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avocado-writing · 3 years ago

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Cut You A Piece Of Me

Part 3, Spring

| Beetlejuice x GN!Reader

| 6k

| Rated: E. MINORS DNI

| Summary:

A college student finds a cheap room in an old house, and soon finds out why the rent is so low.

Part 1: Autumn, Part 2: Winter

The journey back home is long but fine. It’s lonely in the car, even when you put the radio on to keep you company. You kinda wish he was there with you. He’d keep you entertained even if you wanted to punch him.

It’s gonna be a long holiday break.

Your family is happy to have you home and you get down to the celebrations and their feigned interest at what you do in university.

A couple of days go past. Your phone buzzes with a text. It’s from Lydia.

Lydia 🕷: wen u bak

You furrow your brow. Lydia doesn’t usually use abbreviated text. Always full sentences. In fact, she calls you out for shortening words.

You: Beetlejuice?

Lydia: 😈

You snort. Of course.

You: give Lydia back her phone. I’m sure she won’t appreciate it being hijacked.

A pause. Then:

Lydia:😭

Lydia: 😏😜👅🍆💦

You’re not sure if that’s a joke or a promise. Either way it elicits an eye roll.

You: You stop that.

The next text you get actually is from Lydia.

Lydia: Sorry. He took my phone and ran. I’m trying to convince dad and Delia to get him his own one.

You’re left on that, with a small smile lingering on your lips. A couple of days later you receive a text from an unknown number. It’s a picture of Beetlejuice lying back on your bed at the Deetz house, a wild grin on his face showing off the fangs he hides so well. There’s just a kiss emoji.

You: you annoyed the Deetzs into getting you a cell then?

BJ: ‘bulied’ s a strong word

A couple of seconds, then:

BJ: send nuds

You roll your eyes but decide to oblige him. The holiday spirit has gripped you and you’re feeling generous. You pull down your top and send him a snap of your chest. After a few minutes you get another message.

BJ: ❤️💛💓😩😩👌💦💦

You let out a little giggle. It’s sort of flattering if a bit coarse. Like every compliment he gives you really.

It goes on like that while you’re home. He sort of makes the holiday season bearable, actually. Your family’s quiet disappointment in your choice of degree is softened by having him to message. Mostly what he texts is a string of emojis which you have to decipher like a dirty pictogram. But you find yourself smiling a lot. And part of you can’t wait to get back to your home away from home.

Then again… was it really that any more? Or was it just home?

And the longer you stay away the more you sort of miss it.

The strange friends you’ve made. The ghost couple in the attic. The goth child you seem to have somewhat had thrusted under your wing. The demon you’re sending semi-regular nudes to.

And the worst thing is you know you’re going to have to leave.

It sucks. But it’s true. Your tenancy is only going to last for another six months or so. And then you’re going to have to vacate.

You assume everybody there knows it. That you aren’t a permanent feature. You’ll have to leave when the tenancy is done, when your degree is finished. But it’s not really a conversation you want to have. Much like all your important conversations you’re… ignoring it.

Trying to live in the now.

You go back home - real home - in mid January. It’s been too long since you’ve seen everyone. You arrive as quietly as your little car will allow. You gave Delia prior warning, of course, but you didn’t let Lydia or Beej know you were getting home early. You think it will be nice to see their reactions.

After sneaking up the stairs you find them in Lydia’s room. She’s sitting on her bed and Beetlejuice is on the floor with his arms propped up on her mattress. She has a look of concentration on her face and it takes a moment for you to realise she’s doing his nails, painstakingly careful brushstrokes of black. You catch the tail end of the conversation.

“...going steady?”

Beetlejuice shrugs, messing up Lydia’s paintwork and causing her to curse. He sticks his tongue out at her before sighing.

“I don’t know. I mean, I hope so. Who would want to miss out on all this?” he tries to gesture to himself, then takes a moment to actually take a look at how he’s dressed. He seems to slump a little. “I guess quite a few people actually, huh?”

“Just take a bath and get a new suit. They’ll appreciate if you make an effort.”

“But… my aesthetic,” he whines.

“Is like you crawled out of a grave, yeah.”

“Thank you! I’ve been cultivating the look for years. This doesn’t come naturally.”

Lydia sits back and puts the cap on the little bottle. “Blow,” she instructs, gesturing to his nails. He does so but in between breaths admits:

“I dunno. I just miss ‘em.”

“Oh sorry,” says Lydia, “is hanging out with your ex-wife not good enough for you anymore?”

“Ex-wife?” you finally say. Their heads both snap around to face you.

“Doll!” Beetlejuice cries, his face lit up with the genuine kind of excitement you didn’t often see. In a moment he’s on his feet and off towards you. You go in for a hug, him a kiss. You knock your heads together. Awkwardly you shuffle apart, an uncomfortable silence settling over Lydia’s room.

“Oh god,” Lydia says, “I’m leaving. Nice to have you back, though.”

“But this is your room,” you say, but she waves your complaint with a delicately-manicured hand - Beej’s work? - and walks off.

You and Beetlejuice are left alone.

“So… you were married?” you ask, at length. He winces, scratching the back of his head.

“I don’t wanna talk about it. It was a, uh, bad time in my life. Bad-der, I guess, hah.”

You narrow your eyes and he sighs.

“I really wanted to get to the real world, she was easily blackmail-able, we’re over it now.”

You nod. Okay. You don’t really want to know any more.

“So how was your time at home? Did you miss this face?”

With that he hops in the air and begins to float, making a slow orbit around you. You feel a smile tugging at your lips despite everything. It’s so easy to fall back into your usual patter.

“It was nice. But yeah. I did,” you say, and watch with a smug glee as you see him begin to colour pink. “How was your Hannukah?”

He shrugs. “Same.”

You stare at each other for a long moment, gaze holding fast as he continues his levitation. Then you speak at the same time:

“Well, I’d better go unpack—”

“Can I be your boyfriend?”

You almost choke on your breath, wondering if this is a joke he’s playing. But his eyes are puppy-dog wide and sincere in a way you’re rarely used to.

“Do you want to be my boyfriend?” you ask, after considering it. After a moment, Beetlejuice nods. You see the telltale signs of pink taking root in his hair.

“Do you want me to want to be your boyfriend?” he counters.

You let yourself relax into a smile.

“Yeah. Sure, okay. You can be my boyfriend.”

His face splits into a grin so wide you think he may split his cheeks, and he does a spin in the air culminating in a handstand in front of you.

“Hell yeah, baby!” he shouts, righting himself when he’s finished with his celebration and pulling you into his arms. It’s such an honest display of enthusiasm you can’t help but let yourself laugh.

“Hey, can I kiss you?” he asks, after a moment. You’re so shocked he’s asked permission you’re struck silent, and instead of giving a verbal response you answer by pressing your lips to his.

You can feel he wants to stick his tongue immediately in your mouth, but you’re pleasantly surprised when he restrains himself. Instead he gives you a kiss which errs on the side of pleasant. He cups your face and you press your cheek into his palm affectionately.

“Come on,” you say, eventually, “let’s go unpack my stuff.”

When he thinks you’re out of earshot, you hear him mutter to himself.

“I’m gonna be such a good boyfriend.”

You smile.

And he actually… kind of is?

Not all the time, you mean - he is still Beetlejuice, after all -

“I hate spring. Everything’s so alive.” A spider is crawling along the wall. He slaps his hand down on it with expert precision, inspects the carnage on his palm, then fucking eats it.

“Oh my god,” you say, “I let you kiss me with that mouth.”

“You sure do!” he beams -

But overall, it’s… nice.

The weather warms, and flowers begin to bloom in the garden, even though you can guess from Lydia’s withering gazes she wishes they weren’t. You study, come home, do your work, and then spend time with the family and your new - demon - boyfriend.

Beetlejuice is rather clingy, but with all things considered that’s sort of to be expected. He complains constantly that he misses you when you’re gone, then whines how bored he was when you get back. But overall you can see how kind of… devoted he is to you.

There’s a thing about love languages. You can tell one of Beej’s is physical touch, considering the way he’s pretty much always draped over you.

And gifts. Apparently.

You look down at the row of dead bugs on your windowsill. Seems like they’ve been getting more and more frequent these past couple of weeks. They’re all quite pretty, iridescent beetles and beautiful butterflies. They are dead though.

“Beetlejuice?”

“That’s my name, just say it two more times!”

He beams, just like he always does when you call him. You’re getting used to him appearing out of thin air now. You don't jump like you used to.

“Are you putting these here?” You gesture to the row of tiny corpses.

He makes a noncommittal noise and scuffs his shoe on the ground. You furrow your brow.

“Are you mad at me?”

“What?! No!” he says, in obvious hurt. Suddenly, everything falls into place.

“Are these… presents, then?”

“I dunno. I guess,” replies. His cheeks don’t go pink in embarrassment but his hair does. He disappears before you can ask anything else.

You look back over to them and smile.

You invest in some insect pinning equipment and put them up over the next couple of days.

A couple of days later when he sees what you’ve done, he beams. It’s a bit of a macabre decoration but, hey, it suits the two of you down to a tee.

“Hey, is it your birthday soon?”

Your head snaps up from where you’re looking at your laptop. Beetlejuice lazily floats through the air on his back, kicking his legs as if he’s swimming.

“How did you know that?”

“Went through your bag,” he replies with a shrug. You pinch the bridge of your nose in frustration.

“Why, Beej?”

“I was looking for snacks.”

“We live above a kitchen! Why don’t you get snacks from there?”

“Because they taste nicer when they’re from your bag,” he says with a pout.

“Hang on,” you say, swivelling round in your chair to face him, “do you even need to eat? Aren’t you dead?”

“No, I don’t need to.”

“But you do eat? You ate that whole pizza yesterday. Rolled it up and shoved the whole thing down your throat like a snake.”

“Ha! Yeah I did do that. Man, that was funny.” He waves his hand, as if getting rid of the conversation from the air. “Anyway. Stop deflecting. What do you want for your birthday?”

You open your mouth to say, ‘nothing!’, but he beats you there with a: “And don’t go pulling that ‘I don’t want anything’ crap. I know it’s a lie, you know it’s a lie, and lying doesn’t suit you, dollface.”

With a sigh you reach out to take his hand. Even such a simple gesture gets the pink going in his hair.

“Whatever you get for me I’ll like, Beej.”

He grins so wide his face nearly splits in half.

When you wake up on the morning of your birthday, he’s hovering a foot over you. You scream in surprise and lash out - earning him a slap to the side of the face.

“Ha, nice,” he says, rubbing the cheek where your hand just landed. You roll your eyes at him but manage a smile anyway.

“Morning, Beej.”

“Happy birthday, doll.”

He reaches down to kiss you, but you hear Lydia’s voice interrupt the moment.

“Beetlejuice, it’s their birthday. You could have let them sleep in.”

“No,” he states, sitting down and shifting over on your bed so Lydia can join. The Maitlands are behind her too, and they’ve managed to materialise party hats from somewhere.

“Happy birthday! Sorry we couldn’t get you anything, being that we’re, you know, dead,” Barbara says. “But we’ve decided you can have anything of ours you want from the attic!”

“Except the kombucha,” warns Adam, “the kombucha is not good.”

“Thank you, guys,” you say with a laugh.

“This is from me,” says Lydia, shoving a present into your hands. You can see she’s blushing, shy. You tear open the newspaper wrapping and look at the present she’s given you.

It’s a collage. Of photos she’s taken. There’s one of you and her grinning into the camera, a rare selfie - a picture from the Halloween party all that time ago, you in the attic with two floating orbs you can tell, as much as they show up on camera, are Barbara and Adam.

And in the middle is a photo of you and Beetlejuice.

You’re both high in the air, his arms encircling you and carrying you bridal-style. Even though the picture is angled upwards you can still see the look of gentle, sincere adoration on his face.

You remember that day. When Lydia asked you to model for her. The first day you trusted him.

“Oh, Lyds,” you whisper, and pull her into a hug.

“It’s nothing,” she mutters. She only has a moment to return your embrace before you feel Beetlejuice press something against you.

“Okay, enough breather bonding time, my turn!”

You carefully take the offered present and stare at it. It’s not big. Maybe ring box sized. You narrow your eyes.

“Can I open this if there’s a minor present?” It’s not beyond him to gift you a cock ring. You’re not even sure if you’d mind it.

“What! Yes, what do you take me for? Some kind of demon pervert?” A millisecond of a pause. “Don’t answer that.”

With a shrug, you slide a finger under the wrapping paper and open it up.

It is a jewellery box.

And inside is a necklace. A small silver “B” on a fine, discreet chain. It’s surprisingly tasteful - and restrained - for a present from him.

“Oh, Beej. I love it,” you say, honestly. You look over to him to see he’s started to undo his tie, unbutton his collar.

“And see? We match!”

You think maybe he’ll show you a matching necklace, maybe your own initial hanging from it.

What you don’t expect is to see your name TATTOOED across his chest.

You manage to strangle back a gently horrified “Beetlejuice what the FUCK,” and instead force a smile.

Well. Actually. This is pretty on brand for a display of affection from him.

“That’s not how you spell their name,” Lydia pipes up. Beetlejuice frowns and tries to look down.

“What?”

“I said that’s not how you spell their name. It’s like this,” Lydia scribbles your name down on a piece of discarded paper and shows it to him. Beetlejuice shrugs.

“Eh, whatever. It’s the thought that counts, right?”

“Yeah, Beej,” you say, genuinely, “it is.”

It ends up being a really nice birthday. You don’t do much, with it not really being a milestone, but you hang out with your friends and enjoy each other’s company.

If you had known a year ago that your friend group of this strange group - well, you probably wouldn’t have changed a thing.

You go to bed in the small hours nearly asleep on your feet. Beetlejuice floats behind you like a horny balloon animal.

“You want some birthday sugar?” he asks, eyeing you as you strip to get into your pyjamas.

“Come and cuddle me first,” you say with a sleepy yawn, clambering under the covers and holding out your arms. Beetlejuice seems a bit taken aback by the request but is obedient, trying to hide the pink in his roots as he snuggles down next to you.

He smells of grave dirt only vaguely now. You can’t believe you’re getting used to it. But he lacks much body temperature, being dead and all, so he’s the perfect bedfellow for a warmer spring night. After a moment he turns to press his face into your neck, not to be overly amorous, but merely to be closer to you.

“Can I tell you something?” he asks. His voice is small. He’s going to say something sincere. You wonder if he gets the courage by not looking at you when he says it.

“Anything, Beej.”

“I’m really glad you rented this room.”

Your hand finds itself in his hair, petting gently. He drops a kiss on your shoulder.

“I am too, bug.”

“Babes?”

“Yeah?”

“There’s something else you need to know.”

“Shoot.”

This time he does look you in the eye.

“So long as I have a face, you will always have a place to sit.”

You snort, loud and ugly, and Beetlejuice gets the same smile on his face he always does when he can make you laugh.

With a burst of renewed energy you push him over and pin him on his back.

“Can I put that to the test?”

You don’t need to ask twice.

Spring gets warmer, you wear less clothes - which Beeltejuice loves - and Lydia gets sadder.

Lydia always has an air of the morose around her, but it becomes more palpable the further into spring you get. One day you decide to talk to her about it. You come into her room with a pair of sodas - you’ve been friends with her for long enough to know what her favourite is - a pack of donuts, and open ears.

“Hey. Wanna hang?”

She looks up from her book - Frankenstein, you’re not surprised to see - and shuffles over on her bed. You plop down heavily and open the food, listening out to make sure Beetlejuice doesn’t hear the sound of the packet opening and come running like a pet cat.

He doesn’t, and you’re safe.

“Don’t you have coursework to be doing?” Lydia asks as she fishes a donut out with her forefinger and thumb, nibbling at the edge carefully. She doesn’t ask it unkindly, but maybe a little teasingly, because she knows the answer is yes.

“Don’t you have homework to be doing?”

She shrugs, beaten, and shoves the donut into her mouth. You relax in companionable silence for a moment before you breach the subject.

“You’ve seemed sad recently. Well. Sadder. Everything okay?”

Lydia sighs. Dusts off some crumbs from her quilt.

“It’s the anniversary of my mom’s death next week.”

Ah.

“Oh, honey. I’m so sorry.”

She shrugs.

“It’s fine. I’m… better about it. I think we’ll be taking a trip to New York to visit her grave.”

“Do you want to talk about her?”

Lydia seems unsure.

“Is that okay?”

“Of course.”

And so, perhaps the most animated you’ve ever seen her, she does.

You offer to come with her next week, if she wants some company that’s neither her father nor Delia, but it seems Charles has other ideas.

“We were hoping you could house-sit,” he says the next morning. “We trust you and we need someone to keep our… other house guests in line.”

You feel a thrum in the air that means you know Beetlejuice is listening in to this conversation, and likes what he’s hearing. Also you understand this is a reasonably big ask and want to be a good lodger.

“Of course, Charles. I’d be happy to.”

You pretend you don’t hear the whispered boo-yah from another plane.

The next week goes by quickly, but Beetlejuice feels more than ever like he’s so wound up he’s about to snap. Constantly pawing at your body, being touchy-feely. You indulge him when you feel like it, but know if you give an inch he’ll take a mile - and you’ll never get out of bed again unless you set some boundaries.

On the day the Deetzes leave, you give Lydia a firm hug which she returns.

“I’m on the end of the phone if you need me, okay?” you tell her, and feel her nod against your shoulder. From the kitchen you watch your host family load their luggage, then themselves, into their car -

– then a pair of arms wraps around you and hoists you onto the kitchen counter.

“Waah-!”

Beetlejuice steps between your legs, grabbing your ankles so he can wrench you forward flush against him. He buries his face between your shoulder and your neck and takes in a deep, deep breath of your scent.

“Finally, we have this place to ourselves,” he mutters, and you can hear the grin on his face even if you can’t see it. “Where are we starting? Here? Sofa? Hey, we can even go into the laundry room if you wanna sit on the dryer while it vibrates, if that will get you off.”

You suppress a snort of laughter and gently press your hands to his chest, pushing him off of you.

“Beetlejuice, firstly, we’re not going to have sex while I can still see their car in the driveway -”

With a gesture, all the blinds on the kitchen windows shut, cutting off daylight and prying eyes at once.

“Better?”

“- and secondly, I’m not fucking all over their house because that would be rude.”

Beetlejuice makes a whiny noise of complaint in the back of his throat. You cup his cheeks in your hand, forcing him to look in your eyes.

“But, that being said. Why don’t you take a shower and meet me upstairs?”

Your voice is low, sultry, and full of promise for the rest of the day. His eyes go wide. You’ve never seen him run before, let alone for a wash, but there’s pretty much a Beetlejuice-shaped empty space where he rockets off to the bathroom.

When you’re happy you can hear the faucet being turned on, you begin the walk up to your room.

You strip once you cross the threshold, discarding your clothes in a line over to the bed. Dropping to your knees you pull out one of the suitcases you packed when you came back from your break over the holidays.

With a grin, you take out your strap and harness, and begin to get ready.

After what is probably too short a time in the shower than Beetlejuice actually needs, you hear the water stop and the door open. Your boyfriend stalks into your room looking surprisingly… clean. Sure, there’s still moss on him, and there’s some crust that simply won't come off, but he looks far closer to alive than dead now.

And when he takes in the sight of you lying on the bed, fake cock bobbing between your legs, he throws his head up and mutters something that you think might be a ‘thank you, god’.

“You kept this well hidden, huh?” he asks, stalking over to the bed, clambering up towards you. When he reaches out to touch you surprise him - grabbing him by the wrist and flipping him onto his back, straddling him before he can regain his wits. His pupils immediately blow wide, his hair streaking quickly from a playful green to shocking pink.

“You think you can be good for me, Beej?”

He tries to look cocky but it’s rather ruined by the way he’s trying to grind his half-hard dick up into you. You give him a gentle slap on the hip to get him to behave.

“I’m never good, doll.”

“Awh, well. I’m sure we can fix that.”

You drop your head down to press a kiss to his clavicle. He sucks in a breath he doesn’t need from the intimate feeling of it, keeping it locked in his lungs as you make your way down his body. A tongue over a nipple. A nip to his wonderful stomach. Running your bared teeth over the meat of his thigh.

“Babe, don’t make me wa-” he begins to object, but is stopped when you reach up to stuff your fingers in his mouth. His sentence is cut off with a moan as he begins to suck them. His tongue is pointed and long. Far longer than a human’s tongue would be and with far more potential, too. As you caress his body but ignore his cock you look up, watching the way he wraps it round your digits and out to taste the sweat on your palm.

“I think you can be very good, actually.”

You press a single kiss to his shaft before you sit back up, reaching over to your side table to get out the (recently) well-used bottle of lube.

Beetlejuice groans in annoyance when you extract your fingers from his mouth, but watches curiously as you pour a generous portion of it into your hand.

“Knees open for me, honey.”

Beetlejuice does as he’s bid, for once without arguing, watching you like a hawk as you press two fingers to the rim of his hole.

“Fu-uu-uck,” he groans as you push inside him, all the way down to your final knuckle. He takes you like a champion. You crook your fingers upwards to press into the sweet spot you know is there and he throws his head back with a choked moan.

“Babes…”

“Hmm?”

You pump your fingers in and out, adding a third, holding his desperate gaze. You like him like this. Putty in your hand, lost for words because of the pleasure you have him strung out on.

“Y-y’know, demon bodies are built different to breathers. You don’t need to prep me.”

You hum as you consider this.

“Maybe I just wanted to feel you, Beej.”

He lets out another moan, this one a lot more wanton than before. He struggles for words.

“Does it feel good, honey?”

“Y-yeah.”

“Then don’t think. Just enjoy it.”

Beetlejuice collapses back from where he’s been holding himself up on his forearms, reaching back and holding onto your bed pillows for dear life.

You continue your work languidly, in no great hurry to have this over. You enjoy Beetlejuice being reduced to a quivering mess around your fingers. Bring him down a peg or two - hah!, so to speak. You watch the way his cock hardens and bounces against his stomach, leaving smears of precome against the hair leading down to his groin. If you were feeling kind you might take it in your hand, give it a couple of pumps.

However, you’re feeling more like gently torturing him.

Eventually you extract your hand. You add some extra lube to the strap and wipe what’s left off your slippery fingers and onto his chest. His fingers grip the pillows so hard you can hear the sound of fabric tearing.

“Ready?”

“Fuck. Shit. Yeah. Just, fuck, give me anything, babe. I’m dying here.”

You resist the urge to ask, “but aren’t you already dead?” and instead line up the head of your dick with his entrance. You push in reasonably slow, giving him time to adjust, but quickly find yourself bottoming out.

Opened up on you, Beetlejuice thrashes and turns.

“Holy crap, move,” he chokes.

“Magic word?”

“Come on, babes -”

You sigh dramatically and begin to pull out.

“Okay, fine! Please! Fucking, fuck me, please!”

With a vulpine grin, you do.

Your hips move hard and fast against his own, spearing him over and over again with your strap. Each push grinds down into your clit as it hits his prostate, pleasuring you both. But you have a job to focus on. And that’s to reduce him to a blubbering mess.

So far it seems like you’re succeeding.

“Fuck, yes, ah-!” Beetlejuice covers his face with his hands as he loses himself in the pleasure of being fucked, but you don’t let him stay like that - instead you link your fingers through his own and hold them down into your ruined pillows, pinning him and making sure you can see his face.

The sounds your dick makes are obscene, the intimate slide of wet flesh, but it’s all worth it when Beetlejuice hauls his legs up to wrap them around your waist. You feel him cross his ankles to lock himself in place underneath you.

“You want to come, huh, Beej?”

He nods, desperate.

“Gonna need to hear you say it out loud, sugar.”

“Yes!”

“Then come.”

And he does, with a roar that makes you glad you waited until the Deetzes were gone in order to whip this out. He shoots hot spurts all over his stomach, nearly crying with the effort of his release.

“You okay, Beej?”

“Fucking peachy,” he pants, grinning dirtily. You laugh, untangling one of your hands so you can affectionately brush the hair away that’s stuck to his forehead.

“Weird that you only had, what, two suitcases? And that was one of the things you chose to pack.”

“Are you complaining?”

Beetlejuice catches your wrist in his hand and presses a kiss to it.

“Nah, never.”

Then he flips you on your back to return the favour.

The Deetz family return after a few days to a perfectly in-tact house. You managed to keep most of your and Beetlejuice’s escapades confined to your bedroom, but when he slipped his hand down your underwear when you were in the middle of washing up… well, you weren’t going to turn him away, were you?

You just had to make sure the Maitlands weren’t permanently scarred by anything you got up to.

Things settle back into normality, and as April turns to May, you get ready for the end of your uni semester.

It’s a hot afternoon. You’re making sure to keep hydrated as you tap away on your laptop. Beetlejuice isn’t explicitly saying “pay attention to me”, but he might as well be when he comes floating into your room, settling on your bed and staring intently at you. Music plays gently from your speakers, a gentle background noise as you make some edits to your university work.

He’s quiet for about .5 seconds.

“Oh shit, is this Rumours by Fleetwood Mac?”

You nod, tapping your foot to the beat.

“Only one of the -”

“Best albums ever written!” you both conclude. You grin at him, pleased to share this opinion.

“Man, Stevie Nicks is crazy. Lights up the room down in the Netherworld.”

“Wait, Stevie Nicks isn’t dead, is she?”

“I never said she was dead,” Beetlejuice says, puzzled. You decide to let that topic lie, actually.

“What are you doing?”

“Picking out some photos for our photography show next week. They hire out a little gallery in town to showcase everyone’s work, I want to make sure I pick the best stuff I have.”

“Oh.” A beat. “Can I come?”

You look up at Beetlejuice from over your laptop screen. He’s playing with an errant thread off your quilt, pretending not to care about your answer, but failing spectacularly.

“You want to, bug?”

“‘Course I do. Seeing your work in a gallery is like, professional shit. I wanna be there.”

You smile softly at him, feeling a rush of affection spread across your chest.

“Sure you can, Beej.”

“What, really?” he perks up.

“Well, I’d want my boyfriend to be there, right?”

There’s no hiding the pink that streaks his hair.

“But you have to promise to behave. No funny business.”

“Babe. As I live and breathe, I’d never get into any funny business.”

“You neither live nor breathe.”

“Haha, yeah.”

You know nobody can see Beetlejuice hovering along beside you, holding your hand and being dragged around the gallery space as he hovers in the air. But it’s still nice. To be in a public setting with your boyfriend, wandering around like the two of you are on a normal date. You’re wearing a black pair of trousers and blazer, the little ‘B’ necklace hanging between your collarbones.

It feels nice. It feels normal.

“What the fuck is that meant to be?” Beetlejuice asks, squinting at one of the prints from your classmate. You hide a laugh under your hand.

“I think it’s a sewer pipe.”

“Oh. Right. Yeah that tracks,” he says, wrinkling his nose at the rest of the display. You swallow a guffaw with a mouthful of wine and lead him over to your space.

“And this is my stuff.”

You stop in front of a small, muted selection of your photographs. They’re all in black and white, your preferred medium - and most of them are from the Deetz house. Angles of the building itself. Dead wildlife you found in the grass. Decaying flowers.

One of them is of you.

You don’t love self portraits, but you’ve been learning to get more confident with your appearance. The photo is a close up of your face. You’re looking down, face gently melancholy, hair falling into your eyes.

Beetlejuice stares at it.

“Wow. You look… wow,” is all he can say.

“Ha. Thanks, I guess.”

“I mean it. You really have an eye for this stuff,” he says. It feels weird, hearing a sincere compliment leave his mouth, but you can feel yourself begin to get a little bit flustered because of it.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. I mean, you should make a living doing this.”

You’re so genuinely flattered you can’t come up with a teasing response.

“Thank you, Beej.”

He scratches the back of his head, awkward at the rawness of the moment. Then he spies the spread that’s been put out for visitors to the gallery.

“Oh hell yeah, I’m gonna go and fucking destroy those crudites.”

Beetlejuice presses a kiss to your cheek before descending upon the buffet like a man possessed.

Next to you, a man in a black polo neck is surveying your work. He gives an appraising nod.

“You’re the photographer, I take it?”

“I am, sir.”

He nods again.

“Very interesting work. You have an intimate understanding of the relationship between life and death.”

You’re glad Beetlejuice is out of earshot. You can just imagine him chiming in, hell yeah they do!

“Thank you.”

The man passes a business card from his pocket. Your eyes go wide when you see the name printed on it.

Oh god. It’s him. From that magazine…?!

“I’m here as a favour from your professor. We’re old friends, and I come to these shows to seek out new talent. Usually I come up empty. But you,” he turns to look at you for the first time, tearing his eyes away from your photos, “you have something. How would you like to come and work for me?”

Your mouth is hanging open. You close it with a pop.

“For you? From here?”

That would be… well, perfect. You’ve been looking at apartments around here for when your degree is over and lease is up at the Deetz household. You could be near Beetlejuice and Lydia and do something you love. This dream job would be the icing on the cake.

“What? Oh, Christ, of course not. This is rural Connecticut. Nothing happens here. No. You’d need to move to Los Angeles, of course.”

Your heart plummets in your chest.

#Beetlejuice x reader

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jess-the-vampire · 4 years ago

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Sooooo whatya think of the new episodeee?

Oh it’s definitely my favorite episode of the series so far, i was having such a good time at every turn. I’m glad i went out of my way to avoid spoilers, cause i was glad to actually be surprised by some elements on first watch.

I think this had by far the best opening for an episode so far, we finally get back to the villians, we meet the coven heads, we get insight on belos’s plans-

and then belos gets constipated, which starts getting into the more character driven lore, which is the best part. You instantly can tell GG and Kiki have some bit of tension between them to be Belo’s favorite, though granted i wonder if hunter is the only one to know belos is cursed and actually just always insists to help belos with his fits to prevent others from seeing them.

Including kiki.

It’s honestly unclear how aware anyone is that belos is cursed, like him eating pailsmans is apparently not something he hides, but like....i feel him being cursed is something that people would know universally if it got out...so i’m left wondering if anyone knows besides hunter.

Regardless, belos turns into a goop monster with an angry side, and i guess his mask doesn’t transform with him compared to the rest of his body so he breaks it again because i guess he goes though masks like crazy.

Hunter turns away in this scene from his outburst and even though he’s masked here i can already tell he’s most likely pained in these scenes. Like he’s probably seen this happen so many times, and i can’t imagine it gets any easier for him, it’s probably awful to watch belos suffer like this for him (Regardless of the abuse)

And to be honest, it seems pretty painful for him, i think this ep seems to at least confirm whatever this thing is that takes over belos’s body.....belos never actually wanted it in the first place.

Yeah so after Hunter tells belos there’s not enough trees to medicate him anymore, we’re hit with the “UNCLE”. Which, when i first watched it i needed a second to even process the fact they confirmed their relation.

and i was like “CLOSE ENOUGH”, not his kid but uncle still works just fine for me, i’m just happy my assumption they were related actually came to ahead.

And i rewatched this episode a few times, and on second watch i realized more what happened in this scene. Hunter was talking about his interest in wild magic, and making more pailsman to help belos, and some method that could heal him and as soon as belos looked at him he instantly shut down.

He was clearly rambling about wild magic cures for belos because of his interest in it, and then suddenly remembered his uncle hates wild magic and felt super awkward.

It seems highly likely his interest in wild magic came from trying to cure belos and spending a lot of time reading up on the stuff.

And then we get hit with the whole “Our family is dead because of wild magic” line, which.....i’m curious to know what happened there. But it does at least explain why belos feels how he does, if wild magic both killed his family beside hunter AND cursed him in the first place. We’re just gonna need more info on what exactly happened.

Also while Belos is def abusive and does not treat hunter how he should, this scene actually does read off to me like belos does care about hunter to some degree. If belos is cursed and his curse works in similar ways to how Eda’s curse works, then it’s worth reminding ppl that eda mentions early this season how stress can amplify the curse even more.

And sure enough, belos goes goopy on hunter’s shoulder all of a sudden when he grasps him. Which could be considered a sign of stress and that the idea of hunter dying or being in danger actually does stress him.

You could very much also assume this is just due to his curse not being fully handled and just getting worse, or that belos only cares about hunter for selfish reasons....but i’m not taking anything off the table here.

Belos can still be a shitty uncle, and still care about hunter, these aren’t mutually exclusive traits. But we need more episodes for now on this.

But anyways he asks hunter if he can rely on him, kiki is pissed......and we move on.

So i’m glad luz’s impulsiveness is addressed a ton in this episode, they actually bring up a lot of good points. That luz has no plan, that the time she’s spending here might render moot if she goes back to earth, ect ect.

Hunter even calls her out a lot later for not thinking things through, it’s a whole deal in this episode. I’m glad it was brought up cause it’s actually worth asking a lot of these things.

the set up here works, they actually made a good reason for why a pailsman didn’t bond with her. Speaking of which the adoption thing is cute and i love it, it’s a great idea. The designs are all very cute and fun.

Bump face reveal was a lot for me to process, but i find the idea of his pailsman being a pet that can help with his disabilities a good idea.

Also like, i did find it odd that they got staffs so early because we’ve never seen kids their ages with them before, but i guess it’s a new tradition? Does everyone at hexside now have one?

Honesty not sure why batqueen left the nest there overnight, i meant i guess she assumed they were safe with that shield but in context i dunno why she didn’t take them home after the school day was over.

but whatever, luz stays there overnight hoping a pailsman will bond with her and GG just kidnapps them cause of pure luck on his part a bunch of pailsman were in a vulnerable spot tonight.

So GG continues to be charming, by whistling the theme song and then being blasted off his ship hilariously, before cockily teleporting himself right back on it seconds later. Like he and luz have great banter, he’s so extra like this it’s so funny, and god he’s so FAST with that staff it’s scary but so awesome.

Yeah so then hand dragon crashes them and i was so excited cause it meant face reveal. Poor dude looked so in pain and then we find out kiki tried to effing murder him because of course she did. But like, i think killing your boss’s nephew is the WORST way to get a promotion tbh.

(Also i got confused for a bit cause his mask has always been drawn as a mask, but now it’s a helmet in this scene for whatever reason but-)

Anyways, face reveal, Like honestly ppl weren’t too far off with their guesses, really the only thing people didn’t get was the tooth gap (That was fair tho, we couldn’t have guessed that). But it did make him even cuter.

like the banter is funny, he licks her hand, she slaps him, he looks SO pissed at her for this mess.

and i guess that outfit is his under armor apparently.

He’s lucky she didn’t run away immediately and followed him, but maybe he assumed she would since she had no where else to go.

Also his expressions in this ep are glorious, these had to be fun to draw.

Also we find out that the coven team members have never seen his face i guess? They just assume he’s a silly kid and are awful to him, so i guess he’s not only the youngest member of the coven but he never really shows his face much.

(”Call your parents”, ha ha.....whose gonna tell them who his uncle is?)

He is however, REALLY good at parkour and he’s fast even without his staff, so he’s well trained alright.

And then they reveal he’s not magical and i was SO happy cause i was so sure something was up when he wasn’t doing magic like the other witches despite his pointy ears. So they outright confirmed what i thought.

Hunter is pretty smart tho, like he can tell luz wouldn’t hurt him and wouldn’t flee so he knows he has the high ground here. Like he might be being a bit of a dick, but to be fair luz has been nothing but a dick to him throughout the whole episode (Everyone in this episode has been a dick to him tbh)

They team up and i get excited cause i love this kinda stuff and it gets more wholesome because hunter is super interested in her magic, he thinks it’s cool and you can tell how much he actually loves wild magic but then again...shuts himself down because of belos making him fear the stuff.

An then because luz asks, he tells her his backstory.

honestly with how this world treats people who aren’t magically powerful, living and growing up in a world that would find you useless sounds....awful. Hunter must be an anomaly around here, human blood or not.

Luz coming here to learn is different then growing up in a world and being the only one with no abilities and no future without them. Belos provides him with magic and a future, it’s no wonder he stays with him despite everything.

the whole “Found me” thing is weird, cause belos implies they’re blood related and hunter makes it sound like belos semi-adopted him. Which....if he did i dunno why “Uncle” and not “Adopted dad”, but ok....guess that’s for later.

Apparently hunter is important for something tho with the “Titan has big plans for me” thing, not sure what, but-

But yeah as soon as Hunter talked about wanting to make his own future and Rascal tried to land on him i knew EXACTLY where this was going, it was so cuteeeeee. The lil birb wanted to be with hunter, that’s so wholesome.

And he’s so terrified because of belos and what wild magic did to him, the poor bab.

But yeah, luz then trusts him with his staff back, because again....impulsive. But hunter does actually ask if she’s sure, so he might as well be asking if she trusts him.

The plan goes ahead, and hunter nearly betrays her.

though granted, hunter never promised her he’d stop and let her take them away, the truce was supposed to last till kiki was stopped and they were gonna fight out who got the pailsman. But it does bother luz cause she was hopeful he was better then this.

But just like he did before, she calls him out and he doesn’t betray her, because he’s ALSO too nice to do it, just like he said she was. He says his name (Which also took a moment to process), and then beats the crap out of kiki while letting luz get away and protecting her like a badass.

He might not have magic, but he’s good at fighting

like he can easily teleport to luz and take the pailsman, but he doesn’t, he lets them get away and luz knows this. Even though she also knows hunter has to go back to the emperor too and they have to separate.

It’s only slightly bitter terms, because in the end he came through for her and she knows it.

honestly, the worst part is i can’t even be mad at hunter for it, i’m sure he was terrified to fail belos. Both because he loves him and doesn’t want him to suffer....but also because of well...being punished. Really says something when his near betrayal doesn’t even make me mad at him, and i can understand why he nearly did it.

He let her go, knowing he’d be in SERIOUS trouble and that it would hurt someone he actually loves, so....ouch.

so yeah at this point i knew rascal wanted him so it was only of matter of what happened next.

Which was, luz getting the wood, which i like more anyway. Eda and King doing this offscreen and coming home like this is actually very funny, and honestly i appreciate the message of it being ok to wait.....means a lot to me.

yeah so belos is like...being an ass, like the kid tried his hardest, you don’t need to hit him with the “Is this the thanks i get?”. He’s a kid and he’s trying to cure you you dick, give him a break he doesn’t remotely have to help you like this.

Also apparently belos has not even told hunter HOW this happened, like...dude. Hunter is trying to be entirely reasonable here and belos spikes at him, which does imply some physical abuse though the only reason hunter doesn’t get a new scar is because he moves.

but how he reacts implies this has happened before, he is bracing for impact and he flinches. It’s pretty sad tbh, especially since hunter loves him and belos’s respect means something to him.

Belos is such an idiot, like c’mon dude, hunter is trying to help you and you don’t listen to him you dick. Kid shouldn’t have to say sorry for anything he did nothing wrong, he was just trying to help.

Anyways, he gloats at kiki (So at the very least she knows what he looks like under the mask), which he deserves a chance to do anyway. So i guess he didn’t rat her out for trying to kill him, personally my guess why is blackmail.....he was gonna hold it over her head to keep her from doing it again and threaten to tell belos.

But kiki quickly tells he LET the pailsman get away since he was the one to fight her (Curse his cute loose hair strand). So i guess now they have dirt on each other, so that’s fun.

His room is adorable, though the med kit by the bed is concerning.

Rascal comes for him and it;s so cute....though you can tell hunter nearly hurts him on instinct because of force of habit, but it’s so cute how he cares and how the birb loves him and is his new staff.

it was well hinted to as well, it’s so subtle, but the bird being cheery, curious, and his constant habit of escaping boundaries was perfect for hunter. He represents what hunter wants to be and why they got matched is done so well, all without explaining anything.

Hunter indirectly stated his deepest wish, to make his own choices, and rascal resonated with that.

can’t wait to see where this goes.

great ending shot, love me some conflicted shots looking out of windows like trapped birds.

also this title was a pun the whole time i can’t-

#the owl house #toh #toh spoilers #golden guard #toh golden guard #the owl house golden guard #the golden guard #the owl house luz #emperor belos #kikimora

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yayteaberry · 4 years ago

Text

*SFW* Babysitting (Bakugou)

Rarely did he ever take a Saturday off from either training or studying, he was determined to stay better than everyone else. But, it had been raining since yesterday and he felt like he deserved a break anyways. From morning to afternoon, he enjoyed doing absolutely nothing, scrolling his social media and avoiding liking any of his friends posts on principle.

Shitty hair still won’t shut up about the selfie he liked so now nobody gets any.

His planned day of nothing is interrupted by a knock at his door, and he’s been pacified by memes to a degree where he doesn’t react violently to the intrusion.

Instead he shoves his phone into his pocket as gets up and opens the door, plain faced until he sees it’s you and that you’re holding something. Well, someone.

“Hey!”, you greet with an unusual level of enthusiasm, “I need you to do a favor for me.”

“A favor?”, he asks while he takes in the fact that you’re holding a baby, dressed in a striped onesie.

“Yeah, I’m kinda busy with stuff and I need someone to keep an eye on this little cutie for a bit!” To emphasize the importance or maybe sway him, you turn the baby around so he can see the chubby face.

“... If you’re asking me to babysit it, then no.”

You click your tongue against your teeth, rolling your eyes. “Well don’t call her by ‘it’, and I really need you to do this for me!”

He puts a hand on the door to signal that he’s about to close it, “Nah. Ask shitty hair or Deku, I think they’d love to drool over your kid.” “It’s my aunts baby!”, you say as you put your foot over the threshold, jostling the baby somewhat, which excitedly babbles as it meets his eyes, “They’re busy too, I tried asking! Believe me, you weren’t my first choice.”

“What do you mean by that?” He speaks with annoyance, opening the door fully as his competitive nature rises.

Internally you give a sigh of relief, externally you place the baby on your hip. “Bakugou, I think we both know that you’re awful with children. But you’re my last option and I have nowhere else to turn.”

“I should’ve been your first choice! I’m a fuckin’ wiz at keeping brats well behaved! Gimme!”

“Ah!”, you step out of range of his attempted grab and put out your pointer finger, “Don’t yell at the baby, don’t be aggressive with the baby, and most of all, don’t yell at the baby.”

In spite of your words you know full well he’ll do nothing of the sort, just wanting to give the appearance so he’ll be on his best behavior. He doesn’t have to know he was actually the only one you wanted to watch her.

After all his surface level bullying you can tell he’s soft on the inside, knowing he’s the least likely to give into a baby's whims while also being gentle enough to avoid making her cry.

“Yeah yeah.”, he grumbles, taking her from you when you extend her towards him, “When are you gonna collect the brat?”

You give a 50/50 gesture, shrugging, “Ah an half hour to two hours, but I’ll be back before three hours for sure! She’s been fed and changed recently but just in case,” A bag is revealed when you pull it from behind your back, taking it off by the strap and setting it inside.

“Diapers and toys, if she’s hungry there’s something for her in there too. Just, be careful about that, she’s sorta young for it.”

He nods at your words, watching her grapple at his shirt, having not once taken his eyes off her.

“Thank you!”, you chirp and give him a kiss on the cheek, knowing that he can’t do anything about it while holding her. That makes him glance up at you with some minor malice, which is reduced severely by the dusting of pink across his nose.

With that you take your leave, confident he’ll do fine.

He shuts the door and sits at the edge of his bed, cradling her in his arms. After a moment he takes a look over to the bag you left, thinking it’d probably be best to fish something out of there for her to do.

While he wasn’t experienced in caring for a baby in any capacity that felt like common sense. Plus, it’d allow him to continue wasting time on his phone.

“You,” he gently places her on the middle of the bed as he stands, “are not taking my Saturday from me with your tiny incapable hands.”

With one hand he grabs the bag off the floor and sets it on the bed beside her, opening it and digging through its contents. You were right, the thing is loaded with diapers and many different plastic objects.

Keys, babies love keys.

That toy seems the best choice, taking that and a blanket out before putting the bag on the floor nearby, holding the baby like a barrel under his arm while he flattens the blanket, then placing her on her belly.

He dangles the keys in front of her, watching as her eyes widen as she takes a horribly aimed swipe towards them. With a laugh tinged snort he lets her have them, sitting with his back against the bed and taking his phone out, resuming his leisure hobby.

A minute passes before he peeks over at her to make sure she’s still there, idly chewing on an orange key. It reminds him of something a puppy would do, up until she shoves it in way too far.

He drops his phone and yanks the keys away with concern she’ll vomit, not expecting her to look so upset over it. Briefly she contentedly waits for them to be returned, but when it becomes apparent they aren’t, she scowls.

“No,” he preemptively says, putting the keys down at his other side to keep them away, “you did something fucking stupid, so now they’re off limits. Don’t get all upset over it.”

She huffs and slams a hand down a few times, making a ‘gah’ with very demanding intent.

“I said no. Let me find something else then, calm down.”, he says as he reaches over to grab something random out of the bag, finding a plush red dinosaur. “See? Fun. Chew on this.”

He sets it down in front of her, and she immediately pushes it over, repeating herself. If nothing he gives her credit for having a strange amount of object permanence.

“I. Said. No. The fuck do you want me to do? You’re the one who can’t handle having the damn thing!” With a curt ‘no’ as a final statement, he leans over her to shove the keys back into the bag.

This turns out to be a huge mistake.

In a universally understood way, her face screws up as she starts taking in heavy breaths, which makes his eyebrows raise.

“Don’t. No crying.” his tone is as assertive as he can get it, shaking his head as if to cement it. Her tiny face turns red, sniffling once before fat tears begin to roll down her cheeks.

With no idea what to do in this situation, he starts rummaging through the bag for a solution, diapers spilling out as he digs for a similar toy if there even is one. He cringes as she really starts crying, caving and getting the keys back out, giving them to her. “See? See??”

She either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, bawling in the way only babies do, arms giving out as she lays down.

His instincts on consoling anyone are terrible and usually not to be followed but he acts without thinking, picking her up and setting her in his lap, bouncing his leg as he pets her back, softly shushing her, ignoring the part of him that does in fact wish to yell at the baby.

Her tiny body trembles, pawing at his shirt as she rubs her tear stained face into it. Continuing to follow his instincts he lifts her up, both arms cradling her as her head rests against his shoulder. She does eventually calm, relaxing as quiet hiccuping replaces her sobs, breathing regulating.

She's effectively soothed, he on the other hand is completely shaken up.

Jesus, why did that scare him so much? He’d heard babies cry before and always was irritated by it, but this time there was something so different about it. Even now his heart is still racing, mouth dry as he stares forward into the wall with a mixture of worry and gratefulness.

Once she’s relaxed, he picks up the previously discarded dinosaur, placing it in his lap next to her. Thankfully, she seems to have forgotten about the keys, happy to latch onto the plushy.

He takes his phone back out with the intent to resume his earlier scrolling, but he can’t entirely take his eyes off her. He’s more interested in watching her reactions than he’d ever admit.

In some ways she reminds him of you, mainly the eye color and the way her cheeks pinch up when she smiles.

You seem the motherly type to him so he assumes you’re leagues better at this than he is, but you’ve never mentioned having to babysit her before.

In fact you’ve never mentioned her before at all.

Maybe you enjoyed doing it but kept quiet so you didn’t have anyone intruding or asking to see her, babies can feel stranger danger so that made sense, it’d probably be overwhelming. She doesn’t hate him though, maybe you knew that she wouldn’t?

Despite the panic she’s sent him through he really wouldn’t mind watching after her again. It'll probably be easier with you here, though he isn’t sure what he’d do if you were, he’d just be sitting around while you did everything.

God, she is really goddamned adorable. He smirks as he takes a second to allow himself to outwardly express something positive, watching her slap her tiny hand against the toy.

Usually the idea of having a baby is the worst one anyone can have, but right now he isn’t all that opposed to it. Not that it looks simple, more that it looks to be worth it.

He knows he’d make super cute babies, based on what he looks like and has always looked like the kid would outshine any other snot maker.

While he didn’t know what you looked like as a baby he just assumed you did too, briefly considering what a baby would look like if it came from you and him.

He’s got his mother's blonde hair despite his father's brunette coloring so that’s a dominant trait, possibly overriding your own but who can know, it’d more likely have more of your features.

Out of anything he’d want a little girl just like this one, though he’d be happy with anything as long as it's yours. Your features have always been something he likes, face as well as body, you’re built well in every aspect he tends to care about.

That, and your winning personality, even he can see that it’s a very pleasant contrast to his own. A kid with a mixture of both would be undoubtedly unstoppable, making him proud left and right.

Suddenly the thought bubble pops as reality rises to the surface.

You’re not his and he doesn’t like you anyways, this doesn’t bear so much thinking since it’ll never happen.

A heat takes to his cheeks as he tries to move on and pretend he wasn’t having a domestic fantasy involving you, mostly pretending he hadn’t had any fantasies about you.

It was something that’d creep into his mind sometimes.

Kirishima and Deku tended to have some softer traits alongside their bolder ones but it just wasn’t the same coming from either of them.

You had a certain tenacity to you, it was totally within your options to let some rich older man take care of you but you wanted more for yourself, you wanted to be a hero.

It made you strong, and you were strong because you worked for it constantly. As thick as your innocence tended to be, he was fairly confident you could knock him unconscious if it strikes you as the right choice.

He shook his head and made an effort to clear out all his emotions, directing his attention back towards the baby to ground himself.

At some point during his daydreaming she’d knocked out cold, the dinosaur laying on the floor beside him, propped up against his chest, quietly snoozing while drooling a slight amount. Even if he wanted too he couldn’t be grossed out, it was way too cute of a sight for him to get mad.

Looking at her makes him feel tired, so he decides that taking a nap wouldn’t be a terrible idea. Careful to avoid waking her, he shifts around to get comfortable, hooking an arm around her so she doesn’t teeter backwards while he’s moving.

He thinks about whether he should turn her over and lay her on the blanket, unsure of what the proper protocol is.

His neck is gonna get super fucked up if he stays sat like this, so he very slowly gets up and lays on his bed, keeping her held to his chest until he’s flat enough to let gravity do the work. For a moment he returns to thinking about laying her on a flat surface but he lets her stay as she is, being a light sleeper means he’ll be able to deal with any problems if there are any.

After thanking Aizawa for the extra sparring lesson, you quickly get yourself showered and changed.

It’s been about two hours since you left her with Bakugou and you were getting increasingly worried he was reaching his limit.

Honestly you didn’t expect to be gone this long, but you were glad you gave him the estimate because it meant he’d have less reasons to be upset with you.

You prepare yourself for him to yell at you for leaving him alone with a demon for so long, even if she’s rarely a problem you do suspect he’ll be dramatic.

Still, it was a godsend that he said yes to begin with, you were going to make sure to tell him that.

When you get to his room you don’t bother with knocking, opening it to let yourself in without hesitation.

You were going to say something, but you forget the instant you lay eyes on the scene in front of you.

Practically swooning, you place a hand over your mouth to prevent making any noise, getting your phone out to document perhaps the cutest thing you’ve ever seen.

He’s laying on his bed, one arm over her and one over his eyes to block out the light, her tiny hands secured around the collar of his shirt, both of them peacefully asleep.

Not intending it to be blackmail but being aware it would probably become that, you take pictures from several different angles, wanting nothing more than to show everyone.

Though, for his own sake, you don’t actually send them anywhere near the class.

This doesn’t mean you don’t send them all to his mother, you do.

It does pain you to know you’ll have to hold off on showing people lest the information come back to him, but you do make it your phones home screen anyways.

#bakugou katsuki #bakugou baby shenanigans #fluff #mha fluff #SFW #gender neutral reader #gn reader #bakugou katuski x reader #a03 fic

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luckyspacerabbit · 4 years ago

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would you ever share the background you created for kai leng? i'd be so interested in hearing it!

Hehe, yes! Thank you for waiting anon. I wanted to really think this through and make sure I was working with all the possible details of his character.

Okay, so my goal with fleshing out Kai was not to excuse him as a villain or to necessarily redeem him, but to humanize him and hopefully incur sympathy because I find his depiction as a mysterious lackey boogeyman to be 🙄 one dimensional and playing on racist tropes like the yellow peril ✨ (also bioware making him predominantly chinese + a lil russian. extrapolate what u will lol)

So here is my background for Kai :) Lots of childhood headcanoning and then some general talk about his character/why I chose certain elements as I did (such as dumping that dumb phantom blade for butterfly swords AEORHIG)

Childhood: According to the wiki, Kai is Earthborn, and from his general heritage we can assume that he grew up in Northern China (omg that's where my ancestors are from). The most populous city there is Beijing, which, if there was a spaceport or alliance recruitment anywhere, it would be there.

I headcanon that he was born to a bit of an unsteady family, where it was likely there was estrangement and unsafe conditions between the mother and father that may have created a sense of helplessness and neglect from a young age.

In my canon, Dan Hyun's mom, Hannah Shepard was the head of an agricultural research facility on Trident, and was an old friend of Kai's mom (From University, possibly).

As conditions worsened throughout Kai's childhood, his mom decided to take a chance and flee with Kai (age 10 at the time) to Hannah Shepard's science facility on Trident (Sentinel Agricultural Research Facility), where she and Kai would stay for about two years as his mom worked to save enough money for their own place .

Since Dan Hyun was already being homeschooled, it was easy enough for Kai to join up alongside her.

Dan Hyun (12 at the time) was extremely happy to have a friend since life on the facility could be really lonely-- but with all these changes Kai was having a difficult time adjusting, especially when Dan Hyun felt put off by his competitive attitude. After so long feeling neglected and growing in a tumultuous home environment, he craved external validation: homeschool provided an avenue for that. They developed their own academic-based competitive rivalry that counted towards friendship, but grew distant when he moved out with his mom about two years later.

When Dan Hyun was 18 (Kai at 16), she managed to apply to an Alliance Research Training program and receive admission-- something that was considered highly prestigious, despite her parents' reluctance. Kai had already begun to build resentment towards her due to the way her parents treated her (very preciously, sheltered, and without exposing her to the difficult parts of life) in contrast with what he lacked in family and world kindness, creating a drive to supersede her and compete with her once again, if only to have tangible proof that just because he began in a lower place didn't mean he couldn't surpass the vision of success.

After this event, they would strike up a still somewhat friendly rivalry again that continued until Kai enlisted in the Alliance at the age of 18 (his attempts to join directly at 16 failed in my canon lol, but he sure tried )

Alliance Service:

Kai took the combat-driven route while Dan Hyun was receiving training for her eventual research establishment in Akuze, meaning that in their line of work, they never crossed paths-- Though they maintained occasional communication and met up here and there whenever Kai was back from his tours.

This is where I believe his decline truly began.

Some habits, like his desire for tangible proof of success and seeking external validation, manifested more heavily in this time. Collecting badges off of dead soldiers (To remember his skill first hand) is a notable one, but I speculate he relied heavily on the word of his commanding officers to counter his self-esteem. Titles were incredibly important because they were proof. When he began to feel a loss of control which led to emotional outbursts and breakdowns, he would fall back on these bits of evidence that he had done something, anything.

The weight and violence of service combined to break away his mental strength and conditioned him to that of a soldier.

Famously, he was discharged in 2186 after his N7 designation. In a bar fight on shore leave, he murdered a Krogan (OKAY. Listen. The wiki says "first-degree murder" but first degree requires premeditation and bar fight implies heat of the moment. So IDK I think the details around this one are a little fishy. He was on leave but he was a soldier, so ? he probably just had a weapon on him? Okay, I'm not excusing him but premeditation is a bit different from manslaughter so just something I've pondered. It separates intentional killers from accidental murders).

At this point, he is formally incarcerated and set to serve a twenty-year sentence.

Cerberus Contact:

The year is 2177, and Kai has lost everything he's ever worked for. His prestige is gone, he is at the worst place he has ever been, his mom won't talk to him, and he has no one. He had even stopped hearing from Dan Hyun, the only person he could have considered a friend once.

Through a small TV in the prison, he is able to hear about the attack on Akuze, and its one survivor: Alliance Scientist Dan Hyun Shepard. In the attack her biotic abilities (Which she had kept secret for many years) were revealed, prompting immediate recruitment into the N7 Program and a contract for ten years of service. This drove Kai into rock bottom-- while he had nothing, Dan Hyun was steadily on track to uprooting the only thing he had ever felt like he had accomplished.

This is when Cerberus intervened, promising him a home, freedom, belonging, and success.

So of course Kai agreed. Why wouldn't he? He had nothing left in his miserable life and there would never again be a place for him.

Cerberus Intervention:

It's my belief that Kai wasn't necessarily "alienphobic" in the beginning. Instead, I think The Illusive Man saw a very clear opportunity to recruit and nurture a broken man into a pawn of service. TIM is incredibly smart-- everyone who works for Cerberus is. He knew what Kai needed was validation, the promise of success held directly on the tip of his tongue to drive him into tenacity and action.

Organizations like Cerberus, even in real life, prey on people at weak points, fulfill their needs and drape their ideology on top like icing on a cake. That's not to say that Kai is completely innocent-- he ate the sweets and readily threw the world to the side in order to attain more-- but it does give some perspective.

Kai in Cerberus:

In ME2 we know there is some apprehension on Kai's part about the role Shepard will play. He is already starting to feel slighted from failures with Rasa and takes even the possibility of rejection from TIM extremely hard and with violent emotional outburst. This evidences how much TIM has whittled him away over the decade of service. Kai feels as though he owes everything to TIM, that TIM saw something in him-- failing him is disproving that and accepting what Kai has feared all along: that he truly is a worthless and incapable person.

Kai and Shepard:

Kai is best known for his direct antagonism towards Shepard in the events of ME3, directly killing their allies and potential love interests in a way that is extremely personal. Yes, it is part of the job, but at the same time, it's clear Shepard gets under his skin. It's because in the end, after all that setup, Shepard is the one person who can take it all away from him.

They can replace him as TIM's prodigy/ They can bring an end to the organization that gave him everything (From his cybernetic enhancements (uh indoctrination cough couch) ) to his purpose in life. Kai threw it all in with them because he didn't see another choice.

My Canon: The End

So how do things end for Kai in my canon?

As you're aware, you can unalive him, violently. But Dan Hyun is very emotional and due to their shared childhood, I like to believe that there was still a grand feeling of kinship between them, a recognition of the other due to shared insecurities. I don't think there was ever a time Dan Hyun looked at Kai and saw anything other than her slighted friend (which is very romanticized, but SHE is very romanticized), it was just about getting Kai to see that too.

She locked him down the best she could, yelled, cried, and beat the shit out of him, but ultimately, preserved his life. After the crucible had been fired and Thane (alive ofc) attended to, she sought to right things between her and Kai: whatever form that takes. Who knows if he'll ever be able to live comfortably in society again-- but at least here, he has the chance.

Random Tidbits:

Some notes! At his best, I like that Kai is portrayed as Loyal, Hard Working, Methodical, Clever, Tenacious, and Factual. I think sometimes he can be written off unfairly as wimpy or scared, but in truth, he's very sure of his abilities and able to calculate his chances extremely well. He's smarter than fandom gives him credit for.

He has an interesting conflict between arrogance based on title and humbleness. He knows he wants to be the best but he never airs it-- like when Rasa suggests that he wants to be the leader for Humanity but he grows quiet and says to just focus on where things are at right now.

His time as a soldier absolutely affected him in ways I think sharpened him to the killer he became. It instilled values that remained with him in Cerberus, such as when he berates Bates for abandoning his squad and calls him a traitor. Kai doesn't betray-- he's quite literally ride or die.

Also? The ninja sword is super dumb because Kai is Chinese and the swords and Phantom's themselves are designed to appear Japanese in aesthetic. Ninjas= Japanese, but China did have their own sect of Assassins which I believe gave birth to Wu Ching as a type of Martial Arts? Or was drawn from it hmm

To keep to accuracy, Kai would have trained more towards their martial art techniques which focuses on close combat and quick movements, as well as the use of dual blades called butterfly swords (You'd likely recognize them as a set of rogue daggers).

That's all for that meta! Phew. If anyone actually read to the end, hey wassup, hope you enjoyed, and take most of this with a grain of salt since it's my headcanons and background work :) Thank you again for reading!

#my meta #kai leng #anon #asks #PHEW #THAT TOOK A WHILE #HAHAH #dan hyun shepard #mass effect #meta

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gravelyhumerus · 4 years ago

Text

Criminal Minds College AU - Chapter Seventeen

Fandom: Criminal Minds

Title: “I may just take your breath away”

Relationship: Jemily

Summary:

Exams, pizza, board games... what more could a girl ask for?

Slow-burn Jemily college AU where they live across the hall and despite all odds, the universe pushes them together. AKA they’re silly gay babies who pine after each other for months.

Read it on AO3

Tumblr: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen, Fourteen, Fifteen, Sixteen, (bonus scene), Seventeen, Eighteen, Nineteen, Twenty

“That was a lot of chess,” Emily complained, nearly chugging her latte as she and Spencer left the coffee shop.

She pulled her beanie onto her head and braced herself for the snow as the taller boy held the door open for her. Emily almost slipped on the slushy tile floor on her way out but managed to keep her balance.

“Fifteen of the multiple-choice questions to be precise,” Spencer replied. The salted sidewalk crunched under their feet as they made their way across campus.

“I’m so glad it’s finally over,” she admitted. “I think I’ve had enough philosophy to last me a lifetime.”

“I’m enrolled in ‘Minds and Machines’ next semester,” he said. “I think I might try and get a double minor this time around.”

“What’s the goal? Three PhDs by the time you’re 24?” Emily quipped.

He was well on his way, having completed his engineering degree before she managed to graduate high school. He was 17, only two years younger than her, but somehow seemed like a kid. A kid with more education crammed into his brain than she could ever master in her life.

“Something like that,” he replied with a smile. His hair was getting long and he had tied it back during the exam. With last names starting with P and R, they were seated near each other in the large exam hall, and she glanced over at him as he fussed with his hair.

They stopped at the red light, watching as the cars and busses wooshed past them, sending the slush flying into the snowbanks. It had been a fairly sunny day, but bitterly cold. Now, the sun was setting and the campus was bathed in a warm golden glow. The snow had fallen the night before, leaving fluffy white snow covering their campus.

Emily had spent most of the day holed up in the library with Spencer, with him quizzing her on fallacies and philosophers. With his eidetic memory, he only really needed to read the material once. Earlier in the semester, she did feel useful when it came to editing each other’s essays. He always got bogged down with detail, word vomiting everything he knew, and she helped him with his structure and argumentation.

More studying awaited her back in her room. She rubbed at the back of her neck as she thought about the upcoming evening spent hunched over her desk studying criminal justice, a subject that left her questioning her degree half the time as she was forced to learn about the muddled ethics of justice.

That week, she had survived on minimal sleep, eating mostly bagels and coffee to sustain her. Her body was protesting with each step, and she had suffered from a constant tension headache for as long as she remembered. At least her college had that golden retriever walk around at the library yesterday, she thought to herself, sarcastically. Animal therapy definitely relieved all her stress. As if petting a dog for five minutes would fix the anxiety of finals season.

Two more exams, she reminded herself. You’ll make it.

Despite this mantra, Emily was conflicted. While finals were killing her, the end of the semester also meant winter break. Emily would be forced to go “home” for the holidays. For most college students, that meant going back to their respective towns and being surrounded by their loved ones. Emily, on the other hand, didn’t have anywhere she called home. Last winter break, her mom had at least been in DC, and Emily was able to catch up with some of her international school friends who were in the city. This time, her mom was stationed in London, and Emily knew she’d be roped back into her old life. She didn’t know anyone there and knew most of her break would be spent alone.

The last place she had called home was Rome, and now that was tarnished by her complicated past with that city.

Emily was good at being alone. Being an only child of a workaholic single mom meant she learned to keep her own company. She read a lot. She got good at running away, escaping her nannies, and skirting security in order to roam free. She’d be fine.

The problem was that Emily had gotten used to this. She rarely spent a moment alone these days. Whether it was walking to class with Spencer, or Hotch, or Derek, getting lunch with the team, surprise coffee dates with Penelope and spending almost every evening with her girlfriend, she hadn’t been left alone in ages. She didn’t miss it.

Their residence building had a warm yellow light shining out of the windows and a soft red brick facade. In the summer, ivy grew up the south facing side but in the winter, the ledges were covered in snow and the stone steps were slippery. She trudged forward, excited for the warm embrace of the dorm.

Spencer had other plans. He reached into the garish yellow plastic newspaper box that was stationed next to their doorway and retrieved this week’s newspaper.

“Come on Reid,” Emily said. “Just subscribe to the newsletter or something like the rest of us.”

He held up the cover to her in surprise. Usually it reported the news of a recent sports victory, or a change of policy announced by the administrators, or even a fun event held on campus. Sometimes there was even a dramatic protest or an important speaker coming to campus. But this week, the headline surprised her. In large font printed across the page read: “Multiple student politicians fired amid financial scandal.”

“That sounds bad,” Emily said. It did seem way more dramatic on newsprint than on a website, so maybe Spencer was onto something with his affinity for the printed word.

Grabbing a copy for herself, she then walked inside to escape the cold. Warm air greeted them as they entered their residence hall, and both students kicked the snow off their boots before trudging up the stairs. They read as they walked, but the route to their rooms was already muscle memory, so neither worried about stumbling on their way.

Normally, Emily wouldn’t willingly touch this sort of student politics with a ten foot pole. Sure, she was involved with the Criminology council, but there was a difference between the kind of person interested in petitioning for better accessibility to faculty events or running a bake sale, and the kind of students to embezzle thousands of student dollars like what the current student government executive seemed to be accused of doing.

She quickly ran her eyes down the page, the contents jogging a memory from Halloween, of Hotch and JJ discussing the early stirrings of said scandal.

“You know,” Spencer said, “I’m surprised they got a lot of this information, it’s notoriously difficult to file FOIAs for student governments, as they’re technically private corporations. So the fact that they got these files means that this is a much bigger scandal than one might assume.”

Corruption, bribery, embezzlement, nepotism. All words that jogged memories of hiding in the corner of political fundraisers, overhearing the worst of politics from too-drunk elites sipping on their wine and munching on charcuterie.

“I hate politics,” Emily said, stuffing her copy of the paper into her bag.

“I find it interesting. It’s basically a microcosm of our current political climate. In fact, I have subscribed to the print edition of fifteen student papers in the region,” Spencer said, “I like to keep informed on the coverage of student issues, and compare them to our own.”

“Why?!” Emily said with a laugh. “You know you can just look them up online.”

Spencer gave her a withering look, and she should have known better than asking about his aversion to tech. He loathed having to use his computer, as the LCD screens apparently gave him a headache. Penelope even gave him a pair of blue light glasses to attempt to alleviate the issue.

Then, he began to speak, at length, about the dying printed news industry and why print copies were better for understanding than screens et cetera. She made sure to nod and hum at appropriate points, but her mind kept wandering.

She wondered if her girlfriend was in her room. Emily missed her any time they were apart and she yearned to hold her in her arms once again. But she shouldn’t. She needed to work. She had too much to do. Her grades had slipped, slightly, this semester. Everyone warned her about how college would be harder than high school, but no one ever warned her how much the expectations were raised in second year.

Two more exams. She clutched her coffee tighter. She’d rather do anything else besides study at this point. Her body was exhausted, her mind frazzled. She wondered if she could even manage to get through a chapter of revision before conking out on her desk.

As she said goodbye to Spencer and struggled with her keys that were tangled up in their corresponding university-branded lanyard, JJ’s door opened.

“Hey girlfriend,” JJ greeted her, sounding way too much like a straight girl greeting her platonic friend for Emily’s taste. She gave her a pass because it sounded cute in her voice.

“JJ!” Emily said, somehow surprised to see her despite the fact that she lived right across the hall. Her girlfriend was dressed in sweatpants and an oversized sweater, with her straight hair tucked behind her ears and her face bare of make up. Her face was lit up with a smile, and Emily rushed towards her, planting a soft kiss on her lips.

“Hi JJ,” Spencer said as Emily and JJ kissed.

When they pulled apart, JJ gave Spencer a smile as a greeting and asked them how their exam went.

Spencer babbled about their Logic exams for a minute or two, as Emily basked in JJ’s presence. She grabbed onto her hand and found that it was so much hotter than her own and wasn’t sure if she held on tight because she was cold, or if she had missed her girlfriend.

“I’m just glad it’s over,” Emily said. “I never want to hear about fallacies again.”

Spencer seemed to want to say something, but fell silent at Emily’s tired expression.

“Wanna come in for a bit?” JJ whispered in Emily’s ear. Apparently she said so a touch too loud because Spencer replied instead.

“Sure!” he said, and then walked into JJ and Penelope’s room.

“I should really study,” Emily tried to argue, but a single glance into JJ’s deep, blue eyes had Emily melting.

JJ’s room was much messier than Emily had last seen it. Both desks showed clear markers of the ongoing exams, with papers and books piled high. In addition to this was an assortment of pillows strewn all over the floor.

“You guys are back early!” JJ said, after checking her watch, “I thought it was a two hour exam?”

“I finished in an hour,” Spencer said, “and Emily only needed an extra half hour on top of my time.”

Damn straight, Emily thought, feeling somewhat competitive with the boy-genius despite herself.

She really should study, but the prospect of seeing her girlfriend outweighed the desire to sit hunched over a textbook for another evening.

Emily and Spencer kicked off their boots, placing them neatly on the mat by the door before peeling their jackets off and hanging them on the back of her door. Emily wasn’t sure if she liked winter. Whenever her mother was stationed in the Middle East she yearned for snow, but now that she was experiencing the Nor’easter for the first time, the desert sounded like a good time.

“Well there goes my plan,” JJ said, blowing her hair out of her face with a puff of air.

Spencer flopped onto Penelope’s neatly-made bed, collapsing into the assortment of pink pillows while carefully keeping his take-away cup upright. Emily sat down next to JJ on her bed.

“Your plan?” Emily asked.

“Yeah,” JJ said, sounding a bit shy. “I had this whole plan to make up a blanket fort here for you, and I would surprise you with it when you walked in.’”

JJ gestured with her hands at the mess. Blankets and pillows were strewn about, and a bundle of fairy lights were laying in the middle of the floor.

“Then you came back early,” JJ concluded. “Spence, I thought you’d keep her occupied longer!”

“You didn’t tell me that,” he replied. Spencer looked quizzically at her, shrugged, then took another sip of his coffee.

“I just wanted us to have a cute date night,” JJ admitted. “I know you’re so stressed, and you deserve a break.”

Emily grabbed her girlfriend’s moving hands and held them in her own. She felt overwhelmed. JJ was so… thoughtful. Caring. Attentive. So many things that were absolutely foreign to Emily. No one had ever tried to impress her like this.

“It’s okay,” Emily said. “We don’t need anything special to have a cute date night. You’re cute enough.”

JJ gave Emily a goofy smile in response.

“Okay,” JJ said. “If you say so.”

“You’re building a blanket fort?” Spencer asked. “I actually have some experience with blanket fort architecture.”

“You do?” JJ asked, raising her eyebrows skeptically.

“Of course,” he replied, seeming almost offended that she questioned him. “It sparked my interest in engineering. I wanted to overcome the problem of chair-tippage when it came to building the structure, so I devised a system of counter-weights that I found increased the structural integrity by 53%. My mom always told me that I could be an architect, but I thought the sciences better suited my intellect.”

“Oh?” Emily asked, genuinely interested. How would someone measure the structural integrity of a blanket fort?

“Actually, I have some blueprints. Let me grab them,” he said, standing up and making a move for the door.

“Of course you have blueprints,” JJ laughed.

“I should probably go feed Gideon, anyway. I’ll be right back!” Spencer said. Before closing the door behind him.

“Gideon?” Emily asked.

“His fish,” JJ said, “the one he won at the fair. It’s named after his professor, I think.”

She shrugged. The kid was weird, they tended to just accept that.

“I guess Spencer’s joining us on date night,” JJ said. “Sorry. I know you’re stressed and probably want to be studying, but I thought we’d order pizza and just have one night off. Just us. And Spencer.”

JJ planted a firm kiss on Emily’s lips, leaving her dazed and blushing.

“Relaxing sounds perfect,” Emily said, pulling her girlfriend closer to her. “I can’t believe it’s already exams. This semester has flown by. Soon it’ll be winter break, and I won’t get to see you.”

“I can’t imagine you not being right across the hall,” JJ said. “Who will give me kisses when I want them?”

JJ kissed Emily, sucking on Emily’s bottom lip slightly before pulling apart to look at her.

“I know you’re joking, but I hope you’re not kissing anybody else, no matter the circumstances.”

With that established, Emily pounced on her girlfriend, pushing her onto her bed and kissing her deeply. She intertwined her fingers in the blonde locks that were splayed out in a golden halo and breathed in deep, taking in the warm scent of the lilac candle that burnt on her night side table.

All her worries melted away at JJ’s touch. Emily’s brain was filled with the feeling of JJ’s lips on hers, with her lithe form beneath her. Exams, student politics and thoughts of home were wiped away, and her stress faded into background noise.

JJ’s pliant form writhed under Emily’s, her hands sneaking below Emily’s sweater and dancing over her back. They deepened the kiss until they were making out like teenagers in JJ’s dorm with the door still open a crack.

This was how Spencer, accompanied by Derek, found them when they pushed open the door with blanket fort blueprints and bags of potato chips in hand.

Spencer made a surprised noise, which made Emily aware of his return. She jumped up and pulled apart from JJ with a dark red blush gracing her cheeks.

“Woah there ladies,” Derek said with a laugh. “Keep it in your pants!”

“Guys! I was gone for five minutes!” Spencer whined.

Emily stood up awkwardly, stuffing her hands in her pockets as she watched JJ sit up and pat her hair down in a huff.

“Sorry,” Emily grumbled, not really meaning it. She would never be sorry for kissing JJ, but she was sorry for the awkwardness

“Pretty boy dragged me down the hall,” Derek said in explanation. He had Spencer’s rolled-up fort plans in his hand, and lightly smacked Emily’s head with it, making a comedic thwap noise as it made contact. “Hope you weren’t in the middle of something?”

“Only JJ’s legs,” Emily quipped to everyone’s surprise, even her own. JJ hit her jokingly and blushed.

“Hey!” Derek laughed, “Let’s keep this PG!”

“You called?” The voice of Penelope Garcia—PG if you will—rang out from the hallway, and within seconds JJ’s room was filled with just about all their friends standing around in a slightly awkward silence: JJ, Emily, Spencer and Derek were joined by Penelope with Hotch in tow.

The latter two of them had grown closer recently and walked into the room with white shopping bags with the walrus logo printed on the side, looking like they had just returned from out in the cold. Penelope and Hotch going thrifting together, that’s new! Emily thought to herself and decided to file the observation for later. The image of Hotch watching Penelope’s customary fashion show was enough to make her laugh under her breath.

“We’re building a blanket fort,” Spencer announced, changing the subject to the task at hand. “Are you guys helping?”

“Oh you know I will, boy genius,” Penelope said with an excited smile.

Emily looked over to her girlfriend. So much for date night.

———

Without much questioning about why they were building a blanket fort, the team got to work. In college, sometimes things just happened. Impromptu blanket forts were par the course. In their defense, any excuse to not spend the evening burying their heads in textbooks was a welcome reprieve.

It started with just a few blankets draped in the space between JJ and Penelope’s beds, but with Spencer’s instruction, a verifiable architectural marvel began to take shape.

While Emily knew that Penelope would be all gung ho for this sort of project, it was certainly amusing to see Hotch in his khakis and dress shirt crawling around on the floor like a child with the rest of them, tying off blankets and very seriously maneuvering the different parts of the structure.

Sheets were draped here and there, tied together to form ceilings and walls. Two chairs stolen from the common room, loaded with backpacks on the seat for support acted as the entrance to the fort.

While it was crawling space only, Emily had to note that there was a sense of awe when you emerged into the open space of the main fort-area. It was surprisingly big, fitting all six of them with ease. The key to the whole design was a curtain rod Hotch had stolen from the boys shower that lifted the roof up.

The design was strangely reminiscent of Baroque architecture, which she was sure was due to Spencer’s designs. This was a fact that Emily kept to herself. She always tried to rein in the ‘I lived abroad’ conversation points so her childhood could remain under minimal scrutiny.

Emily’s exhaustion transformed into excitement as she relished the time hanging out with her friends. Music played from Penelope’s computer as they worked, they began to work as a cohesive group, each member doing their share. It was nice to do something besides sit at her desk and obsess over memorizing facts and statistics, or figuring out the proper argumentation for an essay on a subject. Making sure that a bunch of blankets didn’t crash onto them was treated with the utmost seriousness, and the whole group was focused with intense concentration at their own tasks.

Spencer did, in fact, have literal sketches of blanket forts in his notebooks, but the details of which were fairly incomprehensible to her. While she believed that he did the math, his chicken scratch was just about indecipherable, and his drawing was little more than a few shapes on a page. Despite this, it was laid out on the centre of the dorm-room floor for them to reference.

At one point, as Emily stood on JJ’s wheely chair, she feared that the fort had all come crashing down as she lost her balance and grabbed at the blankets to stop her fall before tumbling onto Derek with a yelp.

“Sorry,” she muttered as she climbed back onto her feet and fought off the blanket that had wrapped her in a shroud.

She flinched as she realized she had ruined it all, a pit forming in her stomach. She looked at her friends in concern, but instead of yelling at her for her mistake, or shunning her for ruining it for the rest of them, they smiled at her and helped her up.

“It’s okay!” Spencer said cheerfully. “I know exactly how to reinforce that wall.”

“You okay, Emily?” Hotch asked, righting the wheely chair as JJ fretted over her.

“I’m good,” she answered, still confused as to why they weren’t mad at her.

Instead of making a big deal over the set back, they went back to work. Soon, the fort filled out and it returned to its former glory. Arguably, better than it was because they had draped fairy lights throughout the inside, making the space glow with a warm orange light.

Inside was filled with pillows and big enough for all of them to sit comfortably so it was a comfy lounge space. It was cozy and warm, the antithesis of the bitterly cold night air outside.

“You know what?” Hotch said. “This is a damned good fort, Reid.”

The group muttered in consensus. They all had piled into the space, and as the excitement wore off, Emily was wondering what happened next. What does one do in a blanket fort? She had vague memories of building one in her room, but she had just sat inside and read a book.

“I hear the RA’s storage room has a ton of board games,” Penelope said. “They pull them out for socials and stuff.”

“That’s all well and good, but we’re not asking Strauss to let us in,” Derek argued. “I still think she thinks we were responsible for that fire alarm last week. She’s been giving me the evil eye ever since.”

“Who said we had to tell her?” Emily said. “We could just… borrow… them…”

“I mean, they are for us to use, anyway.” JJ’s eyes had a mischievous look in them as she looked at Emily.

“That is true,” Hotch said, the scowl that was usually a fixture on his face turning to a smirk.

“That’s stealing, guys,” Spencer warned, as if they didn’t already know that.

“We’ll give them back,” Emily said with a shrug. “Come on!”

Penelope led the way to a dark wooden door on the main floor, it was labelled simply “Storage,” but the computer science student assured them that it was where the RA’s stored all of their supplies.

“It’s locked,” Penelope huffed.

“Do you have a bobby pin?” Emily asked her in a hushed voice. She wouldn’t have gotten this far if she hadn’t learned how to pick simple door locks. She had trouble with deadbolts but a simple latch she could probably do within a couple of minutes.

The blonde pulled a hot pink bobby pin out of her perfectly curled hair. Emily snapped it into two, bending one end into a longer L-shape. Sticking that into the bottom of the lock and holding it in place, she used the other side to feel for the pins that held the lock in place.

Emily could feel all eyes on her as she confidently knelt in front of the doorknob, the group keeping watch for her as she worked. No one questioned how or why Emily knew how to do this. She had her reasons.

This definitely broke all sorts of residence rules and if they got caught, they knew they’d get into shit, but no one seemed to care that much. They just wouldn’t get caught.

After a couple minutes, Emily’s hands began to sweat. What if she couldn’t do this anymore? She tried to centre herself. She had made it through infinitely more stressful situations in the past. It was the eyes of her friends on her that made her nervous. She was finally accepted by a group, and she desperately didn’t want to let them down.

Then, it clicked, and she was able to turn the brass knob easily. Emily made a noise of excitement, got to her feet and yanked the door open.

Instead of an empty storage closet, on the other side of the door was Erin Strauss, their RA, in a passionate embrace with David Rossi. Her shirt was unbuttoned and he was in the middle of sucking on her neck.

“Dave?!” Hotch called out, startling the couple.

Both groups stood stock-still, neither knowing what to say. While Emily had hid the bobby pins, she wasn’t sure who was in more trouble, them for breaking into the room or their RA for using the space for unofficial purposes.

The room was small and cramped, with a pile of poster board mostly obscuring the one small window that lit the space. Strauss had been hoisted onto the desk, her legs straddling the other student. Emily could see a shelf filled with the board games stacked on the left side of the room, but they seemed unimportant at the moment. While Emily had known about their illicit love affair, she had never expected to see it in action.

“Hey guys,” Rossi said after a moment, his unwavering confidence carrying on to this moment as he pulled apart from Strauss, who was furiously buttoning up her shirt and trying to sort herself out.

“What are you all doing in here?” she demanded, standing up and putting her hands on her hips. “This room’s meant for RA’s only.”

“Well,” Emily said, startled by her own audacity, “Dave isn’t an RA so…”

“We just came for some board games,” JJ said in her most diplomatic voice, despite clearly wanting to laugh at the situation, “then we’ll be off.”

“Take them and go,” the RA said in a strangled voice, her face beet-red and as she avoided eye contact like it was the plague.

Clearly not as embarrassed as Strauss, Rossi simply smirked, collected a few board games into his arms off of the shelf, then deposited them into Emily’s arms.

Realizing that given the circumstances, they couldn’t be picky with their choices, the stunned group thanked him then scurried away, back upstairs with their loot. The silence remained until they made it back to their floor, where they all burst into laughter.

“What on earth was that?!” Derek exclaimed.

“Rossi and Strauss,” Spencer muttered.

Emily and JJ made eye contact, remembering all those weeks ago when they had caught their friend emerging from the RA’s room down the hall in the middle of the night. They had known that Rossi and Strauss had hooked up that night, but had no idea that it was a whole relationship.

“I see it,” Hotch commented. “I mean, I don’t know your RA too well, but Rossi likes a woman with authority.”

Derek and Emily fake-gagged in an exaggerated manner at the comment.

“I think I need to bleach my eyeballs after that display,” Emily muttered.

“Ooo-kay!” JJ said, pointedly changing the subject. “It seems like we have most of the pieces to Clue… I think we could manage a game of that. We also have Scrabble, Yahtzee and Snakes and Ladders. Uh… also a pack of cards.”

“At least it’s not chess,” Emily said, thinking about her seemingly endless exam that afternoon.

“Agreed,” Spencer said.

“We do not have chess, no,” JJ said with a quizzical laugh.

———

After ordering a couple of pizzas to the dorm, they all settled in to play a board game. After a few minutes of debate, they decided to play Clue (or Cluedo as Emily continuously referred to it as). The board was laid out: it was vintage, with a teal and yellow colour scheme and some scuffs and rips showing its age. In their blanket fort, they were seated in a circle, all secretly looking at their Clue cards.

“Can I be Professor Plum?” Spencer asked before they had even gotten the pieces out of the box.

“Of course pretty boy,” Derek said, “I’ll take Mr. Green.”

“My sculpted god of thunder looks excellent in green,” Penelope flirted, choosing the white piece for herself.

“Did you know that in the original version of Clue, Mr Green was a Reverend, but they changed his name for American audience because they believed that the American public would object to a parson as a murder suspect?”

“Good thing you’re on our trivia team, Reid,” Hotch replied.

Emily was Miss Scarlet, of course, and was seated right next to JJ, who had chosen to portray Mrs. Peacock. Hotch claimed the remaining piece: Colonel Mustard.

Emily loved board games. Her nanny in France, who was a kindly elderly woman that Emily only knew as “Madame,” would play with her each Sunday after church. She has hazy memories from that time, but the warm glow of sunlight streaming into their Parisian apartment as she learned how to play Cluedo. Emily would always try to cheat, but knew better than to try to do so with her immensely observant girlfriend seated to her left, JJ’s hand resting casually on Emily’s thigh.

She looked at her cards and grinned. She had been dealt her own character, she noted, as Miss Scarlet’s name was printed in bold on the top of her first card. It felt weirdly validating to know that she herself was innocent. Also in her hands were the cards for the candlestick and pistol, as well as the observatory. She marked these off of her card and tried to gauge her opponents' reactions.

JJ was checking her phone with her cards face down, tracking the pizza’s arrival. Spencer was sprawled back, his long legs taking up way more room than was necessary, jotting down notes on some scrap paper. Presumably some statistics and probability for the possibilities of the cards that were sealed in the envelope in the centre of the board. Penelope smiled over at Derek and flirtatiously tried to sneak a peek at his hand.

After the initial rounds being dedicated to moving around the board, Emily finally made it into her first room: the lounge. There, she decided on her first suggestion.

“I suggest,” Emily said, in her most dramatic, formal voice, which was particularly suited to the role of Miss Scarlet, “that Mrs. Peacock committed this heinous crime in the Lounge with-” she hurriedly grabbed the candlestick, “the candlestick!”

She knew that it wasn’t the correct weapon, but using it would narrow it down to someone ruling out either JJ’s character or the lounge as the scene of the crime.

“Moi?!” JJ said, sounding almost offended at the accusation. “Your own girlfriend?!”

Emily grinned evilly at her, but internally she felt giddy. It was the first time she heard JJ use that word in front of their friends. JJ moved her piece into the Lounge. The others chuckled lightly at their antics.

“You have no alibi for the crime, Mrs. Peacock,” Emily said, “and I am merely making a suggestion.”

JJ glared at her, but said nothing. Emily turned to Derek, who was seated at her left.

“What do I do?” Derek asked, looking around the room, slightly confused.

“Do you have any of those cards?” Hotch asked.

“Yeah-” Derek said, moving to show his hand.

“No!” Penelope stopped him. “Just show one of your cards to Emily if you can prove her suggestion was wrong.”

He made an “o” with his mouth and sneakily showed Emily the Lounge card. Emily noted that, and that it was Derek’s card. Mrs. Peacock had yet to be proven innocent, and Emily gave JJ a suspicious glance.

She loved this game.

As the game progressed, Emily noted a few things about her opponents. A part of Emily was profiling her friends subconsciously, reading each of their strategies like a book.

Penelope always seemed to luck out on her dice rolls, covering a lot of terrain and gathering information like it was a cup of tea. But, she seemed to take it personally when someone accused Mrs. White of having killed Mr. Boddy and gasped every time someone made that suggestion.

Hotch seemed to take the game very seriously, and was at it like he was an actual police officer solving crime. But, it didn’t seem that he completely understood all of the rules, and definitely hadn’t played before, so he spent most of his turn grumbling as he skimmed the rule pamphlet.

Spencer, on the other hand, had memorized the rules, common strategies and probabilities of the different outcomes, so Hotch often looked over to him nervously as the boy wrote longhand equations in the notebook that he pulled out of his bag for the very occasion.

Derek also had never played before, and regularly made ‘accusations’ rather than ‘suggestions’ when he entered a room, frustrating Spencer to no end. But, Derek was smart and seemed to be picking it up as he went along. That was until he made the same suggestion twice in a row, both times making Hotch show him the exact same card. He asked Reid endless questions about specific rules, and more than once he made the boy double check in the rule book when Derek tried to make a rather unorthodox move.

JJ seemed to be the only one genuinely trying to have fun. She munched on the Cheetos that she stored in the bottom drawer of her night stand, and made conversation. Her strategy seemed to be exclusively focused on playing the game like it was the 1985 feature film Clue, playing the role of Mrs. Peacock with a fake accent and treating it like an actual murder-filled dinner party.

After a solid twenty minutes of gameplay, the pizza arrived. With minimal grumbling from Hotch, who was apparently on a roll, they took a break to eat.

“Did you see this?” Spencer said with his mouth full, lifting up the copy of the newspaper that he had grabbed earlier.

“Don’t get me started,” JJ grumbled and took a sip of her pop.

“What happened?” Hotch asked, the conversation piquing his interest.

Spencer explained—with the assistance of JJ who apparently knew one of the people involved through soccer—the entire scandal. Apparently, last year there had been very little interest in the leadership roles, so the President of the student government had simply waltzed into his role. He then hired all of his friends, his girlfriend, his roommate, and together they embezzled thousands of dollars of student funds.

“I can’t believe they’re getting away with this,” JJ muttered. “Is there no oversight?”

“It’s always the same,” Emily replied. “Who’s going to oversee them? The college? They’re corrupt too.”

“This sucks,” Derek said. “Wish someone good would run for government, for once.”

Emily shook her head in frustration. It all just reminded her of her childhood. Embezzlement, corruption and nepotism all were casual topics discussed over family dinner in her home. She had higher hopes for students her own age, would they not break the cycle? Or was it just a microcosm of the outside world?

“You should run Mr. Lawyer Man,” Penelope teased Hotch. “You could take any of these clowns.”

Hotch raised an eyebrow at her and went back to his pizza, brushing her off. Emily smiled at him. Penelope was right, he might actually do a good job if he set his mind to it.

The people that surrounded her now were nothing like her mother’s friends—or the kids she had been forced to hang out with when she was younger—they were genuinely kind, supportive, and seemed to like Emily for Emily. When she told them she was an ambassador’s daughter, they had been more concerned with the cool places that she had been able to travel to than whatever power she had. At college, Emily finally exhaled fully, slowly relaxing more and more into herself.

But, the topic of politics always set her on edge, especially since the semester was ending soon. Her mother had already begun to leave her voicemails about the galas, fundraisers and events that she was required to attend over Christmas break. She pushed thoughts of the future aside and focused on the warmth that surrounded her. With some music playing softly (a song that JJ liked by Vampire Weekend), the softness of blankets under her, and JJ leaning on her slightly as she ate her dinner, Emily felt at peace. She knew she could handle winter break, because she knew that these friends would be here when she came back.

After years of leaving a school midway through the year only to show up to some new boarding school or international school each time her mom was reassigned, Emily never had a chance to put down roots. But, with each bite of pizza, Emily felt herself becoming even more firmly rooted. Not to this place, but to these people as their lives became more entwined.

Once dinner was over, the game continued, and thoughts of politics left their minds. By then, Emily narrowed it down to the weapon (the candlestick), two rooms (the kitchen and the billiard room) and she was pretty sure that it was Colonel Mustard that had committed the crime.

She had a decision to make: walk all the way from the study to the billiard room, or risk being wrong by making an accusation. She was pretty sure both Hotch and Reid were on the right track, as the younger boy’s scribbling in his notebook had gotten even more intense and the older boy was beginning to look around suspiciously, as if the others were trying to read his notes.

She had pretty much ruled out Penelope, JJ and Derek as competitors, as the trio spent most of the time talking, and genuinely trying to have fun. Emily, Reid and Hotch were all way too into it, but Emily was competitive and this was her game. She wasn’t going to lose to Hotch, no way. Reid winning she could blame on his boy-genius nature, but Emily decided that Hotch was going down.

The two boys seemed to have come to the same conclusion, all eyeing each other across the board, the tension palatable between them as their competition became heated.

She nervously tried to move to the billiards room, deciding to play it safe. Better safe than disqualified. But, as soon as she made that decision, she regretted it as Spencer straightened up on his turn and said: “I’d like to make my accusation.”

“Write it down,” JJ prompted, as per the rules. He jotted it down in his paper.

Then, with bated breath, they watched as he grabbed the envelope out of the centre of the board, and read the cards. His face fell when he saw one of the cards, so he must have been wrong. He placed them back into their envelope and back onto the board.

“No dice?” Emily asked.

He shook his head.

“Statistically speaking that should have been right,” he grumbled. “My math was wrong.”

“Boy genius isn’t a good detective, huh?” Penelope mused.

A few turns went by, with Derek, Penelope, and JJ moving around the board or making suggestions.

Emily rolled the dice, making one square from a room. She sighed. She’d make a suggestion next round.

On Hotch’s next turn, he made an accusation, which he wrote down on a pink sticky note that Penelope had handed out when the game started. He checked the envelope.

Emily held her breath. She was sure he had it and that the game was over. She should just call it quits now. She went to bite her nails out of stress, but stopped herself, they were starting to get long and she wanted them to look nice.

A moment passed as Hotch compared his cards. After he saw the third card in the envelope, his expression revealed that was also wrong.

Boys, Emily thought. Always so overconfident.

She made a suggestion instead of risking it: “Miss Scarlet—er myself I guess— in the Billiards Room with the pistol.”

It was a gamble. If she was right, and the people who knew she had her own card and the pistol caught on, they would also know that it was the Billiard Room, because no one would be able to disprove her theory. If she was wrong, someone would have the card for that room, and she would know that the crime occured in the Kitchen.

The second seemed to be true, as Derek showed her his card with a small illustrated image of the Billiard Room on it. She was right. She knew what it was. But, she would have to wait until her next turn. She was going to win.

But, it was she who was overconfident, because as she was too busy preemptively celebrating her win, Derek casually made his accusation.

“Hey I’m right!” he exclaimed, holding up the cards and his own hot pink sticky note.

In his semi-cursive scrawl read: “Colonel Mustard, Candlestick, Kitchen.” These guesses matched the cards hidden in the envelope, and Emily’s own deduction that she planned to make on her own turn.

“You guys really thought I hadn’t played this game before?” Derek laughed. “I’ve got two sisters, board games were everything.”

“Were you hustling us, Morgan?” Spencer demanded.

He smirked.

“Should’ve put money on the outcome,” Derek said with a laugh. “I’d be rich.”

Emily threw her cards onto the table in defeat. JJ shot her an empathetic look, and Emily tried to stuff her frustration down to pat her friend on the back for the surprising win. He deserved it.

———

After the game concluded and the pizza had been completely eaten, the group parted ways, heading to bed, or for more midnight snacks or to finish up some studying, leaving JJ and Emily alone and to start? a game of Scrabble.

The board was ancient, and quite a few letters were missing, but with music droning on JJ’s laptop, and the soft fairy lights overhead, neither girl minded too much.

Emily looked at her letters: O, B, S, O, T, B, W and thought hard, rearranging the wooden pieces to try and formulate a word. After a long day of academia, and investing so heavily into the game of Clue, she probably had only one or two working brain cells and both were telling her to play the word ‘boobs.’

Her eyes flicked to her girlfriend, who looked absolutely gorgeous in the warm light. Her blonde hair almost glowed, and she had an adorable expression on her face. Emily couldn’t help but glance lower, thinking about the real world examples of her Scrabble word.

She played the word with a cheeky grin.

“‘Boobs,’ Emily?” JJ scolded. “Really?”

She sounded angry, but there was a hint of a smile tugging at her cheeks and Emily could tell the girl found it funny.

“I can’t help it,” Emily said. “I haven’t thought of much else since last weekend.”

She raised and lowered her eyebrows in an exaggerated manner, making JJ laugh and kick her lightly in protest.

JJ then played the word ‘throw,’ using the ‘o’ from ‘boobs’ to form her word, earning her thirteen points.

“I don’t think you can throw boobs, babe,” Emily said. “They’re usually attached.”

JJ rolled her eyes.

Emily made it her mission to find the funniest words possible, working extra hard (and missing out on some good points) in an effort to make JJ laugh. ‘Armpit,’ ‘meaty,’ ‘hoagie,’ ‘urine,’ ‘joint’ and her piece de resistance: ‘boner.’ All while JJ was playing incredibly normal, and often strategic words like ‘axis,’ ‘snow,’ ‘vain,’ ‘snag’ and ‘writings,’ hitting multiple double- and triple word scores on the way.

“This is fun,” Emily said, sneaking a handful of JJ’s Cheetos out of the family-sized bag next to the blonde, while she was distracted by playing her turn.

“I don’t understand how you’re winning,” JJ muttered.

Emily shrugged, “Guess I’m just a genius.”

“Reid? Is that you?” JJ joked. “Why are you disguised as my girlfriend?”

“Would Reid do this?” Emily said, leaning over toward her girlfriend and pressing kisses all over her face until she fell back. Then Emily straddled her, their lips meeting in a passionate embrace that left both girls panting.

“I would hope not!” JJ exclaimed with a laugh, making a face at the thought.

They laughed and went back to making out, with Emily careful not to disturb the game pieces. JJ sucked onto Emily’s bottom lip, making her weak in the knees and she struggled to support herself over JJ’s shorter frame at the motion.

“We should-” Emily tried to say between kisses, “finish the game.”

JJ kept deepening the kiss, going so far as to grab onto Emily’s butt to hold her in place on top of her.

“You’re trying to distract me,” Emily chided, “because I’m winning! I see right through your plot.”

She sat up and went back to her tiles before playing another funny word: ‘suck’ for twenty points. JJ grumbled,fiddling with her own tiles, as Emily collected a few out of the bag.

Emily was preening as she rearranged her own tiles and didn’t notice as JJ put down her word. When she went to play her next word (‘zap’) and only then did she see what word JJ played.

‘Love.’

It was there. Clear as day. Written vertically and connected to the word ‘snow,’ it was unmistakable. Emily looked at it for a long moment, trying to figure out what it could possibly mean that her girlfriend very intentionally played such a loaded word. Was it the only word that fit? Did she only mean that she loved the snow? Was she also reading into it?

Emily looked up, making eye contact with JJ. The blonde blushed and looked away, nervously fiddling with the necklace around her neck. Emily smiled faintly at the warmth that flooded through her, but alongside that, was the sharp pang of anxiety. Was she supposed to acknowledge that? Would that make it weird?

‘Zap’ didn’t feel appropriate when her girlfriend may or may not have confessed her love for her.

She played it anyway, deciding that making a big deal of it would just complicate matters. Besides, did she love JJ? She didn’t know. It was all so new. She liked JJ a lot. She definitely like-liked her in the traditional sense of the world. But Emily had never been in love before. She’d loved people before, Matthew for one, and her mother in a way, and she loved Derek like a brother. But being in love was a whole ‘nother ball game.

JJ won the game after playing ‘equinox’ for twenty two points near the end, beating any lead Emily had gained from her silly words. JJ deserved it in the end, as the blonde would sit and stare at her letters until they formed the most complex words that Emily had never even heard of. Emily’s eyes drooped and she was barely able to create three letter words by the end, while JJ was still surprising her with her vocabulary.

Emily shook JJ’s hand to congratulate her for the win. JJ grinned and kissed her.

Then, they looked around and realized two things: it was past one in the morning and Penelope hadn’t come back to the room yet and that all of the blankets that JJ owned were currently being used in the blanket fort.

“Can we sleep in my bed, tonight?” Emily asked. “I’ll help you clean up in the morning.”

JJ nodded but was in the middle of texting Penelope, wondering where on earth her roommate had wandered off to. Within a minute she got back to JJ saying: with derek! will explain tmrw!! 😘 🧚‍♀️ 😳

JJ showed Emily the message and both girls giggled. Emily saw that coming, but didn’t realize it would be a game of Clue that finally sealed the deal.

Exhausted but happy and relaxed after the game night, Emily and JJ tumbled into Emily’s bed and cuddled up together. Between JJ and Emily, the word ‘love’ was left unsaid that night, but Emily fell asleep that night feeling a new warmth in her chest.

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tundrainafrica · 4 years ago

Note

do you currently have any snk universe LeviHan headcanons on your mind?

Okay, before I go into this question, I just have to say my brain is literally a conglomeration of head canons which I’ve built up after hanging in this site for months so at this point, I even have trouble telling which one is real or not because everyone just thinks up such beautiful and reasonable ones.

I wanna talk about one headcanon though which is not really talked about because I don’t think a lot of people jive with. This one resonates with me so well though that I ended up writing it in all my fics even if it’s only barely hinted and was never confirmed in canon. But Imma just drop it here because like I would have wanted to talk about it anyway so now or never.

Since no one ever confirmed Hange’s history I took liberties with it.

Hange grew up in a rich family within Wall Sina.

So my headcanon is Hange grew up rich. Like really rich, not necessarily royalty but at least noble family rich.

Like Hange could have chosen not to work a day in her life beyond managing family properties and businesses like a larger version of the Reeves company but she just had such a passion for discovering the outside world and research that she ended up deciding to join the survey corps anyway, one of the shittiest factions in the military out of passion. This ended up causing a rift to grow between her and her family which is why she never talks about her family or her history.

Are there hints in canon?

These are probably my interpretations but I kinda see possible crumbs which can be interpreted as Hange having grown up rich or at least highly educated.

For one, where do you get the knack and obsession for research? To a degree someone has to have had a lot of time in their life or a lot of time beyond trying to find food or trying to survive to get so deep into something as complex as research, especially in that crapsack world. If Hange was living hand to mouth, she wouldn’t have been neck deep into research. Mind you, Hange is the type of person to get into research for days, completely disregarding her own personal needs and other obligations. This could be interpreted either way but I think not having to work a day in her life growing up, Hange had the leeway to enjoy research and appreciate it, and had built the habit of just locking herself in her room to get stuff done because of her environment growing up. If she had a family to feed, if they were living hand to mouth, I doubt Hange would have built this habit.

Hange’s room is constantly a mess. It could be interpreted both ways,I know. But we have Levi who hates filth because he grew up in filth. We have Hange who lives in a messy room among clutter because maybe she had someone cleaning up after her growing up? When she finally started living alone, she started thinking, I’m too busy to clean this up myself and just goes about her life. Levi, who had lived in filth all his life, ends up the one cleaning after her because he’s traumatized by filth to the point of fastidiousness. While Hange is not.

Hange is familiar with powerplay and media manipulation. What kind of work did she do in Season 3? She did a lot of the politick-ing, the media manipulation and the behind the scenes work to get Reeves back into power and she did a really good job at it. I think this could be interpreted as her having grown up within the walls, brushing elbows among the elite to have known how it works. Hange was one of those completely aware that the uprising and the rebellion could not be completed without getting the trust and the faith of the people. She was also one of the people who knew exactly how that type of shit worked and that's why it went so smoothly in her end.

Hange is okay getting her hands dirty. This could be seen as a counterargument. If Hange was rich, why is she okay getting her hands dirty? I’d like to point out here her motivations for it and the way she goes about it compared to Levi. When Levi fights or tortures, the way he goes about it is he just knows it’s a necessity and something he has to do to get things done. When Hange fights or tortures, there is a sort of wonder or curiosity in her face, which shows she is more motivated by the wonder and the unpredictability that comes with working in the survey corps more than anything. Although Hange has a good heart, she is not as in touch with the struggles of the poor and the powerless as Levi imo. I don’t think it came as naturally for her. In fact, the penchant for survival and the mindset of doing something because it’s necessary did not come as naturally for Hange as it did for Levi. Hange gets her hands bloody because she likes dissection, she likes trying to learn new things (like learning to torture) and this type of perspective, not coming naturally for someone like her at least hints to the idea that she grew up with enough financial leeway to at least not understand that some unfavorable things may have to be done out of necessity.

They glossed over her history. Maybe she had no childhood trauma? Although Hange did have traumas which were put into light after she joined the survey corps, we never hear about any traumas or any big revelations about her life before that. Maybe it was comfortable? Maybe comfortable to the point of forgettable? It was a good life maybe, enough to brush it off lightly. Maybe her life was just so conventionally normal, and the worst she ever experienced is deciding to defy her parents and adjust to a mildly middle class existence as part of the shittiest factions of the military (which is still a farcry from being dirt poor or having lost her parents at a young age.)

What does this mean for my Levihan HC?

It adds an interesting facet to the Levihan dynamic in my end. That’s why I ended up keeping this around as a silent headcanon and I’ll just drop some of them here.

Hange had to teach Levi about living above ground

The culture above ground is completely different. Business language, writing documents are something which Levi probably had to learn when he joined the survey corps and became captain. Hange was rich enough to at least have a good education and formal schooling for her to have sheer mastery of how the rich people talk, how budgets are drafted and how announcements are made in a way to please the rich people. Hange knew that and thats why she ended up doing a lot of logistics and research. In fact, she could have been better than Erwin, which could possibly hint to her even having better education than him.

Levi probably never mastered business language and logistics, which is why he never took any other role beyond special squad leader. Although he has the eye for strategy and combat, he cannot for the life of him handle paperwork or the logistics of being a supreme commander.

Also, they lived in a medieval place so we can assume this type of education wouldn’t be accessible to most people in the outer walls, which kinda supports the point that Hange wasn’t poor or even lower middle class. Like I’m expecting at the least she was on the same social class as Jean.

They fight over budgets.

If I remember correctly, this has been confirmed in canon. Hange handles budgets and Levi likes to blow the budget with luxuries. Hange has simple joys for someone who grew up rich. Having grown up with a lot of money and a formal education, I wouldn't find it surprising that she was a master of budgeting and that’s why she ended up taking over that job in the survey corps. She also handled supplies and her department probably required the most budget. Not surprising that she handled the overall budget.

Hange handles the budgeting and Levi likes to blow the budget on tea and luxuries. It was explained before why Levi blows the budget on tea. Levi loves certain luxuries but never really had them in the underground which is why he enjoys them know in the military. Hange doesn’t have much of an eye for luxuries because she grew up with them already. There’s nothing much which would impress her luxury wise so she doesn’t see the need or the joys of blowing the military budget on slight luxuries.

Hange buys him the teas.

Although Hange has a rift with her rich family already. I don’t think her relationship with them was ever that bad. She was probably like a black sheep, who they would roll their eyes at during family gatherings. “The one child who ran away to join the shit hole military faction.” I think she still has access to their money and they still drop gifts. I have this head canon that Hange actually buys him the teas or gives the nice pastries or souvenirs she would receive from them to Levi so Levi could at least enjoy those too.

These are the only HCs I can come up with now but I have sprinkled a lot of my fanfiction with them and it is practically canon in my head for many reasons… Mainly because it is an incredibly interesting headcanon and facet of their relationship to consider.

Analyzing the romantic relationship between two people from different social classes is just incredibly interesting.

Levi and Hange are complete opposites yet manage to jive. This is a common sentiment and take among all the people in the fandom. But what if you take into account as well that they are from different social classes?

I’ve seen this type of relationship in real life and there’s a lot of adjustment involved but it really puts into light how open certain relationships are that differences in social background are discussed and navigated instead of treated as a dealbreaker on why the relationship won’t work.

Growing up poor and experiencing starvation stays with people and it manifests itself in the small things. In Levi, it manifested itself in his having a special appreciation for luxuries and his obsession for cleanliness. Hange never batted an eyelash at any of those luxuries being in the survey corps offered. For someone handling such a budget, she never felt the need to spend on anything too fancy. In fact, when they were eating beef in that one seen, she didn’t really think too much of it compared to the cadets who grew up in small villages in Wall Rose or Wall Maria.

Even in my family, my mother grew up poor so she has this certain appreciation for saving everything and keeping it. She hates it when we throw away food.. My father never grew up poor so he has this penchant for investing and reinvesting. He has this mindset that if we earn 100 dollars we spend 10. While my mom points out that that 10% isn’t enough for most people to live in. My parents get into the most interesting discussions and arguments having grown up in completely different social classes and I guess, it ended up why I ride so much with this headcanon. It’s just so dam interesting. Tbh, my boyfriend and I are form completely different social classes too so the way we go about material things and money are really different and it’s really interesting to navigate it when the discourse is calm and comprehensive so these relationships kinda influenced this Levihan headcanon.

I feel like for Levi and Hange, this social class issue was a give and take. Hange thought him how to butt elbows with the ultra rich in the military, having been trained herself how to talk to rich people and win their favor. Levi was the one who put into light for Hange the realities of the war and the lower classes.

Hange is a good heart and I’m sure she is aware but I just don’t think she was as in touch with it as Levi who had grown up with it. What she brings to the table for Levi That’s why is the capacity to see the wonder with everything since even in Season 1, it was shown that she wasn’t as jaded as other people in the military. Because she had her whole childhood to build that wonder already, not having seen suffering as a child growing up.

Sorry, if this is pretty long. This HC is pretty important to me because it just adds another facet of their relationship to explore when I write.

I hope you enjoyed reading it at least. Thanks for the ask!

#levihan #levi ackerman #hange zoe #levi x hange #levi x hanji

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daydream-believin · 4 years ago

Text

The Never-Ending Roadtrip (campfire songspell)

Summary: (part 1) Reader has joined Douxie on the quest for Nari’s safety. He’ll need company won’t he? - (part 3) camping and fun fun crush anxiety (part 4)

Warnings: swearing, whole fish-eating, mention of blood, i’ve stopped proofreading shit

Word Count: 3678

a/n: don’t worry there’s no more haunted stuff after this. or missouri. Y/n doesn’t smoke she just feels the need to have a way to set fire to things on her person at all times. a pyromaniac, if you will. also they have been roommates this entire time i just forgot to mention it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Archie was not happy. He couldn’t believe that Douxie would just ditch him like this. It wasn’t like him. Watch the boat, Archie. We’ll be right back, Archie. That was seven hours ago. A rainstorm had come and gone even. He thought for sure that at least Y/n or Nari would have reminded the other two about his situation. But, no, here he was, soaked to the bone and still alone. In Missouri. In misery. As mad as he was though, he was equal parts worried. It wasn’t like Douxie to just forget about him. Something was wrong.

When he finally caught sight of the rest of the party returning to the ship, Arch breathed a sigh of relief. And then got ready to breath fire. Which he quickly put out, after seeing the looks on the kids’ faces once they got close enough. So something was wrong. They looked as if they’d seen a ghost.

“Are you three alright? What happened?”

“Nothing we didn’t survive. Look, we got the tent.” Douxie held up the box to show Archie. He just flicked his tail in response. “It’s already dark, so we’ll tell you all about it while we set up camp. Alright, Arch?”

Archie rolled his eyes. He still thought this camping thing Douxie was pushing was an awful idea. But he’d let his wizard familiar make his own mistakes. He’d been doing a lot of that lately, or, well, more like nine centuries. Tough love. Young wizards cannot learn until they blow up potions in their faces. And this was going to be one of those times. He’d give it till sunrise. Midnight, even. He’d make a bet with himself, if they give up before sunrise, he’d treat himself to some fresh salmon. If they stubbornly don’t give up until after, a can of tuna.

After taking the boat a way into the wooded area they were hiding in, and answering all Archie’s questions, they picked a good place to settle for the night. Or at least Nari did. Douxie and Y/n were still iffy about it. it wasn’t exactly camping spot nirvana, but Nari really took a liking to the spot and its aura or whatever. Eh, she just kind of sniffed the air and told Douxie to stop. She liked the abundance of plant life here. Lots of roots sticking up from the ground, and little berry bushes. Which was going to make for bad ground to bed down on. But that’s alright, they’ll just cushion it with extra blankets. Extra blankets that they did not have. Or even regular blankets. They had no blankets. Fuzzbuckets.

It was going to be ten degrees out later tonight. Well, Douxie guessed they’d have to go back to that ‘huddle together like penguins’ plan. Which wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, now that he’s thinking about it. Cuddling’s pretty nice. A flush spread across Douxie’s freckles. He’d get to embrace Y/n. Pretend like he couldn’t feel how soft her skin was. Pretend like he totally didn’t want to be holding her, but it was essential to their survival so he had to. Archie and Nari would be there too, snuggling with them, so he could pass it off as platonic. But would he want that. Wouldn’t it just hurt when they let go in the morning. After holding onto her for dear life all night, to just get up and act like nothing happened the next day. Would he recover from that? His blush deepened in color. No, they’ll just have to go make another trip to the store. A different store. Hopefully one that’s free of spirits this time.

But he didn’t need to spend time thinking about cuddling his crush. No, he had to set up camp. Y/n was already building the fire. She was half-way through, by the looks of it, and he was just standing here, staring into the tent instructions, blushing away and not comprehending a thing he had read. In fact, he couldn’t seem to read them now that he was focusing. Oh, look at that, they’ve been in Russian this entire time. His blush turned into an embarrassed one. Not only had he been staring off into space, he had been staring into something he couldn’t even pretend like he was reading. Lovely. He hoped no one noticed. Y/n had. Although, she had just assumed he could in fact read the Russian text and didn’t question it. Perks of being a mysterious immortal being. After barely skimming the instructions he could actually understand, Doux took the tent out of the box, to at least make it seem like he had definitely been reading this whole time and he did have the slightest idea of what he was doing.

Douxie checked back to the instructions, careful to make it look like he was just checking back over it, and not reading it for the first time. He added a head nod to make it convincing. Okay, so he needed to spread out the tent. He got down on his knees and rolled out the large bag of nylon in front of him. It took him a minute to get it to where there weren’t any folds and the shape looked right. As right as a saggy boneless tent could look. Alright, now for the poles. Douxie looked around him and found no poles. Where were the poles? Bleeding balroths, did he buy a tent without poles? Oh, no, it appears they were just still in the box. Ain’t that just the way.

Douxie got to work connecting the tent poles. Thankfully, they were connected by some sort of elastic and he didn’t have to figure out which went with which. He found the eyelets they were supposed to go in on the corners and slipped them in. it was a bit tricky, but he managed. He was glad to be able to have something to do with his hands to get his mind off Y/n. The universe did not let him avoid his thoughts for long, however, since now it was time to raise this bloody tent, which required two people, and Archie and Nari were nowhere to be seen. Of course. Y/n was glad to help him raise the tent. She was glad to hold it while he staked it to the ground. She was glad to do anything with Doux. He just felt guilty for asking.

Finally, their new home was up. For the night anyway. Curious, Y/n opened up the zipper door of the tent. It was small, but cozy nonetheless. She poked her head in to get a better look. Doux followed suit. She turned to him, to make some comment about it, but he didn’t hear a word she said. He was too focused on how her face was incredibly close to his face. Her lips, although in the middle of saying something to him, were right next to his. Could she notice he had been looking at her lips? He prayed she couldn’t notice him looking at her lips. She had. Y/n tilted her head in a gesture. She was asking him a question. Quick, response.

“HAAHAHha yes,,” Douxie panicked.

“Oh, ah, okay.” Y/n ducked back out of the tent. Oh Merlin, what did he just say to her.

***

Y/n spent a significant amount of time trying to light the fire, first with her shitty gas station cigarette lighter, then with some spark spells, when Archie came back and lit it with no problem. Damn dragons, always, breathing fire? He wasn’t around while she was struggling either so he couldn’t have helped her sooner. She was sure she had something to be irritated at him about though. He gets to sleep all day and he doesn’t have to pay bills or wear pants. Yeah, there it was. The smell of woodsmoke filled the air. It was fantastic. Y/n took a deep breath. The fire she had built wasn’t exactly a neat log cabin like she had been taught in girl scouts, but it’d work well enough to cook their dinner and keep them warm. Dinner, what were they even eating? Apparently, the answer to that question was trout that Arch caught in the river and some sort of root that Nari dug up. The roots were a bit strange, but Nari had insisted that they were delicious when roasted. Guess it was time to trust the veggie-lady and pray to the stars that they wouldn’t be spending this night poisoned.

The trout was great, although, whole. Y/n wasn’t sure how she felt about how it was looking at her while she ate it. Yeesh Archie, remove the heads? Don’t cats like to decapitate things? But it was a really good trout. Nice smoky flavor from the fire, seasoned with herbs that Nari picked. Douxie liked it, not seeming to mind the still intact head as much. He ate two. Y/n had no idea how he could fit two whole trout in his stomach but he did just that and ate some of Nari’s roasted tubers too. Speaking of which, they actually weren’t that bad. In fact, Y/n found herself eating quite a lot more of them than she expected. A quick google search revealed that they were something called a fairy spud. Y/n made a mental note to go look for some when she got home. If she got home. Maybe home would be different by the time they were safe from the Order. Maybe they’d make a new home. Of course, they’d have to since Douxie fucking burned down the apartment they shared along with their place of business. Her roommate could be a real dummy sometimes, but that was okay, it was entertaining. And cute. His recklessness was very cute. She’d even call it endearing.

The fire cracked loudly, scaring Y/n out of her revelry. Douxie had also jumped beside her. It was a very loud crack indeed. Archie looked smug. Y/n wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was pride for the trout that he had caught himself. Y/n wasn’t about to pretend to know what went on in an ancient cat-dragon’s head. And she had been taught not to meddle in the affairs of dragons, for she would be quite tasty baked into a blood pie.

She wasn’t sure what was hotter, the fire or her face. Y/n supposed that she was lucky for that fire, to blame on for her flushed cheeks. Douxie was not only sitting beside her, but right beside her. They were just sitting on the still-damp ground, there was plenty of space. He had said something about the smoke being too annoying over on the other side, but that didn’t mean he had to sit so close to her. Not that she didn’t want to be sitting right next to him. She’d focus on the fire, she loved fire. Just focus on the flickers and the popping and the smell. And she couldn’t stop thinking about him next to her. It was just, a little much right now. Too romantic. It was like Douxie and the fucking universe were conspiring to take her out. In both senses of the word. Stars, they were practically all alone out here, sitting by the fire, rubbing shoulders, and oh look at that, he’s got a guitar now.

Douxie had gotten a bit bored just staring into the fire, and desperately needed to distract himself from the fact that he just sat so close to Y/n. Why the hell would he do that. She had noticed, he just knew she had noticed. Time to salvage his pride. What better way to fix all those problems than with some good ol’ fashioned campfire songs? Luckily, he always had a great instrument with him now. Transfiguring his staff, he started to play. He’d stay away from the rock and roll for now since it was literally ten o’clock at night and they didn’t need any park rangers showing up. At first, he just played some classics with the volume turned down, then just practiced some riffs for a while, but once he noticed both Y/n and Nari get noticeably sleepy, he switched to a softer, sweeter melody. His fingers expertly plucked at the guitar strings, and also Y/n’s heartstrings in the process. It was such a beautiful lullaby he was playing. She wished she could hear him play it every night.

Nari was the first to head into the tent for the night. She curled up in one of the corners. Y/n would follow her, but Doux was still playing that lullaby, and she didn’t want to miss a note. It was like it was putting, well, a spell on her. She had a really hard time keeping her eyes open despite her will to keep listening to him, but Douxie picked up on it, stopping to her dismay.

“Come on, Love,” He scooped her up as if she were a child, “Let’s get you to bed,”

He carried her to the tent, but stopped dead in his tracks at the entrance. Fuzzbuckets, he forgot about the no-blanket problem. Archie was going to stay awake and keep the fire going through the night, so the cold was no longer a problem, but the ground was going to be hard and lumpy. Their backs were going to be incredibly sore in the morning. Great. He’d let Y/n use his chest as a pillow. No hidden motives here, it was just chivalry. Once they settled into a comfortable and totally not weird position, they began to enjoy a peaceful night sleep to the sounds of nature. Which lasted half an hour before the tent decided that was enough.

It kept shaking, as if someone or something was assaulting it. But whenever one of them got out to fend off the attacker, no one or thing was out there. And Archie was out there, watching it, and he reported nothing unusual. So, maybe the tent they bought from a haunted store was haunted. Who could have predicted that. Oh well, it’s not like it was that endangering, just annoying. They tried their best to ignore it.

But haunted tent did not like being ignored. That lovely woodsmoke smell shifted into, something strange, like, diet blood? The sickly smell of blood but lighter, gentler, and faint. As if the tent wanted to scare them but wasn’t really into it today. Again, not really that endangering as it was annoying so they elected to ignore that also. Nari didn’t seem to be on board with that decision however, and left to go lay by the fire with Archie. Douxie was acutely aware of the head resting on his chest. He was trying his best to control his heart rate and was failing. There was no way Y/n couldn’t feel it. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could do this. Lady Fortune smiled upon Doux. The tent abruptly collapsed in on them.

***

So plan B was to find an inn for the night. After making sure the fire was out, they headed off into town on foot. It was eerily empty, nothing but the occasional car passing through town, but they were in middle-of-nowhere Missouri. The lack of nightlife at could be excused. It was two in the morning; most townies weren’t out partying. The traffic lights reflected off the pavement. It was odd seeing the lights run with nothing there at the intersection, like they were directing invisible traffic. As if there were ghost cars. Maybe they should just get out of this town actually. And they would have, if they weren’t so exhausted that they felt like zombies. Absolutely knackered.

There were exactly three inns in this dinky little town. One that was very fancy, in which they couldn’t even afford to stay in a broom closet at, one that was run-down and cheap, but full, and the last one, their only available option, which was somehow even more run-down and sketchy than the other. Just looking at the outside of it, it was pretty obviously haunted. Or it could be that the people who worked there were really committed to Halloween decoration and got an early start this year. Yeah. The man at the front desk wasn’t exactly a friendly character either. All in all a bit dodgy. Y/n was getting quite antsy, and not only from the creepy vibe. This was the last-resort inn, and with the other one full, there was a good chance that this one might not have the most ideal rooms available. And she had read enough cheesy fanfiction in her life to know exactly where this was headed.

Sure enough, the gentlemen at the front desk informed them that the only room they had left was in fact that famous room with only one bed. She’d snort if this wasn’t killing her inside. She quickly put up a poker face. Douxie balked at the information, but they were desperate, so he quietly accepted his fate and took the room key. Lady Fortune could be kind of a bitch actually. The journey down the hall was awkward as hell. Nari wasn’t sure what was going on, but she didn’t like the atmosphere. She looked up at Y/n and took her hand. Y/n smiled down at the forest child. Nari didn’t return the smile.

They entered the room and took it all in. The first noticeable thing was the smell. Not blood this time thankfully, but stale dust and mothballs. They could work with mothballs. Nari wasn’t visibly repulsed by mothballs. The carpet was sticky. It’d be best not to think about why. There was that cursed full size bed. The only bed left and it’s not even a queen. Douxie and Y/n weren’t even going to be able to have any distance between them. Douxie took a deep breath. There was a shabby little dresser with a tv from the 70’s perched upon it. You know the ones with the rounded screens, big dials, and bunny ear antennas? Y/n wasn’t even going to try turning that on. She got the feeling whatever was on the local channels was not something she’d want to see. She’d not even check the news station for the weather report. Whatever stories were newsworthy in this town was not something she wished to know about either. There was a small armchair in the corner. The floral fabric was torn, revealing that it had been reupholstered recently. Nari took a liking to it and curled up for the night. Archie joined her and got comfortable. Doux cursed under his breath. He had been counting on Archie staying in the bed with them, to make it less awkward.

Y/n was sitting on the edge of the left side of the bed, dragging her fingers through her hair. Douxie put some protective wards around the door. He’d ward up the windows too, but there weren’t any. It added to the suffocating feeling in his chest. Y/n added some purification spells to keep out any less-physical surprise guests. Walking over to the chair, Doux took off his jacket and laid it over Nari and Arch. They looked cozy. He was glad someone would get a good rest out of this. He was sure Y/n would too. It was just him with this bloody problem. He’s the fool who caught feelings here. He must surely be mad. She finished combing out her hair and snuggled under the covers. Guess it’s time for him to get in too now. In the bed. Next to her. All domestic and such.

It only took but a few seconds before Y/n was out like a light. All that sleepiness and such. Despite being the sleep deprived one here, he was wide awake unlike her. The moment the receptionist had told him there was only one bed left, it was like he took a double shot of espresso. Nervous energy, straight into his veins. He normally wouldn’t sleep like this, stiff as a board on his back, but he wouldn’t dare move. They were so close. She still smelled like the fireside, a welcome change from the staleness of the air, yet still a reminder of just her close she was. It was so quiet in the room, all Douxie could hear was the faint blowing of the vent and the pounding of the drum in his own chest. And her breathing, Merlin, he could hear her breathing. It was so soft. He unconsciously synchronized his own breath to it. He wondered how she looked right now, all cozy and asleep. Surely, she looked adorable. Maybe her hair was in her face. Perhaps she was even drooling. He dared not look over to see.

Lady Fortune cackled. Y/n turned over in her sleep, and latched onto Douxie. Oh fuzzbuckets, bleeding balroths, by Merlin, Mordrax’s miracles, fuck. She wrapped her arms right around his chest and nuzzled into it. His face was fire engine red. Whatever chill left in the air was now gone. Her soft hair was tickling his face. She was obviously still asleep right now, and thought that she was cuddling a pillow, or stuffed animal, or, or whatever she cuddled. What was he supposed to do about this? What the hell was he supposed to do. Did he cuddle back? He wanted to cuddle back. He couldn’t cuddle back. He took a deep, calming breath. He should just try to get her off. After, several attempts however, he realized that wasn’t going to happen without waking her up. And he did not want to wake her. He accepted his fate once again tonight. He could feel both his willpower and consciousness fading. Might as well enjoy these last few moments while they lasted, too. It could quite possibly be the only time he’d ever get to fall asleep next to her. In her tender arms. Getting to not just listen to but also feel her breathe. Truly a bittersweet thing.

***

a/n 2: ha! here you go, not one but two glorious there’s only one bed moments. my rite of passage as a fanfic writer. stay tuned next time for oh my god they were roommates

#douxie x reader #douxie imagine #hisirdoux casperan x reader #hisirdoux x reader #hisirdoux casperan imagine #douxie casperan x reader #douxie casperan imagine #douxie #hisirdoux casperan #douxie casperan #my writing #the never ending roadtrip

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