#i really should make a tag for i come with knives

[leighsartworks216]

"I really love how slow this slow burn is!"

My aroace ass with no idea how to write a developing relationship, only relationships that already exist at the start of a story:

[space-mango-company]

Stranger | Chapter 3

Chapter Links: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]

TW: none for this one, I think

Tags: Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen x Atreides!Reader, Arranged Marriage, Eventual Smut, POV Second Person, No use of y/n, Original Characters, Canon What Canon

Word Count: 1.4k

A/N: Unedited for now! Holy moly, sorry for taking so long on this one. I was kinda drowning in uni work the past week. The next chapter should come sooner, I hope. Also just wanted to say thank you so much to those who take the time to comment!! I really really appreciate the kind words. You guys are super sweet. Mwa mwa.

The inky black fireworks exploded in the distance as you were led back into the underground chambers of the arena. Your eyes are relieved to escape the infrared sun. Heavy doors open for you once more. The na-Baron stands, chest exposed, skin slick with sweat under the artificial light. His blown-out eyes hone in on you as you enter. He makes his way to you holding the blood-stained handkerchief.

"Did you enjoy the show, my lady?" His chest heaves and you feel his heavy breaths as he leans into your ear, voice even more raspy, "Aren't you something, little hawk."

He holds the cloth up as if giving it to you but when you reach for the handkerchief he snatches it away.

You sigh and lift your veil, a sweet smile plastered on your face, "A most impressive demonstration, na-Baron. You are as formidable as they say."

Feyd-Rautha takes a moment to scan your face. He doesn't know what your game is but he wants to play.

His breathing has settled. He raises a hand to reach for your cheek but you move past him. You walk towards a table displaying knives laid over a cloth. You pick one up to examine. The blades remain uncleaned, the blood from earlier in the day already beginning to dry. You sense they will be kept that way.

"You have good form. Clean, precise," you say, holding the dagger in a reverse grip, edge out. "You enjoy it, don't you?"

From behind, you feel Feyd-Rautha close the distance between you once again.

"Perhaps you enjoy it a little too much," you turn to him, "I'm sure you let him disarm you on purpose. For the show."

Feyd-Rautha tilts his head and allows himself a small smile. "You should return to the fortress, my lady. I have duties to attend to," he touches your armed hand and gently takes the knife from you, "and my uncle would like to see you."

Despite being shielded from the black sun, you elect to keep your veil for your lunch with the Baron. You excuse the chill running down your spine as the coldness of the high, stony walls of Fortress Harko as Iassa escorts you to the dining hall. Iassa kept her head bowed, you noticed, hands folded in front of her. She didn't need to look ahead to know the way.

When you arrive, large doors open to the sight of the Baron floating at the head of the table. There was only one other seat at the side of the table a few feet from him. Despite that, there was a full spread of food which his servants were already feeding him.

You had done your best to avoid the Baron in your short time here, but it seems this meeting was inevitable.

"Lady Atreides," his eyes turn toward you lazily. "Come. Eat."

"Good afternoon, Baron," you curtsy as you enter. Iassa bows to you and waits outside. You take your seat, "will it only be us, my lord? This seems a lavish spread for only two people."

"Are you calling me a glutton, girl?" he spats.

Your heart takes a beat as you try not to stare at his grotesquely large body.

"We are Harkonnen," his husky laugh rings through the room. "We may lavish as much as we please."

You exhale the breath you were holding and let out a small laugh. Of course. They were the richest house in the Landsraad. The Harkonnens must be accustomed to excess.

"Soon, child, you will be Harkonnen as well," he says in that gravelly voice that is so uncomfortably similar to Feyd-Rautha's. "Is that what you want?"

The question takes you aback. No one has ever asked you this question before. This betrothal has been decided for so long, you've never even thought to ask the question yourself. It was all you'd known. Your duty. You had never bothered to imagine what your life would have been if you weren't destined to marry the Harkonnen heir.

You regain your composure, "Baron, it is my honor to unite our Great-"

"Drop the act, child!" he barks. "Perhaps you fear me, but if you are to become 'family', I will not have the patience for charades. Speak plainly. Do you want to marry my nephew?"

This has been a most unusual exchange. At least compared to what you're used to. Always taught to be sweet and pleasant. You suppose you had nothing to lose, considering the Baron killing you would start an all-out war. You take a moment to think, and then a deep breath.

"I am a woman, dear Baron. There is not much for me in this life. Indeed, tales of your house's savagery are well-known throughout the systems, and in Caladan more than most. But had I not been betrothed to your nephew, I would only be married off to some other lord or count or whatever, gentler than Feyd-Rautha they may be," you swallow. "Perhaps, I could have been trained a Bene Gesserit sister. However, to become the wife of the heir to one of the most powerful houses in the known universe—there are worse fates."

The Baron stares, seemingly satisfied with your answer. He waves his servants away. "Eat, child. Waste not the food of one of the most powerful houses in the known universe."

He begins to glide towards the doors on his side of the hall and his servants scurry to lay down their forks and follow after him.

You look to the remaining servants in the dining hall, then to the mounds of food on the table. Your first dinner on Giedi Prime had felt suffocating with all the nobles around and Feyd-Rautha smugly breathing down your neck. You pile your plate high.

In your quarters, Iassa helps you out of your clothes and into a warm bath. You don't wait for her and begin scrubbing your skin with a rag yourself. Between the heat from the morning gladiator fights and your tense conversation with the Baron, you were happy to wash the sweat off your body.

"Is this alright, my lady?" Iassa is trying to wash your hair with the lightest touch, "Does it hurt you?"

"No, no. It's quite alright." You take over and she moves to begin scrubbing your legs.

You're grateful you brought bottles of your own hair soaps. You notice Iassa is intently observing how you washed your hair and you appreciate her wanting to learn. Although, you surmise she might not have a choice. Her black choker seems to stand out even more against her pale skin.

"How was your day, Iassa?" you say as you lather your hair.

She pauses in confusion. "It was quite alright, my lady," her voice is soft and polite.

"Do they treat you well?" you knew it was a futile question.

"I am property of House Harkonnen, my lady," she says as she pours more water into the grey stone bath, "I am treated appropriately."

"Yes, but do you mean appropriately as in well or appropriately as in—" your desperate attempt to make a friend seems to be slipping through your fingers. You let out an exasperated sigh, "I know it's only been a few days but, do I treat you well, Iassa?"

She takes a moment and smiles up at you, "My lady has been most gracious." You see in her eyes she means it.

"You were right about the na-Baron," you say, "he is formidable indeed."

"I'm pleased my lady was impressed," she wraps a robe around you as you rise from the bath.

"Well, I don't know about impressed," you say as you step out, "he is a decent fighter, certainly. Perhaps it is a difference in the fighting styles of our worlds."

After helping you dress, Iassa bows and leaves you to retire. Her grey robes flowing behind her.

Once alone, you find your father's dagger in your belongings. The Baron's earlier question comes back to you. Is that what you want? To marry Fayd-Rautha? That night, you sleep clutching the knife close to your heart.

When you awake the following morning, you are greeted by a servant girl bringing you breakfast.

"Where is Iassa?" you ask.

"She has been relieved, my lady," the girl looks even younger than Iassa, "I am Zora."

Your brow furrows, "What does that mean, 'relieved'?"

When Zora remains silent, you get up from the bed.

On the dark grey of your vanity, you notice a black strip of leather. A choker identical to your new servant's but it was unmistakable who it belonged to. Your mind ran through the whys and your blood began to boil.

Chapter Links: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]

Taglist: @torchbearerkyle @austinswhitewolf @dreamlandcreations @emeraldsgirl @strawberryfieldsforevermore @bornslippys @vexis-world @aoi-targaryen @alexandrainlove

[miscfandomwrites]

A/N: Little Drabble I've been working on that I figured was good enough to post. And yes, Konig will be in here because I say so and also because I have a huge little crush on him. Easiest way to describe sunshine is that while she doesn't do active field work (unless absolutely necessary) she is still very scary and cute at the same time.

Pairing: Poly! Shifter! Tf141 + Konig x Rabbit Shifter! F Reader

Warnings: Language, dude being a creep, r being a little creepy.

Words: 507

Tagging: @tyler-t0t

Located: Under MW2 -> Sunshine Series

~

“Oh really? That’d be really cool! I bet Gaz would love to come too! He’s been wanting to see that movie for ages!” I told Gavin as he slowly stalked towards me, something akin to a dark smile on his face. 

I held my hand to the side carefully and made my palm flat, the sign for stop as I could hear the boys slowly getting up and walking towards me. Perks of being a rabbit, I guess. 

I smiled at him as I turned my body a bit and opened one of the kitchen drawers, sliding out the chef knife I loved so dearly. 

One of the many things I learned from culinary school: Keep your knives sharp, and your enemies unaware. 

I was forced against the counter as he stood in front of me, licking his lips as if he was a wolf eyeing a delicious meal. 

“Oh bunny, I don’t think you understand, I’m telling you that I want to-”

Before he could finish the sentence, I held up the knife to his neck, starting to force him backwards.

I put on my cheerful voice and the bright face that I used when typically dealing with animals or small children, and smiled at him.

“Oh, I understand completely! Y’know, right this is your windpipe, “ I said as I lightly traced the knife down and up his throat, using small enough pressure to leave slices but not enough to make him react more “And here is your esophagus, Oh! And right beside them are your main arteries that lead to your brain! If they were to get a small slice in them, You could die within two minutes! Isn’t that pretty neat?” I grinned at him, successfully backing him out of the kitchen as I dug the knife a little harder into his neck. 

“Y-You fucking bitch-” he stammered, I tsked and drug the knife across to the other artery, and did the same to it. 

“You really should know better than to mess with a girl in her own kitchen.” I told him. 

“Let alone in front of her pack.” a deep, german-accented voice spoke from behind me, and without having to look I knew it was Konig. 

At that point, I saw Gavin cower, his ears flattening against his head as he quite literally turned tail and ran. 

“Great, now I have to wash the blood off of this.” I sighed, heading towards the sink. 

“That was fucking creepy, lass.” Soap spoke up, arms crossed his chest as he tried to calm himself down from fully shifting. 

I shrugged. “Hey, he asked for it. There’s a reason I’m called Sunshine after all!” I told him with a smile. 

As soon as the adrenaline wore off my temper dropped, still with a smile on my face I carefully hand washed and dried off the knife before sliding it back into its drawer. 

Straightening out my apron, I turned back to the boys with my hands clasped in front of me. 

“Now, who wants dinner?”

[mistypsych]

ANATOMY OF A CRIMINAL - CHAPTER 1

/ yoongi / suga / agust d /

summary: as a doctor you never expected to be dragged into “the criminal life”, nothing and no one seems to be true anymore, your whole world turns upside down after you save him.

pairings: yoongi mob boss x f.reader x non idol bts members.

warnings: smut, guns, knives, stabbings, blood, gore, murders, drugs, criminals, gang life, medical emergency, illness, abuse, swearing, angst, dubcon, gang violence, corruption, manipulation, lies, cheating - 18+ minors dni.

Note: Hi! This is an attempt of writing a fanfic long after writing anything at all. Please also keep in mind English is no longer my first language and it might be a bit rusty and odd at times but I try my best. The story is a non idol BTS fanfic with Suga being the main character. The first chapter or so there might not be a lot of Yoongi but I want the backstory to be clear. The next chapters there will be way more of him I promise! If you want to be on the tag list let me know!

You slowly stepped into the on-call room, sighing while rubbing your aching nape. The painful muscle tension was starting to turn into a headache. You sat down on the big couch and leaned your head back, instantly feeling your body loosen and sink into the soft cushions. Today was a rough day for the ER unit. The hospital was dealing with multiple trauma victims due to a horrendous bus collision. Some patients were barely banged up others unfortunately were looking like they might not make it threw the night. You were already dreading the moment you would have to talk with their family members in case the worse was to come.

The weight of the hour-less intense work and surgeries was starting to rub off on your whole body. As you were almost about to doze off, the doors slammed wide open. “What a fucking trip…” Jungkook stopped mid sentence when he saw you glare at him from under your hooded eyelids. “How many energy drinks did your pour into yourself Kook?” you said in a bit agitated tone. You were tired and running on fumes. He seemed way less strained.

The on-call room was called so for a reason. It was supposed to be a safe heaven for peace and rest. It seemed as tho people like your long time friend let those facts slip their mind. “Sorry Y/N. I did not think you were about to sleep… You looked on fire there!” scoffing a bit under your breath you mumbled “Sometimes I really doubt your capability to think at all… and yes I was lit because I had to at the moment plus I had tons of adrenaline pumping in my system. Now it’s all wearing off”. Running his tattooed hand threw the thick and shiny locks of hair he sighed in defeat. He knew your were right. At times he was way to energetic and high maintenance.

“Still good for tomorrow?” he changed the subject not wanting to get into a war of back and forth bantering. Nodding your head you hummed in agreement.

Both of you usually made plans on your days off to go out and give medical attention to those who were less fortunate. You took care of the homeless, drug addicts and poor elders that were embarrassed to seek help at the official medical institutions. Many times it was also the lack of insurance that could get very high. The two of you saw it as charity and giving back to society.

You met Jungkook at med school in the USA. He was a scholarship student that worked his way into getting the opportunity to study overseas. You were the only person at your year that was able to speak Korean due to the fact you went to Seoul during part of your high school years. So of course you were more than happy to help Kook who at times struggled with the more difficult English terms during the lectures.

Over the years you two grew close and he was the one to say you should once again go to Seoul and take up your internship there. Being an adventurous young woman the mere thought of it seemed a great idea. So here you were years later already after your internship with a secured position as one of the junior trauma surgeons and planning charity work with your friend. You already scheduled some “appointments” with your long term patients.

To be honest you preferred this type of work more than the big shot tasks at the hospital. For you medicine should focus more on helping people. The world showed you many times that if you were less fortunate or simply made some bigger mistakes in life, the cruel reality was that usually there was no way to afford medical attention and insurance. Sometimes it was also the cost of meds themselves. Those could be unbelievably high, especially when it came to rare or terminal illnesses.

You and Kookie worked with official charities that did their best to find funds for some crucial medication for the poor. Not once did you also end up saving lives of some addicts that overdosed. Usually people just let them lay on the streets and did not care to help. You could not blame them tho. The less nice areas of the city were also full of con artists and people simply did not want to risk their own lives. At times it was also the mentality of “they did it to themselves, now they need to bear the consequences”.

You were not there to judge. How could any of you know what these people went threw in life? What pushed them to “self medicate”. So you kept focused solemnly on helping those who seemed like they needed it.

You closed your eyes again trying to ignore the fact that Jungkook was rustling around with some food wrapping. “If I am to survive the last two hours of this hell shift and be of any use tomorrow I would greatly appreciate you stop making a ruckus and let me rest!” you huffed angrily, not even bothering to open your eyes. Once the room was filled with silence, a content smirk spread over your lips. At last the well deserved quiet. Sweet darkness of dreamland slowly took over your mind.

*** *** ***

Getting to your apartment after ending a difficult day at the hospital always filled you with relief. It was close to 8 p.m. Not having to work the night shift this time and having the day off tomorrow made you really happy. As you walked deeper into the hallway your nostrils got hit with a mouthwatering smell of delicious food cooking, it instantly made a smile spread on your lips. The sizzling sound coming from the kitchen meant that your fiancé was already off work as well.

He was one of the best criminal detectives in the city. You both worked hard and sometimes very long hours, but you somehow managed to keep your relationship flourishing threw all the years. Walking towards the sweet and sour smell, you saw his slim frame hovering over some pans and stirring their content. His wide slim shoulders moving under a simple black t-shirt. They matched so well with his thin waist shaping his figure into a perfect triangle.

Resting against the door frame you stared at him in awe. “Are you gonna keep looking or do you plan on saying hello?” he said in a joking tone and turned to you with a big grin that reached to his eyes. You always wondered how he could keep such a sunshine attitude while working a job full of murders, death and gore.

Pushing your back off the frame you walked to him humming and wrapping your arms around him. You rested your chin on his shoulder, breathing in his fresh scent. “Hoba… you are too good to me…” you murmured and kissed him behind the ear. The fact that after a surely long day of work for him, he was there making you both a nice late dinner made your heart squeeze.

You really appreciated having him in you life and that somehow you both were deeply involved despite having hectic and difficult careers. The saying - where there is will there is a way - always made you think of your relationship with Hoseok.

After finishing dinner and basically licking your plate clean, you turned to Hobi with a smile “I’ll take care of the dishes” you said taking the plates from the table and making your way to the kitchen. As you were about to dry off the last glass you felt slender fingers creep up your back. You turned your face a bit a small smirk twisting the side of your lips.

“I was thinking of desert…” Hoseok said in a deep voice staring straight into your eyes. “Oh yea? You want me to run down to the store and grab something?” you teased, being well aware that was not what he had in mind. The twinkling of your eyes giving away how much you were enjoying this. But your fiancé was not the type to put up with games for too long so his only response was rolling his eyes, grabbing you and lifting you up. Wrapping your legs around his waist you kissed him desperately.

Lately both of you were so busy with work, you barely had the time or strength for even watching a movie together, so you excitedly welcomed the attention he was giving you. Not bothering to make it to the bedroom you ended on his lap on the couch. Your kisses were getting wild and messy. Just as you started to grind against his growing member, your breaths getting fast and uneven, you heard the loud ring of your phone.

If it were any other signal you would chose to ignore it completely, but the ring tone suggested is was Jungkook from his “special” number in case of an emergency. “Foooor fucks sake!” you growled trying to wait out the call, still kissing and moving your hips over your fiancé. If it was just a couple rings you could try and tell yourself your friend was piss ass drunk messing around.

Much to your dismay the phone kept on buzzing “I need to take this…” you said sadly looking at Hobi who was trying to even out his excited heartbeat. “It’s ok babe” he said, he knew he could not be angry about it, usually it was him being called into some crime scene. You walked away to answer the call “You better be almost dead or something close to that to have a reason for calling me at this hour!” you hissed into the speaker.

“Y/N! This is serious. A guy needs help… he can’t get into the hospital and the wounds are beyond my expertise. I am downstairs waiting for you. I really need your fucking help. I will explain everything later” his voice was shaky and full of what seemed like fear, so you stopped your ranting right away.

You quickly ran to grab your coat “I am coming down!” closing the door on your way out you told Hoseok you might have a very late night and maybe he should not wait up for you. Taking quick strides down the stairs of your apartment building you once again were thanking the universe for the most understanding man to have chosen to exist in your life.

*** *** ***

You quickly got into Kooks car throwing your medical bag onto the back seat. “I brought all my suturing stuff in case it was really that bad…” you said under your breath still a bit irked at the fact you were driving somewhere instead of getting frisky with your lover. “You will need it. Trust me…” is all your friend said.

Turing to finally look at him you saw he was pale, his hair was messy and his forehead was beaded with sweat. He was clutching the stirring wheel to the point his knuckles were white. You never saw him so nervous, not even at the hospitals ER unit.

Driving in silence for some time you finally snapped out of your trail of thoughts and realized you made it into the shady outskirts of Seoul. Even when working on your charity missions you both never made it into the really dangerous corners of the city, so you were very surprised and felt a shiver run threw your body.

You let your questioning gaze fall to Kookie, you were about to blurt out a “what the fuck man?” but before you could, he was out of the car grabbing your bag and walking to your side. Seeing your face full of questions, he opened the car door for you looking at you seriously “It’s fine… we are fine… we need to go there” he pointed towards a dark building that looked like a hangar.

Your body involuntarily shook at the sight. You immediately thought of all the crime scenes and stories Hobi shared with you from time to time when you asked him about work. But instead of listening to your panicking mind, you decided that surely Jungkook had to know what was going on and since he said it was fine it had to be, right?

You cautiously walked behind him letting him carry your bag. Usually you would always rip it out just to show what a strong and independent woman you were. Once you walked into the building you could hear the soles of your shoes clank on the hard floor. It all started to feel like some thriller movie, the type with a bad ending. The beating of your heart was so loud you could swear Kook had to hear it. The adrenalin was rushing in your system and you were starting to feel in flight mode.

Before you could panic more, an unknown voice broke you out of the cycle “Fucking bout’ time!” a tall and strong built guy growled at your friend and then eyed you top to bottom. “This is that great surgeon? She is supposed to be better than you?” he scoffed, a look of disbelief forming on his face. “For your information I am fucking better at surgical work than most!” you snapped. You were freaked out and now some dude that looked like a typical thug was trying to insult you.

“You better not be just running your mouth hun” he smirked grabbing you by the wrist and pulling you to the next room. He basically shoved you inside and tossed your bag at you. You didn’t even know when he managed to take it from Kook. The sight in front of you was gruesome. A young male about your age was laying on some banged up table. Blood was oozing out of his stomach. His pitch black long hair was sticky, his skin pale as a sheet of paper.

“Bloody hell…” you whispered walking up to the man. You turned to look at your colleague giving him the “what do you expect me to do?! make a fucking miracle happen?!” stare. You bent over the man and checked for a pulse. To your surprise he was still alive.

Looking at his slashed abdomen you thought to yourself there is now way you can do anything in these conditions. Even if by some chance you were to manage to stitch him up, the place was far from sterile, so he would die of sepsis anyway. “He needs a fucking hospital!” you say and take your phone out to call up an ambulance.

Suddenly your cell got knocked out of your hands and fell to the floor with a loud thud. Just as your were about to scream your head off, you saw it, the end of a gun pointing straight at your forehead. “No hospitals” the tall male snarled. Now you were sure, you got into some gang business and this was not gonna go the way you want.

tag list: @wobblewobble822

[wingedjellyfishflight]

Hunting Trip

"Have you even ever been hunting?" Ghost opens his mouth. "Animals, not people." His jaw snaps shut. "Yes, you can come with, but it's not like a mission. And you have to be nice. My dad and my brothers will be with us all week."

"I will play nice with your family, promise," he says, smirking down at you.

"I don't believe you when you say it like that, but I know it's the best I will get. You should be excited, though. I pulled really good tags. Moose, elk, and a black bear. I was not expecting the moose, or else I wouldn't have gone for the other two, but I can't turn down moose." He happily listens to you chatter away about the upcoming trip, your eagerness palpable.

"What will you do with the meat? And furs?" He doesn't really care, but he wants to listen to you talk.

"Oh, we have a guy that cuts it all up, and I'm old friends with a taxidermist. If I had more time, I would cut it up myself, but Captain said he can only give me one week, so butcher it is."

"Wait, wait, wait! You know how to cut up an animal? Why are you so bad at using knives in the field?"

"I hate using it against people. It's... too similar," you say with a small shudder before focusing back on the mission.

You catch a military flight back home three weeks later. You spend the trip curled up in the webbing and trying your best to nap after the week you had. Barely had time to clean up from the mission before you ran to the tarmac. Somehow, Ghost made it there long before you. Must be excited, you think, smiling up at the big guy.

Wrapping your arms around your dad and your big brothers doesn't feel like home, you realize with a pang. Not now that you are across the pond with the team. Price's gruff hug after a mission feels more comforting. Of course, part of it may be the glares they are shooting the "strange man" who walked in the door with you.

Introducing him isn't a disaster, per say, but for some reason, they had assumed you were bringing a woman when you told them a friend was tagging along. Luckily, tags haven't sold out since they assumed a woman friend wouldn't actually want to hunt, and you are able to get an elk tag for Ghost.

Your brothers mock him for living in a country without guns. The ribbing ends when he takes the rifle he is given apart for a thorough cleaning before putting it back together in record time. You know he is showing off and you also know that you won't have to clean the guns by yourself this year, which is a relief as your brothers and dad never seem to remember to clean them.

Your oldest brother talks about the moose he is going to get and the recipes he is going to make with it. You congratulate him on drawing a moose tag, too. He stares at you for a long moment before saying that he will be filling your tag and keeping the meat since you won't be able to take it all back.

"News to me. I got special permission and certification to bring back everything. I will be filling my tags and keeping what I get." Your brother looks like he's been slapped and opens his mouth to argue, but your dad steps in.

"Enough. You were supposed to ask, not make assumptions. She will be keeping what she kills, just as we have always done in this house."

The next morning, you wake up to see Ghost sitting and waiting in the chair next to your bed in the dark. The two of you sharing a bed had been an argument and a half the night before. It had only ended when you threatened to leave and stay at a hotel. You're more than capable of platonic sleeping, and you are old enough not to need to put up with their shit. It's still another two hours before the rest of the house will wake and three before you leave for hunting camp.

"Run?" You ask Ghost sweetly.

"Run," his deep voice responds. You manage good time, clocking in several miles before heading home, showering, and making breakfast. The bacon is finishing just as your dad ambles into the kitchen, dressed to go and yawning, but a smile on his face when he sees you cooking in the kitchen.

"You're up early, dear. Didn't need you to make breakfast for everyone," he says, pressing a kiss to your forehead.

"Oh, I didn't. Bruvs are on their own. Asshats kept opening my door to look in last night. They're gonna oversleep, I'm sure," you say with a frustrated smile. Your dad chuckles and claps a hand on Ghost's shoulder in good spirits.

"Ready to put in some miles, son? Could be a long day."

"Lamb warned me. We did a short run so we wouldn't be too worn out be day's end," Ghost says politely. You shoot him a glare at the use of your nickname.

"Yeah, so we-" you try to interject.

"Lamb? Like what? Lamb to slaughter? That doesn't sound..." Your dad flounders on what to say.

Before you can salvage it, Ghost jokes, "More like a lamb sending men to slaughter. Your daughter can hold her own in the field." Your elbow to his side doesn't even slow him down.

"Field? You are consulting in the field now? It's too dangerous to be around all those amped up men, sweetie," your dad admonishes you gently as the three of you sit to eat a quick breakfast.

"Just sometimes. You know how much I love my desk, dad. If I didn't work out with Ghost, I'd get fat," you joke. You know your dad is skeptical, but he worries enough without knowing the true nature of your work. You miss the glance the two men exchange. Breakfast finished, you rope Ghost into loading the last of the gear with you, trying to keep him away from your dad.

It's only minutes before time to leave when you see your brothers stumbling out of the house to the truck. You make sure to sit between your middle sibling and Ghost. Annoyingly, your brother manspreads, squishing your legs over despite your protests. Ghost is nice enough to let you rest your legs against his, giving you a little more room. At least it's only a few hours to hunting camp. You made sure to bring your own tent and gear, so you and Ghost will be cozy the entire trip. You knew from the start that you didn't want your family to see your newly acquired scars, especially the burns on your back from last year's incident. Roasted pork had been permanently removed from your menu after that one.

"So, you two fuckin or what?" Your middle brother asks out of the blue about an hour into the trip.

"Or what," is your flat answer. No matter which is true, you're not one to kiss and tell.

"You ever hunted an elk before, boy?" You grimace at your brother's terrible mouth filter.

"Not elk, no," comes the answer from your other side.

"Oh, sheep? Antelope?" You try to intervene, but you're not fast or loud enough to drown out Ghost's answer.

"People." The rest of the ride is mercifully silent with your brothers seemingly absorbed in staring out the windows.

Reaching camp, you and Ghost work as a well-oiled machine. After so many months and especially after the time spent together in the last month in the field, you work silently and smoothly. You help your dad set up their tent, your brothers gearing up already to hunt instead. Between the three of you, camp is set in record time. Your dad begs off hunting, claiming he is going to take a nap after the early morning and long drive there.

Having pre-selected your hunting areas as a safety measure, the two of you set off into your designated zone. You let your brothers pick what they considered the prime area, hoping they would bag out early and give you time to fill your own tags. Luck is in the chilly air, though, as you see sign of a black bear not far from the trailhead. Stalking it, you realize it is stalking a herd of elk itself.

Setting up a shot can be difficult. It's even more so when you are hunting a predator. When you shoot your bear, Ghost takes down a big bull elk, too. You send him back to camp to grab your dad and get the animals ready to move. Your dad switches off with both of you to help pull the game back. You load them in the back of the truck and hug both of them excitedly, happy with the quick start to the trip. Two tags done and two to go. Your brothers have no such luck, and they are less than thrilled with your first day success.

You almost laugh when your brothers corner you later, demanding answers. "How could you bring someone like him?!" Your oldest brother is indignant.

"It's not like I work with fucking girl scouts. What did you think spec ops guys do?"

"You never said-" your brother starts.

"I said he was a coworker. The fuck do you think that means, idiot."

"All you do is push papers, course we assumed he did the same," your younger brother interjects.

"Whatever. He's here now. Deal with it and stop being rude to him," you growl out.

The next morning, you get up early and drive into the local butcher to drop off the elk and bear. You come back and set off on an all-day scout to find a moose. You find mostly older evidence of them around, but also spot another elk herd and sign of deer. Your brothers get one deer between them, and they celebrate as if it was a world record animal.

The third day, you roll out of bed antsy. "Run?" Ghost asks with a grin. "Run," you answer easily. This time, you push nearly ten miles before calling it quits. Coming back, sweaty, and flushed gets your brothers riled up. Your response is simple. "Keep your hair on, lads. We just went for walkies. Haven't been getting enough exercise in and eating too well with dad feeding us."

They both bristle at your casual use of British slang and storm off to hunt again, unwilling to even talk to you. Your dad shakes his head. "They'll never see anything crashing around like that."

"Nope. Dad, you take our section today. We are going to push further up and try to glass a moose, and we saw some good elk out our way." By the end of the day, you're tired, but you did find fresh sign, which is encouraging. Just as your dad had predicted, your brothers didn't see anything all day. Your dad, on the other hand, had opted to be picky and didn't take any shots, but saw many animals.

Day four, you decide not to go for a run. It could be a tiring day if you get a moose and have to haul it down. With that in mind, you stage extra gear partway up to be able to move a moose back to camp more easily. You finally glass the moose you've been tracking near mid-day, getting eyes on it for the first time. It's a huge bull, well over the minimum horn size. Your hands shaking slightly, you take the shot. The bull goes down after just a few steps. Processing it takes longer than any other game you've done, but with Ghost helping, you get back to camp not long after dark. Your brothers managed to shoot an elk today, and you celebrate with them, happy that they are happy.

That night, you wake up to a hand pressed to your mouth and a gentle voice shushing you in your ear. Another nightmare, you realize. Your whimpers had woken Ghost, and he covered your mouth before the screams started that would have woken up the entire camp. You thank him with a shaky voice, and he moves his sleeping bag next to yours, wrapping around you. It's what the team has done for months when in the field as a warm body next to yours staves off the screaming and whimpering. Though it doesn't help with the nightmares themselves.

You get up extra early and drop the game off at the processor before heading back to camp. Today is your last chance to fill tags if you want to bring the meat back, so you move fast tracking an elk herd. It takes most of the morning, but you manage to find them and drop a good-looking bull. Hauling it back, you are elated to have filled all of your tags in time.

When you reach camp, you see that your dad has finally gotten his deer, but your brothers were empty-handed again. They complain about not seeing anything. Unable to help yourself, you say, "Maybe if you didn't sound like a pair of trucks crashing through the woods, you'd see something." This sets them off. They think you are making shit up, again, and talking down to them.

You decide they are a lost cause at this point, but Ghost offers to show them a few tricks on moving silently through the forest. He jokes that he isn't as good as you, but he's good enough.

"That's just because she doesn't move. She just sits there waiting for someone else to do the work." Ghost just shakes his head, knowing he can't tell them any stories. Your dad watches you closely, realizing that there is something more going on here, but unable to pinpoint exactly what that something is.

The next morning, Ghost goes with your eldest brother, and you take your middle sibling into your section. You hope that separating them will help increase their chances of filling tags. Your brother pays closer attention than you'd thought he would, and his walking quiets tenfold. He keeps trying to talk to you until finally you snap at him.

"Please shut up. You can talk after you shoot something." Mercifully, he is quiet. You spot the elk herd you've been tracking and move him to set up the shot. He tries to silently argue about where to move to, but you glare until he follows your directions. He settles in and nearly spooks the herd, stepping on a stick as he shifts his body around. Thinking quickly, you almost perfectly imitate a young bull's call, which settles the cows and brings the bull closer to where the two of you are standing, looking for the challenging bull. Your brother successfully takes the shot. And he is ecstatic, whooping and hollering as the cows all take off into the surrounding forest, leaving you far behind.

You help your brother break the bull down for packing out. He looks a lot nervous at the size of one of the packs, clearly not looking forward to carrying it out, until you shoulder it easily. His surprise doesn't surprise you, though. Your brothers hadn't paid much attention to you after they moved out, and basically, none once you enlisted in the military. Upon reaching camp, you find that you are the first ones back. You help him load the elk into the back of the truck and make lunch silently. He looks like he wants to say something, but he never gets it out of his mouth. He spends the time simply standing around, thinking hard and barely interacting with you, though he is watching you closely.

When you hear heavy footsteps coming through the woods, you hurry to meet your dad, helping him drag his big elk back to camp. "Surprised you hauled it back yourself, old man," you tease.

"I've been dragging elk out of the woods for twice as long as you've been alive, girlie." The grin on his face couldn't be matched though when you load it up by yourself, waving him off. The last to return were not successful. It seems your older brother decided that he would show Ghost a thing or two and refused any advice or tips. Thus, he didn't see anything all day. You shoot a look of sympathy at Ghost. That couldn't have been easy to handle silently. He just rolls his eyes back at you, tapping his fingers on his thigh. You tap your fingers back at him and go back and forth in Morse Code. He tells you about how many deer your brother missed seeing sign of or scared off because he wouldn't shut up.

You share how your other brother did, and he smiles at the success you had with him. He tells you that you should take your older brother for one last morning hunt on the sixth day. Maybe you can make him shut the hell up.

Sighing out loud, you say, "Bro, I'll take you out tomorrow morning instead of Ghost. We will get your tag filled." Your brother agrees and mentions that he will show you how it is done, which makes everyone laugh at him.

"Bruv, we are filling your tag. I filled all of mine already. Seems I need to show you how it's done."

He sputters, and your younger brother adds, "It took us just two hours to find a herd of elk. She knows what she's doing, bro. Better hunter than me, for sure." This makes your oldest brother glower, but he finally shuts up.

In the morning, he tries to tell you what to do, and you finally tell him to knock it off after about twenty minutes. He growls, "I'm the oldest. I'm in charge."

You laugh quietly and respond, "Whatever, if you think age is all that matters, you're an idiot. Let's go, and if you want that deer, you'll listen to me. Ghost told me how many you missed or scared off by being too loud and cocky yesterday."

"He what?! Why didn't he tell me? We could have filled my tag yesterday!"

"Probably because you're being such an asshole to him." You shrug like it's the clearest thing in the world because to you it is. Grumbling, your brother follows you. Gradually, he picks up on your mannerisms and his walking quiets, but it still sounds like a moose shoving through a bush most of the time. You stop suddenly, and he nearly runs into you, not paying attention. Grabbing a bit of hair from a bush, you show him silently before walking on quieter than before. Slowly, sign becomes more frequent, and finally, you spot the deer herd. Your brother gets his deer, a big buck, and you help him break it down and load it into the packs. You add both hindquarters to one pack, and he complains that you're trying to load him too heavy. When you shoulder the heavier pack, he then jokes meanly that you're just showing off.

"Just give me that one. I don't want to have to switch off partway down because you're tired," he crows. You ignore him and set off down the trail, too annoyed to even respond to his rudeness. A grunt follows you as he shoulders his pack. At the halfway point, he is nearly wheezing with the added weight of the head on his pack.

"I need... to... stop..." he huffs. "This pack... is too... heavy..."

You wave at him to stop, and when he does, you walk around him and unhook the head from the top of his pack. Hefting it over your shoulders, you use the antlers to keep it in place at the top of your pack. "Let's go. We don't have all day," you call back to him. You can feel his stare as you hump down the mountain, moving faster now that he isn't slowing you down as much. Luckily, it's only a few miles to camp because you're exhausted after hauling so much on your back. Your dad scolds you that you should have sent someone back to get the rest of them to help, and you shrug it off.

"No sense in wasting time, dad. We got it down just fine." Happily, the three of them already have camp broken down except for the makeshift shower area. You've mostly avoided using it, just wiping down with a washcloth, but the deer head bled on your neck and down your back the whole way. "Ghost, can you help check me for ticks," you ask quietly as you strip off your gear before walking to the shower. Your brothers grumble about the two of you showering together, but you don't care as Ghost is the only one you trust to do it and the only one that knows why you won't wear tank tops very often anymore.

When you're nearly finished, Ghost convinces you to put lotion over your burn scars as they are flaring up from the lack of it in the last few days. He walks out in just a pair of shorts and shoes to dig through your pack, ignoring the suspicious stares of your brothers and their stares at his scarred torso. You manage to bite back the moan when Ghost swipes over the first scar, but not the whimper of pain when he brushes the second, which is severely inflamed. He whispers an apology and continues, knowing that you hate pausing part way when treating them, even if it hurts badly.

When you walk out fully dressed and he is still in just shorts, your brothers shoot him similar dirty looks. "Couldn't keep it in your pants a minute longer, eh?" says your younger brother angrily.

"You're disgusting! Havin sex with my sister feet away from her family," adds your older brother.

"Shut up, idiots. He was rubbing lotion on my s-back. I needed it done, and I can't reach the dry skin there easily," you growl at them.

"We know you're lying. You're disgusting. Can't believe you, seriously."

Your dad sees the stubborn set of your eyes and the hurt beneath. His sons have gone too far, he knows. "Knock it off, boys. You've been nothing but rude this entire trip, and I'm sick of it."

"But dad...!"

"Sugar, just tell them. You've been stepping around questions and hiding yourself long enough," Ghost's voice cuts through the air.

"You gay or somethin? Would make sense, but you know we don't care," your oldest brother says as he just can't help himself. It makes you mad enough to about face away from them and rip your shirt off angrily, showing them your back.

"No, bruv. He means I should show you why I couldn't make it on the trip last year. The things I hide by telling you that I consult for the Task Force rather than telling you that I am a member of the task force. I... I haven't wanted to worry you, dad." You nearly whisper the last in the complete silence that follows. Ghost rests a hand on your shoulder, watching their reactions carefully. Their eyes trace up and down the burns that mar the middle of your back and dipping down below the waist of your pants.

"You called from the hospital," your dad says finally. The pieces are clicking into place for him. "I remember hearing the beeping in the background, and you sounded... stressed."

"It was a long recovery. They had to harvest donor skin, but luckily, I got to be a guinea pig on a new treatment that sped things up," you say quietly.

"How did this happen? Why weren't we notified? You didn't let us visit or anything?!" You're surprised to hear your middle brother sounding upset. You take the time to fix your shirt, thinking about what to say.

"I was on a mission. There was a complication, and it bollocksed up the whole thing." You pause as you think back to it. "Anyway, I got caught under some burning shit and yea, this happened."

The glare Ghost gives you has you rolling your eyes at the intimidating man. "You forgot the part where you held a burning timber up to save someone and crawled out on your own, refusing to medivac until the mission objective was completed. I think that adds a few important details to the whole thing."

"And...what were you doing when this happened," your oldest brother demands.

"He was shooting anyone who tried to come near us. Saved my life, he did," you say with a grateful smile up at Ghost.

"So, you've been lying to us about your job and getting hurt, and what else? How do we know what to believe now? You only make it back here once a year, after all." Your oldest brother sounds betrayed, his tone accusing.

You just shrug and shake your head, ignoring his questions and accusations. "You gonna shower before we go, or can we break camp and head home?"

"Let's go. I want away from you as fast as possible," he sneers, turning away from you angrily.

"Fine with me," you say in a flat voice. You take down the last few tarps and drain the water with Ghost's help. The trip to the processor and back home is silent in the car, your dad and brothers thinking heavily on what they learned today while you and Ghost simply enjoy the peace and quiet. As soon as you get home, your oldest brother leaves, tires squealing as he takes off in his truck. You just shake your head, disappointed that he's still got his head so far up his ass after all this time.

You pack the meat from the butcher into coolers for the trip home to London. "You should probably call Captain and tell him to pick up another freezer or two," Ghost jokes as more and more coolers are filled and packed into the back of the truck you rented.

"I had three delivered while we were gone," you grin up at him. "Good thing I got my permission ahead of time. Captain is dying to try this stuff."

"You think they'll let you on with it all? It's more than I expected, and I thought I had a pretty good idea of what to expect," he says, a little worried.

"Oh, I grabbed bribe jerky from the butcher. They'll be excited enough not to care once I pass it around," you say with a knowing smile.

"You know the way to a man's heart, luv."

"Yes, ordnance and explosives," you quip with a loud laugh, making him grin down at you.

Telling your middle brother and dad goodbye the next morning is hard. They both hold tightly to you, and you nearly have to pry your dad off when you go to leave, his worries making him want to hold you tight and keep you safe.

"I'll be back next year, I promise. We probably will need to hunt extra, knowing how much the team will love this meat," you assure him with a smile, pressing a kiss to his cheek. You drive back to the air strip, happy to have ended things on a better note.

"So, yer dad is the dog's bollocks. Brothers are shite though," Ghost says as you drive away. You laugh. It's all you can do. When you show up with a pallet of coolers, the flight crew is ready to deny you until you hand over your certificates and small box of jerky to share between them. They eagerly call over the forklift to load the pallet, and you spend the whole trip listening to hunting stories from their childhood and telling your own with Ghost listening quietly at your side.

Captain Price is there waiting on the tarmac when you land. His eyes bulge when he sees how many coolers you brought back. "I take it the hunt was successful then," he teases.

"Yeah, just a bit. Bet you thought the freezers were overkill, eh?"

He laughs, "You know I did. Set them up anyway. Welcome home, kids," he says, ruffling your hair as he wraps you in a hug and gripping Ghost's arm in a friendly squeeze. You smile up at him, happy to be home with your team.

[preciouslandmermaid]

🕸🕷 my heart is a hornet's nest 🕸🕷

Pairing: Insomniac Peter Parker/Spider-Man x Fem!Reader (code name: “Huntress” + she is Kraven’s daughter)

Rating: T

Summary:  It's been thirteen months since Kraven was killed by Venom. Despite everything, you're still in the city and helping a nerd - named Peter - in his garage try and save the world. It's hard to ascertain where your old life as a hunter ends and your new life begins. Somedays you can't even tell if you're moving forward or not. But, the pull you feel towards Peter is magnetic. And it's bound to end in catastrophe if you pursue him.

Even as part-time Spider-Man, Peter knows his relationships with others puts them at risk. He doesn’t want to throw you back into the carnage, into the fray, to the wolves you claim to be so comfortable around. He can't risk it. He can't risk you. And the long nights in his garage are really, really starting to wear at him.

Prompt: "Are you afraid of me?" / "Do I look afraid?"

tags: enemies to Lovers/enemies to friends to lovers, no use of y/n, secret identity, unresolved romantic tension, first kiss, light angst, slow burn, mutual pining !!

🕷🕷 ( read on ao3 ) 🕷🕷

Kraven snaps your name like a whip.

“You’ll oversee this one, huntress.” he says without looking away from the screen.

A mixture of pride and trepidation curdles beneath your skin. Kraven is trusting you, but he trusts plenty of his hunters. You lick your lips. The transfer of Martin Li. You promise Kraven that you’ll put the team together and leave before the hour.

No one questions Kraven’s decision. You don’t get special treatment purely because you’re his blood. In fact, if you look closely (which you won’t), you’d say that Kraven treats you worse than his other hunters. He expects—he demands – more of you.

There will be a target on your back when Kraven completes his hunt and finds a worthy enough predator to kill him. But that’s nothing new. You’ve had a target on your back since you were young enough to understand the way of the world; predator and prey, hunter and hunted, kill or be killed.

You lift your arm-- THUNK!—the throwing knife hits its bullseye.

“Huntress,” a hunter named Erik approached you, “you want five VTOLs?”

THUNK! This one is a little off-center and you blame Erik for distracting you. You exhale, balancing your weight, and lining up your shot. Erik is bold. Kraven named you the leader of Li’s abduction. He shouldn’t be asking questions. Your eyes narrow.

You pivot on your heel, fast as a viper’s strike, and flashing silver spins through the air. It’s beautiful.

Erik makes a strangled sound in the back of his throat.

Your throwing knife wobbles from where its pinned Erik’s hood to the wall. His eyes flick to the blade. He’s lucky you didn’t miss. Otherwise the blade would’ve sank into his throat or he would lack an ear for the mission ahead.

“That’s what I said,” you yank the knife from the wood, freeing him, “wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” Erik says, voice tight and clipped, and his eyes darken. You know he is loyal to Kraven, not you. If he managed to kill you – Kraven would be disappointed, but he wouldn’t mourn you. Nature is cruel and so is your father. You sheath your throwing knives while keeping one eye on the hunter.

Erik hasn’t left which means he could be planning his next move. You tense and wait for the inevitable blow. Come on, you think, try it. You’d be happy to fight off your frazzled, nervous energy. You should probably conserve your strength in case things with Martin Li go bad.

Erik nods, “huntress,” and leaves.

You roll your shoulders and return to the weapons cache. I’ll bring Martin Li to Kraven and he’ll have his wonderful fight. He’ll achieve his dream.

Nothing will go wrong. Nothing could. You’ve been planning this for months.

******

Peter wobbles to his feet, his head ringing. Whoever these guys are—they’re serious. The tech they’re using is insane. Invisible drones. Laser swords. What’s next? A few giant mecha-robots intent on crushing Harlem? He shouldn’t think about it – he doesn’t want to jinx it.

He stares into the face of the capable, dangerous stranger with smoke burning his nostrils and scalding his throat.

Dark soot clings to your clothes, your expression venomous and focused, furrowed and tight. The light frames you, bouncing off the east river in sparks, and refracting over the small throwing knives clutched between your knuckles. She’s fast, like really fast. Fast enough that he’s concerned you have a spider-sense of your own. Who the hell are these guys? Miles kicks a drone in mid-air and metal-on-metal crunches together like a compacted soda can.

Peter jumps before the blade can slice through him. It whistles through the air, hits and – literally bounces! -- off a metal pole. His lenses widen. He twists his body. His nerves ignite with impending danger, but he’s in the already dodging the first blade.

He’s Spider-Man.

He can’t stop physics.

Your second blade cuts through the air and burns when it cuts his shoulder. He lands on his feet, a sharp inhale drawn through his teeth, and resists the urge to check the injury. She can’t have that many knives on her!

Your lips quirk, “are you afraid of me?”

“Do I look afraid?”

“Hard to say,” you make a gesture around your face, “with the mask and all.”

“Where’s yours?” he propels through the air with his webs slung behind him, “I thought--” you deflect his punch, “most bad guys—” you stumble backward when he kicks your chest, but recover quickly, “want to keep their identities a secret.”

“I have no shame in who I am,” your leg swings over his head.

“So uhhh...who are you?” he quips. His palms land flat on the cold, metal surface and his spine curves, his body moving like a question mark, and avoiding the onslaught of your assault.

“Serious question!” he says a little louder this time while your silver knife dances through the light as it carves his webs into flimsy pieces.

A burst of green flares flash against the gray smoke. His heart flips. The raft jolts to the side. They’re going to drag the ship underwater! The heavy-duty spears punch through the metal as if it was made of tissue paper.

“We gotta get this ship free!”

Peter spares a final glance over his shoulder and you leap from the other side. Are you landing on another boat? A life raft? Are you going to swim away? He has no clue. He can’t spare any further brain cells on it though. He slides down the tilted raft toward the giant spears that function like fish-hooks into the industrial, military transport raft.

***

It’s been approximately thirteen months since Kraven met his end.

You’ve found that keeping count provides some strange, twisted comfort. You wake up, check your calendar, and strike another tally mark into the wall. It feels good to carve the line into the sheet-rock, little flecks of white catching on your thumb and falling like cremated remains onto the hardwood floor and clinging to your socks.

Sometimes you run into old hunters, vying for territory, and hoping to claim some scraps that Kraven left behind. Many, however, fled to Kraven’s homeland to play out the tragedy of a power vacuum and continue Kraven’s legacy.

None of them have impressed you. Not the ones that have sought you out, hoping to kill Kraven’s kin, and earn glory. And definitely not the ones who you’ve run into accidentally. Those are the worst. They’re cowards. They’re mice. You stumble upon them, trying to eat the crumbs off Kraven’s table, and your retribution is swift and bloody and a pain in the ass to clean up.

You wonder what Peter Parker would say if he knew. You pull your sweater over your head. Peter, the nerd running a research foundation out of his garage, happens to be your only...well, friend is the wrong word...but he’s your only something in this city.

You aren’t supposed to have ‘somethings’. Attachments, as Kraven would call them. Attachments made you weak. You thought it was hypocritical for your father preach this advice when he had a wife and multiple children. Not anymore though, you finish lacing up your boots, everyone’s dead now except for me.

The cassette clicks with a satisfying ‘CLUNK’ into the player and you slide your headphones over your ears. The player was a gift from Peter. No. Gift is the wrong word. It’s on a loan.

“What’s this?” You cradled the cassette player, “it looks ancient.” You twisted the sharp-grooved circles. They remind you of strange teeth. You click the play and pause button. It’s clunky. It’s right-angles and lackluster chrome and the buttons make noise.

It’s the antithesis of the technology you grew up with around Kraven.

You love it.

Peter rolls his chair over to you, “it’s not ancient. Maybe vintage. God, do we call it vintage?” he sounds so baffled that you almost smile, “you know, record players and vinyl are making a big comeback so it’s only a matter of time before Walkman do too.”

He doesn’t wait for you to respond, “do you want it?”

“Huh?”

“I’m not using it obviously.” He smiles, “I think I have a few cassettes lying around and there’s no shortage of music shops in Brooklyn.”

Your fingers tighten around the device. The wild part of you, the part that Kraven nurtured through violence and toxic loyalty, wants to throw the device on the ground. See how sturdy it is and compare it to the tactical, military-grade equipment you grew up with. How many pieces will it break into? A dozen?

You gaze into Peter’s earnest face. His eyes are warm, light mahogany. There are soft lines that kiss the corners of his eyes. You think when he is old, he will have many wrinkles around his eyes, and it takes a second longer than normal for your lungs to refill.

“I’ll borrow it,” you say, unable to accept his random kindness, “and return it before our work is done.”

“Great!” Peter coughs, rubbing the back of his neck, “I mean, that sounds good.”

The cassette clicks, whirring warm in your palm, and switching the song. The subway rushes past in a gust of tepid, moist air that smells both stale and greasy. You scan the crowd. The citizens range from individuals wearing jean jackets with sewn patches, to baggy street wear, to plastic bags on shoes, to gym athletics and smart watches.

Someone gets on the train wearing a camouflage parka. Your spine stiffens. Your fingers twitch to the weapons hidden inside your coat. Do I know your face? You shift your body and peer at the subway windows, allowing the ghostly transparent reflection to reveal the stranger’s face.

As you wait for the right angle, the right lighting, you consider your options. Tail them out of the train—could be a trap, but their numbers are never that high. Get close, press the blade to the artery in their thigh, let them see your face before you sink the blade in and leave on the next stop. The timing would be tricky, but not impossible. Not for you. Bail on Pete and spend the next several days tracking the stranger until you’ve found and confirmed their hideout. An ambush. Quick and silent.

The stranger coughs into their sleeve and your fingers fall away from your knife.

You’re glad Pete isn’t here. You’ve never traveled together and you likely never will. It’s safer that way. It keeps him out of your personal life.

“That’s the problem with attachments,” you mumble to yourself, “you start wondering what they might say if they knew you.”

*****

Pete rubs his eyes with his fists, “do you hear birds or is that just in my head?”

You don’t lift your head from the microscope, “it’s birds.”

He yawns. There have been plenty of late nights in his garage shared with you, but this one feels different.

Maybe it’s because of the mercurial light flickering along the planes of your face.

Maybe it’s the notes by your hands, the edges of your fingers smeared black from ink.

Maybe it’s the unplugged headphone wire dangling from your throat and brushing ever-so-often against your exposed collarbones.

Shit. He blinks, looking away. He can’t get mixed up. He’s grateful to you. You donated the notes first, but then pieces of Kraven’s equipment, and then...you came around more and more. You wanted to see what he was doing, wanted to see his progress, or ‘see how helpful your notes are.’ He likes it. He likes having you around.

But, even as part-time Spider-Man, Peter knows his relationships with others puts them at risk. He doesn’t want to risk you too. And it’s not because you can’t fight. To him, you’re finding your place outside of Kraven’s shadow and he doesn’t want to mess that up. He doesn’t want to throw you back into the carnage, into the fray, to the wolves you claim to be so comfortable around.

The sequences before him blur into gibberish. He peeks up through his hair back to you.

Your name is the first word out of his mouth, followed shortly by “you’re bleeding!”

“I tried to catch the sample,” your voice is laced with frustration, “I can’t believe I dropped it.”

“It’s fine,” he opens the first-aid kit that’s stowed beneath the desk, “let me see.”

***

You blink at Peter. Earnest, helpful, kind Peter. You cradle your hand to your chest. It stings, but you’ve faced hornets stronger than this. The tiny shards of glass bounce colorful reflections from the holiday lights strung around Peter’s garage. The wild voice tells you to dig the shards out with your nails.

The blood is starting to stain the hem of your sweater.

Peter doesn’t blink. He doesn’t flinch away. His offered hand holding the gauze doesn’t shake.

You swallow. Why isn’t he shying away from the woman made of shrapnel? Doesn’t he know you’re lethal?

“What?” his eyebrows lift, “are you afraid of me? Or is it medical care in general?” soft humor folds into his brown eyes, “I promise my co-pays are reasonable.”

His words shatter the stiffness of your muscles.

You say, “do I look afraid?” you extend your bloody hand to him.

His fingers curl lightly and gently around your wrist. He flushes the wounds with water before plucking the glass out with a pair of tweezers. His brow furrows in concentration. Your neck prickles and a tingling sensation travels down your spine.

You’ve seen his furrowed brow a hundred times. However, you’ve never experienced it as the subject. Peter holds an antiseptic wipe between his long fingers. His touch is unbearably gentle and you wish you had something to compare it to.

“This might hurt a bit,” the soft, low rumble of his voice is strangely intimate.

The words fall out of your mouth, “I’m used to it.”

“Are we going to unpack that?” He slides the wipe across your angry, throbbing skin.

“No,” your lips twitch, “unless you have a psychology degree I’m unaware of.”

You’re fascinated by the way his fingers move along yours, light and precise, carefully wiping away the blood and wrapping your hand in gauze.

He says, “maybe it’s time for a career change.”

You smile. “What career?”

Peter chuckles, “okay, I walked into that one.”

His eyes lift to yours and his jaw slackens, like he’s finally caught the creature stalking him in the woods, and his fingers twitch on your wrist. The charged moment hangs undisturbed in the air, sending signals through the ether and rearranging the flow of blood in your veins.

His cheeks flush rosy and sweet. The pink hue reminds you of that pivotal morning a few months ago when Spider-Man gave you a sunrise and Pete’s number and a hope for a different future. Your fingers curl into his. And the carefully wrapped gauze prevents you from feeling the warmth of his palm. The wild voice tells you to rip the bandages off and run home. Your knees bump into his.

There’s always so little distance between you.

It’s a small garage, after all.

You tilt forward and hear Pete’s sharp inhale. There isn’t a moment of hesitation. Not for you. You know when to strike, when to move, and when to hide. It’s been drilled into you since birth. Hesitation is a lack of courage, in confidence, and you’ve never lacked either of those.

Peter’s mouth collides with yours.

Your ever-present and paranoid guard slips and you close your eyes to savor it—savor him.

The pliant softness of his lips melds into yours and your exhale shudders between your lips. His hand slides from your throat and holds your cheek, his thumb pressed into your cheekbone, and your hip bumps into the side of his workbench when you stand.

Peter remains on the stool, his neck arched, and his lithe legs part for you to enter the space between them. The thrill illuminates your chest like a red flare against a black sky. His lips play against yours, eager and a little clumsy, and you clutch the front of his wrinkled cotton shirt.

He mumbles your name.

“Shh,” you nose skims along his, recapturing his lips, because you think words might ruin it. The hanging lights flash their merry little dance. There’s fragments of glass under your boots. Ink stains your fingers, blood stains your sweater, and Peter’s tongue stains your lips.

You’ve experienced blood lust. You’ve felt it pounding through your ears and sharpening your focus into razor-thin virulence. You’re familiar with the excitement of a good hunt, a worthy opponent, a well-matched fight. Spider-Man, you think, I’ve felt this with him. But those were mixed with violence, and blood, and bruises.

This – this moment with Peter – is wholly different. Your heart pumps the same blood, pushing it through arteries and valves, but your hands move to caress, to clutch, and stroke through the fine strands of his hair. Your lungs tremble, not in pain, but in elation. The passion rolls through you in waves of syrup and brushes your skin like branches of fir.

Peter’s phone buzzes – loud and incessant – and he groans before tearing his mouth from yours. His cheeks are ruddy, eyes bright, and his chest heaves with hungry gulps of air. You’re glad to know you aren’t the only one affected by the strong pull of – whatever this is – between you.

“Sorry, I’ve gotta--” he lifts the phone from the table, “hello?”

You watch Peter’s face while he talks on the phone. He’s too expressive. He’d make a terrible hunter. And probably a bad poker player, too. You want to kiss him again just for the hell of it. And feel the rise and fall of his chest beneath your palms, feel his breath mingling with yours, his tongue and the blunt force of his teeth.

“I have to go out, um, do you want to come with?” he tilts his chin toward the garage door, “we could – uh – get something to eat along the way?”

You hands twitch at your sides. Your coat, draped on the desk chair, is laden with hidden pockets for knives and darts and small vials of poison. An arsenal for protection, an arsenal for vengeance, the truth of your soul. A soul that Peter cannot – should not – bear witness to.

“Can’t.”

His expression deflates, but he recovers with an easy-going smile.

He shakes his head, “that’s cool,” and says, “another time then.”

You make a noncommittal sound.

***

You finish setting up the tripwire at your apartment door and wipe your palms on your sweatpants. The windowpanes glisten with raindrops, painting the empty corners dark blue, and blurring the myriad of ever-changing traffic lights.

You scratch beneath your ear, upsetting your headphones, and flop onto the couch. The cassette whirs like a little hamster running through its wheel as the song fills your head and blocks out the honking below. You’ve grown to like the city of noise, the city that never sleeps. It’s a concrete jungle. A unique hunting ground.

Tap, tap, tap --

You jerk upright and your head whirls to the noise. Spider-Man perches on the ledge of your window, his red and blue suit shiny and dripping. You cautiously close the distance and begin to disarm the trap before unlatching it. It creaks noisily as it slides open and old paint chips cling to the windowsill.

The cool wet air is tinged with the scent of exhaust fumes.

“Weird time to visit,” you say.

“I was in the neighborhood.” He slips through the window like a salmon and lands soundlessly on the hardwood floor.

You’re going to have to move. You don’t want Spider-Man keeping tabs on you.

“But this isn’t a social call,” he continues, “I need your help with something.”

You lift one eyebrow, “I’m not a mercenary,” then you add, “and even if I was, I doubt you could afford me.”

Spider-Man laughs. “It’s nothing like that!”

You fold your arms across your chest. Spider-Man gives you the vague details of a criminal that he’s had trouble tracking down, could use your expertise, and fighting skills, and so and so forth. It’s a good pitch, you’ll give him partial credit for effort, but you’re not interested in becoming a vigilante – or a hero.

“So, what do you say? We’ve teamed up before.”

Against the symbiote. But, your motivations were selfish. You weren’t helping Spider-Man or trying to save the city. You were weakening Venom.

“No thanks.”

“What?” His lenses widen, “seriously? After my whole speech and everything?”

“Try a power point next time.” You shrug, “I’m retired. No more fighting for me.”

Spider-Man glances around your apartment and there’s evidence of your hypocrisy across every surface. A case of black, tactical arrowheads sits on your coffee table. There’s several target posters hanging on the wall across from your couch with pockmarks embedded into the paper. There’s unfinished gadgets and an open toolbox on the floor near the kitchen where you like to eat breakfast and tinker.

“You’re a bad liar,” there’s a smile in his voice, “just this once, huntress, that’s all. For old times sake.”

You muster the energy to glare at him, but it lacks true heat. “You mean the old times when I was actively trying to kill you?”

Spider-Man shrugs languidly, “we all have bad days.”

That wildness, the hunter that lives inside you, under your skin and in the marrow of your bones is grinding its teeth and trashing into your ribs. It’s hard to determine where you begin and the hunter ends or if they’re destined to forever be intertwined.

You’re a wildcat, unable to be truly domesticated and all your attempts have been in vain.

But, then you remember the warmth of Peter’s lips, his gentle hands, and genuine laughter. You tell yourself, there is room for softness inside of me, for even tigers can purr.

You tell Spider-Man to wait while you get dressed.

“One time,” you hold up a finger, “that’s it.”

“One time.” he agrees with a nod.

Together, you rush into the monotone rain-soaked evening for your first hunt since Kraven’s death.

[jinhyun]

↬part one.

"these days, i haven't been sleepin'

stayin' up playin' back myself leavin'"

pairing: hwang hyunjin x reader

genre: written series, angst, fluff, friends to lovers to exes to lovers, she fell first but he fell harder, yearning, mutual pining, non-idol au, baker!y/n, movie producer!hyunjin.

word count: 4.3k

warnings: y/n has self-sabotaging tendencies, cursing, mentions of alcohol, eventual smut, mature content, MINORS DNI!!!

tag list: open. send me an ASK to be a part of it, otherwise i might miss it. i will only be adding people who are willing to reblog the chapters and/or comment on them, because it does take time out of my day to tag everyone and likes or straight up cricket noises do nothing for me in return if i'm honest.

a/n: so, here's the first part!! idk how long the rest will be but i feel like 4k is okay for now :'). some things were just lightly acknowledged in this part but don't worry, everything will be explained better later on. i hope you guys enjoy!

feedback is very dearly appreciated<3

"You look terrible".

You jolted at Seungmin's remark, feeling your heart race after he had crept up behind you while you focused on neatly placing the freshly made cupcakes in the showcase.

Without saying a word to him as you tried to calm down from the sudden scare, your eyes focused on the large Caramel Macchiato he had placed by you on the counter, smiling softly at his silent show of affection.

"A 'hello' would've been appreciated too, you know?" you hummed, straightening up and leaving the half-emptied tray on the counter before your eyes met your friend's unamused ones.

"I see you every day. Thought we were past hello's by now" he shrugged.

"Are we?" you scrunched up your nose.

"I mean, we should be because it's tiresome to—Just drink your damn coffee".

A throaty laugh escaped your mouth at his sudden exasperation, not waiting another second to follow his order and take a long sip of the beverage he had prepared for you, feeling your muscles relax as soon as the sweetness of it reached your tastebuds.

"Is it good?" he asked.

You rolled your eyes. "You already know the answer to that, you cocky bastard".

"Doesn't hurt to hear it every once in a while" he smirked proudly.

"What did I even do to deserve a coffee made by the Kim Seungmin anyway?"

"Oh, don't act like you don't ask me to make you at least three of these every day".

"Ask is the keyword" you pointed out, taking another sip of it.

He sighed, finally dropping the playful mood and leaning against the wall. "You seemed out of it…"

"Aww, were you worried about me?" you brought a hand to your chest.

"Shut up," he mumbled. "You didn't even hear me come in. I was literally right next to you making your coffee and you wouldn't notice. And your face is…"

"Do I look that bad?" you wondered.

Seungmin shook his head no, yet the concern on his face was clear. "Just tired as hell. Did you get any sleep?"

"Not really," you sighed, leaving the cup on the counter and running your hands over your face. "I'd say I got like three hours of sleep at most".

"Something happened?" he tilted his head.

You lowered your head, and that was all it took for him to read you like an open book.

"Did you get the invitation?"

You felt the air being punched out of your lungs at Seungmin's question. You had hoped that particular question wouldn't be asked at all that day. You had hoped the topic as a whole wouldn't be brought up. But it was Seungmin, you should've expected him to be up-front about it.

You sighed, nervously wiping your hands against your apron before turning around to head towards the cash register — with absolutely no other purpose than to avoid this conversation.

"Did you?" he pushed it, following hot on your heels. "Y/N, come on".

You said nothing.

The answer was so obvious, you wondered why he wanted you to confirm it to him so bad.

Had it been facing upwards all along, you wouldn't have felt your heart being stabbed by a thousand knives.

Of course you had gotten the invitation. It had been lying on the floor of your apartment all day, patiently waiting by the door for you to arrive.

It had been the first thing that caught your eye as soon as you entered your place, and you cursed at whoever decided to slide it downwards under the door. Had it been facing up, you wouldn't have felt your pressure drop the moment your eyes fell on it. You wouldn't have felt your knees go weak and tremble as you reached down to pick it up, and you wouldn't have felt your face heat up at the same time that tears welled up in your eyes.

Because, for the five seconds that it took for you to kneel down and pick the delicate creme envelope up, and for the ten others that it took for you to gain enough strength to flip it over in your shaking hands, you believed the names on the invitation would be the same two that were the cause of your heartbreak.

Hyunjin and Minji, you said under your breath — cursing once again, over how even their names sounded perfect next to one another.

Please, don't be Hyunjin and Minji.

Please.

As soon as you flipped it over, you felt pathetic. How scarred did you have to be for your first thought to a wedding invite being that Hyunjin and his best friend were getting married?

It had been nearly eight months now since you broke up with him, you would've thought your body wouldn't get such a reaction out of a simple envelope on your floor. And the rational part in you wanted to believe he wouldn’t be marrying someone else when it hadn’t even been a year yet. You knew you wouldn’t; not when you were nowhere near halfway there when it came to getting over him and moving on.

Pathetic, that's how you felt.

Wanting to forget about it all, you threw the invitation on your key table before taking your shoes off and heading to bed. Thankfully, this time it laid facing upwards and wouldn't bring you any more heartbreak, since it now displayed the names of the lovely couple who was about to get married and would like you to join them on such a special day.

Felix and Hyejin.

"Mhm…" you hummed in response after what felt like an eternity.

That was as much of an answer as Seungmin would get from you.

"Are you going?" he inquired.

You shrugged. "Don't know".

"What do you mean you don't know?!" he scoffed. "Y/N, it's Felix and Hyejin we're talking about. We've been friends since the beginning of college. Fuck, we’ve been friends with Hyejin since high school!"

"So?" you helplessly tried to fight back, knowing well enough you were at disadvantage here.

"So?!" Seungmin grew frustrated. "I get that you and Hyunjin broke up and I've been very understanding when it comes to not pushing you into hanging out with our group anymore, but it's our friends' wedding we're talking about this time".

You sighed, leaning against the counter in search of some kind of support. "I know…"

"You can't avoid us forever".

"I haven't avoided you" you pouted.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure the only reason you didn't push me away like the rest was because we're literally linked by a contract and have to see each other at our coffee shop on the daily".

"Come on now, don't be like that" your voice weakened, reaching for his hand and holding it in between both of yours. "I can't even remember what my life was like before we became friends, I wouldn't have pushed you away out of everyone".

Seungmin's semblance softened — both at your words and at the miserable look in your eyes. In the end, he was all you had, and although honored, he couldn't help but feel his chest hurt over how you had ended up here.

Not even a year ago, you used to have a team of ten people rooting for you. You used to have a perfect support system, and you used to be a part of it for your friends, too. Now, you had managed to close yourself off and push everyone away. You had cleared the way for Hyunjin and Minji to take over, not wanting to make things awkward after everything that went down. After all, you were the one who ended things, it was only fair for you to be the one to take a step back.

Now, it was only him to you. Y/N and Seungmin, just like it had been up until high school.

With a small smile, he squeezed your hand tenderly. "I really think you should go…"

You bit your lip, looking down to your black shoes, which suddenly seemed like the most interesting view in the world.

Truth be told, you wanted to go. For Hyejin and Felix, you wanted to attend. Being there with them on the most important day of their lives would be a dream come true. But you just weren't ready to face their guests — two of them in particular.

"Will you at least think about it?" he pushed it once more when he realised you might not speak up again. "Before sending your confirmation back by the end of the week".

"Will he…" your voice came out of your mouth before you could stop it, still not being able to look up. "Are they…" you sighed, feeling like you might break down from the thought of it alone. "Are they going together?"

It wasn't necessary for you to say their names, for Seungmin knew well enough who 'they' were.

"You made me promise not to ever tell you about them, no matter how hard you begged".

"That was before knowing I'd might have to face them again".

Seungmin smiled reassuringly. "I don't know, if I'm honest".

The glare you gave him was enough to have him step back and hold both hands up as a sign of peace.

"Cross my heart!" he promised. "Lix and Hye had talked about getting married here and there but the invitation took us all by surprise, you would've known if you hadn't left our group chat".

You smiled melancholically. You used to love that group chat, it had been one of your main sources of sanity all throughout college, and later on the source of many callouts from your friends when Hyunjin and you started dating and inevitably became that couple.

You missed it. You missed your friend group, all of them, even Minji, as sad as it was. But being in the same group as her and Hyunjin was something you were not strong enough to make it through, so you left.

"I'm not sure I should go then…" you confessed. "Imagine if they went there together. I would break down right there, Min".

"Aww, no, come here" he pulled you into a hug, tightly wrapping his arms around your waist and pulling your face into his chest. "I doubt they'll go together, but if they do you can leave. I just want you to show up for Felix and Hyejin, even if you literally only go there to congratulate them and then dip".

A muffled chuckle was heard against his chest. "That would be a bit rude, don't you think?"

"Then stay" he pulled you back by your shoulders, locking his eyes with yours. "You don't even have to look their way. We can go together, I'll make sure to block his view whenever he's within your visual range".

"You'd do that for me?" you pouted.

"Of course, I'll be like your personal bodyguard".

"You should probably gain a bit more muscle for that" you teased, poking his bicep.

"Shut up" he offendedly let go of you.

"You don't have to sacrifice your plus one for me, though" you let him know. "You can take whoever you want with you, I'll be fine".

"Well, it's not like I've got a lot of people lined up to date me, do I?" his snarky remark earned a laugh from you. "Plus, we'd kill three birds with one shot".

"Isn't it supposed to be two?" you tilted your head.

He shook his head. "Three".

You motioned for him to go on with his point.

"The both of us would get a date and wouldn't be put in one of those lame tables for single people so we can mingle" he cringed, and you giggled. "I'd be able to keep you from interacting with Hyunjin and Minji all day long. And, we could make Hwang a lil jealous while at it. I know he was lowkey always jealous of me being close to you".

You snorted, finding his third point absolutely ridiculous. "Oh, come on. What was there to be jealous of?"

"Should I be offended?"

"You're an idiot," you laughed. "But I will take you up on your offer".

"So you're going?!" he cheered up.

"No, I mean… I still have to think of it, but if I do, we should go together".

"Okay then, I guess I'll be waiting" he sighed, quite over dramatically at that. "Please let me know when you make up your mind, so I know whether to check the plus one option or not".

"Will do" you smiled, going back to the long-forgotten cupcakes on the counter in order to keep placing them in the showcase. "Now go see if everything's in order so we can open for the day".

"Yes, boss".

You rolled your eyes. "For the millionth time, I'm not your boss. We're literally associates".

"Yeah, and we're both the bosses here" he reminded you, stealing a salted caramel cupcake from the tray. "Would really appreciate it if you called me boss around our workers from time to time".

"Just go, big boss" you humored him.

Seeing him give you the middle finger while he stuffed his mouth and walked away, you knew the day would go by smoothly.

-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-—-♡

When you arrived home later that night, you were confident to check your assistance on the invitation. Seungmin's pep talk that morning had really done the trick, and the fact that it had been a very busy day at the coffee shop hadn't left that much space for overthinking throughout the day.

So, when you walked into your apartment that evening, you confidently grabbed the envelope you had thrown to the table by the entrance the day before and made your way to the desk inside your bedroom.

Taking a seat by it, you allowed yourself to pay attention to the details on the envelope for the first time. Violet had always been Hyejin's favourite colour, and you couldn't help but smile when you saw the few touches of it on the creme paper. Their names were delicately written in cursive with a black pen right in the middle, and it looked so perfect that it actually had you wondering whether it had been written by hand or in a computer.

Just like Hyunjin and Minji, Felix and Hyejin were, too, names that you considered to look perfect together. You wanted to believe Hyunjin and Minji weren't actually meant to be, though — unlike Lix and Hye, who were so fucking perfect for each other, that it only took you one minute with them the day you all met to realise they were meant to be.

Trying to erase the melancholic smile from off your face, you grabbed a black pen and opened the envelope for once and for all.

The words on the paper that informed the details of when and where the event was taking place went right through your head as you searched for the small square you would have to check in order to attend.

You were going.

Yes, you were going.

That's what you repeated to yourself like a mantra while your mind fought with your body, as the still hand holding the pen wouldn't come down to check the goddamn 'I'm attending' box.

You were going.

You had told yourself you were going.

But, after staring blankly at the paper on your desk for five minutes without being able to move, you came down to the conclusion that you couldn't bring yourself to write down on it.

Not when you were reminded of who you might bump into if you ended up attending.

No matter how hard Seungmin tried to block your view, no matter how hard you tried not to look around for him and have tunnel vision for the groom and bride standing on the aisle only, you knew you would somehow end up caving in.

Because no matter how hard you fought it, your eyes would always look for him in a room full of people. And you knew that if you looked and he was with her, your heart would break all over again and you would not be able to control the tears that would come rolling down your face in an instant.

Even if they were not a couple, even if they did not attend as each other's plus one, you knew you would break down at the most minimal of their interactions — because Hyunjin was no longer yours, and he had been hers first.

Granted, they had never been physically involved —as far as you knew and as far as you wanted with everything in you to believe—, and you had always been too scared to ask Minji if she ever had feelings for him, but Hyunjin did have feelings for her. To make matters worse, he used to have them up until right before you and him got romantically involved.

"She is the most beautiful woman I have ever laid my eyes on" Hyunjin said one night.

You had all been drinking at Minho's on a Friday night, just for the sake of having a good time as the best friends you were — all eleven of you.

Hyunjin was on his third drink already and could feel his eyes becoming heavy, but even then, his eyes would light up at the sight of Minji. Your heart tightened at the realisation, having to remind yourself that it was just a crush and you needed to let go of it before you ended up hurt.

You were well aware of it, but it was hard to let it go when you were sitting down next to him on the couch and his knee was ever-so-naturally touching yours. It was hard to let go of it when the two of you got along so well and would spend hours just sitting beside each other talking about anything and everything at the same time.

And it was hard not to feel your chest hurt every single time he would steal a glance towards Minji, who kept laughing at anything that Han said as they talked by the kitchen's entrance.

It hurt, because he looked at her like she held the stars in the sky, and you wished he would look at you the same.

You wished he would look at you like that. Period.

Not her. Only you.

But he did not. You could tell the difference in his chocolate eyes when they focused on you and when they focused on her, and it hurt the same every single time.

"Why don't you tell her?" you asked regardless, trying your best to push your feelings away.

Hyunjin looked at you as if the most stupid of ideas had just come out of your mouth — and, in a way, it had. "We've been friends since we were twelve, there's no way".

"She's gonna find out eventually if you keep saying those things out loud when she's in the same room" you shrugged, bringing your cup to your mouth, quietly sipping down on your beer.

"What? Did I say something? What did I say?" he silently freaked out.

A bitter smile curved up your mouth, which was thankfully covered by the cup still pressed to your lips.

Hwang Hyunjin was so in love with his best friend that he didn't even realise when he called her the most beautiful woman his eyes had ever seen.

You wished he could ever feel that way about you, but you knew he wouldn't. Between Minji and you, you knew his heart would always choose her. And it was okay. After all, you only had a crush on him. You could make it go away any time.

Oh, how wrong you were. And how you wished it was just a crush.

How you wished you had actually put some effort into making it go away when you had the chance, instead of only letting it grow bigger and stronger by the day.

But not falling for Hyunjin was one of the hardest things you had fought against, and you failed oh-so-miserably at it.

It was his way with words and how he made you feel like the most special person in the world before the two of you were even a thing. It was the way he made you feel like no one else but the both of you existed. The way he would stare and not even try to play it off. The way he would out of nowhere say the sweetest of things to you and expect you not to become a blabbering mess in front of him.

How he would Facetime you at any time of the day just to check up on you and tell you about the plot he had randomly came up with while doing the most mundane of chores; and how he'd show up at your place with your favourite drinks and food, only for the latter to inevitably go cold, as he always seemed to arrive in the middle of your baking sessions, which resulted in him becoming your personal assistant whose commissions would be paid in all the pastries his stomach could handle.

Everything was too perfect for you not to fall head over heels for him.

The darkside of it all was that you only got to experience all that when Minji went abroad for one semester.

He didn't have her anymore, and suddenly he noticed you.

It was as if a switch had been turned off and just like that all the attention he paid to her was now focused on you. It almost felt like he was looking for a replacement in the meantime, and you were too over the moon to realise. Until she came back, and everything you had built together came crashing down.

And maybe it was your fault for letting your insecurities win over the love he claimed to feel for you, but it was hard —if not impossible— for you not to feel like you had just been there to temporarily fill a void.

As soon as she came back, you felt threatened. The second his eyes laid on her and they hugged like they were each other's oxygen after being at the verge of drowning, you knew your days together were counted.

You should've stopped it all back when it was just a crush, when she still hadn't left and you didn't have the chance to have Hwang Hyunjin's attention on you in all its splendor yet.

Maybe then the two of you wouldn't have ended up getting together when she was away. Maybe then you wouldn't have gotten so goddamn insecure when she came back and they inevitably became attached to the hip all over again, like they always were.

Maybe then you wouldn't have gone through the hardest of breakups and the most painful of heartbreaks.

No matter how convinced you were that leaving him was the best you could've done to keep your sanity, you couldn't help but feel like it was not the best choice for your heart.

Ever since you walked away that December night, it felt like something was missing, like you were in a constant state of waiting for something to arrive at your doorstep but it never would.

It was almost comical, how no matter what decision you made, whether you stayed with him or not, your heart would break regardless. If you stayed, your heart would keep hurting every single time you saw him and Minji together. If you left, your heart would hurt over the loss of him.

In the end, you just had to choose the lesser evil. And fuck, letting go of him hurt so damn much you wondered if it was the lesser evil at all.

You wished you could erase that night from your memory. The words you said to push him away and the ones he said to keep you close, the sound of his voice breaking with each sentence leaving his mouth, his gloomy, red eyes looking at you like you had just ripped his heart apart, the endless tears staining those rosy cheeks of his you had just been covering with kisses one day ago.

Everything about it, about how you walked away, you wished you could forget.

It was all on you. You hurt him, and would never forgive yourself for it, no matter how much you convinced yourself it had been the best choice for you.

He had fought for you until the end, and you did not look back from your decision once.

You had lost sleep for weeks after that, and then last night you could not bat an eye as you went through all the possibilities that would come with you attending the wedding. Over and over, you wondered whether you would be able to handle seeing him again after all this time.

Overwhelmed by all the memories and what if's that had been unleashed inside your head by simply staring at that one piece of paper, you took a deep breath and put the pen down.

Although Seungmin’s pep talk had worked wonders to help you get through with the day, and although it had managed to convince you for most of it, you realised it was not a decision you could make that easily. Not that day, at least.

With a heavy heart, you stood up from your desk and decided to make yourself some tea in hopes to ease your mind — leaving the invitation laying there in the darkness of your room, once again left to be forgotten.

You still had the rest of the week to think this through.

tag list: @brinnalaine @slut4colinbridgerton @sherryblossom @svintsandghosts @phenomenalgirl9 @meloncremesoda @jxcesstuff @nhyunn @armystay89 @babrieeee

[oncewhenalongtimeago]

The Jealous One pt 9

Pairing: Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III x Fem!Reader

Words: 3,196

The third time's a charm. 

Tags: fem!reader, silly, ambiguous timeline, Snotlout Jorgenson, Ruffnut and Tuffnut Thorston, Jealous!Hiccup, Post RoB/DoB, Pre-RTTE, unedited

<Previous - Next>

“Woah… Didn’t know you were cool.” Tuffnut scoffed and laughed, his shoulders bouncing as he laughed from his throat.

“Shut up,” You grumbled. You hadn’t wanted them to follow you down in the first place.

You were under a dark niche, an overhang on the opposite end of the spire to the one that faced the village, on the side where Mildew lived but this bit was much closer to the base.

The air underneath was moist and heavy.

You’d come down with Hiccup, once. You’d spent the time loitering and listening to him rant, his neutral greens and warm browns looking out of place against the dark rock, while you did your own thing, leaning against the side of a dripping rock wall. 

You’d thought this place used to be something that belonged to both of you, but now it was more just a you thing… or maybe not.

You’d been feeling confused since you’d woken up in Hiccup’s hut in a spare set of your own sleepwear -when did he have the time to go get your sleep wear? 

You hadn’t even known he’d had it in him to care for anyone like that, in such an intimate fashion. You remembered a point in your teenhood in which he would have insisted you hand yourself off to Gothi- Really, the whole event had woken up a large number of twisty curly things and mixed with the slightly sour feeling in your gut- you were almost sure you’d never recovered from your violent illness.

You could still feel it tickling at your periphery, the sickness- It really would suck if you’d gotten sick again.

It had been a cold night last night and so some of the mud below crunch beneath your feet, thawing frost coating some patches and melting snow wetting others so thoroughly that you’d been up to your ankles in the sludge.

Your boots had a thick wadding of it even now, standing in the sanctity of your own secret cave- you own cave secret no longer.

You had your hands on your elbows and your shoulders hunched, and although it was true that you were mad, you were also incredibly cold.

“Don’t be lame,” Snotlout scoffed.

“Those who live in twig houses should not be swinging axes,” You grumbled, “And so I’d rather you keep all your stones to yourself.”

“What? What does that even mean?” Snotlout puffed up his chest from where he stood in front of you- he was closest to the exit of your little overhang, the one you now wanted very much to leave, though you loathed the idea of stepping out into the mud, much more liquid than it had been earlier, when you had stepped down into your crevasse and it had been still too dark out to cause any real melting.

“I called you dumb, dipstick,” You grumbled, knowing he would never take the time to pull that sentence apart on his own. 

He was stubborn and talking to him sometimes was like throwing knives at an impenetrable wall -the harder to work at it, the more likely you were going to hurt yourself- and you cursed him for it.

You also cursed his father for being such a dud- Snotlout would really be better off if he just thought, but wishful thinking could never be anything but wishful thinking and Snotlout was an old hunting dog- no new tricks for him.

“Downer,” Tuffnut scoffed as he hobbled outside for reasons unknown to you though not unwelcome.

“You know what would solve all your problems?” Snotlout asked. He responded right after, without waiting for you to ask, “Get pretty. Pretty ugly.”

You felt immediately more sour, “That doesn’t make any sense.”

You were even more sour as you felt something smack against the side of your leg.

You looked down just to be greeted by a thick wad of wet ground staining already dark grays darker- and at his squealing, you realized that the trajectory and force of Tuffnut’s throw meant that Snotlout had gotten splashed too.

“Yeesh,” You snapped, “You couldn’t have chosen a better time for a mud fight, could you?”

Mud against your skirt, you followed after Snotlout as he fled, shouting something squirrlish and manly about ‘stuff’ on his coat and yak dung.

He stopped right at the entrance of the cave and you ran straight into his back, rushing out after him, which had the unintended effect of shoving him roughly into the mud in front of him.

You nearly burst a lung with your laughter, half doubling over before whipping your head back as a large glob of mud slammed into your face with all the force inertia allowed.

You gawped, using both hands to pull the mud away from your eyes and wipe it off your face, flinging small spatters of it  against the rock walls and floor.

“That one was meant for Snotlout, but ‘eh,” Ruffnut, the obvious culprit, shrugged, her hands muddied, “I guess you’re good too.”

“Oh, Hel! Chief’s kid! Run!” Snotlout shouted. In the way they did when you were all kids and they’d been mocking you and Hiccup in different ways.

At the word ‘Chief,’ the Twins startled suddenly like bucking sheep, tripping over their feet to sprint away and make for the forest as fast as they could, jumping down ledges and bolting.

You gaped and watched as they all ran off, staying standing where you were, then you began to laugh nearly hysterically as Tuffnut tripped over a long slip of mud before falling violently on his face. 

He only just barely made it back into a scramble a moment longer.

Hiccup stood straight just before the clearly-made-worse field of mud, clearly caught off guard.

“Hi,” You said, with what must have been a dopey grin on your face and mud all over your being.

The others- you were slightly annoyed by how they’d run at the sight of the Chief’s son despite being his almost good friends.

From the chilly walk up the Chief’s hill and into his dwelling, which was dark and slightly cold, which must have meant that the Chief himself was still blessedly absent, off on some overseas trip or other.

“I should… Probably go.” You said, turning. You weren’t sure why you’d come up in the first place, the walk you took spent in silence- you’d need to hurry back to bathe so that your waning cold didn’t spike once more.

“You don’t have to.” Hiccup said then, “I was- I mean, I was- You can, then me? Or I can, then you- No- I had Toothless heat up the bathwater, earlier, and I-”

You tilted your head to the side, looking at him, greasy brown hair and all- Toothless’s fire always ran hot and so, ah, he must have gone for some herbs, then- Gothi planted a few at the base of the mountain, and for those with scarring and the right knowledge of plants, they made for an okay blams, which was the point. The old healer had probably gotten tired of the rabble crawling up to her hut over nothing and making their irritations worse.

“We can... Split the water,” You suggested weakly, shrugging crusting shoulders, tilting your head to a large wooden bucket of water off to your side- nearly large enough to hold a person.

You stayed huddled by the fire, your hands to a mug, your lips teasing the edge of it.

You wore a tunic that wasn’t yours, that hadn’t fit Hiccup by multiple sizes but still smelt like Hiccup anyways flopping over your hands- he’d probably used it to stuff his pillow or the like, because it smelt a lot like residual smoke and him.

You borrowed from him a pair of undershorts, too, and they remained the only thing keeping your bottom half from the grained wood floor- besides the soles of your feet, your knees being pushed up nearly to your chin.

The bath bucket, Hiccup had placed up in his room, probably intending to enjoy the luxury of being able to bathe up in the loft. Unfortunately, he’d conceded the right to bathe up there to you, settling for a bucket and washcloth.

The water, Hiccup was too lazy to bring it down as he’d brought it up.

You figured you would figure it out later as you dried, but by the sounds of it Hiccup had probably just ended up tilting the whole bath out his window, dumping the water that way- There was a stain on the side of his house from when he’d done it before and a gouge where he’d cut out some suspicious looking rot, probably a consequence of the undue moisture and fading waterproofing. 

You wanted to puff at it, but you knew you were much too lazy to pail up any water for yourself.

You looked to the side but remained no less stationary as you heard him come down the stairs and settle, standing an appropriate distance away. He was nearly looking at you but his eyes were angled in a way which said ‘not quite.’ 

You couldn’t fathom why, however, unless he was being shy about your dress, though you couldn’t see why he would be concerned or avoidant- he’d put you in his things, after all.

By the light of the fireplace flickering warmly at the fronts of your legs, his hair was more than auburn in the light, looking lighter and fluffier than normal now that he’d washed out the grime, probably with a slight bit more fervor than usual, though you were slightly aghast by it and confused as to why.

You’d definitely felt softer about him since he’d cared for you, sick as you were, though you were surely unsure of where the two of you stood.

“Hello,” You said, breaking the silence which felt heady and warm.

“...Would now be a good time to apologize?” Hiccup started, his prosthetic and the floorboards squeaking as he shuffled.

You blinked your eyes open, staring at Hiccup for a moment. He looked almost earnest. “...I guess so.”

“I’m sorry.” Hiccup started, “Is there anything I can do to make it up to you?”

You shrugged.

“Are you free? I mean, I could start… I could start bringing you on trips with the Riders?”

You startled slightly, the peaceful atmosphere between the two of your disrupted slightly- and suddenly you could feel again where spots of Hiccup’s tunic were damp, mostly in parts you’d done a poor job of drying, you could feel the few bits of grain that dug into your rump through its fabric and you could feel how the room was still a smidge too cold against your back, except it wasn’t anything you thought of fondly, more something that sent uncomfortably shivers running up your spine.

That was the exact opposite of what you wanted- it would be a  reminder of all the ways you didn’t belong between them, bearing witness to exactly how you always would mess up their rhythm. 

You didn’t like the idea at all. You struggled to come up with a way to explain it to him.

“I don’t… I would just be dragging you guys down. It’s not like I have a dragon, or anything, and you guys have… years,” You said self consciously. You tried to keep your voice from cracking at this part, though you couldn’t really tell if you minded, “-Of experience, together. I think I’ve only been there for a few, you know, before everything.”

Hiccup started and he opened his mouth to speak before closing it.

“That’s my fault.” Hiccup said guiltily, “I should’ve… I trained dragons for the others.”

You knew that especially then as you turned further to the side, the meat of your leg coming to rest against the Haddock’s wooden floor. You could feel all the grooves in it against fresh, just recently damp skin.

“And I… I left you.”

“Yeah,” You said, curling your knees up and refusing to look at him, “You did. But that was in dragon training and I wasn’t there. I didn’t make the cut, I guess.”

 Admittedly, you were a little upset, but as it always went, you hadn’t done much to let it show until now.

They didn’t hide it or anything, but still. Even if the others didn’t hang out much outside of Dragon Riding, they still had tons of experience together. 

You hated being together with everyone at once even in the Great Hall. being there had been a hard reminder, one you’d shake off soon enough.

“It’s different now.” Hiccup protested, taking a step forward.

You wondered if his stump hurt, still. You felt bad about distracting him- you hoped he hadn’t caused himself pain, foregoing the nice bath and hauling all the water out of his window anyways.

“Is it? I mean,” You demurred, slightly out of it, “I still don’t… I don’t have a dragon, so. I can’t fly with you or anything and I know that’s really important. Isn’t that why…?”

“What? No, no, even if it was, we can work on that.” Hiccup smiled awkwardly, “I can- Toothless and I can do all the heavy lifting- not that you’re heavy, I mean… If- if you’re not sure, then-”

“I don’t know.” You started, looking down, “Maybe. But… Why? Seriously, Why now? I don’t understand…”

And you refused to look, not deeply. You didn’t want to, knowing that it usually hurt. Instead you chose to believe that he was either deathly ill or mad- two likely culprits, the last one foremostly. 

You settled your mug to the floor, standing and moving close up to him, one hand grasping his arm as you pressed yourself closer, your other hand coming up to feel at his forehead.

It was wonderful- to feel, to hold, to touch- but you didn’t focus on that, on the uneven feeling of his skin in one parts and the lumps under others and you didn’t focus nearly enough as you probably should have on the light, damp sheen over his forehead, or how nice the burning under his skin was against your palm, nearly oppressive despite the fact that you were the one to make the first move.

You couldn’t tell if it was burning or not to an unreasonable extent -not just by touch- and any redness that must have shown itself, clutched against peach skin, was obscured by the red light of fire and the darkness of shadow.

“You’re not sick now, are you?” You mumbled with some vague concern.

“Ah- N-no.” Hiccup said, his hovering, twitchy hand coming to rest along your waist.

With his eyes reflecting the flickering light of the fire, contrasting against brighter greens and baby colors, you thought that this moment that you’d found yourself in- It was like something out of a dream you’d had when you were younger.

You’d wandered into it unintentionally, and past your musings you’d nearly expected to wake up in your bed at fifteen years of age once again, sleep interrupted by the furious screaming of a bloodthirsty dragon. It would be nice if you did.

This moment, you knew, was not as kind or as dream-like as it seemed, for if it was, there would be more than a broken friendship and hesitant camaraderie between the two of you- a great deal more.

You kept your face blank as you slipped away slightly, ready for the warm, solid grip of Hiccup’s palm on your waist to become something colder and more absent. However, you paused- You hadn’t so much as tugged yourself away from his palm as you’d let it lay there, coming quickly to notice the sureness by which he held it against you, not at all giving as it should naturally be when someone was pulling away, nearly unwilling to let go.

“You’re not trying to win me over anymore,” You asked suddenly, “Not in the typical sense?”

“I-” Hiccup started before his eyes flickered away, his other hand sliding against your waist. “No.”

You did your best not to think of how he might have held Astrid- how you were sure you’d seen him touch Astrid in the same way, which sent twinges up and down your spine and touched your bruising ego, covered in irritating, old, slightly raw burn marks.

None of that mattered, though, because this wasn’t what that was- of course it wasn’t because he’d never treated you that way, and wasn’t that nearly a problem? It wasn’t that you couldn’t look beyond yourself to know, but to treat it in that way- to find it, to know it to be fake or even real or to entertain the fantasy would also hurt- it might sting and rage at your softer parts in a way that made you want to cower, and so you pushed all yearnings and musings and other sad things farther away.

“What are you doing?” You leaned in slightly closer, eyes searching, feeling more serious than not, even as your bare knee brushed lightly against his clothed one.

Hiccup sighed breathily. You could almost call what he did a wheeze.

“...I’m sorry.” Hiccup said, and in an action that surprised you and had your neck straightening and your eyes opening wider by a slight margin, he placed his face securely into your shoulder.

You could nearly feel his lips against your neck, in the place where collar bone met shoulder, and you resisted your own urge to shudder and sigh, all your shaky breaths held deeply inwards.

You mumbled softly, leaning back into him and resting your head against his neck, “I forgive you. I really- really forgive you. And… And I’m sorry too.”

Sorry for dumping water on his head, for being so crass, even if he deserved it- and sorry for everything you’d lost, too, along the way and before the journey.

You tightened your arms slightly, your eyelids shutting tighter as you took in the shape of him, how he felt, ever so warm against you, his hands moving from your waist to your back, his arms pushing and wrapping against your sides, constraining and nice made nicer as the heat of the hearth in the floor beat and flickered steadily on.

Hiccup smelt fresh, like river-washed clothes and a bit like mildew all mixed in with something that was surely Hiccup, something heavy growing finer, much different to the scent you were sure had belongs to him, noted down when you were nothing but young teens tussling and chittering around in forests and along village pathways. 

You hummed into his neck, your eyelashes grazing gently against the skin and baby hairs there and sighed, your voice thick and catching, raspy and muffled by the parts of his skin pressing into your cheek and the seam of fabric warm and almost scratchy against one side of your nose.

You knew  on some level that this might never happen again. So, you desired to enjoy it before you couldn’t- before, once again, you became bitter, before you felt rupturing-ly petty and frustrated and sad.

[chimcess]

A Picture’s Worth || jjk (teaser)

Pairings: Jungkook x Reader Other Tags: Ex-Art Thief!Reader, Ex-Assassin!Reader, Ex-Gang member!Reader, Gang member!Jungkook, Assassin!Jungkook, Hitman!Jungkook, Thief!Jungkook Genre: Strangers to lovers, gang AU, mafia AU, Fluff, Angst, Smut Estimated Release Date: 07/2023 Est. Word Count: ~35-40k+ Summary: After pulling off the largest art heist of her career, Y/N has put that life behind her. However, after 4 years out of the business, she comes home to find a stranger in her house. Warnings: violence, blood, gang activity, mafia activity, mentions of death, crime, robberies, graphic depictions of injuries, guns, knives, major character(s) injured, police corruption, I’m not a gang member or anything so I could be wrong about that stuff, bad Russian, I tried my best; tbd... Author’s Note: It’s been a while since I’ve written a one-shot- especially something this long. So, I thought “why not?” I’ve already gotten A TON written, but still going. Editing will be... fun, to say the least. This has been really exciting to write so far, though :)

I knew something was off when a new motorcycle was parked out front. Briefly checking the plates, I was even more weary when they were from Jersey. I knew far too many people in that corner of the US. Still, I told myself that it could be anybody. Perhaps one of my new neighbors was from Hoboken. That was highly unlikely, though. Eyeing the red leather jacket hanging from one of the handles, I only knew one person who owned something like that. I guess I will be seeing Jimin tonight. The thought bothered me far more than I thought it would.

Taking my time going up the stairs, I considered calling Hoseok and demanding to know why Park was sniffing around my apartment. I knew I should have moved out, should have tried something new, but the thought of leaving the only home I ever knew bothered me. Using the time climbing to my advantage, I slowly steeled myself. Jimin could smell weakness from a mile away. He was also one person who could convince me to do bad things.

The excitement that ran through me at the idea sickened me.

Starting at the 4 on the door, I braced myself. When I walked into that hallway all traces of the new me had to disappear. There can be no laughter, no crying, and no open hostility. I would have to be a blank slate. With one small breath, I pulled the door and went into the hall.

There wasn’t a body in sight, but I knew better than to go off of that. Jimin could get into my apartment with relative ease. No one would notice either. Everyone else that lived was too busy making ends meet to pay attention to the stranger sneaking into my house.

Taking my keys out of my purse, I unlocked the door and walked inside. I could smell him. It was, however, not Jimin. Jimin only wore Orange Blossom by Jo Malone. Whoever this was smelled like baby powder and flowers. My guard completely up now, I continued further into the studio and kicked the door closed behind me. Whoever it was, I knew had been standing behind the door. The smell was not as potent as it had been before. 

Going into the kitchen, I shrugged my coat off before throwing it behind me. I heard it hit something and it was a blur after that. I quickly snatched a kitchen knife from the drying rack and threw myself to the ground. The man grabbed my hands. Kicking his inner thigh, I rolled from underneath him and shot up. He threw his arms up.

“Stop!”

Ignoring him, I threw the knife. The man reacted quickly, catching the blade in between his hands before throwing it down on the floor. While he was distracted, I slid on the floor and grabbed the pistol from under my bed. Pointing it at the man, he rolled his eyes dramatically.

“What are you going to do? Shoot me?”

To join the taglist, ask, message, or check out my FAQ page in my bio!

[lowkeychenle]

Is It Over Now? [ZCL] fic teaser

Description: Your relationship with Chenle is nothing but fight after fight. Amidst the toxicity, infidelity comes into play--except you're determined to one up him...but is it ever truly over?

A/N: this is inspired by Taylor Swift's Is It Over Now? and I highly recommend listening to it because omg...but also...y'all voted for Jisung and this is what it was for so...................he is for real a willing accomplice that's so crazy chenji who

Genre: Smut/Angst (there is no smut in the teaser, the teaser contains an argument that can be triggering for some readers. PLEASE!!! Read with caution)

Content Warnings: This is very dirty idk y'all i'msosorry...but basically content warnings are infidelity (both reader & chenle, explicit on reader's part), some very crazy arguments (there are no physical fights but these can be triggering), explicit, unprotected sex, overall just a big, big crazy cluster fuck where these two are just trying to hurt each otherimsosorry

Expected Word Count: 10k

Release Date: 5pm EST 2023.3.2

Taglist: Open!! Please let me know if you want to be tagged when this comes out <3

Pairing: Zhong Chenle x fem!Reader | Park Jisung x fem!Reader

Juliet's Masterlist | Tell me what you think? :)

Chenle downs the rest of whatever’s in his cup—it’s safe to assume what the bronze liquid is as he swallows and cringes. He doesn’t look at either of you.

“You should go.” Glancing at Jisung, you catch the worried gleam in his gaze.

“Will you be okay?” he asks.

“The fuck does that mean?” Chenle snaps. “Get the fuck out, Jisung.”

“Call me if you need me.” Jisung hesitantly leaves your side, and once the door closes behind him, you slide your hands in the back pockets of your jeans.

“Really?” Chenle finally breaks the silence. “You could’ve picked anyone, and you fuck Jisung?”

“That’s what you’re mad about?” You snort and walk over to the fridge to grab a water bottle. Untwisting the cap, you turn back to Chenle, unaccustomed to his glare being directed at you. “What? It’s okay for you to fuck anyone you want, but when I do it, it’s wrong?”

“What the fuck are you talking about? I don’t fuck anyone but you.”

“You really think I didn’t see that?” You shake your head, anger bubbling in the pit of your stomach. “There were pictures, you dumbass. And now I can’t even act like I’m ignorant. I can’t act like you love me anymore, Chenle. Be serious right now.”

“Oh, right, because being seen with a girl has to mean I’m fucking her, yeah?” He runs his fingers through his hair. “You’re just insecure, (Y/N), and I can’t fucking help you with that. Did you think fucking Jisung would make me want you more? May as well add crazy to the list, too.”

Under different circumstances, you know those words would kill you. They’d be like bullets fragmenting in your heart, but today? For some reason, everything shut off. You don’t want him anymore, and your irritation sparks at the base of your spine.

“You putting this on me is fucking hilarious.” Your voice is sharp, and you hope you return his bullets as knives.

“We’re fucked.” He pours more liquor into his glass, a scowl on his face as he downs it. “Are you kidding me? I make a mistake one time, and you go out of your way to screw my friend? Did you think you could hurt me or something?”

“Don’t know.” You shrug.

“The sooner you admit we were over long before I ever slept with anyone else, the easier it’ll be for both of us. You’re being a child by inviting Jisung over here.” His grip on the counter tightens.

And just like that, something inside you snaps.

“You did this, Chenle. You fucked up, you ruined everything, you are a piece of shit.” You jab your finger in his direction. “At least I had the decency not to get caught in public. You don’t even care at all. Not even a little bit. And it’s so fucking frustrating because I do everything for you.”

“Bullshit,” he says.

“Was it over when you brought that girl here? Was it? Because you cried and begged for me to stay. You said it was a mistake, and you’d never be able to love anyone the same way you love me. You really think it was over, Chenle? Then what the fuck are you still doing here?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You fucking did it again!” you yell, hands tugging at your hair. “You want me to be the bad guy so bad, but all of this is on you. The blame is on you. You’re the one that can’t keep it in your pants. What are you searching all these beds for, huh? You want something better than me?”

“Fuck,” he shouts, hand swiping across the counter.

Time slows as his palm comes in contact with his glass, as he sends it flying into the cabinet, as it shatters beneath his force. How fucking ironic you relate to it.

[isthemedia]

Poolverine-Yoink! (2/2)

Part 2 is now done.

Here's Part 1. And here's the Ao3 link.

@manicpixxiedreambitch

@ineffablestardust

@saspas-corner

@angelbonezs

Since ya'll wanted to be tagged when part 2 was done.

=============================================

‘Not today…not tomorrow…not now,’ Wade’s groggy mind repeated. His joints ached. He could hear a ringing that wasn’t typical tinnitus. He grabbed at the back of his neck, the skin feeling too tight. ‘Really laying it on thick there ain’tcha madam/sir author? Is this whump? I feel like this can be classified as whump.’

(Whump is more hurt than comfort. So no, not really.)

‘Well I’m calling it whump, even if it’s not tagged that.’

(You can go ahead and do that, even though it’s wrong.)

Wade sighed as he curled up a bit tighter. Skin felt like it was prickling if exposed to air. That staticky feeling of just too many eyes watching. He could hear the door of Al’s room creak open. The shuffling of her feet…

“Yer too damn quiet right now,” Al complained. “An’ I know yer still here,” she added, her cane smacking alongside the bed. She stopped when she hit the pile of blankets. “Oh lord this again?”

She didn’t get an answer. No witty reply or snide retort. Heaving a sigh, Al continued on. “I’m headin’ ta bingo, and I’m gonna call Vanessa-she can explain this nonsense ta Logan.” It may have sounded like complaining, but the tone in her voice was clear. It was that ‘don’t worry, help is gonna be on the way deary’ tone. 

And really? Bingo at what…this early in the morning?

‘What time is it even?’

(Early enough.)

‘Lazy establishing setup.’

Wade shifted somewhat, the bed frame of the pull-out creaking as he did. Right, how was Logan going to take this? He should handle this. Maybe? 

Well, Vanessa should be able to handle it, she had no fear with the somewhat feral wolverine he brought home. She did tease him about how he went full ‘White Woman’ and took a wild animal home under the guise of ‘you’re mine now’. He guessed she wasn’t entirely wrong. 

But he also wasn’t expecting Logan to stay as long as he did. He’s read the comics-and sure even though this Logan is from a different universe it almost seemed ingrained in all of them to just-leave some day.  

It wasn’t a bad thing that he stayed. Hell no! If he could he would strap Logan down and make sure he’d never leave. He loved having him around. Al did too. And how could he deprive dearest little miss Mary-Puppins from her other papa? 

The frame of the pull-out creaked again. Oh, speak of the devil. Wade could feel how the pull-out shifted, the weight of the other occupant being removed. But made sense when they’re-what 200-300 plus pounds thanks to a metal skeleton. 

Really no logical way for a shitty pull-out to hold the both of them without collapsing or even warping the frame, yet it still stood.

He wondered if they could use that as sort of a marketing ploy, maybe convince Logan into some centerfold-esque poses just for added effect. Well, effect and future spank-bank material, but he wouldn’t need to know the latter. 

“Come on!” Wade felt the kick given to the pull-out, it jostled the whole thing. Welp, good luck with the Peanut, cause he wasn’t moving. Threaten him with a good time all you want. 

Snikt.

‘And out comes the steak knives. Would stabbing me reset this? Haven’t been stabbed during any of these moods.’

(Pretty sure stabbing would just make you feel worse.)

‘So gonna be a fic with no stabby-stab? And am I even gonna talk? How can you have a Deadpool fanfic where I don’t talk?’

(It’s character introspection.)

‘Sounds like you just don’t wanna come up with quips for me.’

The mattress creaked slightly. Oh, that’s Vanessa. Al really did call her. Such a sweet old blind bat she is. 

Wade could hear them-somewhat over the ringing in his ears that changed to something more akin to the old dial-up sound of the internet. Logan sounded less growly now too.

 Ah Vanessa, the one who can soothe the savage Logan.  

It was weird what his ears would pick up when he was like this. Full conversations happening just outside his makeshift fort of blankets? Nah, that wasn’t important enough. The sound of something being slid across the sheets though? Yeah, could hear that. 

‘And yoink!’ Wade snatched whatever Vanessa slid over to him. Hey! He didn’t have this one! Of course she’d know that. ‘And another for the collection. Ya know I don’t think anyone is gonna get the reference. You’re dating yourself.’

(At least someone is dating me.)

‘Ooof self burn. Ya sure you don’t need the hurt/comfort tag?’

Vanessa just knew what to get-she still remembered. Sure it didn’t work out between them. It stung for a long time. Longer than Wade wanted to admit, but it wasn’t like Vanessa wanted him out of her life. She had to drill it into his head that even if they weren’t romantically involved anymore, didn’t mean she didn’t love him. It was just a different love. 

He sorta got that. He was feeling that too. Feeling it during the Time Ripper thing. During the time in the Void. 

Felt it when he came across Logan. Oh, that was something he still needed to unpack…too bad he was a lazy asshole after a vacation. Eh, it’ll eventually get unpacked-granted, he’ll probably wait until the last minute…like always. 

Vanessa was always going to be special. He would drop everything if she needed him, and vice versa it seemed. But Logan…Logan was something else. He wasn’t sure what he was yet. Sure, he knew what he wanted Logan to be-at least he was pretty sure what he wanted him to be. But that wasn’t gonna fly with Disney and Marvel-or the legion of dudebros who think he and Logan are total and complete masculine heterosexuals. They really need to pick up a comic.

Ah, something else was being pushed towards him. ‘And yoink again!’ Hey, weren't these things discontinued? Sheets were gonna need to be changed after this. At least this time around it would be a more common reason than needing to change them cause they tried to reenact the bed scene from ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’. Maybe they should just buy red sheets. Same logic should apply to them like his suit.

Almost on instinct, Wade felt something shift in the bed. ‘Yoink!’

Only this time, there came a high pitched, noticeable yelp. Oh! Oh sweet baby little angel Mary-Puppins! 

“Shhh shhh. Oh baby girl I’m sorry,” he cooed as he cuddled the shaking pup. He could hear Logan laughing-the asshole! Some other papa he was! Frightening their little baby. His free hand sneaking out of the mess of blankets to flip him off. 

OH! And THAT just made him laugh more? Asshole! When this whole mood thing is done he’s demanding a divorce and child support!

--

Everything was quiet in the apartment. Slowly Wade peaked out from the blankets. Logan was asleep. Al’s door was closed. Mary-Puppins was having little Dogpool dreams.

The apartment was dark, saved for the stray glow of the streetlights filtering in through the busted blinds. 

Carefully, silently Wade slipped out from the mound. Not the worst start to this, though he was tempted to give Logan a smack for making him scare poor, sweet, little Mary-Puppins earlier. The prick-and he laughed the whole time! The super mega prick! 

Wade sighed as he looked over. Logan looked peaceful, or well as peaceful as he could be. Brows were still furrowed, muscles twitching as if ready to go all fight-or-flight. But he wasn’t having a nightmare, so to Wade it meant it was peaceful.

He could save the smacking for another time. He’ll even drop the divorce threat. Cuddles and kisses from Mary were always a plus for him anyway-so it kinda worked out.

Right, he got up for a reason. Treading with light footsteps across the apartment, as to not make a single floorboard creak, he made his way to the bathroom. Hey maybe the merc with the mouth, but he knew how to move quietly . Kinda needed too in that line of work. 

He brushed his teeth, and washed his face. “Ya know, the static feeling from being watched, doesn’t help when there’s like actual readers for this.”

(Semantics, se-mahn-tics. Sides, like you’d let me just keep you as an unmoving lump of blankets for another 3k words.)

“Eh true.”

Wade made his way back, trying to figure out what was the best way to climb back in without waking Logan. He didn’t need to wake him by accident. Even if he wasn’t having a nightmare, it was a bad idea ta just wake up a sleeping wolverine. 

He didn’t wanna get a gut full of adamantium claws again, thank you very much. It wasn’t like Logan meant to do it on purpose. Logan’s mind is always somewhere else when he’s suddenly and rudely woken up like that. So Wade couldn’t blame the guy. Hell, he WOULDN’T blame the guy. 

‘I’ll just blame you.’

(Again no stabbing is happening in this one.)

‘But you are making allusions to it happening before.’

(Oh just go back to your musings and pining.)

‘Fine, I will,’ Wade huffed before looking back over to the sleeping form taking up the other half of the pull-out.

Logan looked better these days-not that he didn’t look good ‘cause goddamn Hugh was still working it even after all this time. It was more of how relaxed he was now. Had a bit of weight put back on him too-‘happy weight’, that was the term right? Or something like that. 

Urban dictionary would help him. Just needed to steer clear of the raunchy side of it. At least this time around.

Wade took it as a sign that Logan was happy here. Maybe if he stayed happy enough he wouldn’t want to leave. He really didn’t want Logan to leave. 

Logan matched his crazy in a way Vanessa did and in ways she didn’t. In ways she just couldn’t. 

Logan didn’t need to change anything about himself. Didn’t need to be a ‘good guy’-he was plenty good enough so shut up Jean. 

Al loved him too. She might not have said it aloud, but Wade can tell she does. 

Sure he was a little feral. Sure he would rather have booze than an actual meal some days. Sure there were times Wade would wake up with a set or two of claws in his chest. But that was fine. Normalcy was for losers anyway. 

What was normal about two slightly fucked up mutants with regenerative powers, a coke addicted blind elderly woman, and the world’s ugliest yet sweetest dog? Who needed normal in a home like this?

Logan didn’t need to be tamed. All Wade wanted was for Logan to just, feel like he belonged. That Logan had his own little Logan-shaped hole carved out here, Junji Ito style but without the horrific implications.

He was certain if Logan did try to leave, he would follow him-funny sitcom stalker style, and drag him back home. Cause even though Logan wouldn’t want to admit it, this shitty little one bedroom apartment was his home now. Al, Mary-Puppins, and him were family now. 

How Logan has his own toothbrush, coffee mug, he got a cupboard just for his booze, and everything. 

There was definitely some codependency between them. Wade was pretty sure of that. That time in the Void-being almost torn apart by the Time Ripper-the fact that he turned around when Wade called him.

But hey, a little codependency never hurt anyone. Besides,  that would just be another thing to add to the ever growing list of things wrong with one Wade W. Wilson.. He’s pretty sure Logan doesn’t mind it either.

The pull-out didn’t even creak as Wade climbed back in. Not a single sound when he settled back under the blankets.

‘That is some lazy writing there.’

(Hey, be thankful I decided to be nice and not wake the sleeping Logan.)

Wade peaked out again, just to make sure Logan was still sound asleep. Fingers itched to just trace down his sleeping face, through the coarse facial hair and sideburns. Though last time he tried that Logan literally bit off two fingers off. Really didn’t wanna go through that again either. 

Hopefully Logan doesn’t get fed up with this whole thing. Just walk out and leave. To be fair it is kind of a golden opportunity for him if he decided too. Wade hoped this wasn’t going to last much longer. 

--

So, Logan did leave. Well not leave-leave. Jerk decided to head out and restock since they managed to empty the bag Vanessa brought. Dammit, he could be a sweet guy. Why does nobody pay attention to that? Honestly. 

Logan said Al was off to the laundromat-they both knew what that was code for. He also warned Wade that he was setting Mary by him so there wasn’t a repeat from yesterday. Alright, all is forgiven now. 

He didn’t pull Mary under the blankets this time, but he did reach out to give her pets. She seemed content with the arrangement as well, licking all along his hand to his wrist. Seemed she forgave or just forgot the scare from before. 

He slipped his hand back under the blankets. He was thinking-dangerous thing he knows-but he was trying to come up with an idea. A plan to convince Logan that there was no reason to leave. He had a few brewing, but was pretty sure he would end up skewered, or beaten down, or torn apart if he tried any of those.

So his new plan? Well it was a bit crazy. Crazy and yet so simple. Simply just tell Logan. It worked before. It worked quite a few times before. 

So his chances were pretty high about it working again. Just a simple ‘you can stay here as long as you like’. Hmm but that made it seem like he could still leave. 

Maybe a ‘hey, surprise I think I love you…so don’t leave.’ Nah that kinda sounded desperate.

‘You got everything you need right here, besides the housing market is shit right now.’ Eh, that made it sound like this thing was an obligation. 

Wade’s thoughts were cut off when he heard the sound of something being slid across the sheets. ‘And yoink,’ he snatched the offering. ‘Awww Peanut went all the way to that corner store that sold the weird flavor chips. He spoils me.’

Another sound. 

Oh…

Wade felt himself smile as he reached out again, and placed his hand over Logan’s. Damn the guy was hot. Well, not just hot like that, but like he was a furnace. Wade’s thumb rubbed small circles over Logan’s knuckles, feeling the lone scars his body had-where those claws would poke out from. He could feel a knot just behind those knuckles. 

Maybe a good ole massage was in order for him. Would be the least Wade could do as a thanks for him. 

“Yer gonna need to let go or I’m gonna need ta stop pettin’ Mary if you need somethin’ else,” Logan’s voice rumbled. Well, Wade couldn’t let that happen. Couldn’t let the attention Mary was getting from her other papa just stop. He gave Logan’s hand a pat before giving an ‘okay’ gesture, before slipping back under the blankets. “You get so damn spoiled,” he heard Logan say under his breath.

Yeah, maybe just telling him was the best plan. He just needed to find the right words now. 

--

‘Captain’s log, Star date….I dunno the author didn’t give me one.’

(Dates are pointless for fanfics.)

‘It appears the author wishes to deflect from criticism of their laziness in doing a proper establishing setup.’

It’s been four days into this little funk of Wade’s. He was pretty sure he was ready for it to be over. The only issue was that once this was done, then he’d need to figure the next thing. The asking Logan to stay thing.

He wasn’t sure if he was quite ready for that yet. That familiar sound broke his train of thoughts again. ‘Aaaaand yoink!’

“Jesus!” 

Oh Laura came by too. Awww he didn’t mean to startle the baby wolverine. Logan and Vanessa were laughing-they could be real assholes sometimes. Loving assholes but still assholes all the same.  

The creaking of the bed frame, the dip in the mattress. Logan was potentially putting himself into yoinking-range. If that happened, well, there would be no way Wade could resist if he did. 

“You miss him talking, don’t you?” Wade could hear the smirk in Laura’s voice. She’s such a cheeky kid. He’ll take blame for that. Bad influence and all.

“Dunno what yer talkin’ about,” Logan grumbled. 

“Suuuure you don’t.” 

Logan huffed and shifted slightly. Oh? Just a bit more Wolvie. He felt the mattress dip a bit more-BINGO! “SHIT! I forgot!” 

Both hands shot out and grabbed an arm. Logan absolutely let his guard down, cause there was no way Wade could have pulled this off if he didn’t.

And if Logan had his guard down, that meant he was truly relaxed here. More than that, he felt safe here. And why wouldn’t he? He had the one and only Deadpool here to keep an eye on him. Well okay, the one and only that mattered. None of those variants to worry about. 

Man, that shocked look on his face was definitely doing things. Wondered if he could see it more. He felt himself smiling. He knew it was that dumb lovestruck smile he’d give Vanessa when they were together-only slightly different. Cause this one wasn’t for her, this smile was for Logan. “Got too close there Peanut.” Dear fuck was that his voice? ‘Hey next time, write something where I’m not nearly silent for four days. It’s murder on the vocal cords.’

“Yeah, figured,” Logan said softly. “Better?”

“Hmm…a bit,” Wade murmured. Fuck it, he’s in for it now. “Gonna talk your ear off, cause I had a lotta thoughts goin’ through my head during all this.” Wade dragged two fingers along Logan’s jaw, carding through the cause hair of his beard. This time without worrying about losing them this time.

“Yeah?” 

“Yeah,” Wade leaned down. Not exactly the Spider-man kiss, but it was close enough. He felt Logan’s breath hitch.  ‘Please, stay here? Don’t feel like you need to run away. There’s space just for you.’

“...ready ta come out? Say hi ta Laura and Vanessa?” Logan asked as they pulled apart. Wade almost wanted to say no. He wanted to kiss him again. 

But he’d be lying if said he didn’t want to see them. Four days of next to no social interaction was killer. He was gonna need to call Peter and Dopinder too. Maybe make Logan walk with him to the X-Mansion so he could see Yukio and bother Ellie. Maybe watch an episode or two of the Great British Bake-off with Colossus.  “Yeah, ‘m pretty sure I’m good,” Wade nodded. 

Logan shifted and pulled the blankets back and off of himself as he sat up right. Wade pulled them back just enough to uncover his head. He shifted and shimmied across the mattress till he could comfortably lean against Logan-and he wasn’t pushed off. Score!

“Hey,” Vanessa greeted softly. 

“Hey,” Wade gave her a soft smile. Definitely a different smile than before. He could feel it, and she could definitely see it. 

“Missed ya. Seems like Logan did a good job at taking care of ya.” 

“Hmmm he did,” he laid his head on his shoulder. “Thanks Peanut, I owe ya.” 

“Nah,” Logan shrugged slightly, jostling Wade slightly-almost like he was teasing him. Or maybe Wade was getting his hopes up. “ Deal enough with my shit, the least I can do.” 

Wade hummed, then straightened up some when he felt something shift under the blankets. No way, was Logan…okay yeah-yeah maybe this was gonna work out. “yoink,” Wade said softly as he took Logan’s hand, threading their fingers together. 

Logan had a perfect spot, right next to Wade. 

[fairy-writes]

Hi, can i please ask for prompt 19 with Jouno? Thank youu<3<3

THE SCENT OF IRON

Reblogs and Comments are greatly appreciated!!

__________________________________________________________________________

Prompt: “It’s funny. Nowadays, people always expect a gun, but never a knife.”

Fandom(s): Bungou Stray Dogs

Pairing(s): Jouno Saigiku x Reader

Word Count: 0.3k

Genre(s)/Tag(s): Gender Neutral!Reader, Blood, Injuries, Knives

Notes: Yes I’m stealing my own title from a BSD/Tokyo Ghoul story I wrote. Don’t come for me. 

(I’m also getting conflicting answers about what Jouno’s first name is. So lmk if I got it wrong, and I’ll edit this.)

YES, I KNOW IT’S SHORT. DON’T COME FOR ME

__________________________________________________________________________

It was hard to hide things from Jouno Saigiku. 

Especially something like the overpowering scent of iron.

So it’s no wonder he picks up on it immediately when walking back to the Hunting Dogs headquarters. Typically, yes, he would take a cab or just call a car from the base to come and pick him up. But he had this nagging feeling that he wanted—no, needed to walk home from his mission today.

So he did. It wasn’t that far. In fact he could make the walk in about thirty minutes. 

And all was well and good until he caught the scent of iron and the sharp odor of pain. 

Saigiku paused, fingertips brushing against the stone and concrete of an alleyway entrance. He really should keep walking… He shouldn’t care about whoever was in pain down there.

At least, he didn’t care until he heard a gasp and realized it was you.

His feet carry him faster and faster until he almost trips over your extended feet and crouches at your side. He can feel the sticky, oozing blood soaking into his boots and realizes just how bad the situation is. 

“Sai? What are you doing here?” You wheeze, and he feels his lips tug down into a frown. 

“What happened?” He asked sternly, and you hissed out a stuttering laugh. 

“Heh… It’s funny. Nowadays, people always expect a gun, but never a knife.” You whimper, and he hears your hand squish in the torn flesh of your side. 

He probes your side, and you cry out. The wound is deep, and he can’t quite tell if there’s more than one stab wound or not. Knowing your luck, there likely were. But he presses on, removing his gloves to get a better idea of what’s going on. 

All the while, he’s overpowered by the scent of the iron. It’s cloying and nauseating, making his stomach twist and turn in his abdomen. Usually, he’s fine. After all, he’s a Hunting Dog. But something about it being your blood makes it worse. 

He ignores your cries and scoops you up into his arms. Your clothes are already soaked through, and he can hear the “pitter-patter” of the drops of blood falling onto the concrete. 

You needed medical help. 

Now.

He only hoped he could get you the help in time. 

[mania-sama]

gojo satoru's guide to being a good father: cheating is only tolerable if it happens in monopoly

Before He Cheats - Carrie Underwood

➼ information ❧ Jujutsu Kaisen ❧ Pairing: Fushiguro Megumi & Fushiguro Tsumiki & Gojo Satoru, Fushiguro Megumi & Gojo Satoru ❧ Additional Characters: Itadori Yuuji, Kugisaki Nobara ❧ Tags: implied/referenced cheating, no curses au, guardian-ward relationships, gojo satoru adopted the fushiguros, parental! gojo, protective! gojo, vandalism, threats of violence, father-son bonding via car vandalism: the fic ❧ Summary: In which Tsumiki gets cheated on and, really, Gojo has been waiting to destroy a bitch's Maserati. ❧ Word Count: 4,054 ❧ Cross-posted from Archive of Our Own ❧ Original post date: 1 January 2024 ❧ Now available as a podfic!

Gojo receives a text from Tsumiki saying that she’s coming home to visit for a couple of days, and two seconds later the front door slams open. A loud bang echoes in the house when it hits the wall. Oh, good. Megumi’s home.

“I’m going to kill that bastard,” he hears the boy fume, forcing the door shut with even more vigor. That poor abused door. Maybe Gojo should consider a therapist for it. “I’m going to chop his dick off and feed it to him.”

“Good afternoon to you, too,” Gojo greets cheerfully. Looking up from the living room couch, he sees his irate ward stalk to the kitchen and pilfer through the various sharp knives in the steel-colored knife block. Not good. He’s already picking out his murder weapon before taking off his backpack. “What’s going on?”

Megumi spares a side-eye so full of anger that Gojo doesn’t even have it in him to feel disrespected. “He cheated,” he says simply while drawing out the chef knife from the block. The noise it makes is a sharp shing, a telltale sign of crimes yet to come.

“Who cheat— oh.” That would explain the short, out-of-the-blue text message from Tsumiki. Suddenly Megumi’s fury seems a lot less irrational. Gojo has a short, beautiful vision of beating Tsumiki’s boyfriend to the point where even his mother wouldn’t recognize his face.

“Yeah.” Megumi holds the large blade out for a second, giving it a long, examining look. Apparently, it satisfies his criteria because he drops his arm by his side and starts heading for the door. Oh shit. He’s actually going to go chop his dick off.

Not that Gojo doesn’t want to either, it’s just that, well, he’s not supposed to indulge in body mutilation. Besides, if Megumi gets caught with that knife in his hand, he’ll get arrested, and Gojo really doesn’t want that to go on the boy’s permanent record. Satoru, unfortunately, cannot woo police officers out of prison sentences like he has for teachers to throw out Megumi’s detentions.

“Hey, hey, hold on!” Gojo jumps up and vaults over the couch in one swift movement, carefully sidestepping whenever Megumi carelessly turns around. The knife’s tip swipes where Gojo’s stomach had once been. “You cannot go around castrating people!”

Megumi glares at him with the heated fury of a thousand burning suns. His lips are pulled so far down into a scowl that Gojo’s unsure his facial muscles are ever going to let him smile again. “Oh, you’re going to start disciplining me now?”

Okay, wow, Gojo did not ask for commentary on his lack of proper child anger management.“I’ve disciplined you plenty,” Gojo insists, though Megumi looks unconvinced. “Listen. I know he deserves it. But do you even know where he is or how you’re gonna get there without anybody catching you with that knife?”

Satoru holds out his hand expectantly while Megumi stares at him hard, his nose scrunched up and green eyes alight with unrelenting ire. Eventually, he sighs hard and presses the handle of the chef knife into Gojo’s palm.

“You’re not seriously going to let him get away with this, are you?” Megumi asks, his voice marginally calmer and less accusatory than it was before. Deciding to be responsible, Gojo slides the chef knife back into its proper spot and stands firmly in front of the knife block. Just in case his ward makes another attempt at righteous vengeance.

At the question and Megumi’s impatiently crossed arms, Gojo has to think. Obviously, he isn’t going to let this go unpunished. To imagine that any man could think they could hurt his sweet Tsumiki who has never done anything wrong in her entire life — okay, there was that one time that she thought it was okay to spend three thousand dollars on Robux but she didn’t really mean to do that — and run away scot-free sends a violent shiver down Gojo’s spine. 

He never told Tsumiki this, but he doesn’t think her boyfriend is all that attractive or intelligent, emotionally or scholarly. What he did tell her was that as long as she was happy, he would be happy. Not before a talk with said boyfriend where he promised he would do much worse things to him if he ever dared make Gojo’s ward cry.

So, what could he do to a twenty-one-year-old university student without mutilating any body parts but still following through with his promise?

Gojo smiles at Megumi, whose eyebrows are raised in anticipation. “Megumi, you have a lot to learn about revenge. What is the one thing a self-absorbed, cheating man loves more than anything in the whole world?”

“His dick,” he responds confidently.

“No!” Satoru laughs and points a finger at Megumi’s nose, watching as he goes momentarily cross-eyed. “Good guess. I’d put that at number two. But Megumi, dear, you must understand. There is nothing he is more prideful of than his car.”

Noticing his ward’s skepticism, he brings his index finger upwards. He uses the rest of his fingers to list off with his words. “One: It’s hard to get away with castration. As much as I hate to admit it, no way you’re going to chop off his dick. Two: Cars are feminine. Men like him love to own anything they can call a she. Three: Cars are expensive and he is a broke college student. I imagine his parents paid for the one he owns now, which is a nice Maserati Ghibli. Four: He will be without a vehicle and have to own up to his parents that his car got destroyed, and the only correlating event that would lead up to such a tragedy would be his cheating. Do you understand now, Megumi?”

Truly, he doesn’t think he’s ever seen Megumi comprehend anything so well in his entire seventeen years of life. His ward gives him a short nod.

“Good. Unfortunately, we can’t enact our revenge today. We can’t show up wherever he is and destroy his car. No, we have to first get him to park in a secluded lot, then occupy him for a few hours,”  Gojo informs. Megumi listens intently, and, oh, it’s been so long since he’s gotten this boy to actually pay attention to everything he says. It makes Satoru feel all warm inside. “Got any friends that can help us with this?”

Megumi doesn’t hesitate to pull out his phone. “I bet that bastard likes them younger, too. Kugisaki can help.”

“When you’ve come up with a plan, tell me and we’ll review it.”

His ward nods and sends a text on his phone, presumably to Kugisaki Nobara. Gojo waits for Megumi to leave the kitchen to go to his room before he pries himself away from the counter. He chooses to stay in the living room in preparation for the scenario where Megumi decides that he can’t wait any longer and a castration must be performed. He also wants to be the first person to greet his older ward when she gets home.

—

The next three days are spent comforting Tsumiki while carefully planning the glorious demise of her ex-boyfriend’s car. She is too kind, even in mourning of her year-long relationship. She has barely a bad word to speak of that roach of a man. Instead, she cuddles with Gojo as they watch her favorite movies and comedy specials, eat all sorts of unhealthy food and home-cooked meals, and play various board games that Megumi reluctantly joins them in.

It’s the closest they’ve been since Tsumiki left for her second year at university while Megumi works on graduating high school. Gojo works at a different university about a mile away, so he’s nearby at all times. If he cancels a few classes, nobody says a word to him. It comes with being the most highly acclaimed physics professor in all of Japan.

It would be perfect if it weren’t for the weight of a cheating ex-boyfriend dampening the mood at all times. Gojo is happy to be with his kids — wards, technically. Wards — but one of them isn’t, and the other is too involved in a revenge plot to be fully invested in the time they are spending together. Whatever, he consoles himself. It’s the best he’ll get until summer.

In the midst of watching The Human Centipede 2, which, for the record, is a horrifying franchise and he doesn’t understand why Tsumiki likes it so much, he gets a horrid vision of both of his children away in university. Then them in apartments of their own, and they only get together again once or twice a year for holidays. He isn’t able to hold them close on his living room couch on a mundane Tuesday afternoon to watch a deranged scientist attach humans together via mouths to buttholes.

Gojo pulls Tsumiki a little tighter to his side and places a careful arm around Megumi’s shoulders. His son — ward — stiffens for a moment, then leans his cheek on Satoru’s bicep. While both of their eyes are fixated on the screen, he gives a small glance to both of the kids. He feels their steady breaths against his body.

It takes everything in Satoru to smother his smile.

Then the fated day finally arrives.

The plan consists of five participants, four willing (Gojo, Megumi, Nobara, Yuuji) and one unwilling (Tsumiki’s ex-boyfriend). Megumi and his two friends did all of the planning and arrangements while Gojo bought the necessary equipment: two Louisville sluggers, gloves, hats, brass knuckles, a box cutter, and the special edition Tokyo Monopoly. He also rented a sparkling silver BMW because Gojo refuses to be outclassed by a broke college student.

Oh, and they need it so his actual car won’t be recognized. That’s why everything he bought was either new or could hide their appearance, aside from the brass knuckles and board game; if the police catch them, Megumi will never forgive Gojo for not letting him perform a well-deserved castration.

At precisely two thirty in the afternoon, Megumi and Satoru bid Tsumiki a hasty farewell. Gojo doesn’t trust either of them to lie well enough to her, so they don’t give her enough time to ask where they are going. Her shouted question is left as an unanswered echo behind the closed front door.

It takes them thirty minutes to arrive at the designated location, a hole-in-the-wall bar in the rundown part of Ueno. Predictably, there aren’t many people there on a Wednesday before happy hour. Most people had classes or work at this time, and besides, drinking at three in the afternoon without any good football or baseball games to watch is just sad.

Unless, of course, someone had good company with them. A group of friends or a date with a seventeen-year-old girl who insisted that the only time she could get with him was at three on Wednesday! Really! She’s busy the rest of the week and her parents are oh-so restricting…

Since Satoru is a responsible adult, he made sure that the bartenders were paid off in advance to pretend that they are serving alcohol to young Kugisaki. She will simply act like she is getting drunk off of sparkly orange and pink drinks. Then, when the time is right, the ex-boyfriend will lead her to his car to take her to his apartment with only the most pure of intentions. Obviously. But what he will find instead is a pile of mutilated metal and deflated rubber.

There were only two glaring holes in the plan when Megumi originally proposed it to him, which they patched up by including Yuuji. The first: Gojo knows Nobara can bench twice her weight and take down a man with a hairpin, but he needs to be one hundred percent sure she will be entirely safe. There’s no telling what an enraged pedophile may be able to achieve. Additionally, she needs a quick getaway. The second: A video of the man’s reaction is required, and nobody involved will be in a position to record.

So, Megumi kindly asked Itadori Yuuji to hang out in the parking lot in his car, inherited from his dearly departed grandfather, and be at the ready with both his phone and brass knuckles should the situation escalate so far. Gojo hopes it doesn’t because that would make for a terrible reaction video.

The parking lot is situated at the back of the bar, which has no windows for an unsuspecting cheater to look out of and witness a crime being committed on his prized possession. Gojo parks a couple of spots to the right of the pearly white Maserati, spotting Yuuji’s old red Nissan on the left. The windows are barely tinted, allowing them to make eye contact with each other. Or rather, Itadori looks at Gojo’s shades for a split second before waving enthusiastically to Megumi. His ward returns the gesture with a small wave of his own.

Before Gojo can say something that will undoubtedly embarrass Megumi and spoil the mood, he swings his orange-and-blue slugger over his shoulder and adjusts his black cap with a gloved hand. “I’m feeling generous,” he declares. “You take the first swing.”

Megumi looks up at him, gives him a malicious grin, and steps close to the right wing mirror. Instead of swinging it, he slams the butt of the bat into the glass. It takes one more shove to send the wing mirror crashing to the ground. Glass shatters on the asphalt. Luckily, Gojo made Megumi wear a jacket and a pair of designer shades that would protect him from spray shards.

Laughing at the broken display of vandalism, Gojo pats Megumi on the shoulder. “Hit a home run into his headlights! I’ll work on getting in the car.”

“Destroying the inside?” Megumi asks, already stepping around to the front of the car. He gets into a proper batting stance, just like how Gojo taught him when the boy was playing the sport in middle school. The sun reflects brightly on the black-and-yellow Louisville slugger.

“Can’t leave a job half-finished, can we?” Satoru grins. His ward knocks a clean hole into one headlight at the same time Gojo leaves a spiderweb of cracks in the driver’s window. When the glass shatters inwards, he’s able to reach into the car and press the unlock button. The Maserati Ghibli has a slight off-white leather interior. Gojo takes a second to run his hand over the seat, savoring the beauty he’s about to destroy.

It’s a morbid pleasure to slide open his box cutter and carve jagged lines into the clean interior. White scars are left behind when he pulls the blade from the leather. He takes special care to draw little broken hearts and a cat with a pair of sunglasses on. When he’s done with the front and back seats, he finds that Megumi has already made a full round with the car. Thin streaks were keyed into the car doors, and every inch of the once pristine Maserati is filled with deep dents.

Megumi admires the view with Gojo, his breath coming out in small pants. “Well?”

“It can be better. Go again,” he answers, even though the car is so beautifully destroyed that it makes his heart swell. The teacher who said his kid was destined for failure was sorely mistaken; this is a sign of great things to come.

Megumi nods and lifts his slugger to smash another dent into the back window. It was already shattered, but now the only indication glass was ever there in the first place are the shards lying scattered in the trunk.

Gojo could cry with how proud he is of his son. His ward. Son.

Pushing out the blade of the box cutter again, Gojo crouches and slashes a hole into the first of four tires. He watches in satisfaction as air rushes out to rejoin the natural atmosphere. It has the same impact as releasing a caged, rehabilitated animal back into the wild. Probably. Satoru hasn’t done that before but he figures this is pretty much the same thing.

He moves on to the next tire after golfing the fenders three times with his bat. Megumi meets back up with him on the last tire, and this time there’s sweat dripping from his face. It’s a decently hot day, Gojo can admit. A few straggling wisps of clouds drift lazily across the sky, leaving the sun to bake the creatures on Earth. His own neck is uncomfortably wet and sticky.

“Here,” he hands over the box cutter, a shade duller than it was before. “I’ll leave the final honor to you.”

Megumi holds the box cutter in his hand like it’s the Holy Grail. When he rips into the tire, Gojo hopes he’s imagining a dick being sliced off instead like Gojo is. It’s the closest they’re going to get until one brave woman decides that enough is enough.

They step back to admire their work. It should be displayed in a museum next to Winged Victory of Samothrace or Perseus with the Head of Medusa. The whole world should lay their eyes on the perfect mound of metal and rubber they have molded. It’s barely even recognizable. The dark inside machinery of the car is visible from the parts Megumi tore off with his hands or batted away with the slugger. It sits closer to the ground than before thanks to the tire deflation. Several holes fall open in the cracked windows.

Gojo wraps an arm around Megumi’s shoulder, tugging him to stand closer to his side. His ward doesn’t put up a fight against his guardian and even rests his head against Gojo’s collarbone.

No language has an accurate word to describe the feeling that courses through his body. It’s a concoction of every good and bad thing Gojo has done in his life; every misstep he’s taken in raising the Fushiguro kids, and every moment he’s experienced overwhelming pride, fear, and joy for them. It’s twelve years all at once, tucked away under his arm.

“Your sister is going to kill me when she finds out about this,” he says. Megumi snorts.

“It’ll be worth it.”

Megumi’s voice is low with fondness, the only kind that can be produced after a long rush of adrenaline.

A great amount of strength allows him to open his mouth. “We need to leave before they get out here,” he mutters. Slowly, as if reluctant, Megumi detaches himself from Gojo’s arm. The warmth of his son’s body is lost immediately, replaced by the distant uncaring sun.

They wave Yuuji farewell and hop into the car, blasting the air conditioner and the playlist containing both the perfect, glorious, angel choir songs Gojo likes and the obnoxiously emo songs Megumi listens to. About halfway through the drive, Satoru asks if Megumi’s hungry.

Megumi looks up at him from his phone, his eyes squinted with something mischievous. “Can we have—”

“We are not having KFC,” Gojo says firmly.

Instead of frowning, Megumi’s lips contort into a half-smile of some kind. Like he’s trying to hide the fact that he’s enjoying being in the car with Gojo. And Gojo — Gojo can’t help himself. This is his son. The prickly five-year-old he met in an alley is now seventeen years old, looking down at his lap with his face scrunched up in a failed attempt at keeping his composure. He’s not laughing only to maintain his image. Megumi is happy.

It’s not enough to get Gojo to go through a KFC drive-thru because some wounds will simply never heal, but he does pull into the parking lot of the next best thing: Subway.

“So, I was thinking tonight we’d play Monopoly,” he suggests as they gorge themselves on two foot-long sandwiches and a large bag of Doritos. Megumi tries to scowl, but his full cheeks make him look more like a chipmunk.

“No. You always cheat at Monopoly,” Megumi says after swallowing his food.

“I don’t! I play fair and square.”

“You always have to be a banker so you can steal money and give us incorrect payments,” he deadpans.

Gojo ignores him. It’s not his fault they won’t play by the objectively correct rules of Monopoly. “But it’s Tokyo Monopoly! You can own Shibuya Crossing!”

Megumi’s gaze is unimpressed, but he doesn’t retaliate anymore. Gojo doesn’t bother to hide his shit-eating grin. Another day, another victory for one Gojo Satoru.

—

Tsumiki is waiting for them when they get home. She’s leaning against the wall of the foyer, her gaze stupidly hard for someone who’s supposed to be grieving the end of a relationship. It takes them exactly two point three nanoseconds to see that she has them figured out.

“Where were you two?” She asks them as if she doesn’t know. The air cracks with tension.

Gojo smiles and shoves Megumi forward. “You know, Megumi has been dying to tell you!”

His son glares at him in disgust before fully facing his sister. “We, uh,” he clears his throat. “We vandalized your ex’s car.”

The house is silent for five whole seconds. Megumi stares at his sister with bated breath, waiting for his soul to be wiped out of the mortal plane in the form of an hour-long lecture. But Gojo knows better. He knows because this is his daughter.

She sags forward, a smile ghosting her lips. Her eyes carry heavy eyebags, but they shine with expectation. “Do you at least have a video?”

Of course, she wants to chop his dick off, too. And of course, she recognizes that the next best option is destroying his pearly white Maserati Ghibli. She was raised by Gojo Satoru, after all.

Before Gojo orders her DoorDash Subway, they watch the video Yuuji sent to Megumi’s phone — the contact photo for the young Itadori is hilariously cute in comparison to Nobara’s, making Satoru give his son a knowing shoulder bump — on the big screen.

His reaction is priceless, what with the screams and caressing of the broken angles of the car. He moves to furiously grab Nobara’s shoulders, but she digs her heel straight into his balls before he can lay a finger on her.

Yuuji lowers his phone as she gets in, kicking his car into reverse so they can peel out of there before he gets up off the ground. The video ends with the kids’ glorious laughter and Nobara shouting, “It worked! Go, Itadori! Go!” Tsumiki’s giggle gives Gojo more joy than the actual process of destroying the car.

Well. Okay. Her giggle is almost better than destroying a Maserati Ghibli. What can he say? It was the most fun he’s had since he decided to stop breaking the law to set a good example for his kids.

Later, when they sit down to play Tokyo Monopoly, he may or may not tone down his strict following of the rules. Perhaps he embezzles a little less, and perhaps he switches out Tsumiki’s house for a hotel when his kids aren’t paying attention. He still wins after five hours of playing but that’s beside the point.

The day ends with a hug from Tsumiki. He doesn’t fully hug his kids often. Even when they were young and missing both parental figures who should’ve been giving them hugs three times a day, Gojo didn’t let himself get close enough to them. Realistically, he knows it’d been a product of his own young age and inexperience. Growing up in a cold family didn’t help matters; his only model of parents were his own unfeeling ones and what he’d observed of other families from afar.

That doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt when he hesitates to hold his children, unsure if they would want to be touched by their legal guardian. It’s worse to see them withdraw from touching him, too, like they’re worried he’ll pull away in disgust.

So, this is nice, the hug from his daughter before she goes to bed. She smiles at him from the top of the staircase. She is happy.

Yeah, it’s certainly better than destroying a Maserati Ghibli.

… Well. Maybe not. Maybe nothing will be better than that. But he swears that Tsumiki’s happiness is a very, very close second.

[cephalonserotonin]

Devstream 180 Notes

This is a long one, folks.

brought to you by creative lead Rebb Executive Producer Dick Wolf

New dojo contest to kick off a transition to cross-save dojo world… see forum post

Pride Campaign 2024

is active now until the end of June! a new glyph, display, and wings in lovely rainbows!

Jade Shadows update coming June 18!

features a new cinematic quest: Jade Shadows. It picks up after The New War (so it's got TNW as a prerequisite) where the storyline of the Stalker left off. Rebb and the crew request that folks not spoil the quest for others after playing it. Use spoiler tags if possible! Quest runtime ~ 25 min There's a teaser for the story quest, featuring the Stalker hanging upside down like a bat:

New Warframe: Jade!

Pablo describes her as a support frame. Her passive is two aura mod slots which is kind of crazy ngl

Her kit briefly summarized:

1: throws a little mote with an AOE effect of healing for allies and increasing damage taken to enemies

2: cycle through various squad buffs. The UI art for these is really gorgeous

3: a debuff: enemies in her sight are slowed and lose armor. You also revive any dead allies in your vision.

4: floating and a zappy exalted weapon. It's kind of like Hildryn's four but basically better in every way because you can actually set off large amounts of damage and fly higher and faster. The exalted weapon has synergy with her 1 and 2.

As Pablo mentioned, Jade's abilities provide a lot of combo potential, good for any "min maxers" in the audience.

Jade's three signature weapons: the Cantare throwing knives, the Harmony scythe, and the Evensong bow (a variant on the Dread).

The Ascension game mode: "what if Warframe but up?"

Non-endless There's a giant elevator you have to feed with energy. The team's video crashed so Rebb gave what I'd call an excited 12 year old's description of the game mode instead which I loved:

There's this giant elevator that needs energy to go up. So you have to keep feeding it ionic charges so you rise out of the depths. And as you're feeding, the Corpus are there! *excitable machine gun noises* And then you're like, oh god! And then you have to, like, jump around-- but if you fall out of the elevator, you better hope you're good at parkour, and that you can read the level to get back up! and back up! and back up! And then: you have to make it to the top. But that's not all. Once you get to the top of the elevator, you gotta escape. You gotta make a run for it before the Corpus hold you back! Aahhh! Aah! Ah! ���and that's Ascension. :)

Once we finally watch the video preview of the game mode later I think it looks fun. The level looks really neat; I love the graphics of the inside of the elevator. There's a new Jade Light eximus enemy here but I can't really tell any details about it quite yet.

ORDIS IN LARUNDA RELAY!

He's hosting the clan operation Belly of the Beast (featuring above Ascension game mode). In his shop is the Asteria ephemera, which evolves with community participation. Also some arcanes… and a beautiful skin for the Hate.

"If you're a hater, this is for you." Hilariously the arcanes are capped at 42 each because apparently in Gargoyle's Cry certain players went crazy burning themselves out to stock up on arcanes, and the team is trying to prevent that (and players blaming them for their own bad choices, as always). Two full sets each is more than enough, frankly.

Status Rework!

Blast now does a secondary detonation, or if hitting 10 blast procs, creates an AOE explosion. This is exactly what I have been wanting for ages so I, personally, am thrilled.

Magnetic now scales with overguard and shields the same way, and also does a secondary punch of damage (and an electric proc!) once the shield is broken.

Cold should freeze enemies more often now… and came with a free Frost rework! Now Frost's abilities give proper cold procs, thus freezing enemies, which is now standardized across his abilities. His 1 has been buffed and his 3 snowglobe has been modified (to allow shooting from in to out but not out to in). He has a new passive: his armor scales with the number of cold procs enemies have (like the defensive version of Ember).

There's a lot of testing going on right now on the interaction between ragdolling and freezing enemies.

There's a change to damage vulnerability mechanics which I didn't quite follow; seems to be mostly a simplification of the system.

Armor damage attenuation scaling, as mentioned in the last devstream, now has a cap, meaning corrosive procs should be more effective.

Yareli Deluxe

...looks like eldritch coral?

Next round of TennoGen

…finally comes with a Lavos skin, which is plague doctor themed.

Some augments (Protea's is probably OP), decrees (list shown below is incomplete), and arcanes

UI improvements!

In the upgrade screen: duplicate mod config button, indicator for substats, increased mod polarity

Augment list viewer in the abilities screen

Community customization table where you can copy others' fashions. Great news for gamers too unoriginal to make their own fashions, I guess. Coming at first for just Excalibur, Mag, Volt, and Jade.

Quick Access (fast travel wheel) for more areas like the dormizone.

UI autoscaling with resolution (to prevent tiny UI bars for people with huge resolutions), also coming with ability to scale the UI back down.

"Donut numbers" for damage view that do not cover the enemy you are shooting (old way can still be switched back to, called "cloud.")

Awakening quest has a lil fashion preview now!

Loadout hot swaps conveniently directly from the starchart!

QOL!

Cap on adversaries (liches and sisters) at 150. For the sake of database health. The programmer in me is mildly concerned that there was no limit before this.

Semi auto becoming full auto (see last devstream for more detailed description).

Automatic selection of last relic during endless relic cracks.

Streamlining necramech acquisition.

Unifying melee finishers and mercy kills (both with mechanics and appearance).

The return of Heirloom skins: starting with community art this time

First major change (from last year's disastrous heirloom launch) is the heirloom collections will now be released one warframe at a time.

Ember Heirloom is also a purchased fanartist concept!

Two paths to acquire it: a temporary paid path (for money, comes with some plat) and a plat path that will be available until next heirloom launch (and you can purchase the cosmetics individually!)

This is much better than last year's Heirloom launch, which, as aforementioned, caused a lot of community strife.

molten booty

And finally, the TennoCon 2024 schedule:

[she-posts-nerdy-stuff]

Can you tell us what the answers to the six of crows color experiment is?

Yep! ☺️

I realised too late that I really should’ve organised it as a poll somehow, because I’ve had loads of responses (thank you all very much) and whilst a lot of them agreed with me there were a few I wasn’t expecting. My associations in the order than I wrote them in the original post:

Red - Nina

Green - Jesper

Black - Kaz

Blue - Matthias

Purple - Inej

Orange - Wylan

So generally speaking a lot of people either agreed with exactly what I’d said or swapped Wylan and Jesper, which makes a lot of sense. A few people also moved Jesper and Inej around, which I understand and I wanted to add on that point I always connect Inej to purple with the idea of her reclaiming the colour and its power in the same way that she referred to her knives as her “proper claws” to reclaim the image of the lynx. Purple is the colour that was used against her and the colour that represents Ketterdam (Stadwatch uniforms, colour of Kruge notes, and the Geldrenner Ketterdam suite being the main examples); with a part of what separates Inej’s journey and her ship from Kaz’s style of vengeance is the acknowledgement that the city itself is the monster she’s facing, she’s been forced to come to terms with the idea that what happened to her wasn't the result of one terrible person or group of terrible people, but a dangerous environment and society that was never going to see her as an equal go matter what she did in life (this realisation is particularly linked to the “Rare Spices” billboard, which I wrote a post on a while back so if anyone wants to read that let me know and I’ll tag you) so by reclaiming the colour she is not only reclaiming the power Heleen took from her but the city as a whole. I hope I worded that all okay I worry that my point doesn’t come across properly it feels unclear please let me know and I’ll try to explain it differently. However I also understand the perspective a few people raised in their responses of wanting to separate her from that colour because she should always be seen as more than who she was forced to be, it’s just my personal interpretation that part of her pathway to healing is reclaiming the symbols used against her as a symbol of power to use against the system and people that put her in her position.

With Jesper and Wylan, I can definitely see it going both ways and I guess it also depends on what shades of the colours you’re imagining for each of them. For me, Wylan is orange because it can be a quiet, beautiful sunrise but it can also be fire and rage, it can be dark and deeply lonely but it can also be bright and blazing, it can be the first light of home in the dark but it can also be the flames of righteousness. “You were angry. I needed you righteous” “well, you’ve got me”. I realise all/most colours have a natural dual nature but I think orange does particularly and I think that it compliments him wonderfully. I connect Jesper to green for brightness, fun, the “lime green” clothes and vibrant plaid, but also for the farm and the card tables and the painful difference between them - the way his life split in two like a log cut down the middle (I don’t have my book with me so not quoting, but he says something along those lines in Crooked Kingdom when talking about how he ended up moving from the university to the Barrel).

I think the one’s who were always connected the same way were Nina to red and Kaz to black, and I wanted to add a couple of reasons I didn’t see anyone mention yet and that would be Nina being the “little red bird” and Kaz wearing black, mercher suits to mock them and to look, by Ketterdam’s colour-represented social hierarchy that I could talk about forever, like he fits in with them in the upper echelon of society.

And most people also maintained Matthias with blue, connections to water, ice, storms, but I think also it’s worth emphasising his blue eyes that Nina finds so beautiful

I will go through later and tag everyone who has responded so far in this post so everyone can see the results if they want to, thanks to everyone who responded ❤️

[leighsartworks216]

I Come With Knives Pt14

Astarion x gn!Tav/Reader

Something something cleaning blood off your lovers skin is the most intimate thing someone can do

I used some as-of-typing-this unadded dialogue of the companions reacting to Haarlep's "proposition"

Also, while writing, I realized "The Water Is Fine" by Chloe Ament really fit this chapter. It was completely unintentional but I'm not upset about it at all lol

Warnings: mentions of undressing/nudity, references to past abuse, survival responses from past abuse, crying, hurt/some comfort, some fluff but too much angst, blood

Word Count: 1,805

Main Masterlist

First Baldur's Gate 3 Masterlist - Second Baldur's Gate 3 Masterlist

I Come With Knives Masterlist

AO3

Tag List Form

The House of Hope put you ill at ease. It looked nice, but just beneath the surface lingered something inherently wrong. The feeling only increased tenfold when you stumbled upon a grand boudoir, with a large bed in the center, and a red-skinned creature lounging atop the covers.

It reminded you too much of awful times, especially as the being seemed to run his eyes salaciously over your body. Astarion also shifted uncomfortably beside you. When you glanced over your shoulder at him, just for a moment’s reprieve from the incubus’ sultry words, he had his arms crossed, closing himself off as something dark and cold filled his gaze. You wish you’d never stepped into this room.

“Why don’t we play a game?” Haarlep, the incubus, purred excitedly. You looked back at them, determinedly staying locked on their eyes even as they caressed their thighs, spread open in invitation. “You win, I give you everything you desire.” They chuckled as they continued, smirking, “But you’ll enjoy yourself more if you lose.”

A game in a devil’s lair. What a truly horrible idea. But what choice did you have? “What’s the game?”

Haarlep lit up. “It’s a surprise!” they lightly chastise. They gestured in a back-handed sweeping motion, as if casting a spell. “Off with your clothes!”

Your body responds before your mind even recognizes the command. Once it clicks, your hands are trying to untie your chestplate.

“Darling, what are you doing?” Astarion asks frantically, at your side in an instant. In fact, he places himself between you and the bed, hands clasping yours to stop your mindless ministrations. “This isn’t safe - you can’t trust them!” He searches your face with flickering eyes, studying you, trying to find an answer.

You stare wide-eyed at him, just as confused as he was. Fear shivered down your spine to your every nerve. You were going to obey this creature so mindlessly. It horrified you. Your voice is a mere whisper when you answer. “I didn’t even… I didn’t even think about it,” you admit.

He frowns, a knowing sorrow solidifying his gaze on your eyes. 

Haarlep lets out an irritable, drawn-out growl. “Little vampling, there are consequences to stopping our game.”

Astarion’s face scrunches into a deep sneer as he whips around to face the incubus, fangs showing. “I’m afraid we must be leaving,” he bit back, voice weighed down by the iron thread of anger. “Parting is such sweet sorrow and all that.”

“Tut, tut,” they scold, but their eyes alight with intense exhilaration. “You should never have come here, little thief. But, oh, you will make a pretty feast!”

-

You stared at the water, glaring at the currents and minnows and the sun’s waning glow across its surface. You were supposed to bathe a couple hours ago. You hadn’t even removed your armor. The incubus’ blood stains your skin.

You flinch involuntarily when someone sits beside you, but you relax once you see Astarion’s familiar white curls. He’s already washed away the blood that stained him - he was the first to do so, in fact. The moment your group returned to camp, he ran down to the river. You’d opted to go last, and busied yourself with organizing and sorting out your pack and the camp chest, as many times as it took for everyone else to finish. You ignored everyone, even Astarion.

There was no point ignoring him now.

Releasing a soft breath, you stop holding your knees to your chest, and pick at the dried blood on your hands.

“I’m sorry,” you whisper.

“You don’t have to apologize.”

You look at him. His eyes hold a wealth of understanding, tinged with sadness. He’s seen the conditions you lived in, even if they were only brief snippets of the years you suffered in them. If there was an order, you had to obey. But not anymore. Neither of you would be getting on your backs for breadcrumbs - never again.

He tentatively reached out to touch your cheek, testing the waters. You accepted it, leaning into his hand. Usually, you looked quite ravishing covered in the blood of your enemies, but now the dried and cracked gore splattered across your body was only a memorial to your ingrained obedience.

He turned his body to face you and nimbly began undoing your armor. He removed your bracers and pauldrons, and let you rest your arm on his shoulder as he untied the leather straps of your chestplate. They were all abandoned in a pile off to the side. They clattered with each new piece removed from your body, until all that remained were your clothes.

He stood then, with his hands outstretched to help you up. It felt like a monumental task to stand. An uncomfortable weight rested heavy along your back, as though the incubus had found it a perfectly suitable place to lounge and taunt you. You took his hands and he pulled you up, steadying you as your knees wobbled from sitting for too long. He slid a hand to your shoulder, just beginning to pull the sleeve down when you grabbed his elbow to stop him.

You couldn’t bear being naked right now.

He released your sleeve, slid his hand back down your arm, and took your hand in his again. He stepped backward, guiding you along toward the water. You stopped at the edge, frowning at his feet already submerged in the river.

“You’re going to get wet,” you tell him.

He chuckles airily, like he can’t believe that’s what you’re concerned about. “Would you rather I undress?”

You stare at the minnows that investigate his shoes. The way they circle his ankles cautiously and curiously. Then, you meet his eyes with a slight shake of your head.

A gentle tug on your hands guides you further and further into the water, until you’re waist deep with Astarion. The water is chilly, but not freezing. The sun halos him as it begins slipping beneath the horizon. You know you are safe at night with him.

He releases one of your hands again to wet his fingers and begin wiping away the blood from your cheeks. The gentle disturbance of water as he re-wets his hand is all you focus on as you shut your eyes and allow him to clean you.

There is something reverent in every swipe of his thumb. He works the red from your skin not by scrubbing at it, but by slowly coaxing it out until it no longer blemishes your cheeks. When he finishes one side, he switches hands, never fully letting you go. An occasional drop will slide down your face, but he will catch it every time. One trails down your nose when he cleans your forehead, and you feel his lips as he catches it with a kiss.

Satisfied with your face, he moves down your arms. He cleans any blood that made its way through the cracks of your armor and the fabric of your clothes to your skin, massaging your hands as he washed them in the river. You could no longer feel the sun’s warmth.

He taps lightly against your hand to get your attention. You open your eyes and he is relieved to find no fear lingering in your irises, even as you seek out the planes of his face in the dim light of the waxing crescent moon. He lifts your hand from the water and opens your palm to plant a kiss there. Your fingers tickle his cheek.

“May I wash your neck?”

He expects you to hesitate more, or even to staunchly refuse. But you nod almost immediately. He presses another kiss to your hand in gratitude, and begins cleaning the last remnants of blood on your skin as tenderly as everywhere else. He is conscientious to avoid the scar left by your master, and only cleans it last. He’s somewhat relieved it seems to have healed since the beginning of your journey, but there would always be a remnant left behind, no matter how much time passed.

“Almost done, my love,” he promises quietly as he walks along the riverbed to stand behind you. His hands hold your shoulders and arms reassuringly. “Can you kneel down, darling? I need to wash your hair.”

You do as he asks - not demands, asks. If you refused, you could only imagine how he would sigh but relent and use his hands to cup water over your head and wash it while you stood.

The silt is soft beneath your knees.

Astarion slowly guides your head back, and greets you with a kiss to your cheek. You turn your head to indulge in a proper kiss. It doesn’t last long, but it doesn’t need to. You sigh softly against his lips, coaxing him into lingering a moment longer, before he pulls away with a grin.

His long fingers carefully wash the blood from your hair. A crease forms between his brows as he focuses on not pulling at any knots. It’s nice. You close your eyes again and relax into the feeling of him lightly scratching your scalp and washing your hair in sections to ensure he gets every last drop of blood out. You startle when something touches your hand, scaring Astarion enough to pull his hands away, worried he hurt you. But then you laugh.

“A fish touched my hand,” you tell him through giggles.

You feel silly now, kneeling in the water with your lover washing you, both fully clothed after your mind betrayed you. It’s absurd. The world was on your shoulders, crushing in on your soul, as every single soul relied on your success. Your friends relied on your success. Your friends relied on you making the right choices, choosing the best sacrifice to be made. An incubus almost succeeded in using your body as a bargaining chip for information. And here you were, laughing.

Like a catalyst, reality comes crashing in on you.

Tears pour down the sides of your face, and your laughs become hiccups as you cry. Your smile wavers and warps into a wobbly frown.

Astarion cups your cheeks and wipes away the tears with the cool river water. He shushes you softly. “I’ve got you, love. I’ve got you.”

You lift your head from the water, hair soaked, and he guides you as you turn into his chest. You wrap your arms around his waist and cling to his shirt, which quickly becomes damp as you drip water from your clothes and hair onto him. One of his hands cups the back of your neck as the other rubs soothing circles into your back, hoping to ease the trembling wracking your entire body.

“Why can’t I just be okay?” you sob into his neck.

He doesn’t have an answer.

---

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