#i sorta with I didn’t do the background but I was so bored and I wa spike ‘hey why don’t I do a background?’

[slutt4ellie]

Sacred Hearts Entwined

(Bare with me this is the first story i’ve ever written!)

Ellie Williams X Reader

masterslist

Part 2 -> ✞

Part 3 -> ✞

What do you do when you’re falling hopelessly in love with your childhood best friend?

Summery: You’ve been friends since 2nd grade first meeting in school. Growing up in a religious background you’ve always been taught the “right” way to think. So why are you falling in love with her..?

Warnings -> Mentions of the “d slur” / Parents are controlling / homophobia / Both extremely confused of their feelings / cheating / (lmk if I missed anything else!)

WC: 2.3k

(Did not proofread!!)

The girl who caught your eye since you were kids, Ellie Williams.

Age 6 (grade 2) -

You didn’t have much friends, after all it was only grade 2 and being popular was probably the least of your concerns, at least that’s what your mom constantly told you.

Growing up as a naturally shy kid, meant going outside of the box to talk to people wasn’t precisely your idea of “fun”! That’s why you often dissociated, it seemed easier that way? So, as soon as the bell rang for recess you would go to the back of the playground where no one else sat watching the different animals the would scale the trees while the birds would flow through the sky.

But today was a different day, as you did that normal routine a girl sat beside you, freckles that trailed all around her face and light green eyes that shined in the sun with auburn hair which ended up being almost bright red in the sun.

“Do you like watching the animals too?” She asked fairly quietly looking at her hands, you sorta look at her and nod, to nervous to talk..

Age- 7 (grade 3) -

You shortly did learn her name after that moment, Ellie Williams. To be fair you actually started learning almost everything about her. She’s an only child, loves spending most of her time doing art or playing outdoors, she’s way more extroverted then you ever could be, and she has a pet dog named Max.

You and Ellie almost spent all your time together if not at her house playing outside then you guys would be cooped up in your basement finding new board games while your mother cooked dinner for you guys upstairs. Coming out of your shell with her seemed easier then other people, she made it easy. After all she didn’t get easily bored of my shyness through the beginning.

Age 10 (grade 6) -

“Okay push!!” Ellie groans pushing a trash bin closer to the convenience store ladder which leads to the roof. “Ellie this is dumb” You say on the opposite side using your back to help her push it. “Just relax! Once we get up there, then we can practically see the whole town!” She smiles continuing to push it “But if we get caug-“ You can’t even finish your sentence before she talks “We won’t get caught!” She says as the trash bin finally reaches the end of the brick wall.

“K boost me!” Ellie smiles walking up beside you as you slowly crouch resting your back on the cold metal trash bin, you put your hands in a cuff which Ellie’s foot rest in as you lift her up. She’s not even standing on the trash bin for more then 10 seconds before the bottom gives out and she falls feet first in the bagged trash “Ag fuck! Help!” Ellie groans trying to lift herself out.

You burst out laughing not even grabbing her hands to help her up and out, but now she yells “Help me!!” You’re still cackling as she practically falls out “Eww now you smell weird!” You laugh getting away from her “Oh yeah you want a hug?” Ellie says chasing after you as you run away into the distance.

Age 14 (Freshman year) -

“It’s bullshit!” Ellie says annoyed “They didn’t care about signing us up for a catholic school for the last 10 years” Ellie says kicking in her new shoes she got for her uniform “Maybe just a change of heart” You shrug almost accepting it “You barley even care” Ellie says looking at you “Us pouting isn’t gonna change our parents mind, the decision is final now?”

“I don’t wanna even go, I look really dumb in a skirt.” Ellie holds it up disappointed “Ellie you look fine in a skirt” You sorta smile looking at her “I don’t, I rather just wear the pants.” Ellie groans sliding her hands down her face dramatically “Well I think you look good?” You say partially because you want her to stop whining about it but mainly because you mean it.

Age 15 (grade 10) -

“So you’re going with Alex then?” Ellie ask looking at you as you read a book “I mean yeah he asked it would be weird not to go?” You sorta shrug “K..? I- We just always made fun of people who went to the dances, I just didn’t except you to suddenly change?” Ellie says, she wants it to seem like she doesn’t care but she’s genuinely doing a horrible job covering it. “I guess I didn’t get the impression you cared so much?” An annoyed tone leaking through your voice.

“I don’t.” Ellie says almost coldly adding on a few seconds later. “I’m probably gonna dip, my parents want me home soon anyway.” Ellie says standing up. You sorta just wave also not in the mood it’s been a long day and you don’t wanna fight with Ellie over a stupid thing like going to the dance with someone.

16 (grade 11) -

The moment where the story starts to go downhill, well this is it. You got together with Alex a few weeks after the dance and you’ve been together all summer. Leaving little time for Ellie, and don’t get me wrong! It’s not like it’s purposefully happening, it’s just the fact that you’re both at 2 different points and spending all your time with the person you’ve previously been doing that with for 10 years isn’t exactly on your top priority list. Ellie’s also just been weird around you, she doesn’t like it when Alex is brought up occasionally sighing every time he’s even mentioned or going on about how she can’t see you guys going beyond high school. And at this point you finally talk “You say it like you’re fucking jealous?” You say a bit pissed off.

“Why the fuck would I be jealous?” Ellie claps back. “I don’t know Ellie! Please you tell me, every time I bring him up it’s like the idea of me dating someone repeals you, I don’t get why you’re not happy for me!”

“Who ever said I wasn’t happy for you” Ellie says now no longer walking so she can actually look at you in the face. “You just imply it constantly, like am I missing something, did he do something??” You say actually wanting to hear her opinion, why she hates him. Ellie chokes up though, wanting nothing to do with the real reason she doesn’t like Alex.

“Because I-“ She stops, and switches what she was going to say. “Because me and you barley hang out anymore, last summer all we did was go to each others houses and now you have 0 time for me!” She sorta yells. “Because Ellie I have a boyfriend? Did you not except us to grow up?” You now yell back, this whole argument is picking up fast. “I expected you to have the fucking decency to hang out with me once in awhile, you think i’m some girl who’s just obsessed with you and it’s getting old” Ellie says hurt that becoming evident when her voice cracks. “Ellie I didn’t say-“ You can’t finish your sentence because she talks. “It’s fine we can hang out later.” She says turning around and walking away.

To be fair half of you wants to chase after her, talk to her like you used to before you guys even started high school, but you don’t. This isn’t a movie after all.

(Present: Saturday)

You and Ellie haven’t talked in about 4 days since the little fight, the annoying part of it is the fight wasn’t even that serious, it’s just neither of you know where to start.

Throughout your friendship there’s only been a few fights, none of them being at all important, dumb stuff like you never gave each others clothes back or broke a toy. Never something like this, something that actually had meaning.

You don’t even understand why it bothers Ellie so much that you’re dating Alex, she’s your best friend, if anything she should support it, you would support her? As of now though you’re trying to do everything in your power to completely ignore the fact you guys even had a fight, as long as she doesn’t talk to you and you don’t talk to her it’s fine! Right…?

That’s at least how you thought about it, avoiding it seemed like the best situation at the end of the day because you never had to confront the problem, you did that a lot. When you were 7 and broke a glass cup, the way you solved it was hiding it in between the tiny opening between your counter and oven. Which actually ending up working..till your brother found it and immediately snitched.

Tonight though there was a perfect distraction, there was a party and half the school was going to be there, I mean it was a safe assumption saying Ellie wasn’t going to be. She hated parties, she said “It’s like a bunch of toddlers in a room, not really anything fun about that?” Which wasn’t completely false but she rarely let loose and actually drank.

Tonight’s plan was to get blackout drunk, forget Ellie, forget school, just forget everything as of now, and just hang out with the guy you loved..?

Because you love Alex how could you not?? He plays football, is popular, has a bunch of friends, treats you nice! You would be insane not to like him!! So why does everything with him feel so stale and forced? Shit now you’re thinking to much about this, Ellie is just getting in your head.

So when it was 11pm and your boyfriend Alex picked you up you made sure to make him the only thing on your mind, hanging around him, being touchy, anything to convince you that you love him. “Baby can you get me a drink” He ask smiling kissing your cheek “Yeah of course” You smile walking over to the kitchen grabbing a red solo cup filling it up with punch when as you look up, there she in. Ellie..

“Real gentleman you picked out.” Ellie says sarcastically drinking out of her red solo cup clearly tipsy if not drunk. “What..” You sigh looking up at her.. “I said real gentlemen. I mean because he’s grabbing your drinks and all!” She smiles looking at you right in the eyes.

“Why the fuck do you suddenly care so much Ellie.” You say annoyed looking at her. “I don’t care I just know you could do better..” She shrugs looking at her red solo cup the confidence disappearing after that sentence. “Who’s the magical person who’s better for me then Ellie?” You look up at her

Ellie sorta shrugs. She wants to say her but she rather skip on border school because her stupid crush on you, if her parents found out Ellie would be kicked out in a matter of seconds. “I don’t know, just someone better” you just slowly nod as Ellie finishes her sentence “Thanks for that great speech Ellie.” Ellie grabs you arm as you try and leave. “When did you start settling for low?” Ellie ask looking at you “Fuck you” You push her.

Ellie pushes you back “You’ve changed” You quickly shoot back “You act like you fucking like me!” you say probably to loud “You seem like a dyke Ellie.” You don’t even know why you said that!..well you sorta do. It was to cover your own ass, it was better to say that then “I think i’m in love with you Ellie”. Ellie almost immediately steps back and walks out which prompted you to follow “Ellie I didn’t fucking- fuck.” You can’t even finish your sentence before she’s gone, at this point you’re almost sure you just fully screwed up your whole friendship.

(Sunday 3:47am)

You can’t fall asleep knowing you called Ellie that, it was a heat of the moment and you didn’t even fucking mean it, it felt so much easier then admitting you think you love her? What if she didn’t feel the same when, then the whole school knows you like girls and next thing you know your parents find out and you’re getting sent to a border school to be “corrected”! Fuck, fuck, fuck. You get out of your bed throwing on a t shirt and sweatpants, what are you even doing??

You quickly sneak out your window and start running to Ellie’s house which is about a 7 minute normal walk. As you run up you notice that Ellie’s bedroom light is on, so sneakily climb up onto the roof, you used to do that a lot during summer after your mom would say no to a sleepover but once you climb up Ellie’s window you lightly knock on it.

After about a minute and a half she opens the window and sees it’s you almost immediately shutting it. Before Ellie can shut it though she puts her palm on the window. “Ellie can we talk” You ask genuinely nervous she might say no.. “No, i’m studying?” Ellie completely lies but she just needs a shitty excuse “Ellie it’s Sunday can I just come in. Please.” At this point it’s like your begging and Ellie eventually opens the window fully. You step in looking at her “I’m so sorry” you say almost immediately “Mhm” Ellie replies, she doesn’t wanna here stupid ass sorry’s

“Ellie” You say looking at her.

And as soon as Ellie looks up you lean forward and kiss her. Ellie moves her hands on your face and you do the same..

But that moment is cut almost immediately right after when Ellie’s father walks in..

A/N -> I hope this is okay for my first post!! I’ve been reading on tumblr for about a month now and I thought making something could be interesting. I might make a part 2 depending on if I feel like it considering this story ends on a cliff hanger 😭

[tellmeallaboutit]

knock knock (Raphael x F!Player)

Chapter 2, In Which You Meet A Tall Dark Stranger 

Chapter 1

SUMMARY: Careful which mods you install for BG3. Did you read the terms and conditions carefully?

TAGS: meta romance, psychological horror, smut, the character is the player, Raphael is after you, you wanted him, you invited him to our world, he accepted your invitation

RATING: explicit

AO3

Chapter 2

The next day, during your lunch break, you made another attempt to persuade Raphael to take his clothes off. The clock struck noon; your private laptop was on the right side of your desk, while your work laptop was on the left, Teams open and your mouse ready to show signs of activity from time to time.

The sun was shining through the wide open window, children playing outside. Idyllic. Nothing sinister could be happening in broad daylight with those happy sounds in the background. The horror movies told you so. Except for Midsommar.

Well, screw Midsommar, then. This isn’t Sweden.

"All right, I'm going to set some ground rules here," you said to the loading screen. "I can be as creepy as I want to be to you, because you're just a bunch of pixels, but you can't do anything creepy to me, because I'm a human being. Got that? Good."

The sound of your voice made you feel braver.

As you heard the familiar sinister 'you-let-the-villain-win-bad-player' music in the background, you covered your eyes with your hands and peered through splayed fingers.

Then he appeared. Just as you had wished. Perfectly naked, with a stereotypical video game six-pack and just the right amount of body hair. The orange lighting made his skin glow, and his flaccid penis, like that of the game's generic male model, vanished from sight as he strode closer.

Your ears pricked up to listen to the scripted monologue you knew by heart, watching (waiting?) for any hiccups or new animations, the YouTube app on your phone playing the identical scene for comparison.

Everything happened exactly as it should, word for word, save for the speaker’s nudity.

All good. You breathed a sigh of relief and spread your fingers wider to admire Raphael a little better. 

Same as always. Handsome and charming and completely imaginary, which, now that you thought about it, was the biggest part of his charm. 

"Ta-ta... for now," Raphael's signature line echoed through the room.

"Bravo, Raphael," you praised the screen. "You've done nothing creepy. You have earned your title of Archdevil Supreme."

After waiting for a response that never came, you laughed off your silliness and shook your head. Your laptop was overheating, giving off a slight synthetic smell. Should have upgraded a long time ago. Just need to put enough money aside.

"OK, screenshots," you said. "I wanted to take some screenshots. Do you mind, Raphael? Can I have your consent? They’ll help recruit more followers for you, my liege."

Your phone vibrated. The FaceID gave you a preview of the Discord messages from Queen-of-the-Bored, one of the few Raphaelites you'd actually spoken to directly and felt like you kinda sorta knew.

queen-of-the-bored: ngl that was some really funny joke, we spent the whole night trying to recreate it :-D queen-of-the-bored: you sounded legit worried over that voice message tho haha you: it was legit. check the reddit thread queen-of-the-bored: which thread

Ok, let me google that for you. You typed in the same search words as yesterday, "Raphael naked mod April prank," clicked on the thread from yesterday, and skimmed through the comments.

“nah not joking there is this naked mod for teenage mutant ninja""

“all dongs appeared MASSIVE on April’s first”

Scrolling further, you realized that was not the correct Raphael - it's Raphael the Turtle, not Raphael the Devil. Why was there so much NSFW content about him? What did people see in turtles?

You quickly corrected your search to "Raphael BG3 naked mod April prank," but it didn’t bring back any relevant results. So, you changed it to "last twenty four hours" just to be thorough.

Didn’t help. Nothing. You were the only to be called a naughty little mouse. The special one.

queen-of-the-bored: which thread dude??? you: my bad it was the turtle queen-of-the-bored: ??? queen-of-the-bored: I am slowly getting worried about you haha

Next step? Contact the mod developer directly? What if they have no idea what you're talking about?

Then what? What were the alternative theories? You've been hacked and doxxed to madness for that one Twitter post that got people waving pitchforks at you? 

There you go, you were scared again. Daytime, sun shining and children playing outside, but there you were, alone in your flat, scared again.

You took a deep breath and looked at the screen. "All right, I understand, Mr Archdevil Supreme. No screenshots. I'll uninstall the mod and I apologise for my disrespectful behaviour."

You couldn't bear to see Raphael's face on the screen again so you hit ctrl alt delete instead of Escape and stared blankly at the Task Manager.

Next, you uninstalled the mod that had caused all this trouble. Then you went to Tumblr and removed the reblog of Raphael in a cat playsuit with the tag "my poor miau miau". Then you deleted your bookmarks on AO3. Your Twitter account was beyond repair, so you deleted it altogether.

None of these actions made you feel any better. You grabbed a quick cup of shrimp noodles, but eating it only made you feel worse. As you tasted the sodium on your tongue, you came to a realisation: what you needed was to go the fuck outside.

You had been stuck in your flat and home office since the start of the pandemic, chronically online. Online work, online colleagues, online friends, who was the last real person you saw, talked to and hugged?

Your mum, probably. 

Oh yes, no wonder you were going mad. You need to get out there and meet some real people. You opened Discord, quickly scrolled past the sketch of Tav giving Raphael head, and typed a message: you needed to touch grass.

queen-of-the-bored: well there is Comic-Con this weekend  you: this is NOT touching grass, this is burning it queen-of-the-bored: true you: besides not going alone queen-of-the-bored: maybe Raph will keep you company 😈 

What? Such a strange thing to say. Or was it? Who the hell was that behind the screen anyway? Apparently someone called Sammy from Ohio. Supposedly. Wasn’t she the one who recommended this mod?

She was.

Come on, you're just letting your paranoia get the best of you.

queen-of-the-bored: oh BTW I found THE hottest Raph smut  queen-of-the-bored: mind the tags it's so hot but soooooo fucked up queen-of-the-bored: just read it trust me thank me later

Who the hell were you, Sammy from Ohio, Korilla? You put the phone down and started pacing around your small flat. It was not much to pace around, only forty-two square meters. 

At least you rent a flat in a building with other people and not some house at the edge of the forest. Strangers live below you, above you and on either side of you. They don't know you and you don't know them... but they were there, just in case...

Just in case.

"You know what?" you said to your computer. "I need a break. I need to focus on my mental health. Self-care, Raphael. I'm not playing with you. For now".

The moment you finished speaking, your phone lit up again with another notification. This time it was an email. You made a mental note to start managing your notifications better.

Did you enjoy your Devil Dick © - Natural Red experience? We know you will be back for more 😈 Check out the new...

What the fuck? Oh no, no, click away and make a mental note to never order from Bad Dragon again with customer satisfaction emails like this. It's borderline harassment. You ordered from them ONCE, as a joke, just to see what ridges might feel like.

Not as good as the smut had promised you,

Private. Private stuff. Between you and your bed drawer. Between you and your browser. God, how much stuff you have in your browser history. You should have used incognito mode more often.

Would that have helped? 

"That was low, Raphael," you muttered. "Or is it Haarlep today?"

You glanced around your room before angling your computer screen towards the wall, then retrieved the Devil Dick © from its hideaway in your bedside drawer. Your fingers grazed over the silicon ridges as you swiftly stashed it away in a box beneath the bed.

"If you must know, it was too big for me. Flattered?"

Crawling out from under the dusty bed, you looked up and realized for the first time that anyone in the building could easily peep into the flat if they tried hard enough or cared enough to do so.

Enough is enough.

You need to hydrate, you need to eat some vegetables, you need to start jogging again and you definitely... you definitely need to go out and talk to some real people. Maybe it's time to get back on Bumble and try your luck again. Who knows, it might actually work this time.

He wouldn't like that.

Where did that thought just come from? He wouldn't like it, who the hell cares what some imaginary devil thinks.

Standing up straight, you pointed a finger at the screen in front of you.

"Raphael, just so we are clear, you and I: I really like you. I do PR for you every day for free. You don't have to scare me to get my attention. You should appreciate me and be nice to me. I'm the best agent you'll ever have.”

Having made your point, you put on your running shoes and AirPods. It brought back memories of all the times you had jogged through the nearby park. Afterwards you'd sit on the bench and eat an ice-cream, watching couples, happy and glowing, watching families with children, happy and stressed, watching people living their lives in a reality parallel to yours, and then you'd come home and go into a reality parallel to theirs.

The AirPods picked up right where they left off last time.

I want to hold you close, soft breasts, beating heart, as I whisper in your ear

I wanna fucking tear you apart

You removed the AirPods from your earlobes and exhaled. This wasn’t Raphael's fault. This is She Wants Revenge, you have listened to it a thousand times. You knew the lyrics, they hadn't changed. 

You can't even listen to music anymore. Pull yourself together. 

Get some vitamins from the pharmacy.

Touch some goddamn grass.

***

You stuck to your digital and physical diet until the weekend, and as a reward, nothing happened. No oddly timed emails, no strange messages, no random phone calls. Maybe it was your pitch talk or the vitamins you started taking, but either way, Raphael was on his best behavior, and so were you. 

No Tumblr, no AO3. Didn't even touch Steam. Got into a highbrow podcast about the Roman Empire.

You set a new personal record for days without 'self-indulgence', as Raphael would put it, although that wasn't really the intention. Something always seemed to interrupt - whether it was the loud hum of the fridge (which was always obnoxious) or the flickering light in the hallway (which had been broken for over a week). 

By Friday, you had finally finished the work projects you had been putting off for months. The job wasn't too bad, but it hadn't been any fun for years, if it ever had been. You did the bare minimum to get the paycheck and keep the job, and your employer kept the paycheck at the bare minimum to keep you. If there was anything else you could do, you would do something else.

Still, this was probably the most productive week you had in years. You scrubbed your flat from top to bottom twice and cleared your wardrobe of clothes that no longer fit.

You were proud of yourself.

Gradually your sense of security began to return. You tried not to dwell too much on the incident with the naughty little mouse; if you didn't think about it, it almost felt like it hadn't happened.

On Friday, you plucked up the courage to play BG3 again, wandered through Baldur's Gate, avoiding the House of Hope for the time being, had a few fights, played the graveyard scene with Astarion (daring, but a small part of you hoped it would make Raphael jealous enough to come out again), and shut it down. 

Nothing out of the ordinary.

You hadn't planned to go to Comic-Con. For one thing, it was on the other side of the city, in the business district of the convention centre, so it would take at least an hour to get there. Secondly, going alone just felt... weird.

It was not until Friday night that a little voice in your head started to whisper, "Why not? Maybe you'll meet some like-minded people”. Make some friends you can actually touch (not in a creepy way). 

It's a better chance than endlessly swiping on Bumble.

Maybe you'll meet...

Neil Newbon. If you can get past the hordes of fangirls. Andrew Wincott. No, Andrew Wincott wouldn't be there; you'd checked beforehand. To be honest, hearing his voice might have been too much for your psyche at that moment.

So you decided to go. You went, and it was as fun as you had imagined it would be - that is, hardly any. The convention hall was huge and crowded, rows and rows of stalls, crowds and crowds of people. Live panel discussions, cosplayers, flashing lights, bright colors, chatter, laughter, very loud, very lively.

Raphael wouldn't last a minute in that chaos.

"Hell is other people," you thought to yourself, quoting Sartre. If you ever met Raphael, you'd quote Sartre to him too. He must know that you read intelligent books and not just fanfiction. 

Some people might be comfortable going to events and eating alone in restaurants, but not you. It's even worse being the odd one out in a group of odd ones. How come all the others had someone to take along? Where did they find all those people in this godforsaken city?

You talked to a few people and a few people talked to you. Nothing really took off. Your mind was elsewhere, to be fair. You were looking for something in the crowd. 

Someone.

It was absurd, yes, but so was what happened this week with the mod. You had met a few Raphael cosplayers, three at least, but they were...

Well, of course they weren't him. But they did a great job with the clothes and the hair and the make-up, and one had really great prosthetic horns, and you touched them and admired them and praised that particular Raphael for all his hard work in creating them.

They were real people, not video game characters that had come to life, and neither were you. You looked down at your jeans, at your thighs, and thought you should start jogging again, and felt even less comfortable in your own skin. 

Then Neil Newbon came along and things quickly became too chaotic for you.

You decided to take a break and walked down the street until you came across a cosy café - none of that generic chain stuff, but something that tried hard to be authentic with pretty flowers in the windows.

Sitting alone at a table for two, you looked down at your phone and opened the Discord chat because you came here to talk to some real people.

In the main chat, there was a heated debate about whether devils are allowed to torture mortals into signing contracts. Both sides presented arguments based on lore, edition contradictions, past precedents and personal conviction. 

A man's voice interrupted you as you typed your own very elaborated opinion of hellish law. "Excuse me, may I?" he asked, his words slightly muffled by the AirPods.

"Sure," you replied with practiced friendliness, not even looking up. That was always your default answer. It's not like you can say no to this kind of request anyway. 

People ask and do a lot of things out of politeness. That was precisely why you took the AirPods out of your ears.

The moment you lifted your eyes to meet the man's, you learned the true meaning of the word 'jumpscare'. Your body jerked upwards, the table shook and the coffee cup tumbled - narrowly missing Raphael.

Raphael. 

Not a man who looked like Raphael, not a man who was dressed like him - Raphael. 

You weren't sure if you made any sound or uttered any words. You probably yelped.

What you did do for sure was gawk.

His skin tone identical; hair slicked back just right; eyes uncannily accurate in hue and shape - down to every wrinkle. A perfectly realistic rendering. Not the uncanny valley type, no, perfectly believable. This is exactly what he would look like if he were real and swapped his fantasy clothes for a business suit.

So this is what it feels like to go completely insane.

Very banal, actually. You are having a psychotic breakdown and no one is even looking at you, except for an imaginary devil.

"Oh my, my apologies," Raphael said as he quickly grabbed napkins to mop up the spreading lake of coffee on the table. "I did not mean to scare you."

Oh, but he did, very much. You could not breathe, your chest encased in an iron brace of fear. It's you who needs to apologise, and apologise fast, and apologise a lot, and beg for mercy. Especially for liking the Twitter art of him being spit-roasted between Yurgir and Haarlep. 

If you only knew... you would never have clicked on it... absolutely never... all those posts you wrote... 

"Raphael?" you managed to squeak out. “I didn’t mean it, I swear.”

This must be how a deer feels in the headlights of an oncoming truck.

He looked at you, very sincere confusion etched across his handsome face. "Excuse me?"

You drew in a shaky breath, your nostrils flaring as you tried to catch a whiff of cherries under the aroma of fresh coffee, not caring how absurd you appeared. Yes? No? Or was that strawberry jam on his croissant? Have your senses gone haywire? Your mind certainly has.

"You're... you're here to cosplay Raphael?" 

The thought tumbled out of your mouth before it had time to fully form in your head. It was the only explanation that made sense... It didn't, but it made more sense than all the others put together.

Raphael moved closer, pulled up a chair and asked, amused: "I beg your pardon, I'm here to do what to whom?"

The voice. The voice was the same. Andrew Wincott's voice. The man had simply stolen his voice. Or had the man stolen it from him? The movements, the mannerisms, the facial expressions. This man could not be Raphael because...

Well, because this man was real. As real as you were. 

"Raphael," you explained. "From the video game. Are you here to cosplay... to play... Raphael?"

The man gave you a look as if questioning your sanity, and rightfully so. You were also sweating bullets - could he see the damp patches under your hoodie? You pressed your arms against your sides; wouldn't want him noticing.

"I'm hardly an actor," Raphael replied with a polite smile, "although there was a time in my youth when I entertained such ambitions."

He chuckled lightly and took a leisurely sip of his coffee. 

"I'm here to enjoy my espresso, nothing more. I... have never been particularly fond of..." he added with the disdain of a typical middle-aged man, "... video games.”

You had no response for that because Raphael wouldn't be into video games either; that much was believable.

"My office is across the street," he said, pointing towards the office complex opposite you. "Precisely there."

The golden sign on the building across from you, d'Avergni & Partners, told you nothing, except that Raphael had an office job and an office space and a desk and all the things that the devil shouldn’t have because the devil invented them to torture the others.

Raphael was dressed like he had just stepped out of a board meeting. A three-piece slate gray tailored suit, white shirt peeking out from underneath, silk tie and matching pocket square. Of all the modern Raphael AUs, you preferred the Professor one, you voted for it, you had Sucharide’s fic bookmarked. The Professor was more, ugh...

Safe.

As for you, you were wearing a hoodie with your university on it. A clean hoodie, but a hoodie nonetheless. What the hell else would you be wearing to Comic Con? You didn't do your hair. Well, putting it in a ponytail is not doing your hair. Why did you not do your hair? 

"I know, I know, you must be wondering why anyone would toil on a weekend," Raphael continued. That was the last thing you were wondering. "Alas, no rest for the wicked."

"Wicked?" you echoed. You looked at the people in the cafe, sure they were staring at the both of you, but they weren't.

"Oh," he chuckled lightly, "it's just an expression – 'No rest for the wicked.' You've never heard it before?"

"Of course I have," you said, momentarily embarrassed. "Never mind...sorry."

"You have nothing to apologise for," Raphael raised his eyebrows. "In fact, I should be the one to apologise for startling you. May I offer you another cup of... ah, what was that... cappuccino? After twelve? Tsk-tsk, young lady".

Not a single modern man could ever manage to say the words "tsk-tsk, young lady" as charmingly. That was Raphael.

"No bother, I can get one myself," you said quickly, about to stand up. 

He raised his hand slightly and put it down to halt your movement, and for a second you thought he was going to touch you, and if he had, if you had felt the skin of his skin, he would have felt more real and you would have died on the spot from a bursting heart.

"I have no doubt about that. But may I treat you? It would be my absolute pleasure”.

Pleasure. The way he said the word was straight obscene. You couldn't handle the word 'pleasure' coming from a man who had been responsible for more than half your orgasms in the last few months.

So in your daze, you mumbled: "Yeah. Yeah, sure."

Raphael stood up and walked over to the barista. She acknowledged him, so that's one point for him being real and you not hallucinating. Not only did she acknowledge him but she flashed him a goofy grin - clearly smitten.

Of course she is.

You have to take a picture of him. How do you take a picture of someone without their consent without being a total creep?

You don't. It's in the fucking definition; you can't. But you should. Maybe you'll open your camera roll and see someone completely different, and then you'll know it's time to call for mental health services.

Your phone was buzzing with messages, which you quickly swiped away and went straight to the camera. You took a picture of him from behind while he ordered you a coffee. The barista gave you a “fucking weirdo” look. 

Fuck you, you thought, you have no idea what I am going through right now. Then you switched to the camera roll and checked to see if the photo reflected what you saw.

A broad, fit back of a very attractive middle-aged man with lush brown hair, paying for coffee with cash.

You couldn't decide whether this made you feel better or worse.

When Raphael returned with your cup, you had something for him too. "This is the character I was talking about," you said, a screenshot of virtual Raphael ready on your screen.

Anyone who saw the screenshot would say, "Who motion-captured me?" 

Not Raphael. He barely glanced before shrugging and handing your phone back. "Hmm, I see some resemblance, I guess."

Resemblance? What fucking resemblance? There was no resemblance; he WAS Raphael! You were about to argue but he beat you to it: "Why? Were you hoping to meet this...Raphael?" 

His voice dropped an octave and he looked at you intently. He was flirting - openly, unashamedly.

"I...I was," you stammered out. "He's my favourite character."

Brilliant, brilliant line. Dear diary, today I wanted to meet Raphael, my favourite character from my favourite game. So much for quoting Sartre.

"Well now, I'm flattered," Raphael purred, causing you to wriggle uncomfortably in your seat. "I do bear some physical likeness."

That was a massive understatement. 

The man had a disarmingly charming smile. You tried to remember if Raphael had ever smiled like that in the game. It was mostly scowls and grins and smirks, but this kind of smile? You didn't think so. You caught a glimpse of yourself in his hazel eyes, and that was not Tav; that was you. Just you.

Not that you were unattractive or anything. Average. Maybe even a little pretty on a good day. You didn't like yourself very much. Then again, most people don't. That's how the beauty industry makes its money. 

You got your share of attention, some, nothing to brag about. Had two boyfriends, it didn't work out, you used to care, now you don't. Certainly never got any attention from men who looked like him.

Why should this man be interested in you, why? Ah, yes. Your soul. He probably wants your soul. Is it worth much at all? Is it worth coming all the way to Earth? You wanted to apologize to him for going through all this trouble just for you.

"So this event in the convention hall down the street..." he snapped his fingers as if trying to recall a forgotten name.

"Comic-Con 2024," you supplied. "It's huge in fandom culture. TV shows, video games, that sort of stuff.”

"Ah. Not my kind of entertainment - or my kind of audience, for that matter," Raphael said with a slightly raised eyebrow, eyeing the “Astarion approves” badge on your backpack.  "It does remind me of a deal I signed recently."

"Deal?" you asked in a weak voice. He nodded. "What deal? With who?"

"With who? No, I meant the Microsoft-Blizzard acquisition". 

Ah, that kind of deal. The words felt so reassuring, so real, the acquisition. Raphael would have no idea about these words. Raphael wouldn't say "Microsoft". You mean the real Raphael. What the hell is a 'real' Raphael again?

For the first time, you let go of a little tension. You took a first sip of your coffee and leaned back slightly in your chair. 

"Actually, I think these acquisitions are really harmful for the industry," you said. 

Why did you have to be so confrontational? You didn't have anything clever to say about such things, so you spoke the truth instead. Bad idea.

"How candid of you to say that. Well, I’ll be just as candid with you: I am indeed a villain." Raphael grinned. "I hope you can forgive me." 

There went your short-lived relaxation, which lasted less than a minute.  Raphael had just looked at you and said "I am a villain". Challenge him. Tell him it's him because, well, it's him. It can only be him. Tell him you know it's him, and then...

And then what?

"Everybody's got a job to do, I guess", you managed to utter the most generic phrase in existence.

"Isn't that so..." Raphael replied, pausing for a moment before finishing the sentence with your name.

You did not introduce yourself to him. You were sure of it. Absolutely sure. 

"How do you know my name?" you asked, half rising from your chair, raising your voice and quickly lowering it again. "I didn't tell you my name. How do you know it?"

Raphael gestured to your phone, which lay on the table screen between the two of you. Your work ID card was tucked away in its transparent case - something you hadn't needed for a while.

It had your first and last name on it.

"I saw it right before my eyes," he explained. "I thought it was a hint."

"It wasn't," you said.

"Oh, another faux pas on my part then," he said. "At this rate, I owe you something to make up for all my many transgressions. Perhaps dinner?"

You let out a nervous chuckle. One of your popular Tumblr posts had been an impassioned rant about how Raphael had promised a similar in-game offer but failed to deliver despite the many times you gave him the Crown.

"I seem to have absolutely terrified you, and that was not my intention. I insist on making it up to you. If you allow me, of course. I don't want to impose. Would you allow me to?"

He looked at you with the intensity of a man admiring a beautiful woman, his shoulders back and chin slightly up, trying to present himself from his best angle - something you've seen men do before, but rarely (if ever) to you. It was as if he could hang on every word that came out of your mouth, simply because he enjoyed watching your lips move. Raphael looked like he was in love, for Christ's sake.

Your cheeks grew warm. 

"Yes," you replied.

He kept silent for a bit, savouring your answer. 

"Splendid. Where might I collect you?"

It took you a moment to realise that he was asking for your address. Your personal address. Shouldn't he know it already, if he was Raphael? You replied as nonchalantly as possible:

"Why don't I give you my number and we can arrange to meet at the center?"

His expression darkened slightly; you've seen this look in the game before.

No, you shouldn't have said that. You wanted him to like you. 

Desperately.

"You don't trust me?" Raphael's voice dropped an octave or two, playful and just a little threatening.

You felt his breath on your face (cherries?) and the next second you stopped feeling your legs. The attraction that had been simmering inside you for months started boiling over.

Breathe. Pretend it's not Raphael. A man came up to you in a coffee shop and asked you if you trusted him in that kind of tone, leaning in like that. You know what the sensible thing to do would be - get up and walk away. And if it really was Raphael, get up and run away. 

You remained seated and stayed. 

"Just, ugh..." was all you managed to get out of the jumbled thoughts in your head; two coherent sentences so far into the conversation, and both of them made you sound like an absolute madwoman. 

Raphael laughed.

"Of course you don't trust me, that's only prudent, and you seem to be quite an intelligent young lady. But just so we are clear, you and I: you have nothing to fear from me. What is that number of yours?"

Quite an intelligent young lady, the words echoed in your mind and you remembered your naughty anonymous Tumblr confession: I would suck every last drop of cum out of him as long as he kept praising me.

God, everything you've read with him in the main role. Double penetration, double vaginal penetration, pet play... you weren't even into half of it. You hoped Raphael didn’t think you actually wanted him to do all of the things you read with you.

You just liked clicking on random links.

"Do you need something to write it down or...?" you asked hesitantly.

"I will remember," he said curtly. “I do not forget things easily”.

You realised that there was something far more frightening than anything that had happened before: that he wouldn't remember, that he would never call you, and that this conversation and this meeting would end there. 

So you carefully enunciated each number, then took a pen from your pocket and wrote it down on a napkin: it seemed romantic in the movies, but your handwriting and the coffee stain made it look like a secret message from the madhouse.

He grinned and tucked the napkin into the pocket of his suit.

He took the last sip of coffee and then took your hand in his. He touched you. His skin was warm and real and soft and everything you had ever imagined, his touch surprisingly tender. 

Your whole body responded to that tiny crumb of affection, viscerally. You hadn't realized how famished you were for a touch until that moment.

He lifted your hand to his lips and pressed them against yours. His lips were soft too, slightly damp from the coffee.

"I am looking forward to our rendezvous," Raphael murmured against your palm. "Ver much so."

Rendezvous.

In any other situation, a middle-aged man kissing your hand would be downright creepy. But this... this was a fever dream, an illusion, anything but reality. Because there was no way this madness could actually be happening to you.

Was it a bad thing? Was reality ever... this? So unpredictable? So exciting? 

You only snapped out of it when the door closed behind him, but you snapped out hard. You practically threw yourself at the next table, where a group of guys were sitting, their appearance screaming video games - backpacks and scruffy beards, Warhammer-emblazoned T-shirts. 

You grabbed one by the shoulder and hissed urgently: "Guys-guys-guys-guys." Your words came like rapid fire. "Tell me that guy doesn't look exactly like Raphael from Baldur's Gate? That one? On the street behind the window?" 

Damn, you sounded desperate.

"Ah, sorry, never played it," came the nonchalant reply before he turned back to his friends' conversation.

"Baldur's Gate," chimed in another, his face lighting up. "Amazing game. Looks like who?"

"Raphael," you said. "The devil."

The guy laughed, but didn't even look where you were pointing.

"Ah, the two-pump chump?"

You shot a quick glance at Raphael. His eyes met yours through the glass window, and they were cold now; his smile was gone. 

I didn't say that, you pleaded with him in your thoughts. That guy said that. That guy over there. I would never say that.

Your defence of his bed skills stretched from Reddit to Tumblr threads, you argued that Haarlep was slandering him, that Raphael was the best fuck there ever was and you personally vouched for that because you fucked him a thousand times in your head.

"Don't call him that, please," you whispered to the guy. He gave you a confused look when you pointed at Raphael again: "Look at him. The one staring at us. Does he look like him?

Is he real? Do you see him too?

"Ah yes," he admitted with a grin on his face, raising the cup of coffee to his lips, "he sort of does. Yes, he does! Well, I hope he doesn't...oh shit! FUCK!".

The guy's face contorted in pain as he clutched his mouth, jumping, cursing, tears streaming down his face. You could see the skin on his lips reddening and blistering.

"What the fuck?! It's fucking boiling! FUCK! "

The barista rushed over to him, spewing apologies as she tried to handle the situation. You took a step back and glanced at Raphael whose lips were moving subtly - two syllables that matched rhythmically: 'bye-bye' or maybe 'ciao-ciao'. 

It didn't have to be 'ta-ta'. He waved nonchalantly at you.

You waved back.

NEXT: Chapter 3, In Which Larian Introduces The Raphael Romance

[hoodievixen]

With My Own Eyes - Part 5 - Waxing Gibbous (Dream of the Endless x OC)

Based off of this

Summary: Morpheus just wanted to keep his soulmate safe. She just wanted to make her own decisions. Doesn't help that he doesn't show her his face.

Words Count: ~ 4 K

Warnings: swearing, mentions of blood, witchcraft, bad grammar and even worse spelling, !Comic Spoilers!

A/N: It took me so long to write like the last thousand words. But I got it done. Happy Holidays!

Tag List:   @intothesoul @ poemfreak306 ​

Master List

Now being back home Sibyl didn't know what to do. She spent the afternoon yesterday doing upkeep. From laundry that had been sitting there for an extra week, cleaning out the rotten food from her fridge, and answering the total of three messages while she was gone. But after a night of sleep in her own bed, she woke to not wanting to do anything.

Sibyl could swear any day prior she had a thought of "If I was home I could..." Yet now she was home she had no idea what to do.

Sibyl spent most of the morning staring down her works in progress, a comfort show on in the background. There was no modivation to do anything. It just turned to her watching the same show for the uptenth time. All while hating herself for not being productive.

When lunch time rolled around she came to the realization that there wasn't anything to eat, as she threw it out the night before. Sibyl tried to see if her friend would go out with her. She didn't even get her friend to answer her phone.

She was gathering up her things, deciding to go out on her own. She was checking what cash she had when there came a tap on her window. On the other side of the glass sat a large black bird. She only knew of one that would come knocking on her window. She rushed to unlock it, and lift it open. "Matthew?" she questioned.

"Who else could it be?" he joked as he fluttered in and landed on her counter.

Sibyl closed her window to keep out the summer heat. "I intended it more to question why you are here," she clarified.

"I'm a free bird, I can go where I want," he told her, flapping his wings.

"You're bored, aren't you," Sibyl deadpanned.

Matthew looked away. "A bit, yeah. There's nothing going on in the Dreaming."

"Well I was going to go get lunch. I would enjoy some company," Lore offered, sticking her phone in her pants pocket.

Matthew flew over and landed on her shoulder, something he had only started to do the day before. "Sure," he agreed, "I wanna see what people do when they see me on your shoulder."

They stared. Some kids pointed. The tired worker at the cafe chose to ignore it. The most unique thing to happen was a dog barking at them. But no one said a word.

"You got any roommates I should be worried about?" Matthew asked as he took in the place.

"No," Sibyl assured him. She sat down on her couch, ready to dig into her to go food. "I live alone."

Matthew nodded his head. Sibyl smiled, such a human reaction coming from an animal. Something she thought could never be a reality. There been a lot of things that have changed for her very quickly. "Have you ever been to hell?" Sibyl asked.

"Yeah..." Matthew said sounding unenthused and far off.

Sibyl knew what was up with her. Why she couldn't bring herself to do anything, let alone have interest in doing anything. She was worrying. Normally she'd be able to sit her own mind up with logic, or plain out proving her worries were unfounded. But worry about someone you just started to get to know, and actually sorta like, going to Hell with the possibility of not coming back, wasn't something one can think themselves out of. Cause by all logic, Morpheus most likely won't come back.

"What's it like?" Sibyl almost whispered the question.

Matthew hoped down to settle on the couch next to Sibyl. "Cold," he started, "and weird. It is everything you think it is, yet not at the same time."

"Do you believe in hell?" the bird asked, remembering his conversation with Morpheus when they first arrived in hell.

Sibyl tried to laugh. "Sorta have to at this point," she joked. "But I did before. Grew up Christian, went to church every Sunday, said prayer on holiday with the extended family, and watched VeggieTales. As a teen I started not to believe. If God was real, why would so many bad things happen, why didn't people care about one another, why did my prayers go unanswered.

It upset my mother, but my belief was broken. I didn't care why the universe was. I was, and I would be what I wanted to be. But the things your told as a kid they stick with you, and it's human nature to wonder what comes next. So alway in the back of my mind I believe Hell existed, and since it did I was destined to end up in it's pits. I never feared it, I just accepted it as a fact, much like how every living thing dies."

"People only go to hell because that is where they believe they should go," Matthew confessed a secret of the universe. Something he overheard, of which he shouldn't have.

Sibyl smirked, "Sound like Christianity." She bit down, taking a too large bite.

"What about Lucifer?" she asked as she finished chewing. "Do you think Morpheus will be okay?"

Matthew looked to his feet. "I want to believe so." While it was an opinion, it also shared a truth.

----------------

Still unable to get herself to do anything, Sibyl turned in early for the night. It was weird waking up back in the Dreaming. She knew she was dreaming. It didn't feel as real as it usually did, like all dreams. She was standing in the throne room, barefeet on cold marble floors. She scanned up the stairs to his throne, where she'd always spot him. Where better to look for him than the place you always find him.

Sibyl laughed to herself. She didn't realize how much she's grown attached to the guy in such a short amount of time. He was quite and brooding. But in a thoughtful way. He would take in every words given to him and think tirelessly for the perfect response to get what he wanted back. Even if it was no answer at all. While he had a weird way of showing it, he did care. Changing his approach just requires communication, which Sibyl has plenty of practice with.

"Lady Sibyl?" the voice of Lucienne echoed from behind.

Sibyl glanced back and gave a smile to the familiar face. "I told you Lucienne, Sibyl is just fine," she reminded her. She glanced back at the throne. "Or Lily, it's what my friend's call me."

"Alright, Sibyl." Lily rolled her eyes. Of course she'd choose the more formal one. "May I ask what you are doing here? And how you got here?"

Lily shrugged. "Sorta just dreamed myself here," she confessed.

Lucienne looked to where her gaze was. It was practically glued to the throne, a melancholy smile tugging at her lips. "You must dearly miss him."

Lily let out a laughed. "I guess I do."

-------------

Lily looked up from her hands when she heard the sound of footsteps approaching her. She didn't know how much time had passed, it had probably been hours. She smiled at the familiar man walking towards her.

"I hope you haven't been waiting long," Morpheus commented.

Lily smirked, "I was the one who decided to wait." He came and sat down on the stairs next to her. "I'm glad to see you are alright."

"I apologized for any worry I may have caused," Morpheus apologized.

"Nah," she refused it. "My thoughts are my own problems. If I want to worry about my friend, I will."

Morpheus turned to look at her. She still got unsettled by the sight of his helm and not a face. "I am touched that you have concern for my well being," he told her, "Thank you, Sibyl."

"Lily," she corrected him. "No one calls me Sibyl. It's a family name, so gotta a couple others in my life. You never asked, so I never told you. But I keep thinking I'm in trouble whenever I hear that name." She finished off with a laugh, not to sour the light tone between them.

"So, how was Hell?" Lily was quick to change the topic.

Morpheus pulled out an old key made of a dark metal. "Closed," he answered nonchalantly. "Lucifer had left their station. Giving me the key to Hell."

"What?" she asked in confusion.

-----------------

Lily jumped at the sudden appearance in front of her. "Fuck," she hissed as she had knocked a mug into the ground. She let out a groan looking at the shattered pieces and spilt coffee. "I really need to put a bell on you."

"Apologies," Morpheus apologized, stepping around the counter to help Lily pick up the mess.

Lily shied him away, flicking a towel at him. "I've got it," she told him. But before she could pick up a single piece of shatter ceramic, it all disappeared into sand. "Well, that works..."

"Are you prepaired to go?" he asked her.

Lily nodded, "Just let me grab something." She walked past him into the door behind him

His gaze followed her until she disappeared through the door way. Dream's gaze shifted to the canvases propped against the wall. He lifted one of the paintings to take a look at it. Sprawled across the canvas was a forest in fall. In the middle ground, almost missable, was a figure clad in mourning clothes. The next one was a cave of blues and white with warm reflections. The one after was a pair of lovers playing on tree swing surrounded by blooming greenery.

"Oh, yeah, those," Lily sighed, stepping out her her room was a bag over her shoulder. "I had been waiting for a sunny day to photograph them."

Dream looked at the final painting. The pair of figures sat next to eachother, covered in shadows casted by the sunset. "It's a story," he commented. Quite a simple story. One of new love and the lose of it.

Sibyl shrugged, "That's sorta what I do. Every series I paint tells a story. I tried making comics before, but just dosen't feel the same."

"You clearly take insperation from impressionalism," Dream commented, remembering who her favorite artist is. The background where more strokes of color than anything realistic. By the people in her paintings look so beautifully blended that they could walk off the painting if the so desired.

Lily stood next to him, gazing at the painting Morpheus was still holding up. "My friend likes teasing me that I don't know how to paint backgrounds," she confessed with a laugh. "She's not much of an art person, so she dosen't get it."

The meaning from such a decision was very easy to figure out. Someone could put in minimal thought with basic art knowledge and come to the meaning. "The people and who they are matter more than where it happens."

"Yeah, other artist have critiqued saying it too simple of symbolism, but they're just a bunch of stuck up picks," Lily groaned, "That's why I never went to art school."

----------------

Lily halted in her speedy walk to go eat breakfast. "Well hello there," she greeted the familiar helm. "What bring you here so early in the morning?"

"I've come to advise you to stay away from the dinning hall," he told her.

Sibyl tilted her head in confusion. "Why?" she wondered.

"Word has spread that I have the key to hell," he told her, "Many have come to ask for it to be handed over to them, and more will come. I do not wish for you to come to harm from these visitors."

"Should I just stay in my room?" Lily wondered hesitantly. Not that she'd complained, she had just planned to go to the boarded of Nightmare to sketch the hilariously drastic devide of the land.

"No," Morpheus assured her, "The guest ar to stay in the dinning hall until this evening where they will be shown to their rooms. You are welcome to go anywhere in the palace, and in the dreaming."

Lily gave an awkward thumbs up. "What about food...?" she wondered, feeling her empty stomach churn.

"Meals will be delivered to you chamber," he told her, "Someone will be up with your breakfast shortly." He found it cute how he could visibly see her relax with the assurance of food.

"Saddly, with needing to host the visitors, I will not be able to spend anytime with your today," Morpheus shared. He was glad to see a small grown appear on Lily's face. "Matthew will once again join you, if you need anything just let him know." With a bow of the head he turned to leave.

"Morpheus," Lily called after him before he could get too far. "If you want to, you can stop buy this evening," she offered, "Again, if you want to. Don't feel like you need to."

Dispite the fact Dream did not need to breath, he felt his breath hitch. Even if their relationship stayed like this for eternity, he would be happy. "We shall see," he told her. Who's to tell what event may occur with the guests.

-----------

Dream softly knocked on the door to Lily's chambers. He was not sure if she had yet to trun in for the night. With most guests requesting to meet him personally, his evening ran longer than he had hoped. His unbeatinf heart fluttered at the should of hurried shifting from the other side of the door.

Lily opened the door, a smile on her face. "Well hello there," she repeated the greeting from this morning. "Wasn't sure if you were going to pop in." She opened to door wider, inviting him in.

"It would be quite rude to turn down an invitation from a lady," he told her with a small laugh.

Sibyl closed the door behind him. "So, how was your day?" she wondered, trying to spark conversations.

Morpheus was silent in thought. Lily settled on her sitting room couch, waiting patiently for his answer. He settled down in an arm chair just to her right. "I have much to think about," he confessed.

"I believe it," she agreed with a scoff, "Still trying to wrap my head around the whole 'key to hell' thing. I can't imagine who'd want it."

"That would not be hard, most of them are still known as myths to humans," Morpheus told her.

Sibyl raised an eyebrow, skeptical of his words. "Like who?" she quedtioned.

"There are the Asier, Odin and his son Thor have come as a delegation, even brought the trickster Loki with them." Dream was a mused by the look of shock of Lily's face, knowing it would only get more dramatic the more he shared. "Sent from their own Pantheon is Anubis, Bast, and Bes. By himself is Susano-O-No-Mikoto. To reclaim hell are the demons. Azazel, Choronzon, and Merkin. There are also the emissaries from both Choas and Order, respectively. Then there are the angels Duma and Remiel to over see it all. Finally are a pair of fae siblings Cluracan and Nuala sent by Queen Titania to see to the key not changing hands."

Lily was silent, looking tk the ground with an unreadable expression. "Dude you just broke my understanding of everything," she told him in a serious tone. "But how or who gave Matthew a balloon? Cause he let it go in my room, and it sorta phased into the ceiling, and now red latex pieces keep randomly falling out of it.... It's been a really weird couple of hours."

"I'll see to it that it stops," Morpheus assured.

"No," she laughed, "I wanna see how long it take for everything to fall back down."

-----------------

Lily had perched herself on a stool before an easel. She had spent most of the day there, and her joint weren't enjoying the awkward angle they were forced to keep. She knew she should have at least gone out for a walk. She knew better than to stay in one position for hours on end, yet she still did.

And all she had to show for her stiffness was a see of barren trunks. Lily was practiced in giving the impressions of trees, less so on making them look real. Something had compelled her to paint the scenery of the dreaming, realistically at that.

Lily was in a lul of her attention, busy wiping paint out of her brush. A soft knock was heard from behind her. She turned to find Morpheus standing in the open doorway, knuckles lowering from the open door. "You seem distracted," he commented.

Lily awkwardly laughed, brushing back stray strands of hair lingering around her face. "Yeah," she sighed, "I can get like that when I'm in the zone. Sorry if I didn't hear you say something."

Dream stepped across the threshold into the studio. "I have only just arrived," he assured her.

She spun around in her chair, her joints screaming at her. They had not appreciated the sudden quick movement. "I take it the whole Key to Hell situation is solved," she inquired.

"Indeed," Morpheus nodded. "Some of the guest are still here, but all should leave within a days time."

"Cool-io," Lily said with a thumbs up. "Can I ask what you decided to do?"

Lily felt, even through the helm, his gaze on her was different. "There is nothing you can't ask me," he said sincerely, "I had bit been the one to make the final decision. Had it been an option since the begining, I would not have hesitated as much as I did to make a decisions. The angels have taken the key, ruling Hell under the oder of their lord."

Lily hummed, "That sorta makes sense." She looked to the floor, slipping that knowledge in her recently growing folder in her brain housing the strange truths of the universes. She had no idea what she'd ever do with the folder, but it was there.

Lily returned her attention to Morpheus, who had settled in a chair I front of a drawing desk. He even sat in a simple wooden chair like it was a throne. "Is there something you came to me for?"

Morpheus hesitated to answer. "I just wanted to hear your voice," he confessed.

Sibyl was middly stubbed by his words. She couldn't help the smile appear on her face as her cheeks heated up. "Hopefully you weren't hoping for something too beautiful," she joked, "Rarely dose anything mildly intelligent leaves my mouth."

"You could say anything, and you would hold my undevided attention."His soothing voice did little to help Lily feel lest flustered by his words.

Sibyl smirked with a devious idea, "Then do you want to hear about some of my useless knowledge? I'd be happy to bring you up to date with the Fnaf lore."

----------------

Lily opened up the rather simple door. Not all the doors in the palace were the same. Many were, but it all depended on where they lead. She knew this room existed, but had never been to it herself; the kitchen. She was surprised to find it void of any people.

"So why did you want to come here?" Matthew asked, settling down in the counter. He had been the one to lead her here, still her chaperone when Morpheus was busy. But she didn't mind a friend.

Sibyl started searching through the cupboards, taking note of what each one held. "I want to make cookies," she simply commented, pulling our a large mixing bowl.

Matthew hopped along the edge of the counter to follow Lily. "Couldn't you just ask for some?" the bird wondered.

"I don't want to eat them," she explained, "I want to make them." She found the cupboard that stored the sugar and flour, checking to see what was what.

"Who for?" he teased.

Lily pinched flour between her fingers, nodding at figrueing out what white substance was what. "Morpheus," she answered nonchalantly, "Might get him to take off that stupid thing."

"Yoy know he dosent eat, right?" the raven wondered.

"Yes," the woman groaned, "But this is the best idea I have. I got used to him wearing it, but now it's annoying. Like well be having a perfectly normal conversation, and turned to look at him just to see bug eyes."

"He has his reason," Matthew said sarcastically.

Sibyl sighed, looking across the ingredients she has gather on the counter. "Which I respect, if he told me what they were," she complained, "He either needs to respect me enough to tell me that reason or trust me to show me his stupid face."

"So, you're going to force him to take it off?" The bird was confused.

Sibyl shook her head, "No, I am going to force him into a situation where he should choose one or the other."

Matthew flew over to land on her shoulder. "And if he dosen't?" he wondered.

"My times almost half up," she reminded him.

-----------------

"I do not need to eat," Dream simply reminded her.

"I know," Lily hesitantly mumbled, "I just wanted to do something for you. I know I can't do much, but this is something I can do." She slightly lifted up the plate of cookies in her hands.

Sibyl had been rather bashful since she came up to him in the throne room. It was rather cute, her hesitence and embarrassment. Dream was wondering how he could get her to react like this to something he'd do.

"I very much appreciate your thought," Dream assured her, "But you need not do such things."

She slightly nodded her head. "Well incase you change your mind," she sat the plate on one of the higher steps. "I'm gonna go help Lucienne in the library." She awkwardly made her way to the exit. Lily took one glance back before exiting the throne room.

Matthew flew down from his perch, landing on the stairs. "If you aren't going to eat them, can I have one?" the bird asked. Lilt hadn't let him have any, as it wasn't in a raven's natural diet and she didn't want to get him sick.

"If you feel you must," Morpheus answered, removing his helmet.

The raven started pecking at a cookie on the edge of the plate. "You know, she just wants to see your face," Matthew confessed.

"Explain your words," Dream demanded, settling back down in the stairs.

Matthew dramatically pecked out a chocolate chip from the cookie. "I mean, you want her to trust you, right?" he pointed out, "Sorta hard for her to do that when you clearly hiding something from her."

Dream reached over grabbing a cookie from the plate. There was much he needed to think about in regards to Lily. His relationshop with her was much different than all his others. She practically hated him in the begining, but she has come to like her. Dream has also come to enjoy many qualities Lily possess. Buy the relationship wasn't yet at a place he felt comfortable. He wanted her to stay for him, not a shallow desire for his looks. Only half the cycle was coming to pass, for all he knew Sibyl may still wish to return to her life come the next new moon.

--------------------

"So you're really a witch?" Matthew questioned. He knew her to read old tomes, as well as mentions in passing from Morpheus, but never actually confirmed it.

Sibyl tucked away her notes. She was comparing her note of her family grimoire to the notes of a very similar story in a lost one. "Yup," she answered nonchalantly, "Not like the new aged witches, they have the right idea just not the proper execution. I can do magic."

Mattgew settled himself in her shoulder. "Can you show me?" he asked timidly. "Like I've seen the boss do some magical stuff, but like you're human."

Lily softly smiled, adjusting herself in the grass. "I guess I could show you something," she shrugged, before holding out her hand.

Matthew watched in anticipation as Sibyl steadied her breath. He could also hear her heart beat even out, matching her breathing. In her outstretched hand lit a flame. There dancing in her palm was a mass of fire. She let it linger for a moment before closing her hand the smother the flames.

"Woh," the raven said in awe. "I thought you'd need like a cauldron or something. Maybe some eye of newt, frog tongue, blood of a virgin."

Sibyl laughed, "Some spells reguire stuff like that. Though those are all slang terms for different things. But fire is elemental magic. It's the most simple for of magic for us witches. All know how to weild all six, but tend to be intune to one more than the rest. For me that happens to be fire."

"Five?" he questioned, "Isn't it just earth, air, fire, and water."

"Those are indeed four of them, but the others people don't think about are life and mind," Sibyl explained, "Though those two only have a couple basic spells, most spells of those elements are higher levels."

She had weaved her hands into the grass and from between her fingers sprouted a small yellow and white flower. "This is the most one can do with life before requiring a higher price." Lily removed her hand from the grass.

Matthew hoped down to examine the plant, pushing leaves away in order to see that it had roots. The bird than looked up to the witch, excitement over taking him. "What else can you do?"

Sibyl wore a smirk, "What do you have in mind?"

[sunny-clover]

Dream log anyone?

I had a dream last night that I was spending time with 3 of my cousins (barf)

and background: I had to go back in the closet like a year ago and one of my cousins is a little shit about it and all my cousins are still kinda suspicious about it but anyways that’s not exactly relevant

but yea they were being shits and for some reason we were about to go rob a Macy’s store or something and yea for some reason it was still open even tho it was literally Midnight and I guess I found something really cool and I actually wanted to pay for it or I might have just had a lot of respect for the worker so I paid for it and then as we were about to walk out we realized we lost my shit cousin (the one I mentioned earlier) and I was like “oh well” but we still were waiting for him at the exit and the workers were like “guys you gotta go get outta here you already got your stuff so you need to leave” and I don’t understand why but some super tired cashier was like “you know what I’m adopting those kids” and we were just fine with it????

Thinking back, the face of the guy was kinda like one of the substitutes I had last year who was just this dude who hardly gave a shit and just wanted us to do our work but didn’t care if we didn’t. Me and my friends sorta bonded with him cause he was funny and just seemed bored with the world.

makes sense I guess? I don’t think there was much more of the dream, but on another hand I had a different dream about a bus. I had to move to the front cause everyone in the back hated me and the bus driver told me to move up.

[karimamk]

Movie review time, it’s been a while

So don’t hate me, but I’m gonna say it. Don’t worry darling was fucking shit. Don’t get me wrong, the idea and concept of the movie was incredible, but the only reason people actually watched it was because Harry Styles and Florence Pugh was in it. I really like her, I didn’t care much for Harry Styles, but her I expected a lot from, him not so much lol.

Let’s start by saying was Harry Styles even really in it? His character was so fucking bland it could’ve been played by a piece of toast and no one would notice. His acting was also pretty dull, but I guess that sorta relates to the character being dull himself? Florence on the other hand, I can’t see anyone else playing her character, although, I found that half her lines were either her screaming and crying, repeating things to herself, or her breathing heavily. This movie probably couldn’t been an hour and a half long if they just got to the point instead of 3/4 of the movie being these scenes. I didn’t find that any of those scenes did anything to help the film at all, it actually made me want stop watching because it wasn’t executed in a good way. She did the best she could I guess with the character she played, but I will say it wasn’t her best. The other characters, well let’s just say it was definitely made clear that they were background characters and didn’t really have an actual role to play. I couldn’t tell you any other actor or actress in this movie because of how insignificant their characters were. The movie might as well have been called Florence Pugh:1950s. Because that all it was right?

Aesthetically, the scenery and backgrounds in the movie were average. There was nothing wow about it, sure it looked nice, but that’s about it. Nothing stood out and it was just another movie, so that didn’t help keep my interest. It’s been about 2 months since I’ve watched it and I could not describe it to you, that’s how badly they relied on it, hoping that it was so perfect that people would be mesmerized by it. Like I said, it looked nice, but it was not memorable at all.

Onto the big reveal. I was forcing myself to get through this movie at this point, and by the time the big reveal came, it was a let down. It was boring, and they took their time doing it. The best part was when she was the nurse operating, that I will say was genius, the rest of the reveal however was dragged on to the point where I didn’t even care what the point of the movie was anymore. I will say that when the wife of the creator of the town, killed her husband to take over the town herself, that was great. It honestly felt sorta random, but I guess it worked with how messy the rest of the movie was.

And finally the concept. Like I said, the concept of this movie was fucking brilliant. A husband working on a secret project, in the middle of nowhere in this enclosed town that’s seemingly perfect. A 1950s wife who is suppose to blindly follow her husbands orders like a good wife, but noticing the flaws. Figuring out that something is wrong. Playing the perfect wife while secretly investigating. Eventually piecing together the clues and her memories despite being gaslit into thinking she was sick and imaging shit. Learning that the life she was living was a simulation, that her husband who claims to love her so much, took her actual life away from her, because he was so insecure about himself. The fact that he was absolutely the complete opposite of his simulation self, that was the true reveal. I think that they really tried to sugarcoat it, because that scene alone says it all. Men who are unsatisfied with themselves, force their wives into a simulation where they have everything they want, the looks and the money. They don’t care that their wife is suppose to have a dull personality, just as long as they obey their husband. They have no remorse that their wife is actually laying on a bed in a crappy little house, where he was insignificant and unemployed. The husband was jealous that the wife had a life that didn’t revolve around him, that she had a job and friends, while he didn’t. The simulation was never for the wife and him to have a good life, the perfect life. The simulation is meant to make a pathetic excuse of a man feel good about himself. But no one’s actually saying that that was the actual point of the movie, the only thing that people talk about is the sex scenes in this movie. That’s what happened with the trailer isn’t it? Out of the entire trailer, the only “important” thing was the sex scene.

Anyways yeah that’s it, like every other new movie to come out, it could’ve been great, but they butchered it so badly that I would never watch it again, and wish that I never watched it the first time either.

[victory-cookies]

I don’t have a cool caption for this yeet—

[wrenqueenisboss]

Your New Family (SBI!family x gn!reader)

A small headcanon/drabble thingy centered on the Sleepy Bois family and their sibling.

- Philza was walking, (sorta patrolling ig) when he saw an unnatural lump in the snow - at first, he panicked, thinking that Tommy had gotten himself into more trouble - “Tommy?” he called. There was no reply - He walked closer to discover a young you, curled up into a ball, covered in snow - Phil was flooded with a torrent of emotions. On one wing, (yes, I just did that) he was concerned for the child (you). An on the other wing, he was so angry for your guardians/family/protectors for leaving out here - so without a second thought, the Philza we all know and love scooped you into his arms and carried you back to his home - he burst opened the door and called for his family - techno, who had been sitting by the fire reading one of his many greek mythology books, looked up curiously - he wordlessly nodded at Phil before shouting up the stairs. “Will! Tommy! Get down here now! Dad needs us!” - heavy footsteps echoed through the charming house as the boys came running down the stairs - all the while, Phil was setting you down on the couch and finding a blanket to wrap you in - techno looked over curiously at the thing that was swaddled in his favorite blanket. He was SHOCKED to find a child.  - Wilbur and Tommy were surprised as well - “Who’s that, Dad?” Tommy asked, a little to loudly - Philza looked down at you, still sleeping in the blanket. “A helpless child I found in the snow” - Techno got up and walked over to you. He tilted his head curiously, pink locks of hair falling over his forehead a little. “They’re kinda cute, not gonna lie.” - Tommy’s mouth fell open. Wilbur was blinking furiously. Phil was just still. Everyone was surprised. Techno was never this soft or kind, even though he was a child (only 5)

background info:

In this, you are five years old. Techno and Wilbur are technically twins. Their birthdays are a week away. Both of them are six. Tommy is three, but he has way too much energy. Philza is... Philza. Sorry, DADza. 

back to the hcs:

- at Phil’s instruction, Wilbur went to get healing potions while Tommy was told to sit next to you - techno went back to reading, but every so often, he’d look over at you to make sure you were okay - Phil went to make soup, get hot towels, and first aid supplies for when you woke up - eventually, Tommy got bored of just sitting and watching a mysterious child sleep, so he went back to his room. (He’s 3. Give him a break, people)  - checking to make sure no one was immediately around, techno got up and walked over to you and sat next to you - he brushed a bit of your hair out of your face with a surprisingly soft and gentle touch. - you begin to stir and the contact and techno froze. But he didn’t move away - Your eyes opened and he stared admired their e/c coloring.  - “hello, orphan” he said quietly with a very awkward wave - You took in his skin, small tusks peeking out from his bottom lip, pink hair, and  piglin-gold jewelry and smiled - “you look cool,” you said bluntly - techno was shocked. but nevertheless, the corners of his lips twitched. “thanks,” he replied in a monotonous tone you would soon learn to adore - You reached up to tuck you hair being your ear, revealing a streak of pink tucked among your h/c locks - “we match” techno said simply - Philza, Wilbur, and Tommy re-entered the room. They froze at the unfamiliar expression on techno’s face - Wilbur was the first to speak. “bro, is everything okay?” he asked, stepping forward to sit next to his “twin” - technoblade nodded and pointed at you, fully awake - you began to sit up and the blanket fell away - somehow knowing what tech wanted to say, you pointed to your hair - “we match,” you and tech said in unison

needless to say, you and technoblade became very close.

Send my a message in my asks if you want me to do a part two. I’d really love to. After all, Sleepy Bois Inc. SUPREMACY

[padawansuggest]

I hate it when people use ‘iPad kid’ as an insult because it’s always referring to kids/teens/young adults who watch stuff on their phone or iPad while eating or something.

No. Listen. I have ADHD and autism to such an extreme level that I can’t even get dressed for leaving the house without listening to music, or a fic, or a podcast, I need something to occupy my mind or I literally struggle to get dressed. It’s executive disfunction and it’s crippling. I can’t eat food if I’m not watching or listening to something. I can’t even watch ASMR videos without listening to a fic or podcast because half the time the sounds in them trigger me for some unknown reason. And I use the ASMR videos to calm down.

Have you ever been super bored while washing dishes or doing laundry? Listening to music isn’t the only way to go. I have an app that reads documents to me so I download fanfiction as a PDF and it’ll read my shit to me. Getting into the groove of cleaning your room or even the bathroom while listening to your fave comfort fic is literally so soothing. Turns a complicated task for someone with executive disfunction into a soothing repetitive motion to add to the fic.

It’s simply a calming technique???? Who cares if your kids are watching YouTube while they eat. Just ask them to put on headphones if they’re listening to sound cause that’s general space-sharing etiquette.

Executive disfunction is an issue with senses. Sometimes you need absolute silence to complete a task, and that’s fine, but sometimes you can’t function unless you’re doing this task as background to listening or watching media. It’s genuinely helpful to people who struggle to start new tasks, is having that task, be the background of a song or a fic or a podcast or a movie you’re watching.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be entertained either. Yesterday I was vibing so hard on a fic I was listening to that I got dressed and ready and by the time I was at the store I was kinda sad to pause the fic to go in, lmao. I don’t like or want to listen to fics in a store tho, that’s too much sensory input. But I didn’t even want to stand yesterday, much less get ready to leave and walk to the store. But I did, and by the time I was there I felt active and healthy for being in the store for a good half hour. It was nice.

Basically, yes, is being an iPad kid sorta funny? Ya. But is it okay to mock someone who’s using secondary sources to function primarily? No. Jail.

If you are genuinely struggling to start a new task on the regular, it’s because of issues with change and senses, and if you find a way to cope with that, then I’m so proud of you.

[ashasdramadrawer]

What If rant

What If has just been weird.

It really IS bad fanfic. While I dislike how Mary Sue is a meaningless phrase- it sounds like they used Captain Carter as a sort of Possession Sue: she’s an author avatar and we’re seeing how she could do So Much Better than Steve. Including saving the universe, demanding her happy ending, etc. Peggy is a frustrating character in how she’s basically a sort of ‘not like the other girls’ character that happens when you’re in high school, absorbed a lot of misogyny from the people around you, are not performing femininity as well as others and are being punished for it by society. You hit that stage and have absolutely not no theory of mind- the ability to understand that other girls have just as much of an inner life as you do, and that they struggle with the same things. And yeah, some are bullies and assholes, but wanting to be one of the boys does not make you inherently better.

Now, here’s the thing- all comic book characters are wish fulfillment to a certain extent. There’s no reason that we can’t have a character like Carter- except that we sorta do. Her name is Captain Marvel. And she’s being ignored.

I think part of that issue is because Brie Lawson pissed off the dudebros. And she’s got more upcoming movies. So they probably don’t feel they have to promote her as much. But there are plenty of other female characters the What If stories could focus on instead of trying to literally have a woman possess Captain America and do the whole ‘backwards and in high heels thing’. If they’re going to do it, they didn’t have to make her a tank. She was a spy. She should still have a spy’s ethos. She was never Steve Rogers, she didn’t come from his background, and worldview is always influenced by things like race, class and gender.

But there’s more to how boring What If has been.

They’ve taken no risks whatsoever. The role swap AU is a staple of fanfic, and been done so much better by fanfic writers. Starlord T’Challa is cute and we enjoyed it. But some things, like a redeemed Thanos, was just weird. The story refuses to acknowledge that Thanos was just WRONG and bad and failed his test of character (come on, that was what the soul stone should have been- the person you love the most is yourself. The willingness to sacrifice YOURSELF is like storytelling 101 here) and should not have even gotten the soul stone at all.

The zombie plot was basic, same with the story of Hank Pym killing the Avengers. All of them involved manpain and were pretty ridiculous. Peggy becoming Captain Carter was more of the same. Party Thor was funny but again, nothing groundbreaking or new. And all we have with Peggy as Cap is an attempt to reinforce the steggy ship by literally rubbing off all of the so-called romantic parts of their story from TFA and replacing it with stucky scenes.

And that? That’s fanfic 101. You pop off a trait from a character you don’t like but think is cool and give it to someone else. Iron Man with Cap’s shield, Cap in Iron Man’s armor, Iron Man somehow being better than Shuri when it comes to smarts. But all it does, instead of trying explore a character, is try to prop them up by hurting other characters.

It’s not asking the question “What If”. It’s trying to replace a character by importing the coolness of another and plastering it onto another.

I date myself but... my head is pasted on yay

I saw this on twitter last night, but someone brought up a good point. Disney doesn’t really want Sam Wilson as Cap, with all the uncomfortable implications and stories that comes with it. Peggy as Cap is safer, nostalgic, and lets them keep a white person in that role. And it really freaks me out.

[destinyc1020]

I know maybe newer anons may be curious but I’m confused as to why the break up is still a topic 😅 It’s been almost three years since their break up and has been over a year since they have gotten back together. I know we all get curious but I feel like at the end of the day we will most likely never get definite answers. If you chose to believe the Audrey tea, then we can sorta conclude (along with other evidence) that they broke up for a number of possible reasons, but all we know for sure is that they never stopped loving each other even when they were broken up (or else they wouldn’t of gotten back together). It’s all water under the bridge so why does it even matter now? Tom and Z clearly could not seem to be more happier (as Tom recently just stated in an interview) 😅🥰

OMG THANK YOU!!!!  😅 👏👏

I am so BORED with all of the exes/rebounds and breakup talk these days lol. 

Back when we didn’t have 100% proof that Tom and Z were back together again, the topic of exes and why Tom and Z broke up was more interesting.  But now that they’ve both been split up from their rebounds for almost 2 YEARS, and have themselves been dating each other again for OVER a year, I really think it’s time to put a nail in the coffin on all of the exes/rebounds and Tomdaya 1.0 breakup talk.  Like, SERIOUSLY lol.  😂 

There are some things we will just NEVER know, and you know what? That’s okay!  We don’t have to know everything, because it’s NOT our life.  It’s theirs.  🤷 

Like you said, they both seem happier than they’ve EVER been these days, and that’s all that matters!  🥰 

But seriously, all of the Jacdaya, Tadia, and Tolivia talk is all just a bunch of nonsense at this point, and I’m sure all parties have LONG-since moved on by now lol. 😂 

We will probably NEVER know why Tomdaya broke up the first time, and that’s okay too! If anyone wants some “background” discussion on the breakup or the exes, just go look through my archives (I’ve discussed it ad nauseam since 2020), or go check out @spidermaninlove‘s timeline/tea/receipts.   Otherwise, the rebound and breakup talk is beginning to get monotonous.... like a merry-go-around lol. We get NOWHERE lol.  

I try to help out Newbies, or those new to the ship in providing info or thoughts/theories/etc., but it’s to the point now where I feel like I’m just repeating myself lol.  😂 Just search the archives, or do a search for key words.  That should give you plenty of “background” reading material lol.  

[ballorawan740]

SCP Scenarios: When their kids swear at them (REQUESTED)

Main Masterlist | SCP Scenarios Masterlist | My Works Masterlist | Rules | Request | Socials | My Original Post

Requested by: @Astro_KeySimp

WARNING: Swearing (sorta)

Ok so I kinda made the reader into the child since don't remember if you wanted the reader to be a child or not, so if it wasn't to your liking, then I'm sorry, but I can make a separate version on where the reader isn't the child

It kinda became more of the SCPs and doctors being dads than their reaction to their kids swearing

SCP 073 (Cain)

Cain was walking around with you since you were bored and there wasn't anything to do

Being unaware of what some of the staff were saying, ye went over to grab you some food for later in case you got hungry

Once you both went back, he watched you play with some Legos and was talking as if it was your Lego friends talking to you

Cain looked away for just 10 seconds and heard you shout out "Wow! He said that her baby's such a bi-" which shocked him as he heard it

Cain looked around and made sure that nobody was around the room and was somewhat surprised that you was the one saying this

Being a good dad he is, Cain explained to you carefuly that you shouldn't say that word because it's bad

And being a sweet shy child, you obliged and stopped saying the word

Til this day, Cain had no idea about where and who you've heard the word from and is very much more self-aware

SCP 076-2 (Abel)

Abel is that type of dad who would teach you all the bad words and encourages you to say them

It's the researchers who had to teach you top not to say those words

One time, Dr Glass came in to examine you and had rewarded you as usual since you were so cooperative

You drew a picture of you and Abel talking in a garden with bright coloured flowers

Simon asked if he could see your drawing and saw that the conversation you and your dad had was those of swearing

This surprised Simon since you knew so many at such a young age but wasn't totally shocked since he knew that you were Abel's child

And knowing him, he wouldn't teach you to be nice, so Simon took the job as a mother hen and taught you to not use those words around people

SCP 999 (Tickle Monster)

Ok, so I'll keep this SCP short since I, again, don't know what I should write for this adorable, squicky, neon-orange, bubby blob

Another SCP who doesn't cuss

This adorable squishy boi here was about to have a heart attack when he heard you swear fir the first time

He had to ask you worryingly where you heard that phrase and you just said some guy wearing a white jacket

999 sighed knowing that you'll grow and couldn't do anything to stop it

He did, however, mention that you should try and avoid saying those things to anyone and that they'd most likely have a heart attack since you were his child and you won the genetic lottery for being the cutest and outgoing child in the world

The only other person who knew of this was Dr Glass (sucks to be him ngl, he do be a mother to everyone) and he had to help poor 999 with teaching you better words

SCP 682 (Hard to Destroy Reptile)

YAY! Another SCP who would teach their kid to swear

682 has such a dirty mouth like 076 and would 100% teach you all the words he knows

Similarly to what happened with Abel, you were taken for an interview with Dr Sophia Light since she was assigned to you

She's such a sweet and kind doctor to be around and would teach you anything and everything you would probably need to know all the while keeping an eye on you in case you become overly aggressive like 682

You were just eating some sweets Lights had given you for good behaviour and overheard some researchers swear

Remembering what your dad had taught you, you just repeated those curse words while clapping at your achievement

This had shocked Sophia and that researcher since you were known to be a moderately shy and quiet child who normally wouldn't say those things despite being 682's child

Sophia had to ask if you understood the meaning of those words and shook your head as an indicator for no

She had to carefully find her words and told you to never speak of those words again and took you back to 682's cell

You went and hugged your dad and told him that you learnt from the doctor that those curse words were bad and neither of you should say them

682 had a headache after that

SCP 049 (Plague Doctor)

I have a hard time thinking that 049 would teach his child to cuss and would avoid swearing in front of them at all cost

Like, he barely swears anyways but he wants to stay classy and sassy for his innocent child

Just like the other day, his kiddo, you, was curious about the whole surgery thingy he does on the dead bodies, so you asked him to teach you and so he did (like the good father we nevah had)

So you learnt some new, yet difficult, words (cuz we all have a nonexistent pea-sized brain) and somehow, you managed to fit in a curse word

This did surprise 049 as he had remembered that he didn't teach you those foul words

He had to give you a talk about using such words and you teared up since you thought that people used them to express their affection to others

Unsurprisingly, 049 took his sweet time looking for the guy who 'taught' you this and wanted to use him as a case study for your future lessons

SCP 035 (Possessive Mask)

Another parent with such an amazing influence on children

035 would teach and enable you to use swearing as a form of expression

So you were free to say whatever you want as long as they aren't directed to our mask here, especially if it's in a negative way

Otherwise, you'd be punished (No not like that! He'll just ground you from your favourite TV show/movie)

The researchers were surprised, not about you swearing, but how you use them through expression

Except for this poor guy who was new to the foundation and bumped into you by accident

This rookie found himself listening to you cursing like a sailor (maybe not that much but more or less on the same level as Samuel L Jackson)

Word got out and everybody laughed at the poor rookie and told him more about your background and how you love to swear (apparently swearing will prolong your life, so you'll basically be immortal here)

035 was impressed by the whole ordeal and rewarded you with more shows to watch whenever you're both free

SCP 105 (Iris)

Iris would accidentally swear in front of you and whenever she realises it, she would tell you to not swear at people since it wasn't very nice

So she would use words to replace the swearing like "oh fudging hell not now" and "no sugar honey ice tea"

The foundation felt that it was slightly unnecessary but went with it anyways

They'd even go as far as saying that it's ridiculous, but who are they to judge?

Iris was your mother and she's a single mum too, so she felt the need to be overly beating but would occasionally let you decide on your own since you were only 12

The foundation members did tell her that you will eventually grow and more of these words will be used but she just hesitates

As a teen, you did begin to use foul words more often and Iris would argue about how you're using them, especially towards her, your own mother

Needless to say, you both felt bad and made up

SCP 106 (Old Man)

Now this old man right here doesn't exactly speak, or at least very rarely

And if he does, he'll most likely be talking to you or the foundation staff if he needed some help finding you

He'll most likely be able to understand what the researchers are saying, even if they aren't speaking English

My own personal hc is that 106 understands English, German, Spanish, French, Chinese, Arabic and Indonesian and probably many others

Every now and again, somebody would come in and teach you new words and give other lessons like maths and poetry (our favourite)

You came back home to tell him all the things you've learnt as he watched you in awe as he braided your hair

You've even used some new phrases, including swear words while talking and 106 was pretty impressed

I feel that he's quite neutral with swear words since words are words and are used as a form of verbal communication

So I don't think they'll be much change in his behaviour to whether you're swearing or not

SCP 096 (Shy Guy)

Now with 096, all he does is scream

So basically, somebody else would have to teach you some words

It's not to say that 096 is a dumb animalistic creature with no soul and just kills people who look at his face

He isn't stupid since he manages to find anyone who looked at his face from the other side of the globe

And he seems to understand what the researchers are saying, or at least on a more intermediate to moderate level

You'll learn about swear words from the other researchers, whether they'll be teaching it to you intentionally or you've overheard them

The foundation could really care less, but would at least prefer that you chill a bit if you got carried away

096 would act all cheery when you learn more new things as it's not like the foundation would let him out anyway, so he'll be living the outside world life from you (How relatable, but more with babysitting and dating, cuz I'm too pretty for anyone to date XD)

Like with 106, I don't think 096 would have any special reaction towards swearing, but would probably be screaming internally for a bit since he knows that it isn't a nice word

Dr Jack bright

This mf right here is one of those parents who would be kind but firm

Bright would most definitely give in to your curiosity and teach you whatever you want to learn but would warn you of the dangers

Depending on what it is, he would even go as far as giving you your own personal guard who would stay with you and train you

And unfortunately, this guard has such a foul mouth, so you're constantly exposed to such words

Luckily for the both of you, Jack Bright doesn't really care about swearing as long as you're not being extremely inappropriate if you were to work

He would even joke around with you sometimes and would even start the conversation with swearing

For instance, he'd just surprise you with a "Yeet his mf outta my sheithole"

And yes, you did laugh at his antics

Some would even say that you're an exact clone of him but more stable (for now)

Well, Bright is an amazing dad, but I'd say just below Dr Glass

Or maybe even on par with him

Like Bright is a goofy dad that has all the terrible dad jokes and Glass would be the type of dad to look out for his kid

Dr Simon Glass

Dr Glass would most definitely avoid using swear words, especially if you were under 15

Even if you were over 15, he'd still avoid swearing unless he wants to make a joke or 2

So most of the time, you'd learn all the swearing from other people and SCPs

Sometimes you would swear by accident and Glass would just look at you, slightly disappointed

I'd say he doesn't exactly care about you swearing per see, but would rather you avoid it

It's cuz Simon is the best dad a dad could ever dad and nobody could prove me wrong here

He's also one of the top best dads compared to the others on the list

He's basically your best friend so he'd let you vent and its the 1 time he'd let you swear to show your emotions

Simon would 100% know your thoughts and behaviour

He's just that good at reading people, especially you - almost to the point where people would say he's an SCP cuz I swear he's just empathic and telepathic

As mentioned before, Glass would be the type of dad to care for your mental health

It's not that the others don't, it's just that Glass is a top their God of Psychology and would come to you before you even know you have depression

He would even crack a joke sometimes

So every so often, he would shout out "LANGUAGE!!!" from across the room before you could even bat an eye and say anything

Dr Alto Clef

Another top tier dad, but swearing addition

Your godfather would literally be Jack Bright

Then it's Kondraki and Glass

He would let you swear on a daily basis and would join you

Sometimes you be looking at your Oppas/Noonas and be like: "Oh fxxk me!" and Clef, who's in the next room, be like: "Yeah, fxxk me too!" (Yes but no sis! No incest pls!)

Other times, you would be in the same room as Clef and Bright and you'd join them in being chaotic

And poor Kondraki  is just there at the back trying to do his work peacefully

One time, Kondraki had to grab a Simon Glass to help stop the chaotic trio

And OML did it end so well

You were easy to manage tbh, with the exception of you swearing

Clef and Bright would most definitely encourage you to swear more

Especially Clef since he does have a twisted sense of humour

Dr Benjamin Kondraki

Kondraki is totally the type of person who would tell their kid to mind their own language

But he secretly doesn't care and his child knows it

His style of parenting is similar to Simon's

And yes, Simon is your #1 godfather/uncle

You'd go to him for emotional support since Kondraki sucks at that

Sometimes you'd swear at him and he'd get mad though

So yeah, running to Glass is a wonderful idea

And we all know that Kondraki doesn't mean what he said

He's just extremely introverted, but he's rather sensible - Usually...

Anyways, he would ask Simon on tips and advice on how to get you to stop swearing so much and he just gave Benjamin a parenting book (Like fr guys, let Glass have some rest, he's tired of babysitting over 100 dozens of pets in the zoo and all the other babies who work in it)

[antiloreolympus]

10 Anti LO Asks

1. I kinda hate how Hades has only had 2 relationships before Persephone and one being his brother’s brother and the other being toxic on both ends. I sorta wish Leuce was in there as like an ex with no drama like the two just didnt work out or something chill (break ups are hard but there’s less dramatic break ups). Idk I just feel like a little internal conflict like that would have some spice to the story but also make me root for the couple a bit more.

Going deeper into it, as a reader we know Minthe as his evil gf whose never gonna work out and Hera and Hades are toxic secret affair, but what if Hades did have a functional relationship with someone who wasn’t toxic but they didn’t work out and she didn’t want to stay in the underworld/be queen. I just feel like that would add a complex layer to the story, not making it all black and white.

With Persephone having more dating experience it’s kinda hard because everyone wants her BUT they aren’t allowed to date her to keep her pure/her mother would kill them/TOGEM. But if RS ever wrote more Persphone and Hermes I’d just want them together like forget hades. 

2. Ive seen some LO fans say "NOW the actual myth will begin" and it's like??? Wasn't that already done in the first three episodes? Why would you RESTART IT? More so, it is objectively awful writing to publish nearly every week for FOUR YEARS to actually get to the main point of the story, which even then will probably take month at best to even start. This is just such a train-wreck in terms of planning, writing, development, and even basic story creation yet the fan will insist it's genius!

3. What I find so aggravating about LO and its fans is they are convinced it's the most unique, groundbreaking work ever, when it's anything but that. Modern settings, Technicolor skintones, "humanizing" the gods, etc have all been a Thing for decades, sometimes even centuries before LO even existed. Even the idea it "deals with heavy topics' is false since the original myths already did so and didn't treat it as haphazardly like Rachel does. They want it to be anything but what it really is.

4. I see so many of the fans excuse Rachel making it just modern NYC as "it's a fictional world so she can do what she wants"  begs the question: do they think Ancient Greece is a fantasy land that never existed? It very much did, and had cultural and social differences from modern day. Even modern Greece is different from America. She does't even try to keep any of it intact despite it being set in that exact time and place. At some point we have to admit the "Greek" part is lip service at best.

5. the "anti" community for LO is overwhelmingly queer, BIPOC women and NBs who used to like the series who where in turn forced out of the fandom because of the almost entirely cishet, white fanbase who refused to even court the idea of differing opinions. The idea all of us marginalized people are "oppressing" a privileged white woman and her entitled fanbase because we critique how she' butchered countless real issue and a real country's stories for her white "feminism" fantasy is laughable.

6. i do not get why all the new book covers we're getting for lo are so boring?? like at least the first normal cover was visually grabbing (even if just lie about what the comic is actually about and has some questionable symbolism in it) but the newer ones are so boring. they don't even have backgrounds now and the logo is so randomly placed and I don't get why. they have book cover artists on staff surely they could help her do it? or work off her sketches and make something better?

7. rachel retweeting a single old picture from cyprus: see! i can about greece! anyway let's ignore that while I retweet 20 pictures in a row about how eris is literally an apple and how hades just needs so many babies RIGHT NOW.

8. rachel spends more time posting about her nails on twitter than even bothering to retweet even one post from her co-workers to give them a needed promo to her massive audience. it's just off putting to me how every other webtoons creators minus her, mongie, and snailords will do anything to support and promo each other while they refuse to do the bare minimum even as the webtoon company bends over backwards to make sure they get them everything they want while ignoring the rest.

9. Even ignoring the issues Rachel added into the story for her own weird reasons, how naive are her and her fans to think whitewashing and romanticizing perhaps the most infamous of all Greek myths into an idealized romance aimed towards pre-teens at the youngest wouldn't come with built in criticism? Like there's a reason the myth is so hotly debated, and it's not because of "misogyny", it's because of how misogyny is used to demonize a mother for the sake of a romanticizing a male abuser..

10. I love how LO fans say "hera only cheated with one person! so that's different from zeus's many affairs!" like no it's not lmao. a person who killed one person and serial killer both get life in prison regardless of how many victims they have. rachel also seems to be implying hera is having an emotional affair with echo which by her own in comic logic is just as bad as a physical affair, so wouldn't that be at least two people? regardless two wrongs do not make a right, hera is also bad here.

[studiothetics]

Drawing People 2

Expecto patronum, my dude. It’s me, Evan! I am but a humble visitor in your land of tumbling, so I do not mean to presume, but perhaps the “long post” tag applied to my last missive means verbosity hath claimed my tongue, once again. Let me see if I can make the second act of this drama a little snappier.

these folks got basic, boring poses so I could use them as simple mannequins. Drawing like this out of my head is fun, but kind of time consuming. Doing a thorough job of the figure before clothing it shortens the time a good bit, and keeping the pose pretty simple removes any demand of the fabric to do difficult things.

Who this? Can’t tell you. Why this? Experimentation! These drawings were great test beds to answer questions about rendering: what kinda stuff works with characters in this idiom, what kind of linework, what level of detail, etc. But on the other side of the arbitrary distinction I’ve just decided to conjure are compositional questions. God I love that word. Composition — The sum of a picture.

Art history, and particular commercial art history has so many good answers to compositional questions, and a lot of their answers make a lot of sense for visual novels, what with commercial art often needing to wrangle decoration and flatness with representational stuff. I’m partial to the solutions of your Muchas Alphonse and kin, but that sort of density and curation of parts is only possible when you’re working with a single picture at a time. Duh, you say and I concur. We have to do more modular stuff, especially if we're going for a high level of detail, and we’re splitting up character and background duties. We needed to find ways of simplifying, modularizing and keeping things unified.

Western commerical art in the late 1800s is really a zenith of single-picture making in my books. It seems to me that there was an endless variety of exciting design exploration supported by real chops.

Luckily commercial art has some answers to this as well. Ya’ll heard of the Weiner Werkstatte? How about John Austen? Oh you’re a connoisseur are you? You’re a quite hip individual? Well then, you heard of Carl Otto Czeschka? (I dunno if that’s actually a deep cut.) Here are some common themes between them. Flatten space, use only a few distinct values and colors and use heavy blacks to unify the picture. 

Aside from these general ideas, we were specifically interested in Austen’s use of orthogonal perspective. It seemed like a really natural fit — centering the picture on the characters with the world as framing, it’s flatness generating less friction with textual and decorative elements and giving us a pretty consistent format to interface foreground and background elements. Hypothetically it gave us a tremendous amount and demanded less work… Hypothetically.

Pyrga didn’t wind up actually featuring in the prototype but I still love the big weirdo. A compositional feature you might not notice unless you a comp dweeb is that they're not fully balanced pictorially. They very much need an answer to their left, preferably above their shoulder. I tried to carry this compositional incompleteness forward with every asset so they would mesh well with one another and even if they were solo, there would be a visual relation with the background.

So bam. heavy blacks, less variety in the linework, very few colors and orthogonal perspective. There are things that work well here: being attentive to the turning edge of the shadows gives it a flavor I don’t see many places, and aiming for more naturalism gets it out of the Hades/Hellboy sorta cartoony zone that it was trending toward initially.

There are problems, too. I’m not good enough to get that level of naturalism out of my head with any kind of speed so I needed reference. With this character, that’s sort of ok. They're kindof an amorphous blob of fabric and that’s just fine for kit bashing different references and imagined bits and whatnot, but other characters have much more, let’s say definite garments. Secondly the spot blacks pose a real issue for decoration, they wind up needing to override any kind of patterning, and the linework on turning edges winds up noising up and cluttering things. The lack of line opacity and overall brush size is also making some detail work challenging, but I wasn’t quite sure how else to get the linework readable with the asset scaled at different sizes.

Now all this stuff shoulda given me pause, but there were a lot of plates to keep spinning. We were in the thick of writing, I was bouncing between finishing up other designs and trying to get the UI on track, yada yada. Petra was on the mind, as well. We were missing some key things for her — A mask and a cloak.

Designing this mask coincided with a push for more overtly greek looking stuff, so I was thinking of how to style a sort of blank face after typical greek statue face forms.

What good is a mask to a very overpowered warrior? Our answer was threat display, what with Petra often fighting enemies that wouldn’t be repelled by armor. This was something to stop hapless goons from running into the three toothed meatgrinder. So the question is what’s scary, then? What’s badass enough you don’t wanna fuck with the person wearing it?

It’s nice to do a little painting every now and then. 90% of this project h linework and flat color. Here the painting was particularly useful to communicate the form to future me who’d have to draw it from a lot of angles.

Turns out neither of us wanna fuck with the Hydratic's eponymous Hydra. It’s a pretty obvious subject in retrospect, what with Petra being a state zealot, but the thought of making that her mask didn’t come up till quite late, likely because in my head the Hydratics were a fundamentally 2d people — wouldn’t you know, turning a 2d idea 3d gave it a lot of personality.

A sasha sketch page. They had a lot of really fascinating ideas about Hydratic garments that made so much sense for their history.

The mask design was pretty straightforward all things considered. But the cloak… Sasha and I had been trading sketches of just what to do with that fuckin thing for like months. It was a complex problem because there were a lot of bases to hit. The Hydratics are modern, sporty, military, brand heavy, decorative, flat, uninterested in veneration. Petra is workmanlike, zealous, uncharmed by culture, physical, and at a pinnacle of hydratic military service. We need some indications of greek-ness no matter what, but we shouldn’t be too greek cause reasons. Getting these competing elements to all work together became a very interesting puzzle. How would you solve this?

For us the answer actually came outta watching 1917 a while back. Both Petra and Io are supposed to have a couple cues that liken them to ww1 soldiers, their experience in the apocalyptic conflict sharing some character with 1917’s hellish proceedings. This got me thinking about more dedicated military gear, and a slightly different character to Hyrdratic warriors. What of instead of hoplites, they were more like riflemen?

This almost looks like concept art!

In research, I’d found a genre of eastern european military poncho/cape thingies that really worked. They got armholes so the soldier can handle their firearms while still wearing it, it doubles as a tent, it’s rugged, it’s got kind of a rigid silhouette but it can be worn in interesting ways to break up the figure, and importantly, it’s got a whole lot of real estate what you could jam Hydratic Icons on. It’s a perfect fit for Petra who’s traveled Greece fighting monsters and champions. Her spears even work as tentpoles!

I can’t say I’m 100% happy with the final design (pictured at the front of part 1) but good golly it’s a hellofalot closer to the goal than what we were cooking up before. So I think we can call this a draw. Some problems on the style front, some solutions on the character design front. But the damoclesian sword of asset-completion hangs large above our heads, dear reader. Oh dam I think that means there gonna be a part 3! Good golly! Check back in soon for the laborious conclusion to this junk where I do a full process breakdown of an asset.

[1kook]

netflix & chill

summary If you planned things right, you could rain down your raging displeasure on Jeon Jungkook right after the meal but before this proposed ‘Netflix and chilling,’ maybe dramatically throw your glass of wine at him, before storming out of his place and reporting him to the authorities (Namjoon) for his douchebag personality. warnings grinding, 2 seconds of sub kook, oral (f), cum eating, vanilla but [ passionate ], unprotected sex, dirty talk tags use of the oldest trick in the book (“your hands are sooo big”), shy oblivious AND gentleman jk? pick a struggle, brief ment of app developer kook, evil and conniving oc wc 10.2k !! wow!!

will I ever write a serious jk fic? NO. this entire thing was based off this pic of jungkook which i’ve said before that i would print out in sepia filter and crumple and stuff in a drawer n then tell my kids 35 years from now was a long lost lover i met on a cruise to the bahamas and never saw again ty to mia more @daechwlta​ for being there during my brief crisis over this fic 🥺

When Namjoon had first not so subtly mentioned the idea of setting you up on a date, it was with a faux air of disinterest that you had masterfully pried the details out of him. Namjoon has a friend, he said, a friend who was kinda sorta attached to his hip. And while Namjoon loved the kid, he also thought this friend could use some social interaction outside of Namjoon.

Now you and Namjoon weren’t exactly the most conventional of friends for him to be proposing blind dates to you at whim. He was your senior at school, your mentor in your scholarship program, an educated man studying for his masters. So when he’d first uttered the words you were immediately on the fence. Sure, the two of you knew each other well and probably got along better than most mentor-mentee pairings among your year, but you doubt Namjoon knew enough of your tastes to offer you up for a blind date.

According to Namjoon, his friend was a kid in the same year as you, making him not so much as a kid as he was your classmate. You brushed it off at first, spewing some bullshit excuse that you’d rather focus on your studies, and how dating was a distraction to your education, as if you hadn’t spent the weekend prior binge watching some Spanish novella while you dutifully ignored your essay.

The second time Namjoon mentions it you agree on the spot. Life on campus could only be interesting for so long, so you might as well make the best of it and go on as many stupid dates as possible.

Namjoon is over the moon.

He tells you he’ll pass your phone number on over to that friend of his—“Jeon Jungkook”—and promises you you won’t regret this because his friend was amazing, really. And for Namjoon to sing his praises for just any underclassmen was unheard of. In fact, besides you, you don’t think Namjoon knows many other students younger than him, and if he did, you hardly doubt he would regard them so highly.

So he gives his friend your number, and so ends your weekly meeting with your mentor. You only realize on the walk back to your dorm that you forgot to ask him about some club at school, the whole goal of this week’s meeting, but by then you don’t really care, the whole conversation fading into the background.

In fact, you forget about the whole ordeal until Friday night rolls around and you’re once again, binge watching another novella on your laptop, when your phone suddenly vibrates.

You were by no means a loser at school, a friendless nobody, but you were also not the outgoing, school-spirited student on the front page of your school’s website, and thus had nearly every app that could produce a notification on your phone muted, every text thread silenced. The only notifications and messages you allowed were from your email and from your roommate, and considering the fact Doyeon was face down in a puddle of her own mid-semester tears right across from you, it was probably your email.

Much to your surprises, it isn’t that “Monday’s Class is CANCELLED” email you were hoping for, but instead some unknown number in a text notification. You roll your eyes, click it open thinking it’s a reminder from some store or from some guy claiming to be from your bank, only to pause at the words written inside the little grey bubble.

hey its jungkook!!! joon gave me your number to I guess ask you on a date soo are you free tmrw night??

The excessive punctuation reminds you a little bit of your kid sister back home and the dorky emails she’ll send you from time to time. It’s with that memory and a smile on your face, that you’re suddenly reminded of what exactly this message is saying. “Oh shit,” you mumble, moving to sit up and reread the text. Doyeon complaining loudly in the background has you reading it twice more before you understand it, and by then there’s a fluttery feeling in your chest.

You were by no means easily swayed by people, but this guy had received praise from Kim Namjoon of all people, so he definitely had some prestige to his name. He doesn’t seem overbearing from this one text he’d sent, but he also didn’t seem completely disinterested.  

You try to match his nonchalant energy, letting him know you were in fact free and down to meet him, just to let you know more details.

You won’t lie, there’s a giddy feeling bubbling within you at the prospect of getting all dolled up, hitting the town, pawning a free meal off some unsuspecting college soul, and maybe even hitting it off. It’s been a while since you’ve dated, sue you.

Jeon Jungkook’s response crushes those dreams as well as hurdles you straight into a nightmare.

cool!! was thinking i could cook for us at my place, drink a little wine, maybe Netflix and chill a little bit??

You are blown away by the absolute gall of this man, to butter you up by painting a pretty picture only to reduce you to a mere booty call. The fact he had felt confident enough to say all that within the same sentence blows your mind.

Did this Jeon Jungkook, who you had no idea of what he looked like, who had no idea of what you looked like, seriously just invite you over for some quote unquote Netflix and chill?

Who, in the ever living hell, was this guy who so sleazily invited women over to fuck with no qualms about who they were?

You’re offended that Namjoon would set you up like this, pawn you off to such a greasy friend. But then again, you guess not everyone knows their friends thoroughly, because this Jeon Jungkook flirtatiously inviting your over for some sex sounds nothing like the golden boy Kim Namjoon had raved about earlier this week. You click your phone off, tapping the device against your lips as you ponder how to best rip this jerk to shreds via text.

It’s amidst Doyeon cursing out her statistics teacher that an idea hits you.

Tomorrow was Saturday night, and as far as you knew, you really didn’t have anything else going on for you anyway. You’d take Jeon Jungkook’s offer, let him cook you a free meal and drink some of his wine. He mentioned having his own place, and vaguely you remember Namjoon saying he lived alone, hence his introverted tendencies, so you could slip in and out without doing that walk of shame through a boy’s dorm hall.

Not that there would be anything to feel shameful about. In fact, if you planned things right, you could rain down your raging displeasure on Jeon Jungkook right after the meal but before this proposed ‘Netflix and chilling,’ maybe dramatically throw your glass of wine at him, before storming out of his place and reporting him to the authorities (Namjoon) for his douchebag personality.

Ha! That would certainly teach the asshole not to use his poor, unsuspecting friends to reel in nice girls like you into one night stands.

You could practically feel the devil horns begging to poke out of your skull, the forked tail wiggling behind you, as you click your phone back on and text Jeon Jungkook a great!! what’s your address :)

——

Saturday morning and afternoon are as boring as they usually are. You do a little homework, and spend thirty minutes filling Doyeon in on your master plan, which she eats up and even gives you some pointers—“and then you can be like, ‘you sick freak, as if I’d let you near this 5-star, Michelin reviewed, Gordon Ramsey approved coochie’ and throw the whole plate at his head!”—before getting ready for your little date at Jeon Jungkook’s.

You try hard to look good, harder than you would have if he hadn’t offended you by reducing you to a booty call, and Doyeon helps. She does your eyebrows all nice and natural, dusts the thinnest shin of liquid highlighter across the high points of your face, the whole shebang until you’re looking like a sexy, glowing goddess. You shimmy into a pretty dress, nothing too fancy nor too casual, and even pull on those strappy sandals you’d bought on sale last winter before blowing a kiss to Doyeon and meeting your Uber downstairs.

You don’t quite remember what the reason behind Jeon Jungkook living in such a swanky neighborhood a few minutes from campus was, if it was from a job you vaguely recall Namjoon mentioning, or if it was just purely hereditary, but his place is nice. It’s a connected townhouse, something you’d expect a newly wed couple to live in and not some douchebag third year.

Worse comes to worse, you get banned from this rich neighborhood after humiliating one of its residents in his own home, not that you’d ever make it big enough to live here anyway.

You’d texted Namjoon sometime that morning to let him know you were meeting his friend, an ominous text with an even more ominous smiley face attached to it. But it seems Namjoon is easily blinded by underclassmen he trusts, if Jeon Jungkook’s assholish feats and your own suspicious behavior is anything to go by, because he texts you back a polite have fun! he’s a little shy, so it might take a while for the ball to start rolling hahahaha.

Shy my ass, you think closing the door of your Uber behind you. You double check the address that had been texted to you, walking up to the neat townhouse and knocking against the polished door.

It’s a little chilly, and you hope finding an Uber is easier later tonight when you make your grand escape. It’s between these thoughts that the door swings open, revealing the most handsome man you’ve ever met.

He’s attractive, disgustingly so, with dark hair and light brown tips to contrast, tickling his cheekbones. His dark eyes are round and imploring as they meet yours, gaze almost innocent and doe like as he takes you in. He’s got this soft, blue turtleneck on, and it looks like it should be a seasonal sweater reserved for the holidays but he pulls it off nicely on this premature spring night. His pretty pink lips move, and it takes you a second to realize he’s talking.

“___?” He says, and his voice is deep, yet soft in its own unique way. You nod, like a stupid bobble head, because your throat constricted the moment this beautiful angel opened the door. “It’s cold outside, come in!” He urges you, out stretching his palm to make sure you don’t trip over the slight step up the door as he brings you into his home.

“Hi,” he exhales when you’re finally inside, standing a little too close to you in his small entryway.

“Hi,” you finally choke out, a little dazed by how handsome he is, and the sudden realization that you’re supposed to throw your glass of wine at him tonight because he’s a douchebag dawns on you. You blink yourself out of your stupor, taking a step back and gesturing towards your sandal clad feet.

“Oh!” Jeon Jungkook exclaims at the sudden realization. “I forgot to set out a pair of slippers for you,” he sheepishly admits, before he excuses himself to go get some. There’s a tiny ottoman pushed against the wall, beneath a long mirror, that you take a seat on it, carefully unstrapping your sandals.

All the while, you’re deep in thought.

It makes sense that someone like Jeon Jungkook was so forward in inviting you over for sex during your first interaction. Realistically speaking, the guy had it all. He lived alone in a swanky townhouse in a wealthy neighborhood (you finally remember Namjoon saying he did some app developing for major companies—yeah, still in college but already making it big because he was that good), and looked like the blueprint for the perfect man, someone who’d impress your parents. On top of that, the man was was a 21st century Adonis. You hadn’t missed the flash of ink on his knuckles, or the way his jeans had hugged his legs.

He’s making his way back now, inspecting the slippers in his hands, and you don’t miss the way the jeans are pulled taut around his thighs in particular.

Yeah, he definitely knew his way around a woman’s body, there was no way he couldn’t have.

You slip your feet into the slippers he places before you, wiggling your toes around, before glancing back at Jungkook. He smiles warmly, a little beauty mark beneath his lip making itself known. He takes your hand, pulls you up onto your feet, and begins guiding you down the hall and to what you assume is the kitchen.

“I didn’t know what you liked, and I figured asking you three hours before you came over would be too awkward,” he laughs, rubbing the back of his neck. He glances at you again, and upon seeing your inquisitive stare, quickly turns away with flushed cheeks.

Oh this man knew the game, and he knew it well.

Jeon Jungkook still thinks he can play that cute campus boy being set up by his senior card now, after he’d shown you his true colors last night via text. But he has a big storm coming. As much as you could admit he was good to look at, you would not be fooled by some pretty face and tasty food. No, you came here with one goal and one goal only, and that was to give Jeon Jungkook a piece of his own two-faced medicine before running off to tattle to Namjoon.

You reach the kitchen and the heavenly smell of Alfredo sauce swarms your nostrils. “I… I’m still new to cooking, so I hope you don’t mind some Alfredo pasta,” he admits, shy smile adorning his features as he avoids your gaze once again to toy with the dish towel by the sink.

You creep closer to the counter, where two meticulously presented ceramic plates sit beside a wine bottle, and the glands in your mouth suddenly go into overdrive in their rush to make you salivate, and you choke out an overly eager, “it looks amazing!” before you know it.

Okay, you came here with two goals.

——

Jungkook carries the two bowls in his big hands to the dining room beside the kitchen, and you follow behind with the bottle of wine and two glasses as you set the table together. The utensils are already there, but Jungkook runs back into the kitchen anyway to return with some fancy cloth napkins for the two of you.

Just as you're tugging a chair out to sit, Jungkook beats you to it. “Ah, let me,” he smiles, and your heart thunders nervously in your chest as you return the expression, brushing your hands beneath you before sitting down and letting him push you in. Jungkook takes his own seat in front of you, and before you can dig in he calls out to seemingly nobody, “Alexa, dim the dining room lights.”

The overhead lights dim, and with their overbearing glow gone, you can finally appreciate the battery powered candles snuggled neatly into a little bowl on the table between you two. You ooh appreciatively, and Jungkook looks proud of himself.

Then, he says, “Alexa, play…Date Night Playlist.”

You blink, and a soft piano tune begins filtering through a speaker he’s hidden somewhere in the room. Even with the fake candles being your main source of light, the flush on Jungkook’s cheeks is evident as he gestures towards you to eat.

You won’t lie. Jeon Jungkook was extremely endearing.

This much becomes evident the further you get into the meal. As small talk devolves into full fledged conversations and story telling, his shy demeanor slipping away but still sticking to the edges of his personality, you begin to have a more difficult time connecting this Jungkook to the one who had less than 24 hours ago asked you to come over and “Netflix and chill” with him.

But the more you speak, the more distant that image begins to feel. For one, Jungkook does put on a fairly reserved aura for you, telling you about his job but refusing to brag about it even when you egg him on. He has no qualms gassing up his friends, Namjoon in particular, who Jungkook claims is his role model for some unknown reason, given the fact they are neither in the same major nor in any of the same clubs. They’re friends, point blank period, but Namjoon is very obviously a star in Jungkook’s eyes.

Additionally, he’s quite embarrassed to admit why Namjoon had been so set on getting Jungkook to date, but eventually tells you it’s because Jungkook’s last girlfriend had been during your freshman year—two whole years ago! It makes you wonder what he’d been doing since then, if he’d used the time to fully invest in his work or if he’d been mingling around, unbeknownst to his friends, which would explain the flirtatious offer that landed you here.

Still, a part of you refuses to believe last night’s Jungkook and tonight’s Jungkook were one in the same, and if they were, what had made this shy man so unabashedly invite you over for some sex. Was this act all a ploy? Or maybe, was he purposefully trying to ward you away by coming off as a gentleman now that he’d seen your face and wasn’t interested in you anymore?

Apparently it’s neither of the two, and you don’t realize this until you finish your meal and make your way into his living room to finally get down to the long awaited Netflix and chilling. It’s only when you sit down on the couch, smack dab in the middle, because at this point, you’re not gonna throw your wine at Jeon Jungkook like you planned, he was too nice. And if this niceness was an act to get in your panties, you didn’t care at this point. He was hot, achingly so, and at least you’d get a good fuck out of it.

But as you said, apparently not. Because Jeon Jungkook sees you purposefully take up the entire middle of the couch, sultry eyes staring him down, and decides to sit flush against the armrest, somehow leaving a good foot between the two of you, despite the fact you’re sitting next to each other.

Your brain can’t work fast enough to comprehend the situation, before he’s asking you what you want to watch. “Um,” you say, pointedly staring at him and not the screen. “Tr-Transformers?”

The way Jungkook’s eyes light up is insane, already round eyes nearly popping out of their sockets as he eagerly rushes to select it from whatever streaming service he has, probably not even Netflix, all the while chattering on about how much he loves that series, and is so glad you do too.

The whole time, you’re struck by the oddness of his casual tone, the way he’s overly invested in the 20th Century Fox opening, and how he’s very carefully avoiding intruding in on your personal space.

The last point in particular has you wanting to pull your hair out, because you want Jeon Jungkook intruding in on your personal space. You want him pressed so tightly against you you can’t breathe, you can’t move, until you’re drowning in him as he finally lives up to his promise of some Netflix and chill, because you want him, and you want him so. very. bad.

“Oh, I forgot the popcorn!” Jungkook exclaims, and you jump at the sudden volume of his voice, because he’d been pretty silent as he avidly watched the first few minutes of the movie. “Sorry,” he chuckles, and his leg brushes against yours as he shuffles between you and the coffee table on his way out. You vaguely hear the popping of the popcorn in the kitchen, but you’re too distracted by your suddenly overwhelming thoughts.

Okay, one thing was for sure, and that was that Jeon Jungkook definitely had no fucking idea what the phrase Netflix and chill meant, because the way he’d zeroed in on the movie and the popcorn, and not you, was unheard of on such invitations. You deduce he probably heard it somewhere, and, now understanding the true nature of Jungkook’s sweet and shy personality, made no such perverted connection to the phrase.

Which meant he most definitely did not demean you to a mere booty call, like you’d deluded yourself into believing, someone he could hump and dump with no regrets, before calling Namjoon up to thank him. Which meant he’d had no ulterior motives in meeting you tonight, just planning to get to know you at the suggestion of his friend, and had—unbeknownst to him—successfully wooed you thus far.

Which was great! If you turned a blind eye to the evil, conniving plans you’d made without even meeting the guy, and the subsequent flood of self-inflicted disapproval when you realized Jeon Jungkook was a sweetheart who definitely did not deserve having a glass of wine thrown at his face after making you a home cooked meal and giving you the full Olive Garden experience, with his dimmed lights and candlelit dinner and piano music on the background.

Yeah. Perfectly fine.

The only problem now was that you had become so dangerously smitten with the man that you wanted to sleep with him. You wanted that Netflix and chill, needed it like it was the last slot in a daycare class and you were a soccer mom of five wanting to get at least one kid out of the house for the summer for the sake of her own sanity. You were desperate.

No, you scold yourself. This was fine, this was good, this was perfectly okay. If anything, this just further made you enamored with Jungkook, because it proved how gentlemanly he was by not trying to sleep with you on the first date.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t want to, the devil on your shoulder crooned.

The microwave in the kitchen stops, and you hear the sound of cabinets opening as Jungkook pours the popcorn into a bowl. On screen, the main character is meeting a bunch of giant cars-turned-robots, you don’t fucking know.

But the devil was right.

Jungkook hadn’t offered to sleep with you, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to. Furthermore, that didn’t mean he couldn’t be seduced into wanting to, your evil brain suggested, and the hope that had slithered it’s way into your chest from the very moment Jungkook had opened the door, took that fact and ran with it.

“What’d I miss?” Jungkook says when he returns, popcorn bowl in hand.

“Oh, um, he was with the car,” you offer, trying to stop the nefarious smirk from slipping onto your features. Jungkook laughs, cute and airy as he shuffles past you.

He’s too absorbed in the screen, not looking as he sits down, closer than last time until his thigh brushes yours and he jerks back in embarrassment. “Oh, sorry,” he flounders, goes to move away but you act fast.

You grab onto his upper arm with both of yours like an octopus, keeping him flush to you as you gaze up at him with wide eyes. “No, it’s okay,” you rush to assure him, loosening your hold as he tentatively relaxes beside you. You glance down at the popcorn bowl in his hand, swiping a piece to pop between your lips. “It’s easier for us this way,” you say, and you’re pulling that straight out of your ass, because you hate popcorn and have literally zero desire for it and wouldn’t have reached for it anyway if you weren’t trying to convince him this was all for popcorn sharing purposes.

Jungkook’s eyes briefly flicker down to where you’re munching on that popcorn, your lips, before he’s quickly averting his gaze. “Ah, y-yeah,” he agrees, and though he tries to relax back into the couch, you can still feel the tension of his muscles as he settles beside you.

With his eyes no longer trained on you, you snuggle closer into his side resting your cheek against the soft material covering his shoulder, finally letting that devious smirk slip onto your face. You keep yourself close to Jungkook, loving the way his warmth permeates the thick sweater he’s wearing, even if he’s still overly into the movie. You know he’s seen it before, because he keeps telling you random tidbits like, “they use this in the next movie!” Or “he ends up becoming really important in the sixth movie,” and you want to listen to this endearing nerd’s commentary, you really do, but once your brain is stuck on horny, it is stuck on horny.

He doesn’t even eat a lot of popcorn, setting it down not ten minutes later onto the coffee table. You release him as he moves forward, but quickly latch onto him again when he sits back down.

Much to your surprise, Jungkook is way more relaxed then, shrugging you off to rest his hand on the couch behind you, and you inwardly squeal at the prospect of getting to cuddle up to his body, and not just his arm. You cuddle in close to him, leaving your slippers on the ground as you tuck your legs up onto the couch cushions.

Jungkook is so warm and firm, and you know it’s your horny brain speaking, but you swear you feel a tight set of abs underneath the palm you rest on his stomach, and you give an experimental brush over the area. His heart picks up, you hear it by where your head is leaning against his chest, and you tilt your head up to give him a curious glance. His cheeks are red, and he doesn’t look at you even though you know he sees you, so you decide to kick things up a notch.

You sigh loudly, peeling yourself away from him to properly level him with a pout. “Jungkook, aren’t you hot in this?” You ask, pinching the wooly material between two fingers and pulling it from his skin. Jungkook finally looks away from the screen, nibbling his lower lip as he takes in your quizzical expression.

“Um, only a little… but it’s fine!” He rushes to say, and you recall from your conversations over dinner that Jungkook doesn’t much like people fussing over him, so you quickly change gears.

You press a hand against your cheek, the same one that had been resting against his shoulder earlier. “Oh, well… it’s really itchy,” you announce, and his eyes widen, one hand absentmindedly reaching to clutch the material at his chest. “It’s making me really itchy,” you emphasize, and part of you feels bad for taking advantage of his caring nature, but this is all for the greater good, you convince yourself. “Do you mind taking it off?”

“I, uh, yeah,” he agrees, reaching for the hem of his sweater before carefully peeling it off. When he pulls it over his head, you can’t help the triumphant grin that overtakes your face, though you quickly mask it when he finally frees himself from the material. “Better?” He says once he’s clad in only a plain black shirt.

“Mm, much,” you sigh, and nearly soak your panties then and there when a tattooed sleeve comes into view. “Woah!” You exclaim, snatching his wrists up to examine his skin. “What’s this?” You marvel, tracing every inch of delicious skin with your predatory gaze. Jungkook huffs out a laugh, and you glance up to watch as he rubs the back of his neck in that same embarrassed way he’d done multiple times throughout your night together.

“My tattoos,” he says, and then seems to realize the simplicity of his statement and rushes to add to it, “I hope you don’t mind?”

You hum, shifting onto your knees to face him as you continue tracing over a huge tiger lily by his forearm. “Why would I? It’s your body,” you say, and watch the nervous glance melt off his face as he regards you with something new. Something akin to wonder as he lets you trace over more of his ink, nodding along to your words.

“Yeah… yeah!” He agrees, and you grin at his sudden zeal. He chuckles, physically relaxing beneath your touch, and it’s probably the most relaxed he’s been all night as you continue rubbing your hands over every tattoo on his skin, and then purposefully focusing on the ones near his bicep. “Sorry, ‘m just used to people pushing off their own opinions about them onto me,” he explains, and for a moment, the horniness that had been fueling you all night fades away, and you let your hands trail down, past his wrist, until you’re sandwiching his hand between yours.

“Fuck what anyone else thinks,” you tell him, eyes hard as you imagine anyone imposing their stupid thoughts on Jungkook, who was too good for this world. “If you think they’re cool, then they're the coolest thing in the world.”

He smiles at you, and you’ve seen this smile about a million times tonight—when you first came in, when you talked about yourself at dinner, when you mentioned this stupid movie—but it has something swelling in your chest. Something too intimate for a first date, so you quickly move to repress it.

Glancing down at his hand in yours, littered with smaller tattoos across his knuckles, your brain whirls into action. Bringing it up between the two of you, you turn his hand over to line your palms up. “Wow, your hands are so big,” you sigh, slowly reverting back to dirty thoughts as you twist yours and Jungkook’s hands this way and that. He snorts, bends the tips of his fingers over yours just to hear you ooooh again.

“Yeah, they’re pretty big,” he agrees, completely ignoring the film playing on the screen, which is a huge win in your eyes considering how deeply he’d been watching it earlier.

Finally, you see an opening and pounce.

“Well, that means something else is pretty big too,” you murmur, chancing a glance up at his face. His face is the perfect definition of composed, and you can tell when exactly he processes your words because those little pink lips part in surprise, red slowly filling the apples of his cheeks. You let go of his palm, letting it slide between your fingers until it falls limp beside him.

Jungkook watches you with wide eyes, as you raise yourself up onto your knees. “Jungkook?” You mumble, giving him no warning before you’re throwing a leg across his lap, knees pressed into the couch on either side of his thighs.

“Y-Yes?” He stutters, brown hair falling away from his face as he stares up at you. You flash him a sweet smile, and you can tell it relaxes him because his fists unclench beside him.

“You’re a really nice boy,” you sigh, and when you’ve scooted your knees a little closer to his ridiculously thin waist, you finally let yourself sit. You find yourself right before his crotch, which he desperately tries to hide as he shifts around, but can’t with you on top of him. You let your hands flutter to rest at his shoulders, and he gulps. “You’re so sweet and cute,” you add, relish in the flush that climbs up to his ears. “But I’m a little sad you invited me over to Netflix and chill, but won’t do just that,” you pout, a finger tangling itself in a soft strand at the back of his head.

“Huh?” He stutters, eyes nearly bulging out when you wiggle around again. “I-I’m sorry?” He huffs, and when you move too close to his crotch, where his jeans are slowly growing more and more strained, he panics and reaches a hand out to steady your waist.

You feign confusion, flashing him another pout as you duck closer until your noses bump against each other. “You know what it means, don’t you, Jungkook?” You inquire, eyes falling dangerously lidded as you swallow up every inch of his appearances.

He stutters, hands moving up and down as if he doesn’t know where to put them anymore. But you know exactly where Jungkook can put those hands, and you waste no time catching his wrists in your hands to guide him towards your hips. “No?” He breathes, fingers flexing against you, and you smile sweetly at him.

“It means,” you purr, shifting forward until you’re flush against where you need him most. You can barely contain the whimper that climbs out of your throat when you finally feel the rough material of his jeans against your panties. “It means you wanna fuck, Jungkook,” you exhale, tossing your head back as your body basks in the slight reprieve, the way Jungkook squirms beneath you aiding greatly in providing that sensation you craved.

“It’s nothing more than an excuse,” you huff, placing a hand on the back of his neck to steady yourself. At your touch, Jungkook jolts, thighs jumping beneath you and you stifle another groan when the zipper of his jeans prods against your core. “For you to fuck my brains out while some s-stupid movie plays in the background.”

You’re not sure when, but sometime during that last explanation your hands had fully delved into the thick tresses of Jungkook’s hair. You give an experimental tug, and poor Jungkook, so lost in all that you’re telling him, lolls his head back for you easily until the long expanse of his neck is available, soft creamy skin yours for the taking.

You pounce, kissing the skin gently at first, before sprinkling in a handful of nibbles. He’s sensitive, devastatingly so, as he gasps at a particular suck. You suction your lips on the spot below his ear, carefully biting down on the skin as he unravels beneath you. “Will you do it, Jungkookie?” You murmur against the shell of his ear,

He nods eagerly, and his fingers hurt where he’s pressed them deep into your waist, like he’s trying to brand you as his with his mere strength alone. “Y-Yes,” he exhales, hips jerking when you swipe your tongue over the pretty mark you’d left on his perfect skin.

You smother your smirk against his neck, grinding down on him once again. “Yes what?” You tease, and let his strong hands roll you against him afterwards.

“Yes, I-I’ll…” he stumbles, eyes dazed as he watches you through hooded lids. You raise a brow at him, shifting in his lap. It’s enough to kickstart him back up, and he’s biting down on his lip hard enough to draw blood. “I’ll fuck you, I’ll fuck you just like you want,” he rambles. He surprises you when he begins rutting up against you, so animalistic and uncontrolled, nothing like the sweet Jungkook that had indulged you over dinner. “I’ll make you come, p-promise,” he rasps.

You smirk down at him, hoping he doesn’t see the metaphorical horns sticking out of your head the further he falls into your trap. Before he can say anything else, you surge forward, slotting your mouths together for the first time that night.

It’s no surprise that Jungkook kisses just like he speaks, carefully like he’s afraid one hard press of his lips will ward you off. His lips are smooth, a fact you’d hyper-fixated on all night as he spoke, but before you can ponder on that any further, something hot and wet is prodding at your lower lip.

The gasp you barely manage to contain ends up escaping anyway when Jungkook’s hand comes up to cup the side of your face, tilting your head to the side as his tongue slithers into your mouth. You become obsessed with the way he touches you, every bit the gentlemen he’d been all night, fingers just barely pressing into your cheek like he doesn’t want to mess up your makeup. His other hand, snuggly wrapped around your waist, pulls you tighter against him until your chests are pressed together.

And that tongue. That tongue of his that leaves no room for argument, quickly shutting down any attempts of yours to overtake him. He’s graceful about it too, one nudge enough to convince you he’s got this, he’ll take care of you. You whimper, a sound Jungkook swallows before he’s biting down on your lower lip.

When he pulls away, his lips are red and glossy, and you wonder if yours are too. “Fuck, you’re so pretty,” he sighs, gazing at you like he can’t believe you’re there in front of him.

Before you can say anything else, he’s burying his face in the crook of your neck to brush kisses over your skin. “Let me eat you out,” he begs, but his voice is so silky and smooth that it doesn’t sound so much as a plea as much as it does a suggestion. He licks a stripe up your neck, and you jump in his hold.

It’s at this moment where the sudden realization hits you, the feeling of having the reins yanked out of your hands. You so vividly controlled every aspect of Jungkook just a few moments ago, when you’d had your own mouth on his neck, and carefully coaxed him into some sex.

But it seems Jeon Jungkook isn’t as soft or as pliable as you had dubbed him to be, and if the way he’s begun subtly rolling your hips into his crotch is any sign, he certainly wasn’t the submissive type either. Which leaves you wondering, exactly what type of person was Jungkook in bed?

Well, you had all night to figure that out.

“Hey,” he whines suddenly, ripping you out of your thoughts. You glance down at him, registering the bored set of his eyes and the unimpressed quirk of his lips. “Pay attention to me.”

You blink, lips twitching. You can barely muffle the giggle that tears itself from your throat, leaning your forehead on his shoulder as your body shakes at his suddenly childish words. Jungkook chuckles too, as if suddenly realizing how out of place his own statement was. “Sorry,” he smiles, cheeks pleasantly rosy and you can’t even stop yourself from kissing him silly.

Jungkook, bless his heart, let’s you rain down a good three kisses on him before he’s pushing you down on the couch beside him. There’s still a slight gleam in his eyes, but the rest of his face schools itself into a hungry expression as he drinks in your body laid out before him. “Let me eat you out?” He asks again, voice but a soft whisper.

You nod, heart beating loudly in your chest as he shuffles down until he can press a kiss to the tops of your thighs. He hasn’t even done anything that intense yet, but you already feel the muscles in your leg ready to spasm just from his proximity.

He’s mouthing at your skin, nudging your legs apart, and you, usually so confident in your sexuality, can’t find the courage to look at him as he so lovingly carries out his ministrations.

As if sensing your sudden bout of shyness (you! shy! Doyeon was gonna tease you about this for the rest of your life once you recapped this for her), he places a soft kiss just below where the hem of your dress begins, before pulling back and uttering, “this okay?”

You hum in response, face warm from just imagining how good he must look down there, peppering your skin with kisses. Your heart nearly rips itself out of your chest when a strong set of fingers wraps around your wrist suddenly, sliding over and around your hand until he’s tangled them with yours.

At this, you nearly break your neck trying to look at him, only to be met with an amused smile. Jungkook gives your hand a squeeze, and you barely get to appreciate the schoolgirl flood of emotions in your chest, when suddenly his free hand comes out of left field, cupping the back of your knee to push your legs further apart, before gliding across the expanse of your thigh to push your dress up.

If Jungkook holding your hand was enough to make your heart skip a beat, Jungkook pressing a chaste kiss to your panty-clad mound was enough to send you into cardiac arrest. Your leg twitches at the sudden touch, a gasp catching in your throat at the delicate path he kisses over your panties, until he’s flicking his tongue over your clit. “Oh,” you moan, and against your better judgment, your free hand is tangling itself in his silky strands.

Jungkook smirks, what sounds like a tiny chuckle muffled as he continues mouthing along your sex, until your panties are soaked both from your arousal and his saliva. Your little thong stares him in the face, and he groans at the sight, glancing up at you with those wide eyes of his like you’re his entire world. “Can I?”

Jungkook gives your clit one final kiss, before he lets go of your hand, and you can’t help the whine that leaves you upon the lost contact. Jungkook eats it up, pressing a kiss turned smile against your knee as he tugs your underwear down. It coils up as it goes, until he’s pulling a tightly twisted maroon thong off your ankles, and tossing it off somewhere behind him.

If his mouth felt good through your panties, it feels even better without. You mewl when he brushes his lips over your clit, plush lips working your sensitive bundle of nerves, sly tongue occasionally creeping out to toy with you further. “Jungkook,” you cry out, back arching. He licks and slurps likes he’s a starved man, and you're the first meal he’s ever had. You want to sob from how good it feels, his tongue flicking over your bud like he just can’t get enough.

He pulls away to catch your gaze, doesn’t let it go as he runs a lone finger over your slit, coating the digit in your own arousal, before carefully plunging it into your warm, wet heat. “Is this good?” He rasps out, watching your facial expressions carefully as he wiggles his finger deeper into your core, his other hand wrapped around your thigh to keep you still. You moan, feeling like a boneless heap of organs beneath this insanely handsome man who can’t keep his hands off your quivering pussy.

His fingers don’t let up, slowly pulling out before plunging back in. The room fills with disgustingly wet sounds, but that fact drifts to the back of your head the faster his fingers go. Your eyes roll into your head, your body twitching with each press of his fingers.

“Is it good, pretty?” He repeats, and since you’re not looking at him anymore, the sudden lick against your clit has your back arching and your thighs quivering with surprise. “Tell me it’s good, ___,” Jungkook croons, and you nod in a hurry.

“It’s good!” You cry, moaning loudly when he slips another finger into you, scissoring the two inside of you. “It’s so good, Jungkook—y-you’re so good,” you moan, and nearly cry actual tears when he curls his fingers inside of you, pressing down against the most sensitive spot within you.

Jungkook doesn’t let up, continues licking and slurping against your sensitive bud, even when your orgasm hits and you’re begging him to stop. He doesn’t let you go until he feels the warmth coat his fingers, feels the wetness begging to seep out of your plugged pussy. He lets you go then, only to move closer to your hole and replace his fingers with his mouth. There, he carefully catches and collects the cum that trickles out, mouth warm against your trembling body.

Your body quivers with each long drag of his tongue over your sensitive cunt, and you’re about to ask him to stop, when he finally pulls away and pushes himself over you, arms caging you in as he stares down at your withered form. “Kiss,” you manage to gasp out, and Jungkook raises an eyebrow in question. “Kiss me,” you repeat, and then, thoughtfully, “please.”

Jungkook complies, leans down to connect your mouths in a sweet kiss. You’re blinded by the delicacy of it all, that you in no way see coming the sudden substance that slides down your throat from his own. You choke at the sudden intrusion, belatedly realizing it’s your cum he’s pushing down your throat, the cum he didn’t swallow.

“That’s it, pretty,” Jungkook croons, licking up the residual come that hadn’t made it into your mouth. “See how you taste for me. Isn’t it sweet?” He murmurs, pushing his tongue into your mouth as if he regretted not saving any for himself. It’s the first time you’ve had your own pleasure in your mouth, so you’re not exactly sure how to feel. What you do feel is the overwhelming surge of arousal at seeing Jungkook rave about it and lap it up inside your own mouth.

He kisses you for a few moments, mouth moving languidly along yours. One hand reaches down to rub soothingly at your inner thigh, like he’s coaxing the feeling back into your body after lulling you into one of the most heavenly orgasms of your entire life. You whimper when he bites down on your lower lip, like you’re still too sensitive to reciprocate, but Jungkook doesn’t mind. He lets you go, licks over where he’d bitten like an apology.

After a few minutes of just this, of feeling like the most cherished girl in the entire world, Jungkook finally pulls away and levels you with a dashing smile. “All good?” He asks, hands still trailing up your waist until they’re framing the swell of your breasts, where he gently circles your nipple.

You nod, dazedly staring up at him and it’s at this exact moment that you realize there’s something stiff poking at your hip. You glance down, and Jungkook glances down with you, until you’re both staring at the hard on he’s hiding beneath his jeans. Jungkook chuckles, low and dark by your ear as he experimentally presses it against you.

Before you can stop yourself, your hand is untangling itself from around his shoulders and slithering down his front. You cup his erection, his shaky exhale giving you the courage to toy with his belt buckle until it’s undone and you're battling with the button on his jeans instead. You put up a good fight, but in the end the angle is too tight for you to properly undo it, and Jungkook brushes your hands away with a soft kiss to your lips.

He pushes himself off you, and you’re immediately craving the warm press of his body against yours the second he’s gone. “Get that dress off for me, pretty girl,” he says, pulling his shirt over his head, rendering you completely speechless as you gawk at his body. Jungkook glances down at you as he goes to undo his pants, a shapely brow raising in your direction and a soft quirk of his lips gesturing for you to do as you’re told.

You spur into action, wiggling the dress up and over your breasts until you’re pulling it over your head and letting it drop beside you on the floor. You’re just in time to see Jungkook push his jeans down his hips, a classic black Calvin Klein underwear band glaring back at you.

The chance to marvel at Jungkook’s thin waist framed by that tight underwear is gone as quickly as it came, and you’re greeted with an even more mouthwatering sight when he pushes the elastic band down, and that big cock you had alluded to springs out of its confines. You groan, subconsciously rolling your hips into the air as you take in the sight of his cock, mushroom tip swollen and flushed. There’s a thick vein that runs along the underside of it, one you only see when Jungkook grasps his dick in his hand and tugs upward like this isn’t his true form, and he can get bigger.

“Ready?” He asks, biting down on his lip as he continues to stroke himself. You nod, wiggling closer to him until the backs of your thighs rest on top of his, knees knocking against his waist. He grants you one more of those kind smiles, before he’s leaning down to press a hand beside your head, the other lining himself up with your soaked entrance.

Running his cock over your folds one last time, collecting as much of your cum as he can, he brushes a kiss against your cheekbone before he’s pushing in. You moan, throwing your hands around his neck as he pierces through the initial ring of muscle surrounding your warm heat. “Holy shit,” you choke, mouth dropped open as you pant like a dog against his shoulder. “J-Jungkook,” you cry, legs tightening around his waist the closer his body presses against yours.

Once he’s at the hilt, pelvis flush against you, you can’t help the series of whines and mewls that escape your lips from being so comfortably filled to the brim.

To your surprise, Jungkook is the first to speak. “Fuck,” he groans, breath hot against your ear. He sounds fucked out, once silky voice raspy with need as he grinds his hips against you tentatively. “This is what you wanted, isn't it?” He huffs, both hands coming down to wrap around your waist, your back arching under the wonderful hands that find themselves squeezing every inch of your back in an effort to pull you closer.

His mouth brushes against yours from this new position, and Jungkook puckers his lips, tongue coming out to lick at your bottom lip. You nearly cry when he finally pulls his hips away, relieves his cock from your tight heat before surging back in. “Wanted this from the moment you walked in, didn’t you, sweetheart?” Jungkook grunts, repeats the same motion until he’s picked up a steady pace of pushing and pulling, each roll of his hips sending a shock of ecstasy crawling up your spine.

You nod, eyes screwed shut as pleasure warms every inch of your body. It’s even worse to not see, because every sound and every touch is magnified tenfold, until you’re drowning in sensations. Jungkook’s choked groans, the slide of his hips, they all become too much too quickly and you’re choking back a sob.

“Fuck,” he groans, glancing down at your withered form like an animal as he picks up his pace. His hold on you tightens, never letting your body move away from him and he begins jack hammering in his thrusts, swallowing your cries with his lips. “Had me thinking you were a nice girl,” he huffs, and you wonder if he knows how tightly he’s holding you, how this grip will most likely leave you with fingerprint bruises tomorrow morning. But then again, you don’t care. All you care about is Jungkook’s voice and his body, guiding you toward completion. “But all you wanted was a quick fuck.”

You steel yourself to look at him again, and when your eyes finally open and focus, you’re wishing you hadn’t because Jungkook looks so hot over you. His pretty eyes, the ones that had led you into a false sense of comfort throughout the night and tricked you into believing he would be easy to bend to your every whim, are hard now. “Isn’t that right, doll?” He spits, and you whine when he punctuates this question with a particularly brutal thrust of his hips. His balls slap against your ass, and you squirm beneath him as you begin to feel the beginnings of an orgasm build in your core.

“I-I thought—“ you stammer, tone pitched from the way he jostles you with every thrust he gives. “Y-You wanted that,” you weekly defend, canting your hips down in a feeble attempt to progress this along.

He snorts, captures your lips in a rushed kiss where he wastes no time snaking his tongue inside your mouth. His saliva trickles into your mouth, and you whine as he purposefully lets it happen, pulls away just the slightest to pucker his lips and let a thick trail of spit fall straight into your open mouth. Satisfied with his little stunt, he rams his cock against you once more.

“If you wanted a quick fuck,” he says, nearly loses himself in your pussy, “you came to the wrong guy, sweetheart.”

You’re too caught up in the nice drag of his cock against your pussy, the tip of his cock stopping him from ever pulling out completely, that it takes you a second to process his words. “H-Huh?” You choke, teary eyes flickering across his face wildly as if the answer will be right in plain sight.

But all you’re met with is the soft pull of his lips as he flashes you a smirk, pearly white teeth tugging at the pink flesh, as he levels you with a glare of his own. Before you can question him further, he’s letting go of your waist to hike your knees into the crook of his elbows, his pouty lips growing further away as he leans back.

This shift has his cock nudging up, rubbing against the hood of your clit where a bundle of nerves he’d only briefly brushed before sits. You shriek in pleasure, writhing beneath him as the sudden sensation hits you full force. “Jungkook!” You sob, his hips slowing to a grind as he watches your face crumble beneath him.

“You like that?” He murmurs, rutting his hips against you shallowly. The change of pace, the rabid piston of his hips slowing to this, has your body melting into his touch. You barely manage a nod, eyes fluttering open and shut as his hips move sensually against you.

His cock brushes against that sensitive spot with each roll of his hips, and you’re a mewling, puddle of emotion by the third thrust. “Pretty girl,” he hums, letting go of one leg to place a hand above your mound, thumb circling your clit until you’re trembling beneath him. “Did you think I would fuck you and kick you out?” He husks, watching your body like he’s a lion and you’re his prey.

Your brain is far from comprehending anything at this point, reduced to a mere mass of nothingness as he continues moving against you, fingers rubbing your clit in all the right ways.

“Well, you were wrong about that, doll,” he huffs, and you’re blessed with the sight of his head lolling back as he loses himself in the tight grip of your pussy, skin glistening with sweat, trailing from behind his ear and over his neck, until you’re watching a pearl roll over his collarbones. “I don’t do that,” he informs you, and he pinches your clit between two fingers, hard enough that you almost miss his next words as you moan. “No, baby, I’ll fuck you and keep you forever,” he spits, and you whimper at his words. Finally, he lets go of your knees, right as you’re teetering on the edge of an orgasm and you moan out in protest as he ducks down to cage you between his arms again.

“Please,” you beg, voice hoarse as his hips slowly return to their pace from before. He’s still not pulling out as much, keeping his thrusts shallow as he kisses a trail up your neck and over your jaw.

“Gonna fuck you so good, you don’t ever want to leave, pretty,” he says, kisses the corner of your mouth as his hips pick up pace. You wanna cry, feeling so warm and cherished in his arms, his voice telling you how good you’re doing as the coil in your stomach tightens and tightens until you’re begging him for more. “Do you want that?”

“Yes! Yes!” You sob, rolling your hips against his like a madman as you chase your high.

Jungkook hums, smile smushed against your lips as he watches you desperately writhing beneath him. “Yeah? You want that?” You nod, mewls swallowed by his kisses. “Then cum for me, pretty girl.”

You whimper, just as he bucks into you once more, and suddenly you’re falling apart. It starts in your lower back, the ecstasy climbing it’s way through your body until you’re quivering and sobbing in his embrace, muffling your sounds against his shoulder. The muscles in your entire body tighten painfully, until suddenly a wave of contentment washes over you, and you’re too weak to even hold onto him anymore, arms flopping back onto the couch cushions beneath you.

The whole time, Jungkook mutters encouragement against your jaw, keeps his thrusts short but quick, guiding you through your orgasm. When you’re done, he presses an open mouthed kiss beneath your ear, pulling away to look at your boneless frame beneath him.

A few pistons of his hips later, and Jungkook is coming inside of you, cum coating your walls as he hammers his way through his orgasm. He pulls out when he’s done, and you instantly feel your mixed arousal drip out between your thighs.

Woozy from the wine and the two orgasms, you fall asleep soon after.

��—

“Good morning,” you murmur, standing at the doorway leading into the kitchen, an area you’d only been able to find after stumbling around the upstairs of the house in confusion.

Jungkook whirls around, wide eyes taking in your appearance. You clutch at the hem of the big t-shirt you’d pulled on, the only article of clothing you saw that was thrown over a chair in a bedroom you didn’t dare snoop around. “Morning,” he exhales, calculating gaze never leaving you as you tiptoe over to him by the counter.

He doesn’t say more, spluttering into action when you peek over his shoulder to see what he’s up to. “What’re you making?” You inquire, and his hands begin fidgeting with the knife.

“Oh, um,” he stutters, and perhaps he’s overly aware of your presence so close beside him, because he suddenly doesn’t remember how he’s supposed to cut an avocado. Cute, you think. “Just, um, toast with avocado spread…”

You hum. After a moment, it seems Jungkook is able to quell his nerves, and he carefully slices the avocado open, spreading its innards across the toast. He hands you the first piece, which you take after masking your own surprise, and soon after he’s turning away from the counter as the two of you eat in silence.

After a few thoughtful munches of bread, you speak. “Thanks for carrying me to bed,” you say, refusing to look at him.

“You’re welcome,” he replies, almost a little too fast and you barely bite down a grin as he rambles on. “Wasn’t gonna leave you on the couch, especially not when you were so tired after… ah, yeah.”

It’s the reserved way he carries himself that gives you the balls to look at him. His ears are flushed adorably red, like when you were at dinner last night talking about his job, and all you wanna do is pinch his cheeks. “Yeah,” you agree, and then add with an air of faux shyness, “you were really cool last night.”

It’s the little devil in you begging to jump out, curious to see how far you can push Jungkook before he shifts into that suave version of himself from last night, and you would feel bad had the corner of his lips not tilted up in amusement.

He chokes out a laugh, mutters a “yeah?” and you don’t stop yourself when you jump into his arms and kiss that avocado spread right off his lips.

——

On Tuesday afternoon, Kim Namjoon is in the midst of delivering another sermon-like speech on the importance of utilizing your student ID when visiting any of the Starbucks within a two mile radius of your school, when you spot a chestnut head of hair from the corner of your eye.

“Sorry, Joon! My ride's here!” You yelp, shoving your notebook into your bag as you stumble over yourself in your haste to leave.

Namjoon blinks. “Huh? I thought you lived on campus?”

You nod, that giddy feeling starting up in your chest as he comes closer to where you and Namjoon have taken up residence on a table in the commons for your weekly meeting, and by the time he reaches the table Namjoon is still in the midst of questioning you.

“Jungkook,” You say, all dreamily and dazed, and you know this because Doyeon caught you with this same exact look on your face after he dropped you off at the dorms Sunday afternoon.

Namjoon startles. “What the f—“

“Hi,” Jungkook beams, leans down to brush a kiss against your cheek, which only serves to make you even more ditzy and dumb in the face of this handsome man. “Oh, hey, hyung.”

“What’re you doi—“

“All set?” Jungkook asks you, completely ignoring whatever his beloved senior was saying in favor of taking your bag off your shoulders. You nod, have to swallow a giggle down when he takes your hand in his. “Bye, hyung.”

“Bye, Joon!” You barely remember to throw over your shoulder, too busy wrapping yourself around Jungkook’s arm to hear Namjoon blabber in shock. 

“Kids these days,” he huffs.

[ part 2 ; hulu & woohoo ]

[thelastspeecher]

Monster Falls AU - Introductions

Once again, my ficlet naming skills leave something to be desired.  Here’s what I consider to be the Beginning of my variation of Monster Falls AU, aka when my darling OC Angie shows up.  But I could be persuaded to write scenes even a bit earlier, say, when the gents first begin transforming...

Anyways, enjoy poor Angie finding out what she unknowingly signed up for.

———————————————————————————————————–

             There was a knock on the front door.

             “Stanley, get clothed,” Fiddleford hissed.  Stan groaned.

             “C’mon, Fiddledork, five more minutes,” he said.

             “Ya can scratch yer back in private, like a gentleman.  Put on a shirt ‘fore she sees ya.”

             “Fine.”  Stan set down his backscratcher and walked over to the couch, where he had discarded his T-shirt earlier.  “Now that you’ve got some help for the cure, think you nerds could work on some sorta lotion for me?  These scales are driving me insane.”

             “I know, I know,” Fiddleford muttered, making his way to the front door.

             “Seriously, I haven’t felt itching like this before.”

             “I know!” Fiddleford barked.  He glared at Stan.  “I’ll see what I can do.  Right now, just get dressed.  We’re easin’ her into things, remember?”

             “I think it’s stupid, but I’ll go along with it,” Stan mumbled, slipping on his T-shirt.  “Hey, Ford, Fiddledork’s sister’s here!” he called.

             “I’ll be there in a moment!” Ford shouted from the basement.  “I’m cleaning the lab!”

             “It’s about time,” Fiddleford said under his breath. He opened the front door.  “Angie!”

             “Fidds!” a female voice squealed in delight.  Stan stared at the young woman embracing Fiddleford.

             Wait, she’s cute?  I thought she’d just be a nerd like Ford and Fiddledork!  The McGucket siblings broke apart.

             “Oh, it’s so wonderful to see ya!” Fiddleford’s sister gushed.  She frowned, concerned.  “Ya look pale.”  She put the back of her hand on Fiddleford’s forehead.  “Are ya feelin’ all right?”

             “I’m fine, I’m fine.  Just excited to see my baby sister.”  Fiddleford turned to face Stan.  “Stanley, this is my little sister, Dr. Angie McGucket.  Angie, this is one of the twins I’ve been workin’ with, Stanley Pines.”

             “Doctor,” Angie scoffed, shoving her brother playfully. “Yer worse ‘n Ma ‘n Pa!”  She smiled at Stan.  “Please, call me Angie.  My folks ‘re just happy I finally got my doctorate.”

             “Can ya blame us?  Yer the first McGucket to get a doctorate in anything!” Fiddleford gushed.  He kissed Angie on the cheek.  “I’m so proud of yer herpetology degree.”

             “Fiddledork, you said she was a biologist,” Stan said, crossing his arms.  Angie giggled cutely.

             “Herpetology is a subfield of biology,” she explained. “It’s the study of reptiles and amphibians.”

             “…Oh.”

             “But don’t worry, I’ve got a broad general biology background that should be enough to help with whatever it was ya needed my help with!”  Angie smiled at Stan.  Footsteps sounded.  Angie looked past Stan.  “This must be the other twin.”

             “Ah, yes, Stanford Pines, PhD,” Ford said, brushing past Stan to shake Angie’s hand.

             He must’ve put his human disguise on when he was downstairs.  Ford’s horns were hidden by his messy hair, his hairy legs were covered by his extra-long lab coat, and he wore boots over his cloven hooves.  Ford smiled politely at Angie.

             “Thank you so much for your willingness to help us,” he said.  Angie smiled back.

             “It’s no problem.  I’ve been a bit bored since I graduated.  I’m glad to have this opportunity to put my degree to good use.” Angie hefted her suitcase in one hand. “Sorry I got here so late.  I don’t have a car, so I had to take the bus, and them buses go awful slow.  I certainly hope ya didn’t wait fer me to have dinner!”

             “No, we’ve eaten already,” Ford said.

             “Oh.  Good.”

             “Did you eat?” Fiddleford asked.

             “No.”

             “I’ll fix ya up somethin’.”

             “Thank ya.”

             “Is that all you brought?” Stan interrupted. He nodded at Angie’s suitcase. She looked down at it.  “That’ll last you what, a week?”

             “It’ll last me long enough fer the rest of my things to arrive by mail,” Angie retorted.  “My friend Marley will be sendin’ m’ stuff.”  She cocked her head, her polite smile frozen on her face.  “Since yer so concerned with my belongings, maybe you should bring ‘em in,” she suggested.  Stan raised an eyebrow, impressed.

             “You’ve got some claws, don’t you?” he asked.

             “Bless yer heart,” Angie said, her voice cloyingly sweet.  She turned to Ford.  “I realize I got here late, but would ya mind sharin’ some of what I’ll be helpin’ ya with?” she asked.  Fiddleford cleared his throat.

             “We’re goin’ to ease ya into things,” he said. Angie frowned at him.

             “Why?”

             “It’s complicated work,” Ford said.  “Due to your late arrival, we won’t be able to, ah, debrief you until tomorrow.”

             “…Oh.”

             “But we can give you a tour of the lab!” Ford said brightly.  Angie smiled.

             “That would be lovely.”

             “Stanley, would you get her things?” Fiddleford said. He put his hands on Angie’s shoulders. “Stanford ‘n I will show her the lab.” He looked at Angie.  “At the mo’, we just have a lot of environmental samples collected from the woods, but I reckon you’d like to look at ‘em.”

             “Really?” Stan said.  “It’s just a bunch of dirt and creek water.”

             “Luckily, I’m a big fan of dirt and creek water,” Angie chirped.  She shot Stan another smile.  “Thank you fer bringin’ my things in.”  She marched past Stan, leaving behind her suitcase.  Fiddleford and Ford both gave Stan warning looks.  Once the scientists had disappeared, Stan picked up the suitcase.

             I like a lady who gives as good as she gets. He headed for the attic, where Angie would be staying.  Doesn’t hurt that she’s easy on the eyes, too. 

-----

             Stan was jolted awake by a bloodcurdling scream. He sprang from his bed, already out of the room by the time he realized he didn’t know where the scream came from nor whether he should be running towards it.

             Odds are that I shouldn’t be going after it. Screaming is never a good thing to investigate.  Not without a weapon.  The door to Ford and Fiddleford’s room opened.  Fiddleford hesitantly entered the hallway, white as a sheet.

             “That was Angie,” Fiddleford whispered.

             “Why the hell did she scream like that?” Stan asked.  Fiddleford swallowed nervously.

             “Probably ‘cause she saw somethin’ what wasn’t natural.”

             “Look, man, it’s way too early to deal with this shit,” Stan said shortly. “What are you getting at?”

             “I’ll need- I’ll need to talk to her, but I’m worried that she might-” Fiddleford started.  Footsteps sounded.  Stan hurriedly ducked back into his bedroom, as his pajamas didn’t cover up the scales that were slowly spreading across his body.  He closed his door most of the way, leaving it open just enough to eavesdrop. The source of the footsteps, Angie, ran past his door.

             “Fidds,” Angie hissed.  “I need- I need to talk to ya.”

             “Uh, sure, Angie.”

             “Could- could ya close yer bedroom door?  I don’t want Stanford to hear.”

             “Of course.”  Fiddleford closed the door.  “What’s goin’ on?”

             “I’m-”  Angie took a shuddering breath.  “I woke up this mornin’ and my legs, they were awfully itchy, so I went to put some lotion on ‘em.”

             “And?”

             “And…”  Angie’s voice became even softer.  “I had- I had scales.”  Stan’s heart stopped.

             Shit.  It spread to her?

             “Show me,” Fiddleford said.  There was a rustle of fabric.  “Those- those are scales, fer sure.”

             “What- what do I do, Fidds?” Angie asked desperately.  “Do I- do I go to the doctor?”  Stan pushed open his door.  The McGucket siblings looked up.  Angie hurriedly lowered the leg of her pajama pants, but not before Stan caught sight of black and yellow scales across her thigh.  “S-Stanley!”

             “I’m gonna come out and say it, ‘cause Fiddledork’s gonna beat around the bush,” Stan said bluntly.  “You’re turning into a magical creature.”  Angie paled.

             “W-what?” she squeaked.

             “That’s why we asked you to come here.  A while back, we got exposed to something, and since then, we’ve been turning into magical creatures.”

             “M-magical-”  Angie looked like she was about to faint.  “I-”

             “Stanley!” Fiddleford hissed.  “Ease her into it!”

             “She deserves some answers,” Stan snapped.  He looked at Angie.  “I’ve got scales, too.”  He turned around, revealing the maroon scales that now covered his upper back.  Angie gasped.  Stan turned back to face her.  “Ford and Fiddledork have been trying to come up with a way to reverse it, but they weren’t having any luck.”

             “So- so ya roped me in,” Angie said weakly.  Stan nodded.  “Why’d ya invite me here if ya knew it was some sort of…contagious condition?”

             “We didn’t know it would spread to ya,” Fiddleford said.  “If we did, I wouldn’t have asked ya to come here.”

             “What exactly do ya know about this condition?” Angie asked.

             “…Not much.”

             “So ya didn’t know it would spread, but ya also didn’t know it wouldn’t,” Angie said.  She shook her head.  “Fiddleford, this- I’m-”  She took a shaky breath.  “I thought ya were more responsible than this!”

             “Angie, I’d never intend to hurt ya.  Please, believe me!” Fiddleford begged.  Angie kneaded her forehead.

             “Fiddleford…” she said softly.  The door to Ford and Fiddleford’s bedroom opened.  Ford stood in the doorway, his goatlike legs on full display.

             “Did I hear correctly?  The transformation has spread?” Ford asked.  Angie looked up.  She let out a small squeak and collapsed.  “Is- is she all right?”

             “Fucking hell,” Stan groaned.  He walked over to Angie’s prone body and checked her pulse.  “Okay, I think she just passed out from seeing Ford.”

             “We should’ve eased her into things,” Fiddleford moaned loudly.

             “Would you just drop it?” Stan snapped.  “We’re way past that, Fiddledork!”  Angie stirred slightly.  The movement caused her shirt to lift slightly, revealing more scales, this time red and yellow, by her belly button.

             Maybe she’s turning into whatever I’m turning into.  That might be nice.

             “Stanley, please pick up Angie.  We should move her to a softer surface,” Ford said.  Stan rolled his eyes.

             “Fine.”  He picked Angie up.  She settled into his arms with a soft sigh.  “Want me to put her on the couch or what?”

             “Yes, the couch seems a good idea.  I can examine her more easily than if she were in bed.”

             “Oh, hell no,” Fiddleford said immediately.  Ford looked at him.  “Stanford Filbrick Pines, you are not examinin’ my baby sister while she’s unconscious!”

             “I won’t do anything to her.”

             “Don’t matter.  Yer studyin’ can wait until she’s awake.”  Fiddleford looked at Angie, visibly heartbroken.  “But when she wakes up, we’ll have to answer her questions ‘fore she answers ours.”

[allthewhumpygoodness]

My (kind of) entry for @sicktember prompts #1 and #11 sorta combined. Medieval fantasy-ish.

The wind bit through their layers of clothing, even where they sat huddled before the fire. The flames swayed enticingly, the hot coals below looking like a warm cave they longed to curl up in. Though at this point they figured not even that would warm their frozen bones.

"A?" They looked up and saw B watching them, concern in their eyes. "How long have you been out here?"

A shrugged, another shiver taking hold of them. "A few hours, I guess."

"Hours? A, you're clearly exhausted. Go back to your tent, I'll take watch for now."

They just shrugged again, turning back to the fire. There was an aching behind their eyes that had only worsened over the past while, as much as they longed to shut them they knew it would only be all the worse if they did. They longed to sleep, to flop over right where they sat and let their sore muscles rest for a while.

B sat down beside them with a huffing sigh. "So something's bothering you. Isn't that right?"

At this point, A was far too tired to deny it. "How can you tell?"

"You always stalk off on your own when something is wrong. You get all quiet. More quiet than usual, that is."

Normally A might have laughed. But now they were simply too exhausted for it. "I haven't been feeling my best, that's all. Nothing that important."

"How so?"

"It doesn't matter."

"A."

B was giving them a side eye. They knew it, even if they weren't looking at them. Another chill hit them, making them pull their cloak tighter around their shoulders. They coughed a little into their shoulder, not realizing until they did that there was a deep ache in their chest, spreading into their arms. "I've just been tired, chilled. I ache all over." They shot B a look. "Probably just from riding all day, I'm sure."

"Oh, to be sure." Even as A curled up tighter, resting their chin on their knees, they could feel their friend's eyes on them.

Exhaustion weighed down on their eyelids, forcing them shut. They buried their face in the folds of their cloak, allowing the darkness to soothe the aches in their head and eyes a little. Soon B would leave, they knew that. Everyone left eventually.

Sure enough, they heard the shuffle of boots, the sounds of somebody standing and walk away. Maybe it was their tiredness, but they felt tears closing up their throat. Stupid. They'd known B was going to leave. They'd known. They shouldn't have been surprised.

The wind blew harsher against them in their huddled bundle and they shivered worse than ever. Out of nowhere their face and neck felt uncomfortably hot in comparison to the icy block of the rest of their body. They pried it up from their knees and were hit with a wave of dizziness. Maybe B was right, and they should just go back to their tent.

Another repeated thud of footsteps came up behind them and they turned, wincing as the dizziness worsened.

"Here you go. How long has it been since you've eaten?" A blinked. It took them a moment to make sense of that they were seeing - B, standing over them with a bowl of steaming soup in their hands.

"You came back," they said blankly. They'd thought...

B shrugged. "Of course I did. What, did you expect me to leave you here by yourself?"

They didn't answer that. "I just didn't...thanks, B."

"Not a problem."

A's heart warmed a little just at the feeling of them sitting down beside them again. They hadn't been abandoned. Not yet.

The soup warmed them too. It was a good, strong broth with some herbs and bits of meat, but not much else. Which didn't bother them much - they hadn't been hungry in a while. But the warmth of it was nonetheless comforting. They sat and sipped, the soothing heat of the soup and the fire lulling them from the inside out. They almost could forget how sore their head and tired muscles were, and how the world spun when they turned their head too suddenly.

Halfway through the bowl they couldn't make themselves eat anymore. Their body felt weighted to the ground; if they didn't have to move for a hundred years they would have been happy. When the half empty bowl of soup almost slid from their grasp for a third time, they felt a firm but gentle hand on their arm. "Come on, you're dead on your feet. Let's get you back into your tent."

This time, A didn't bother to protest. They let B pull them to their feet, one arm around their still trembling shoulders. The ground swooped out from underneath them and they stumbled, swaying against their friend.

They heard B chuckle. "Watch yourself, A. You must really be exhausted."

Responding took too much effort. Instead they let their head flop against B's shoulder as another wave of dizziness tugged at them. The camp torches eventually faded from their sight as they approached the wooded area that held most of the tents. By the time they reached their own they were shivering worse than ever, their head pounding in time with their heart. If they didn't lie down soon they really would collapse.

The next few minutes were a bit of a blur, but they could hear B's cheerful voice talking away as they helped A into bed, even helping them pull off their boots and tossing every blanket they possessed on top of them. It was a little better in there, warmer yet darker, and lying flat made their head stop spinning, even if there was only a light mat separating them from the hard ground beneath.

"Get some sleep," said their friend's voice from somewhere above them. "I'll take your watch."

It wasn't long before they slipped into an uneasy sleep, disturbed by dreams that flitted around half formed until they could no longer tell if they were dreams or not. They opened their eyes a crack, still half asleep, and saw a dark thread on the wall of their tent...the thread became a spider creeping slowly towards them, they jerked back but instead of waking up the spiders only bored into their dreams, speaking to them with evil voices. Then they were struck by lightning and frozen in place, all their muscles taut and rigid, unable to move, unable to breathe, everything aching...a dark shape rose up above them until it was too big to see, stretching all around the tent, it reached down and grabbed them...

This time they sprang awake with a cry, scrambling backward away from the terrible shadow fingers that reached out for them. They couldn't breathe, their head was pounding, surely they were going to die...

"A," said a half familiar voice. "Hey, A, it's just me. Breathe."

They tried. In an instant they started coughing, their chest sore and ragged. A pair of strong hands held their shoulders, rubbing gently. "You're all right. Deep breaths now, I just need you to breathe."

A slumped against B's shoulder, worn down completely, their breath shuddering in their chest. Their limbs burned and froze and shook all at once, the ground beneath them tilting horribly. They felt themselves being laid down again, grasping out for their pillow. B's voice remained in their ears, gentle and comforting.

A second voice joined theirs. "Are they all right?"

A hand brushed their forehead. "They've got a fever, trouble breathing..."

"The poor thing..."

"Please don't go," A said hoarsely, suddenly terrified. Their eyes cracked open a sliver, B and now C too blurred in their vision. "I - I don't want to be alone."

"Of course not." B brushed the hair out of their face. "You're going to be just fine, we'll take good care of you."

Their eyes burned, head aching terribly. They could hear shuffling, the hushed voices of B and C and others from the camp in the background - probably talking about them, their overtired brain finally caught up enough to realize.

"Don't help me." It took them a second to tell they'd spoken out loud, but once they began they found it hard to stop. "Don't, I'm just a burden to you...please leave me be."

C's gentle voice was close to them now. "I thought you just said you didn't want to be alone?"

"They're mostly delirious, C." That was B. "Don't pay attention, just wait with them while I try and get my hands on some medicine."

A slid into a half sleep, imagining shadowy fingers creeping up their shoulder and voices whispering in their ear. Their eyes snapped open once, heart racing, but all they saw was the dim light of a candle and C's anxious face above them. Whimpering a little, they curled over on their other side, fighting to ignore the spinning in their head and the sickening ache in their joints. Everything was too much.

For a while it remained too much; no matter how much they tossed and turned they could not get comfortable, sore muscles and chills beating them down the worst. B returned with a spoonful of some bitter herbs that they managed to coax down A's throat despite their protests, which did nothing but leave a sour feeling in their stomach. They could not tell whether it was day or night anymore, all they knew was that they longed to sleep and couldn't seem to no matter what, and could not escape the pain that encircled them.

Their friends' faces merged with each other, and other faces they'd known long ago and thought to have forgotten, sometimes they thought they cried out for people no longer alive but in the small part of their mind that was still lucid hoped very much against it.

Once they woke up with a cry of fear from a nightmare that was already fading away, but the terror still clung to them. They shivered violently in the dark, limbs and head burning, until they felt another blanket go around them and C's voice shushing them and telling them to go back to sleep.

It continued on like that for a while. There were times when they were fully awake, but those times only meant they could feel the full effects of their illness, and they found themselves craving sleep when they came. B or C sat with them most times, but sometimes others would poke their heads into the tent to see how they're doing, sitting with them and making jokes in an effort to cheer them up, or just bringing them a bowl of soup when they hadn't eaten in a while. They never realized so many people cared about them.

Finally, one day they woke up to find their head was no longer pounding, their limbs still horribly stiff but not quite as sore as they had been. With weary eyes they looked automatically to the side of their cot and once again saw B sitting there, one hand laid gently on the top of their head. "You're awake, I see. Feeling any better?"

The hand in their hair was soothing. "A little," they answered croakily. "Did - did C come in too, or was that a dream?"

B chuckled. "Half the camp visited you at some point. They were all very concerned, did you expect them not to be?"

A lump rose unexpectedly in their throat. "I - I guess I did expect that."

B sighed. "A, we care about you. All of us care about you. How many times can we say it? Or show it?"

A was too tired to halt the tears that slipped from their eyes. "I'm sorry," they muttered, "I'm just...not used to people caring very much."

"Well, get used to it. You don't have to do this all by yourself, A."

It was too hard to stop the tears now, so they let them fall and curled up tighter under their blankets. They still weren't sure how much control they'd have over what words came out of their mouth, so they kept it shut for the time being, and tried to think of nothing but B's careful hand running through their hair. They had friends. They had a family.

It was almost too much.

But in a good way.