#if they'd been on the same page like this by day one

[erasinglines]

at the end of this, it’s hard not to feel gutted; hollowed out and empty, as if he’s been turned from the inside out, raw and waiting for all to see. can’t deny that the verity they’ve been relaying has been draining, but it’s been a long time coming, he thinks— no longer speaking in codes around each other, each communicating in a language the other didn’t speak. they’ve always been on the same page, able to understand that most intricate parts of each other, pieces of him that’s gathered cobwebs, locked away in the deepest corners of his mind. from so early on, he’d found such a comfort in her, as easy as breathing. even easier, he thinks, like she was essential to his very being, the reason that his body functioned on a day-to-day basis. it hadn’t taken much, for that to string them together, souls entangled from the moment their eyes met at that party, all those years ago, hands intertwined while they seeking solace elsewhere. he hadn’t known it then, in that moment, but that sanctuary has always come from her— her, as a person. no matter how much distance is between them, or where they are, how much time has passed. it’s always been her, for him, no matter the circumstances. that hasn’t changed now, even with all they’ve gone through, deliberate actions or not. his gaze softens, as he looks at her now, wanting nothing more than to take back all that’s occurred tonight, to be whoever she needs him to be, to be what she wants. he’s had doubts that he hasn’t been for some time now, that clearly she’s found something better in fletcher— that whatever they'd once shared was long gone, only remnants, crumbles of a structure, that once stood so tall left in its place. now, he can see that maybe neither one of them have been fully honest about the natures of their relationship; that much he knew, if tonight's conversations were anything to go by, if their night a few weeks prior had anything to say, too. has never been great at remaining angry at her, anyway, as if his body is physically incapable of doing do for very long. so, as she takes a step closer, he does too, as if to tell her that, to remind her that this is how he's always preferred them, with her right within his reach. and his hand aches to reach out to her further, as if a single touch could make up for all of his wrongdoings, but he holds back, that hand clenched at his side. " it's okay, " he assures her, that gentle glint back in his eye, colour returning to his face. " this is all... pretty fucked up, i guess. guess it always has been. " and the chuckle that rumbles from his throat, this time around, is genuine. clipped around the edges, sure, as he paints the obvious, but that bitterness is no longer attached to his words. " i'd like that, though. starting over, i mean. if you still want me around, that is— know i haven't been very fair on you, that i've only been making things harder than they need to be, " a gulp, then, as if it encapsulates the regret, the guilt, that's been festering inside him, dating back to the moment he'd left. " it's just... you're always going to be someone that i want, and i don't know how to get rid of that, " doesn't know if he wants to. " and if that complicates things too much, i get it, you know? my goal in this has never been to hurt you.

it was cruel, what she said to him that fateful day over coffee. there was something wrong with her, she thinks, to ever say those words out loud to him, to lie about something she knew would hurt just to get a reaction. she wasn’t thinking of the consequences then, and that’s why she knows she deserves to face his frustration and his ire, now, to hear just how deeply her actions affected him. “ no, that was so fucked up, i know, i just… i was so jealous and scared that you found something better than what we had, so i lashed out, and it was fucking awful of me. i should’ve just told you the truth, instead, ” that no one else compares, in the slightest. there’s contrition written all over her countenance, shame and regret permeating every single syllable that leaves her lips. “ and i know that doesn’t fix it, and it’s okay if you hate me for it because i think i hate myself for it, too, i just… i’m so fucking sorry for ever putting that in your head. ” now having the same experience herself, she would do anything to wipe it from his memory entirely, just like she wished someone would do for her, right now. she understands now that this is why exes generally weren’t advised to talk after a break up— there was so much miscommunication and jealousy and hurt swirling around them, threatening to swallow them whole. and she’s afraid it might, until she witnesses his sigh, listening to his confession, feeling guilt well up inside of her as she allows for more honesty to spill past her lips, shaking her head slightly. “ hey, no, that night was… it was exactly what i wanted. you always... i mean, it always was, with us. " she pauses, wanting to offer additional reassurance. " it was perfect, miller, honestly— it meant everything to me. ” her voice shakes, slightly, on those last few words, but she means it all the same. she means it so much, actually, and she wants him to know that, to understand just how it’s affected her, how much she hates that he second guessed himself because of her previous actions. and she can’t help but hold her breath at his next admission, feeling herself soften entirely at his explanation, all her anxiety and fear melting away, disappearing into the cold night air. so that’s what all this was about— fuck, did she feel ridiculous now for worrying, for assuming the absolute worst. the relief that accompanies it is palpable, apparent in the nervous chuckle that spills past her lips. “ god, she’s really missing out. it’s not a bad sight, looking up at you. ” her gaze holds on him a little too long after saying that, but she breaks eye contact with him soon after, turning her head to hide her embarrassment at letting those words slip out as fingers rub across her face, her lips, as if to force them back inside. “ sorry, i shouldn’t have said that, but… that’s not fucked up, though. or well, it probably would be to anyone else, but i… i mean, i don’t even let him see me fully naked, because i just… don’t feel good about myself with him, and i always turn off the lights because i can’t bear to look up and see someone that isn’t you, either. ” it’s followed with a sigh, yet she feels emboldened enough to take a few steps closer to him; still respectful of his space, but close enough to satisfy that constant urge inside her to be near him. “ can we just… start over, you think ? because i really hate fighting with you. ” a pause. “ but i get it, if i’ve fucked things up too much. i only want you to be happy, you know ? ”

[sgt-dignam]

you know, maybe we shouldn't play it here in town, just to be safe, just to make sure. well, i don't know if going out in the woods is gonna do much good. i mean, what's the blast radius on an evil song?

FROM | 3.10 - Revelations: Chapter Two

[todayisafridaynight]

I’m fairly new to the fandom, but I do have a question if you can answer it! Why do people ship Daigo with Aoki / Masato? I tried looking to see if they’ve interacted before, but couldn’t find anything! Sorry for asking I’m just </3 dumb AND I LOVE YOUR ART OF THEM!!! Nerd looking ahhhhhh

hi ! welcome to the community i hope you're having a lovely time so far and ty for enjoyin my stuff :) no need for apologies it's a very fair question to have :]

i cant speak for everyone (all. ten people into masadai anyway) but Personally To Me i just think the idea of them together is very funny. thats quite literally it im afraid..

[shellshocklove]

moanin' & groanin' | logan howlett

pairing/AU: lumberjack!logan howlett/wolverine x inexperienced!female!reader

summery: working for your father's timber business isn't what you saw yourself doing, but when the wolverine comes looking for work it's suddenly not so bad – especially when he can teach you a thing or two.

warnings: this is an 18+ fic so mdni! age gap (in the way that his mutant abilities prolongs his life), swearing, use of pet names, smut, car sex, praise, a little dacryphilia, logan's got a dirty mouth, soft dom!logan, a little size kink (basically logan has a big dick), handjob, fingering, a little manhandling, unprotected sex (don't do it!!), no use of y/n

a/n: um hi! this is my first ever logan fic. i really hope i got him right! not beta read, and barely edited so any mistakes are my own. happy reading! <3

main masterlist / ao3

The pages crinkled under your fingertips as you turned another page. Over the top of your book you could see your father's men milling about, getting the timber ready for another outgoing truck. Day in and day out they worked like flannel-covered ants. 

He wasn't here, your father, leaving you to hold down the fort, or office to be precise, as he  ran errands. "I'll be back before lunch," he'd told you, a hand passing through the sleeve of his tan Carhartt.

The office felt bigger when he wasn't here, like his neuroticism took up twice as much space as he did himself. You looked around the room. It was small, more like a hut than anything else, raised up on cinderblocks. A tiny kitchen lined the front wall, the refrigerator had given out once this month already and something smelled like it had died in there, the white florescent light under the wall cabinets gave you a headache, and the tap drip drip dripped. The table and the mismatched chairs, your father had found at a fleamarked years ago, before you were born most likely, and they wore the wear and tear of years of use. 

Every available surface was covered in papers, and the wooden shelves on the wall dipped in the middle from the weight of the binders. When you were little you'd been afraid the wood would break in two, but they were still standing (hanging?) – maybe they'd stay like that for the rest of eternity for all you knew. Your father's office had only one desk, which made your job as occasional office manager and full-time problem solver, problematic. 

Your father would sit in his chair on one side, while you'd steal one of the mismatched chairs and occupy the other end. If you'd had your way, you wouldn't be working here. The timber business interested you just as much as your father was interested in the disco they played on the radio. "If it ain't the king of rock I don't want to hear it," he usually said and switched the channel. 

But the town was small, and no one was hiring. The summer after you'd finished high school you'd dreamt of moving to the city, but the money had been tight and your father needed you. At least the work, if your father didn't meddle, was relatively easy: answer the phone, type out the invoices and salaries, keep an eye on logistics, and make sure whatever breaks gets fixed. 

The radio hummed at a low volume, one of the singles from Tapestry, as you turned another page of your book. Leaning back in your father's office chair, you glanced at the clock over the door. He should be back by now. Just as the thought crossed your mind, the door swung open.

"Did you need something?" you asked, your book dipping down in your lap. 

Logan raised an eyebrow at you as he walked into the office on heavy steps, that damn cigar hanging out the side of his mouth. "Nice to see you too, princess," he poked jokingly, tugging at his gloves, one finger at a time, and tucking them into his leather belt. 

He sported the same outfit he usually wore; bootcut jeans, a white t-shirt under his flannel and a thicker wool-lined jacket. He must've been sweating in here with that on.

Autumn had claimed the trees and ground months ago, but this morning the frost had covered the ground and bit at the apples of your cheeks. Your breath had come out in swirling plumes when you'd locked yourself in this morning; the first glints of the sun peeking through the windows as it rose over the mountains. The first thing you'd done was crank the heater, and now as you approached midday, you'd shed your sweater long ago while the windows had fogged with condensation. 

The smallest of frowns tugged at your brows, as a heat prickled up your neck to your cheeks. Logan made you a little nervous– not in a bad way, but in a way where your thoughts would wander in his presence, conjuring up scenarios of him and yourself in… comprising positions. Okay, maybe it was in a bad way. But who could blame you when he walked around like that?

He'd arrived only a few months ago, at the tail end of the summer, looking for work. He was strong, stronger than any of the other men working for your father, and although the work was hard, it seemed like he never tired. You didn't know much about him and he kept mostly to himself, hidden away in a cabin up in the mountain, but sometimes you'd see him down at the local bar, nursing a glass of whiskey in one hand and a lit cigar in the other. More than once you'd seen him chatting up Kayla Silverfox, and more than once you'd wished it was you in her place.

"Oof," Logan groaned as he opened the fridge, grabbing his packed lunch and closing it as fast as he could. You appreciated him for that; whatever had died in there should stay in there.

"Yeah," you said, "I'm not cleaning that again, not even for a million bucks."

"Can't blame ya." 

He looked to the table for a second where the guys usually ate their lunches, before he decided to take your usual chair at your father's desk. As he sat down, you pushed the ash tray to his side of the desk, earning you a short smile in thanks as he rested his cigar. It wasn't unusual for him to talk to you on his breaks. 

So, why did you heart beat so fast in your chest?

Because it was the first time you'd been alone.

"So, where's your old man?" he asked and bit into the sandwich he'd packed in an old newspaper.

"Running errands– he should be back soon…" you trailed off.

Logan hummed non-committedly. "So, you're in here sittin' pretty readin' your book while we're out in the cold slavin' away– maybe I should become the boss' daughter."

"Well, it's not easy," you sighed, feigning confidence, "and you gotta be pretty first of all," you front teeth dug into your bottom lip as you tried to hide your nervousness.

"That's true," he grinned, "I ain't got nothin' on you, princess."

Logan held your gaze with intent, and it was like something in the air shifted. It happened sometimes with Logan, like he had this power beaming from him that sucked you in. Erratic wings fluttered in your stomach, and you had to drop your gaze.

"So, how's the book?" he asked, taking another bite of his sandwich.

"Eh," you shrugged, dog-earing the page your were on, before throwing the beat-up paperback on the table. "Too many plot twists– first they're on earth, then there's this virus spreading– so they have to move all of humanity to the moon, but then there's this species that lives under the surface of the moon who they start a war with, but one of the main characters are in love with a moonie– that's what they call them– so, now they're in love and trying to stop the war and…" you shrugged again.

Logan chewed slowly as he nodded his head. "Sounds complicated," he decided, making you let out a small laugh.

"I guess so."

A grin washed over Logan's face at your small laugh, and you felt his gaze roll over you, over your exposed skin. When he looked at you like that, like a predator drooling for a meal, you felt a small damp spot stick to your panties. You watched as his nostrils widened, his jaw clenching shut as a pulsing vein protruded from his neck.

"So, science fiction," he started, clearing his throat, "Didn't know you liked that," he continued between the last bites of his sandwich

"Some kid at the library recommended it," you shrugged, "so I thought I'd try it out. And it's not like it's that far from the truth– we've got mutants."

Logan crumbled the newspaper hard and quick, the sharp sound making you jump. "Yeah," he said, and stood to his feet, "That's true."

He grabbed his burnt out cigar, and threw the ball of newspaper in the trash. You started to wonder if you'd said something wrong, but then he said, "Your father's back," and not even a second later you could see your dad's old truck pull up outside the window.

How did he even know that? 

"Logan– wait," the words just fell out of your mouth before you could even think them through. He hovered by the door, raising a questioning eyebrow at you. 

You could be brave– Just say it! 

"Come by later would you? Before you leave for the day– I have something for you."

A gush of cold air blew in with the arrival of your father. He almost crashed right into Logan on his way out, nearly knocking him down the wooden steps. You thought you could glimpse a small nod from Logan, but he was out the door so fast you couldn't be sure. 

The rest of the day went by slowly as a growing anxiety gnawed at your neck. With your dad back you slipped out to borrow the car, driving into town to pick up some lunch at the local diner. It was routine at this point, something you did without thinking, but today your thoughts couldn't stay still. You were pulling up outside the office when you realized you'd driven the whole way with the radio off.

What was even your plan? 

You wished you were better at this. You could pretend, sure, put on a brave face to hide the nerves from surfacing, but how do you get a man like that to go for a girl like you?

You felt non the wiser when the sun had dipped below the mountains and he finally knocked on the office door. Your dad had left thirty-minutes earlier, stranding you at work with no way to get home. 

If this didn't go well, you didn't look forward to walking home.

"What 's it you wanted, princess," Logan asked, leaning against the frame of the door with one knee popped. Your eyes couldn't help but run down the length of him – his broad shoulders, the bulge hidden below his big belt buckle, and the veins of his exposed arms as he slung his jacket over his shoulder.

"Oh, um," you tried to shake your thoughts, and you rummaged the desk for the envelope. "Here," you said as you found it, stretching your hand out for him to take it.

He pushed off the door frame with a raised eyebrow, the cold air from the open door taking with it the warmth of the office. "What's this?" he questioned, taking the envelope from your hand. 

"It's your check– for this month's work," you explained.

His raised eyebrow pulled into a frown, "This is a week early," he questioned, "and I usually get these sent in the mail."

"Oh, I-I just thought I'd give it to you personally this time," you lied, fitting a shrug at the end for good measure, trying to sell how completely normal and nonchalant you were.

Logan raised a skeptic eyebrow at you, and you suddenly felt really really stupid. In your chest your heart could compete with a hummingbird's.

"Really?" he said with a smile before he dropped his chin, "Can I appreciate a little extra something in here, or…?" he trailed off, waving the envelope.

Letting out a shaky inaudible breath, you tried in your flirtiest voice, "Maybe if you give me a ride home…"

...................

The lights from the town below looked like stars scattered over the night sky, the yellow light of the roads connected them like on a string. You knew that Logan knew where you lived; the town was small, and even with the short time he'd spent here, it wasn't hard to get familiar. He'd stopped at the lookout point, about half-way up the mountain road. It was nice in the daytime, with a nice view of the town, the mountain and rivers, but at night it attracted a different kind of crowd: lovers. It was cheesy, and cliché, but clichés were clichés for a reason. 

The Led Zeppelin tape whirled, and the music stopped. 

Suddenly you felt nervous, fingers picking at a loose tread on your sweater. Logan leaned forward to flip the cassette, and his truck filled with a sound of organ, like you were back in church. When he leaned back he slung his arm over your seat. You watched how he spread his legs, getting comfortable, as his eyes found your face.

Under the wool, your heart picked up its beat.

In a brave move you shifted closer, the leather seat moaning under you, as a pleased smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. His big palm snaked around your shoulder, curling you closer to him until his lips caught your own. You only hesitated for a second before your hand found his neck, where your fingers tugged lightly at the hair at the nape of his neck. 

A low growl huffed against your lips, and he deepened the kiss, pressing himself roughly against you as he licked into your mouth. You couldn't help the small whimper escaping you. His touch was rough, almost impatient, but tender all at the same time, and you felt yourself fall apart.

The air stuck to your skin, clammy and sticky with arousal and now you started to get impatient. With a loud smack you broke apart, your lips raw and spent from use as you caught your breath. A rough hand cupped your cheek, the pad of his thumb skated gently over your skin as he tilted your head towards him.

"Such a pretty little thing," he mused. His eyes had gone dark, pupils huge and filled with lust; yours must've looked about the same as they rolled down his body. He shifted closer to you, pushing you closer to the door, and you got a better view of the bulge hidden behind his jeans.

Your heartbeat pounded in your ears, clogging up the sounds around you like you were underwater, pushing at your thoughts at the back of your mind. Logan moved with such ease, each touch natural and easy, like he'd done them a thousand times. Not like you, with only your short-lived high school boyfriend under your belt. 

"Hey," he shook your head gently, "Where you goin', bub?"

"I'm sorry," you whispered, a heat coating the apples of your cheeks. 

He shook his head, his face surprisingly tender for someone so rough, "Tell me, baby."

"I'm just…" you trailed of, trying to find your words, "I'm a little nervous– I haven't done this much," you said, avoiding his gaze.

"That's sweet, bub." The pad of his thumb rubbed the pet name into your skin as he leaned forward to catch your lips in a soft kiss, "But I wouldn't worry that pretty little head of yours 'bout it."

His breath was hot against your own, and an ache started to spread between your legs. The hand on your cheek travelled downwards to tug at your jacket, and you parted only for a second to rid yourself of it, but before you could lock your lips with his again he grabbed at your hands.

"I'll teach ya," he told you and guided your hands to his broad form. 

He let you touch him as he shucked off his jacket, your fingers dancing over the soft flannel. He was solid beneath your fingers, hard muscles from hard work. A patch of dark hair curled at his chest, peeking out beneath his white shirt, and you found yourself wondering where it lead.

Curling his hand around your wrist, he guided your hand lower; down over his chest where you could feel the solid form of him. His bronze belt buckle burned you like ice, but the heat of him as he pressed your hand to the hard bulge beneath the buckle burned even brighter.

"You feel that?" He looked you straight in the eyes. He pressed your hand down harder and you could feel the shape of him against your hand, hard and thick, and big. You barely managed a nod through the wave of heat coating your cheeks. 

"That's because of you, princess." His voice was low, almost like a growl, as he started to guide your hand to rub over the thick length.

"Me?" you questioned, breathless. 

"Yes, you," he chuckled, a heavy hand petting at your head. "D'you want to take it out? Stroke it f'me?"

"Please," you begged, looking at him with moony eyes through your lashes.

"So polite f'me," he mused, his hands tugging at his belt before he popped the button on his jeans. Slipping off your shoes, you crawled up into the seat, sitting back on your knees as you watched him pull at his jeans. Peeking out from under the denim, you could see a dark patch of hair.

Logan was in no rush, revealing only an inch at a time of the base of his cock, making a show of it as the tension rose. A wave of tickling arousal washed over you, and it made you brave, reaching a trembling hand forward, you helped him tug at the fabric.

At last his cock sprung free.

You felt your eyes widen at the sight, as you involuntarily squeezed your thighs together. Even with your limited experience, you knew he was bigger than most. The thick length of his cock bobbed from the weight, hanging heavy between his legs. At the tip of his fat head, a drop of precum pearled, almost invisible in the dark truck. 

"Come here, bub." He widened his legs as he reached out a strong arm for you, curling you into his shoulder. 

"Put your hand on it," he ordered, "like this," he grabbed at your wrist and guided you hand towards his mouth. You let him move you around, eyes blown out and wide as you couldn't take your eyes off his impressive cock. 

A wet blob of spit pulled you from your thoughts, it drew the slightest frown over your face until he guided your palm, now coated in his spit, to his cock.

Under your palm his skin was silky soft, but hard and firm at the same time. You found yourself mesmerized at the sight of your hand around him as you familiarized yourself with the heaviness of him in your hand. 

"There ya go–" he cut himself off with a groan as you formed a fist around the head of him. Your fingers struggled to reach around him, but it didn't seem like Logan minded much when you moved downwards smearing his spit over his shaft in an experimental tug. 

"That's it, good girl, just like that."

A warmth bloomed in your chest at the praise, wrapping itself around your heart. You wanted him to say it again– to be good for him. So, you reached forward with your other hand, wrapping it around the base as the other formed a fist around the head. Another pearl of precum beaded at the tip, and you took the opportunity to skate your thumb over it, massaging it into his spit.

A growl seemed to get caught in Logan's throat, and still riding off your high that the praise had sown in you, you started to pump his cock in slow strokes. A slick sound escaped under your fists with each stroke, and you watched how his head fell back in pleasure.

"Am-am I doing it right?" you asked, voice barely above a whisper.

At the sound of your voice, Logan sat up straighter, a heavy hand falling over your back to pull you closer. "You're a natural, princess."  

You couldn't contain the smile from coating your lips as he brought you in for another searing kiss. It was hot, and suffocating, and all-consuming, all at the same time. It clouded your mind, and you forgot what your hands were supposed to be doing. 

Logan's hand travelled down your body, his big palm grabbing at your ass. "Take of your pants," he ordered against your lips, "Panties too," underlining his order with a couple of light slaps to the flesh.

Shuffling out of his hold, you fingered at the button of your pants, pulling at them and your panties as quickly as you could. Goosebumps prickled over your exposed skin, the air suddenly frosty without Logan's touch – but that didn't last long.

The calloused pads of his fingers trailed up your thighs, pressing down into the flesh as he pulled you closer to him. "Come sit in my lap, princess."

He didn't wait for you to move, instead he manhandled you how he wanted. Spreading his legs wide apart he fit you between his legs, your back pressed against his hot chest with his hard and leaking cock caged against your ass. 

"I'm gonna touch you now, baby, okay?" his deep voice whispered in your ear.

"Okay," you peeped, heart pounding in your ears at this new proximity. 

He spread your legs, putting your wet and neglected cunt on display, hooking them over his knees. When his palms danced over your inner thighs, you felt yourself sink deeper into his chest, deeper into the safe scent of pine and man. 

"Need to get you ready f'me, bub– stretch this tight cunt out for my big cock," he cooed.

You ached for him, a sticky wet feeling between your legs as you wished so badly for him to finally touch you. His touch was light, but teasing, drawing circles along the thin flesh, circling closer and closer to where you needed his touch the most, before he pulled away. 

"Please," you whined, grabbing at his arm.

His breath felt hot against your neck, and you could feel the grin he pressed against your skin. He let you guide him upwards to hover his large palm over your mound, but he wouldn't let you have it. Instead, he pushed at your sweater. His hand spread across the skin beneath your belly button as prickled goosebumps followed the rough pads as they ran across your skin.

"Y'gonna feel me right here, bub?" he teased, "So deep inside your tummy?"

A whine caught in your throat and you felt like an exposed nerve. Arousal pulsated throughout your body, threatening to pull you apart unless he did something soon. Your neglected cunt dripped with an ache only he could sooth. 

"Yes, please, Logan," you whined, tears threatening to spill.

His thick beard scraped against your cheek, and you almost trembled from anticipation as he slid his hands downwards. He raked his fingers through the curls of your mound, and a gasp fell from your lips when he finally pushed at your clit.

A wide smile reached across your face when he started to circle his fingers, tight with the perfect amount of pressure. Your hips bucked to meet his touch, your cunt eager and dripping for more of him. His other arm clasped around your middle, keeping your still and steady in his lap as he had his way with you.

A bold finger dipped lower, running through your folds and teasing at you entrance. A slick sound filled the car as he played with your cunt, circling his fingers around your hole, dipping a teasing finger inside you just to the first knuckle, before withdrawing it just as quickly. 

"Such a messy pussy," Logan murmured in your ear, the deep bass of his voice vibrating into your skin. "Listen."

The sound as he played with your pussy was obscene, lewd, and so dirty you felt a heat crawl up your chest. A breathy gasp escaped you when he finally split you on his finger, and a satisfied smile coated your lips as he started to move it inside in a steady rhythm, prodding every so often at that spongy spot inside, the spot your own finger couldn't reach.

"F-feels s-so good," you managed to stutter out. 

The heel of his palm pressed against your clit with every thrust, teasing at your insides and conjuring moan after breathy moan from your lips. He guided you closer and closer to the edge, and you wanted so badly to fall. When he pulled out to slide another finger inside you, you felt a tear roll down your cheek with satisfaction.

"I can feel that pussy clenching me– you close, bub?" he poked, never stopping his fingers.

Your head rolled back, resting heavy on his shoulder as you nodded franticly, mouth parted slightly, humming out small breathy whines. You were so close, the tension in your stomach twisting and aching for release.

But then he pulled his fingers, dragging them up over your mound leaving a wet trail in your curls. You couldn't help the disappointed sigh as more tears pressed their way down your cheeks.

"Shh," he hushed you, "you're okay, bub." 

Under you, you felt him move, his strong muscles flexing as he shifted you on his lap. When you felt the blunt head of his cock slide between your folds, an eagerness came upon you. You grinded against him, making a small chuckle rumble from his chest. Logan slapped his heavy cock against your folds, coating his big cock in your slick arousal. 

The first stretch of him knocked the breath right out of you, the fat tip of him splitting you in half as he helped you guide yourself down on him. You had to remember to breathe, your hand fumbling for something to hold on to. 

"Fuck," you whimpered, eyes wide, "I-it's so big– it's t-too big."

His hand wrapped around your middle held you in place, keeping you still on his cock as you adjusted to the first inches of him inside you. 

"It's not too big, princess, you're doing so well f'me," he praised, "just a little more, bub– you can do it."

With a wet whimper you lowered yourself, taking a couple more inches of him, as Logan pressed more fluttering praise into your skin. He let you take your time, easing yourself down on him at your own pace. When your thighs were finally flushed with his, he was so deep inside you, you jolted, trying to move back up, but Logan's hands held you down. You felt him in your tummy, like he'd said, his cock reaching so deep you were shaking.

"Sit still, get used to it," he told you, as you tried to catch your breath, "You're being so good f'me."

And somehow the burning stretch of him soothed away into a pleasurable pressure, one you couldn't help but chase. With an experimental rock of your hips, you felt the fat head of him prod at your spot, making you mewl. And when you started to swivel your hips, Logan groaned in satisfaction, meeting your movement with small thrusts.

Slowly, he picked up his rhythm, strong hands shifted to dig into your hips, holding you in place for him to move you as he wished. In your ear, you heard him growl, deep and animalistic as he fucked up into you.

It didn't take long until your breath came out fast between moans as the pressure built, and built, and built. 

"Logan," you moaned, tethering right on the edge.

Another growl escaped his chest, as his strong arms hooked under your legs. He pressed them tightly to your body as he picked up his pace, bucking wildly into your eager cunt. You could feel him throb inside of you, and you couldn't help but clench at the thought of feeling him spill inside you, claiming you.

"Don't stop, please, don't stop," you begged, tears streaming down your face like two winding rivers, "I-I'm gonna come."

A hand slid between your legs to rub at your puffy clit, coaxing you closer and closer with winding circles. 

"Come on my cock, baby, come all over that big cock."

It was hot, and blinding. Euphoric shocks pulsed through your body, as you fluttered and gushed around his cock. Logan's grip on your legs tightened as you shook violently with your orgasm – a million stars exploded behind your eyes.

"Oh, that's it, bub, such a good girl," he praised between heavy wet pants against your ear.    

Fucking you through your ecstasy, Logan chased his own high at a relentless pace, and all you could do was take it, reduced to a ragdoll in his hands. In your ear he muttered nonsense interlaced with praise, telling you how good you felt, and how perfect you were for him.

With a deep groan he pulled out quickly, tugging at himself until he spilled his thick spend on the truck floor. With bleary eyes you watched how it pumped in quick spurts, dripping down his hand and soiled the knuckles in his own sticky cum. 

Behind you, Logan breathed hard, nudging his nose against the column of your neck to press soft kisses to the hot skin. 

A pair of bright headlights beamed down the road, pulling you from the moment with its blinding light. Logan helped you shift off his lap, reaching to hand you your discarded clothes before he tucked himself back into his jeans. 

The cassette whirled in the car radio, and you couldn't remember when the music had stopped. Logan shifted back behind the wheel and an eerie silence grew in the distance between you.

"How 'bout I take you somewhere to eat?" he posed.

You smiled, "I could eat."

...................

hopefully this was okay? a comment telling me your favorite part is always welcome, and my ask box is always open to chat <3 and thank you for reading!!

© shellshocklove, 2024 i do not give any permission to repost, translate, feed to AI or redistribute any of my writing, with or without credit!

[reiderwriter]

🫂 Transference 🫂

Pairing: Spencer Reid x virgin!Fem Reader

For the CM Kink Bingo Challenge 2024

Summary: He saves your life, and he keeps saving it every day, but Spencer won't let you love him until you finally beg him to. Is transference really that much of an issue?

Warnings: 18+ MINORS DNI, Mentions of Case details - reader is the unsub victim, mentions of rape and attempted rape, gunshot, death, kidnapping, imprisonment, parental neglect, abandonment, loss of virginity (positive), semi-public sex, bathroom sex, fingering, penetrative sex (p in v), missionary, praise kink (good girl), moaning kink (?), safe sex, slight cum play/ oral, aftercare.

A/N: I wrote a virgin reader fic for kinktober that people loved a lot (thank you all!), and I had a lot of requests for something similar, so please - enjoy!

Masterlist || Bingo Board

You'd met him at the library, as if the world wanted you to forever associate the comfort you found in between the pages of a worn book with the man that tried to end your life. At first, you'd thought it a coincidence, then he'd flashed a smile at you, and you'd believed it to be fate, drawn in by the charm he wore as a disguise. 

Your first date was sweet, flowers and dinner. Your second date was sweeter, and they kept on that way. Sugar dropped into your ears until you were floating on cloud nine, right as he turned his charm off. 

“Really?” He started one day, his tone accusing from the get-go. 

“What?” 

“You're really going to eye fuck that man in front of me?” His voice was loud enough to catch notice in the small café you'd joined him in for the morning, and all the life drained out of your face. 

“I'm not- what?”

“No, forget it,” he chuffed, taking another sip of his drink and turning away from you. 

You noticed it more and more from then on, how he would accuse you of small things like looking at other men, like you had the choice to ignore them when they were shop clerks, bus drivers and just fucking people living their lives. 

Your friends were even weirded out when you joked with them about it, telling them all about your silly boyfriend who ripped a poster off your wall because it had some actor or singer or something on it. It wasn't even that important to you, but as you laughed, you were greeted with silence, with sideways glances and concerning questions. 

It was all starting to crumble, and there was nothing you could do to stop it but cling on. 

The next thing was his pushiness. You'd been up front with him at the beginning of the relationship that you were a virgin, something that he was more than happy about. 

He'd said it was because he was a man of God, and he understood your commitment, which confused you as you weren't a virgin for religious reasons. But you brushed it off as everything else about him was so… gentlemanly? 

Until he started pushing his hands up your thighs when he kissed you. He tried multiple times to push his fingers into your underwear as you tried to pull back, each time apologizing immediately when you displayed more panicked displeasure. 

“I'm sorry, something must have… The devil got to me for a second there, Y/N, but I won't let him win.” He kissed the top of your head, and he walked you to your door before giving you another chaste kiss and leaving. 

They found the first body the next morning.

She was young, maybe 16 or 17. Beaten, raped, mutilated, and asphyxiated. They said he'd kept raping her body long after she'd taken her last breath. It took them two weeks to notify her parents because of the way he'd left her. 

You'd watched the news report the same week with your boyfriend, shocked and horrified at the news and cuddling closer to him for comfort. 

Each step you came closer to him, each time you allowed him to touch you, he took it as a sign of his ownership, his claim on you. Not a single other person could get in between him and his prize. Each time you rejected him, he killed another girl. 

By body five, they'd called in the BAU. 

“Did you hear they're bringing in the FBI to solve that Cathy Renaud case? It's all over the news. Apparently, the team is super special.” 

You'd brought up the words while cooking him breakfast. He didn't live with you, but any good girlfriend would feed their man, so he woke you up every day on his way to work to let you prepare him something. 

His whole attention was on his phone, though, as he nodded through your conversation, grunting and moaning at each word. 

It was only when you brought him his plate of pancakes that you realized that he was just as interested in the subject as you were. Because he was staring at the photos of the girl he mutilated the night before. 

You didn't want to think about everything that happened after that. After the plate fell to the floor and cracked, splintering into your foot and causing you your first injury in a long line. 

You didn't want to think about the things he showed you, the way he touched you, or at least tried to. You heaved and wretched and emptied your stomach every single time you thought about the restraints on your wrists, how he'd tried to rape you but couldn't bring himself to do it because you weren't young enough anymore. You weren't dead enough.  

Instead, every time you thought back to that week, you found yourself back at the end. You replayed the bullet lodging into his brain as a comfort, which told you more than you needed to know about your mental state. It was Spencer Reid who'd shot him. He'd been quick enough to realize that the man would never have been talked down, and he'd fired the shot as a mercy to you. He may have killed your boyfriend, putting him down like he was a sick animal, but you were the one put out of your misery. 

He didn't stop to watch the body hit the floor before falling to your side, the other agents clearing the room and checking the corpse. He'd helped you to your feet, drawn an arm around your waist and pushed your head into his chest so you didn't have to see the carnage on the way out, didn't have to deal with the camera flashes as the press scrambled for pictures of the monster's willing victim. 

“One step at a time, this isn't your fault. Just stick with me,” he said, moving you from the house to a waiting van as you clasped his vest desperately, needing the lifeline he'd thrown you. 

“Ma'am, ma'am. I'm a paramedic, I won't hurt you, I just need to take your vitals, make sure you're okay.” 

The voice was vague and in the distance, and you were so sure it wasn't directed at you that you simply let yourself wrap around the man who'd saved you when you got to the ambulance. Nothing else was around but his chest, his hand on your back, your legs wrapped around him as they finally gave out. 

“Ma'am… Please, you're injured-” 

“Y/N,” he spoke finally, and you grabbed him tighter, nails digging into the skin at his neck. 

“You're Y/N, right? We've been looking for you for a long time. I'm not going anywhere, I won't let anyone hurt you.” 

The words were enough to reassure you, pulling back slightly as the paramedics began working on you, but not enough for you to embrace their touch. You clambered away from the paramedic the moment you saw he was a man, close in build and coloring to the corpse in the building behind you. 

You screamed, you cried, you pounded at the doors as Spencer held to you him, letting the paramedics sedate you, rocking you to sleep on the step of the emergency vehicle.

He was by your bedside every time you woke up, too. It was funny seeing him there when you still didn't know his name. Your parents hadn't visited, too ashamed to be associated with the entire thing to even check in on you. 

He had himself assigned your emergency contact after six days of your parents not showing up. In all that time, he'd sat patiently by your side as you wailed and raged and went numb, and the cycle repeated itself in perpetuity. 

He was there, too, with a bag of clothes and a fresh start waiting for you when you were ready to be discharged. 

His team had since moved on to another criminal of the week, putting the lives lost behind them as they traipsed through more cases and corpses and killers. He was still there, though. Somehow. 

You were old enough to be able to discharge yourself from a hospital, old enough to not need a guardian to take care of you. Spencer stayed anyway, and you didn't bother asking why. 

“I don't want to leave the hospital,” you said, climbing back into the bed you'd forced yourself into for the last week. The same bed where the nurse had ran your rape kit even after you'd told her he'd never touched you like that, after you'd explained and denied and shouted to high hell that no-one had touched you like that and she sure as hell wasn't going to be the first. 

Spencer had put a stop to the traumatic experience when he'd returned with your coffee, always picking up something for you when he went out. 

The nurse had gripped and moaned and murmured an apology, and you knew you'd not been an easy patient, but you couldn't bring yourself to feel bad about it. 

That didn't mean you wanted to leave yet, though. 

“I can't leave, I have nowhere to live.”

“Y/N, you can't stay here forever.”

“Spencer, I can't go home. My apartment is a crime scene, I almost died there, and there are reporters posted there 247 waiting for me to come back. They think I'm evil, they-” 

“They think you're a victim,” he said calmly but firmly, cutting you off before you could spiral again. “Which you are. And you'll be a victim forever if you don't get out of that hospital bed and start moving on.” 

He dumped a bag on your bed, a bag you recognised as one of your own overnight bags from your apartment. He looked at you again, the question in his silence. 

Are you going to keep being his victim?

You huffed as you got out of your bed, throwing off the covers and standing in front of him. He didn't budge. 

“Well?” You asked, looking at him as he stood still, not moving even an inch. 

“Well, what?” He replied, eyebrows knitting. 

Instead of replying, you rolled your eyes and reached behind you to the ties in your hospital gown, opening it until you could pull it off your body before pulling out the clothes he'd left in the bag. 

You didn't glance at him again until you were fully naked, readying your underwear so you could pull it on. When you turned back to him, his gaze knocked the wind out of you. 

You'd stopped feeling like a woman the minute he'd carried out of that room. You were a child, a fragile doll, a specimen to be studied. For some of the nurses, you were an infection they could catch. 

Spencer Reid, against his better judgment, was looking at you like you were a woman. Like you were the object of his every desire. 

“S-Spencer…” you said suddenly feeling the shame and embarrassment of being naked suddenly in front of another person. You pulled the sweatshirt he'd packed you over your torso, covering all of your intimate areas as you stammered out your apology. 

“I- shit, I'm sorry-”

“I'll wait - I’ll wait outside. If you need anything you can… you can do whatever.” He said, dragging his eyes off of your body and letting them fall anywhere that you weren't. His eyes darted from the floor to the wall, to the air next to your head and finally to the door where he took himself out. 

You dressed in a hurry and followed him. 

“Spencer? Spencer, I'm ready,” you said, running down the hall to him and grabbing his arm, holding it for support and comfort, but mostly just to be close. 

Since waking up from that first sedation of many in those first few days, you hadn't been more than a few hours without having him hold you. 

His team had sent many warning looks watching you wrapped around him like a scared child, hiding behind him like a small, shaking dog. You hadn't seen a problem in it, truly clinging to him like a lifeline. 

After whatever the hell had just happened in your hospital room, though? Now you felt each solid ridge of him. You hadn't felt like a woman, sure  but you equally hadn't acknowledged Spencer as a man until then. A very attractive man. 

The stubble on his jaw only made it sharper. His gentle, curving eyes, cut at the corners by the start of laugh lines, his mouth straight and… and kissable. For the first time in months, definitely for the first time since you'd met your monster, maybe even for the first time ever, desire heated the depths of your stomach. 

Your breath hitched, and you held him tighter as he led you out of the ward and ushered you into your new life. 

“We're not going to your apartment. Your landlord released you from the lease for…obvious reasons after some persuading. Your parents-” 

“My parents?” You asked in disgusting, halting in the hall. For the first time since you'd left the room, he had to turn and look you in the eyes. He'd done his best to dampen the desire, but some part of you still recognised it, even as your logical brain fought to be heard. 

“Your parents agreed to fund three months in a new apartment. After which time, you will have a job and some stability, so you'll be able to pay for it yourself.”

You tried to argue and tried to talk back, but your tongue was thick. 

A new apartment. Living alone, being alone, for any amount of time, felt daunting. 

But Spencer took one more step towards the door and then another, and you had no choice but to walk with him, hand slipping down and grasping his like it was your lifeline. 

The drive to whatever new apartment your parents had leased for you was silent, and the storms in your head grew until they'd taken up so much space they erupted forth, darkening the actual skies. A crash of thunder rumbled somewhere in the distance just as he pulled into the building. Luckily for you, there was underground parking, so you didn't even need to contemplate letting the lightning hit you. 

There was one space left, and Spencer pulled his car in, flipping the engine off and getting out without another word. 

He led you up the stairs, then he led you to your floor, then he led you to your door and handed you the keys. 

You felt cold as you opened the doors, knowing you were about to confront items of boxes that had watched you be burned, cut, slapped, beaten.

There were no boxes behind the door. Everything had, to your shock, been unboxed and staged already. 

You recognised magnets on the fridge, stuffed animals on the bed when you made your way to your bedroom. Your toiletries were neatly tidied into your medicine cabinet, hell, even your bookshelves had your own dog-eared copies of books well past their prime. 

You had every comfort and joy without having to push yourself through the pain of thinking about where these items had last been kept. 

There were new things too. The couch was definitely second-hand, but it wasn't the one you'd brought at Goodwill the week after your college graduation. That one was stained red, no doubt, somewhere in a tip. There was bedding and sheets and blankets and plates and forks and knives - a whole household of items that someone had chosen. 

You turned back to Spencer and cried. You buried your face in his chest and wrapped yourself around him again as he held you. 

And then, realizing he'd been the one to orchestrate this, if not the one who had arranged everything himself, you pushed up on the balls of your feet, and you kissed him. 

For the few seconds it lasted, it was brilliance. The pressure on your lips after a second had your heart singing as he kissed you back, your hands balling into his shirt as you stepped closer and closer, needing to be wrapped around him, buried in safety and warmth. 

He pulled back and stepped out of your reach too quickly, the back of his hand reaching up to his mouth as if checking that it was still there, that he'd actually just been kissing you back. 

“Y/N, you don't…we can't do that.” 

“Do what?” You said, creeping forward, needing to feel him beside you again. 

“You're not… you don't feel about me the way you think you feel about me,” he said, pushing your hair behind your ear as you wrapped your arms around his waist again. 

“How do I feel?” 

“Grateful. Y/N, this is gratitude. I saved you, and so you think you are in love with me. It's called transference, and you will deeply, deeply regret this one day.” 

The urgency in his tone had you flinching, even if he was trying to talk to you as softly as possible. For a moment, you'd done as he'd asked and forgotten you were a victim. It was apparently something he himself would not forget anytime soon.

You stood around awkwardly for another minute or two. 

“What…what now?” You asked, avoiding the kiss and whatever lay in that direction.

“I'll walk you through the emergency contact numbers. The apartment building is pretty old, so there's a wall phone in the kitchen, but there are some modern amenities, too. The laundry room is on the first floor, next to the porters office. I'm in apartment 23 on the second floor, and-” 

“What?” Your entire body buzzed, hearing him speak, and you almost forgot to breathe, rushing to stand straight again.

“I… I live on the floor below,” he said, almost cautiously now that you'd thrown yourself at him. “I thought you might enjoy the company.”

He gave you a weak smile and you wanted to kiss him all over again, to press your lips again and again into the soft flesh of his skin, his lips, his nose, his cheeks, his neck, his chest. 

You wanted him to hold you. You stood by the sofa and let your grip on a cushion tighten to stop from throwing yourself at him again. One rejection was enough for the day. 

Not that you stopped in the weeks to come. 

Spencer had himself relegated to office work for the first month as you rode out the waves of your grief, sticking by his side for comfort.

Your friends came and went, but they wore the stench of ‘I told you so’ and ‘I saw that coming,’ and you suffocated on it after so long. 

Every day after he returned home, you arrived at him door and threw yourself into his open arms, sitting with him for hours. Most days, you read together, ignoring that the man flipped pages three times as fast as you did. Some nights, you watched shows or movies, making your way through three companions worth of “New Who” in a week.

Each time you came, he took care of your food, ordering or cooking simple pasta dishes for you. 

He told you about the time his coworker had taught him how to make the perfect pasta, berating him for putting oil in his pasta water, and damn near drawing his weapon while he made sure he salted it. 

You laughed together and ate together, and you forgot together. 

Your life was back to normal when you got your first job interview. It's nothing spectacular, but it was enough that it would pay the bills to the apartment whose lease is a ticking bomb counting down to 0. It was a normal office, where you would be doing normal work that you had absolutely done before. 

The interview was normal, the female employee that meets you first reassuring you that the company is safe, their employees vetted and supported. 

And the company makes feminine hygiene products anyway, so they don't attract too many men, or at least none like the monster you'd known. 

All in all, the interview went well. 

It went well all the way until you reached the bus stop. You felt eyes on you, watching your movements, but you couldn't see anyone else focusing on you particularly.

You felt the stares on the bus, and the stares when you got off the bus two stops early. You felt the stares walking around the block three times to throw whatever was following you around off your track. You felt the stares as you sat outside Spencer's apartment until 6:45pm, when he came home and found you there. Your interview had been at 1pm.

“Y/N, what's wrong?” He said, immediately holding you and guiding you into the apartment. 

Your anxiety and fear had settled into self-loathing and disappointment. You let him hold you quietly, rejecting food and conversation. 

You sat quietly with him on his sofa as he held a book in one hand, stroking your hair with another as you laid on his chest. 

The emotions of the day were overwhelming, consuming the part of your brain that had started being happy again for the first time. You grew angry at the sadness for seeping back in, and in an act of rebellion, you pushed back up and kissed Spencer once more. 

His brain was slower to react this time, even if his body wasn't. 

You straddled his hips as your lips joined his, melting together in a hot embrace. He dropped his book quickly, hand resting on your hip as the one that had been stroking your hair angled your jaw up so he could set the pace. 

All your emotions were swept away in a wave of desire as you slowly rubbed against him, butt shifting as you clumsily followed your arousal past your worldly knowledge. 

You couldn't even think about what was next because your tongue was clashing with Spencer's, and your brain was short circuiting. 

The second you let out your first whimper of pleasure, he pushed you away and stood up, crossing the room to put distance between you, just as he had a month beforr. 

“Y/N, you had a bad day, but this isn't… This isn't how you should make yourself feel better.” 

“Spencer-” 

“I told you about transference before, Y/N, you need to listen to me. I'm not… I'm not the one for you.” His voice shook as he ran his hands through his hair in stress, body tense in a way that informed you he was holding himself back. 

“Transference. Transference…” You sat upright on his couch and let all the logic rush back into your brain at once. 

“Y/N?” He asked, voice shaking as he watched you zone out of the conversation, almost afraid that he'd damaged you again. 

“Is there… Is there something wrong with transference?” You asked, voice impossibly calm as you still stared straight forward. 

He moved towards you again and knelt at the floor in front of you, clutching your hands in his. 

“Y/N, you don't really want me like that, you don't, you can't-”

“Love you?” You asked, your voice finally breaking, eyes finally meeting his.

It was as if you knocked the wind out of him. He sat there completely dumbstruck. 

“It might not be love, okay, I'll admit that. But you're… you're strong and smart, and you take care of me. And you're attractive, and you make me happy, which is something I didn't think I'd ever be again-” 

“Y/N, something happened to you today, and you threw yourself at me. You threw yourself at me when you moved into your apartment. You felt stressed, and you reacted, Y/N. You don't love me.”

You sat calmly listening to his words again, your body still aching for his touch, your heart still pounding in your chest. 

“Okay. Okay. So if I do…this when I'm not feeling vulnerable, then what? Then you'll believe me?” 

“Y/N…” he sighed in defeat, hand again raking through his hair. 

You grabbed your things and stood up off the couch, bending to press another kiss to his lips before you parted. 

He was shocked silent, but that didn't stop him from chasing your lips as you rose, rising to his knees and then his feet as you walked away from him.

“I'll see you tomorrow, Spencer. Get some sleep,” you said, letting yourself out or the apartment and carrying yourself, heavy and dejected, upstairs. 

If Spencer was anticipating seeing you again the next morning, he wasn't anticipating seeing you in his office.

“Spencer,” you called out as you walked into the bullpen, clipping your visitors badge into place again, making sure it wasn't crooked.

Immediately, he stood from his desk and rose to meet you, ignoring the looks from his coworkers as his hands landed on your arms, immediately checking on you. 

“Y/N, what are you doing here?” He whispered, checking for tears, or injuries, or something to show him your motive for seeking him out. 

You just smiled at him, brushing a hair behind your ear when you saw him hesitate making that same gesture. 

“I was summoned. They need my statement to corroborate your weapon discharge paperwork, and Agent Hotchner called earlier.” 

His hands dropped as he breathed a steady sigh of relief, trying to make his reaction smaller than he knew it was. He was afraid something had happened to you again, and he was so caught up in his relief, that he didn't notice you moving closer until your lips were on his cheek and you were waving him off as you ascended the stairs to Hotch's office with your escort. 

“Spencer,” Morgan's voice called from behind him, and he turned hesitantly. 

“What was that?” 

He felt the eyes on him, and he pushed all thoughts of you to the side in place of total rationality. 

“I explained transference to her but… she doesn't seem to - she doesn't care.” 

“Spencer the last time I saw that girl, she was practically the walking dead. She just smiled.” Morgan said, shaking his head. But Spencer was watching you, and not his friend, and really, he wasn't even listening.

“Spencer? Spencer?” Morgan said again, rising to get in the man's face some more until he finally looked at him again. 

“She thinks she's in love with me.” 

“How do you know she isn't?” 

You kept working on him, little by little, day by day, until Spencer's field work started again. 

A little part of you was sad that he wouldn't always be around every day anymore. But you'd got that job and got over yourself as you started going out more. You made friends at your office, and you went out and laughed and joked with old college roommates. You felt like a human being again, and to no one's surprise, you still wanted Spencer Reid. 

He left every Monday on a case, and by the time Wednesday rolled around, you missed him. Going out to drinks with some coworkers after clocking off certainly didn't sate your appetite for him. 

“Spencer,” you said, breathily into the phone when he picked up, throwing yourself onto your bed. 

“Y/N, what happened? Is everything alright? Do you need me to come back?”

“No, Spencer, I just-” you hiccupped and giggled before continuing. “I just missed you so much.” 

The silence on the line was suddenly so funny to you, and you giggled again. Feeling hot, you stripped down to your underwear and started talking again. 

“I miss cuddling up to you and crawling all over you. You're really soft, you know?” You sighed, hands trailing up and down your stomach lightly. 

“Y/N,” he said in a warning tone. 

“I miss your face. I'm switching to video call,” you announced and fumbled with your phone. 

“No, Y/N, wait-” he said, but pulling the phone away from his ears, he realized his protests were too late to matter as he took in your half-naked form. 

Though your face took up the majority of the view on the camera, he could see the soft trim of your lace bra poking into the camera, and the generous push of cleavage your angle facilitated to boot. 

Checking around him for people looking, he tucked himself into a corner and scowled back at you. 

“Y/N, this isn't a game. Turn the call off and go to bed.” 

“But I miss you,” you whined. 

“Y/N,” he hissed, eyes falling to your hands where you'd begun massaging your heavy breasts. 

“When are you coming home?” You asked, whining again like a petulant child as the alcohol flushed through your system, bringing all of your desires to the forefront. 

“Soon,” he said, not trusting himself to say more than a word. 

“Good. Because I miss you. Spencer, I- I think I want to have sex with you.” 

His eyes shut as he tried to remain calm even as your words rang in his ears from 1000 miles away.

“We'll talk soon, Y/N. Good night,” he closed, finally hanging up and covering his face in his hands. He made his way quickly to his motel room, threw his phone down on his bed, and ignored as best he could his throbbing cock in his pants and the three pictures you'd sent him since he hung up. 

He didn't resist for long. 

Three nights later, you found yourself at a bar, living life to the fullest. You'd taken back to society like a swan to water, and you weren't letting the stern words of Spencer Reid keep you down. Knocking back another shot, you smiled and cheered with your friends until you felt the eyes on you again. It was different this time, though, hotter, and closer. You turned to look at the door and saw Spencer Reid and the other people who'd saved your life walking to a booth. It was Spencer's eyes on you. 

You definitely did not believe in a higher power - how could you, after all - but you did believe that this was fate. 

You blew him a kiss as he watched you walk back to your table with another cocktail in hand, letting a man who'd been trying to flirt with you earlier follow you to your friends. 

When you went for your next drink, you found him at your side in a heartbeat. 

“I'm not checking up on you,” he said, even though he was. “I'm ordering a drink.” 

“Two drinks,” you said, shooting him a flirty smile as you pressed yourself against him again, chest to chest. 

“You're ordering two drinks, Spencer,” you whispered into his ears as his head dropped down to within an inch of your own. The air felt changed, but you refused to move to close the gap. You'd put in the work the last few times. You needed Spencer to be the one to take the chance this time. 

He ordered your drinks, and still you didn't move apart, huddled together as if you were whispering conspiracies to one another. 

When your drink was firmly in your hand, he grabbed your wrist and led you to a dark corner of the bar. You sipped your drink quickly, managing two swigs before he took it and placed both drinks down - right beside Penelope Garcia - and dragged you out into the hall. 

The bathrooms were empty when he pushed you inside, and your heart throbbed as his hands pushed you into a stall, lifted your legs to wrap around him, and then his lips finally crashed into yours. 

Transference or whatever else it was supposed to be, you didn't give one shit in that moment as his tongue coaxed your lips apart.

His hands didn't stay in place for long as he dragged them up and down your body, exploring every part he'd memorized from the pictures. Every curve or inch he'd previously held tenderly, gently, he now raked over with the hunger of arousal, pushing your short skirt up until it was past your hips and his fingers could sink into you instead. 

You were soaked before he even had one digit inside you, his thumb rubbing roughly against your clit as you turned to jelly in his hands. 

You'd masturbated before, sure, you were a grown woman. But the feeling of someone else's hands, someone else's hest, the knowledge that someone else desired you so badly that they'd drag you into a bar bathroom just to sate their lust? That was new, and it was exciting. 

His lips covered yours as your legs shook, silencing every moan, every whimper with his tongue. It was wild, messy, your tongues clashing wildly and messily as your hips rocked violently, trying to reach that high, but also trying to make this last past his fingers. 

It wasn't to be though as you shuddered around his three digits, your orgasm ripping through you silently, leaving you wide-eyed and wide mouthed. 

“We're done,” he said, gently kissing your cheek as be stood you up, letting you stretch out the soreness in your muscles. 

“For now?” 

“Forever, Y/N. This was a mistake.”

Your heart hit the ground, and he stomped on it, but the anger filling your gut pushed up and out before he could completely bow out. 

“No,” you ground out through gritted teeth. 

“Y/N, you aren't in love with me. You feel grateful that I saved you, you feel attracted to me because I'm older and you think I can protect you, and a little part of it is that you've always been attracted to men who are dangerous. You're not in love with me, so-” 

“You sound like him.”

Shocked, he paused, and his grip on your hips tightened until his nails were biting into your skin. 

“What?” 

“You're telling me how to feel, you're telling me what to do. You sound like him.” 

“Y/N, that is unfair-” 

“Unfair is denying that I'd know how I'm fucking feeling to let you wallow in self sacrifice, Spencer. Unfair is playing the martyr when we can both see that you want this as fucking badly as I do.” 

You didn't give him a second longer to react, but grabbed him by the wrist and, making sure your skirt was once again in place, pulled him back out of the bathroom and into the club. 

Stopping by Penelope, you put his drink in his hand and grabbed yours, downing it quickly. He followed your actions, taking a sip until you were done and slamming your drink back on the table. 

Then you kept him moving, pushing doors open, hailing a cab, and climbing in with him hot on your heels.

You kept your grip on him tight until you'd marched him to his apartment. Releasing him, you flattened your back against his door, letting him slowly unlock the door as you spoke to him again finally.

“Do it, Spencer. Be my first.” 

It was like he was a different man walking over that threshold. His hand were on your face, his tongue again fighting yours as you stumbled back into the apartment, crashing into the wall, then the coffee table, and then the couch. 

You cursed in anger hitting his closed bedroom door and pushed him away to open it yourself, but his arms wrapped around you from the back and he sucked bruises against your neck as his hands grabbed your breasts and squeezed them.

His cock was rigid in his pants, and your body ached for the unknown, the soon to come pleasure that he was to deliver. 

He pushed you down onto the bed quickly, and you rolled yourself over, pulling your own dress off as quickly as possible. 

“That's my job,” he moaned, meeting your lips again as his hands fell to your underwear once again. 

“You have a long to-do list, Spencer, I'm just helping,” you smirked as he kissed you again, your hands shakily working down each button of his shirt as you acted to tear it off of him. 

“We have all night,” he replied, fingers once again rubbing at your bundle of nerves, hips pushing up and into his hands. 

“No, Spencer. No, we don't. I need you now.” 

His mouth covered yours again as you finally, finally got his shirt off, letting him throw it to the floor as you started working on his belt. Your legs spread as he inched closer, sitting between your thighs comfortably as he waited with bated breath for you to finally touch his cock.  

You knew what dicks looked like, you knew what they were supposed to feel like, but you never realised you'd want to touch one so fucking badly until his sprung from his pants. 

He took your hand and spit in it before you wrapped your fingers around him and felt the heat of his cock pulsing against you. 

He was big, long more than girthy, and you wondered how thousands of years of women had managed to survive coupling if this was the weapon meant to numb them into horny submission. 

One stroke, and you were a mess, his fingers hooking into you as you flicked your wrist up and down. 

You watched his precum rise and swiped it up in one finger, tasting it as he groaned and started thrusting up, fucking your hand as he scissored his fingers inside of you. 

He stretched you out, readying you for his thick cock, and you gladly sat there, letting him use you and ready you all at once. 

When you were ready, he wrapped his arms around you again, lifting you onto the bed properly and laying you down softly in the sheets. Kneeling to roll on the condom he'd grabbed from his bedside table, you watched in curiosity as you tried to memorize every movement, every second of him sinking into you. 

The tears in your eyes were emotion just as much as pain, your heart hammering in your ears as he whispered praise into your ear, dropping confessions like bombs. 

“You're taking me so well, Y/N, that's good…” he moaned, pushing in one inch. 

“That's it, Y/N, just a little more. I love you, you can do it,” he said, sinking in two more. 

“You feel so good, Y/N, made just for me,” he said as he finally hit your limit. 

You knew the stretch wasn't the end, and he rested there for a second, letting you get used to him before you lost patience with him. 

“Spencer just, just push through,” you grit out, and he did, snapping his hips up just that.inch or two more and sending that spark of pain through you. 

In an instant, his lips were on yours, his fingers on your clit, flooding your nerves with pleasure as all you could think of was the pain. 

But when the pain faded, there was still him, and his cock neatly sheathed inside of you. 

His hips moved languidly at first, his entire body weight pushing down on you, lazily twisting and writhing as of this were just one of your cuddles on the couch. 

You whimpered, and he moved faster, and you learnt quickly that your noises and sighs to him were what his praise was to you - motivation.

You moaned, and he picked up his pace, moving faster as you whimpered a lustful ‘yes’ into his ear. 

“Good girl, good girl, Y/N, that's it. Good girl,” he repeated, unable to say more as you whimpered and cried under him, speech lost as he split you in half with his dick.

You grew louder, and his cock buried itself deeper, your moans dragged on longer and he picked up speed. 

He whispered that you were his perfect little slut, and you jolted in his arms, cumming on his cock and screaming his name. 

He kept pumping into you, careful to make sure the condom stayed in place as he finally bottomed out and let pleasure roll through him again.

Coming down from his high, your tongue pushed into his mouth, and you rolled him over, sitting yp on his dick as he watched. 

You rose off his cock, letting him stare in wonder as your own arousal dripped off of your skin, his cock coated in arousal, and spit from his fingers and, yes, a little bit of blood. 

You crawled back and peeled off the condom, tying It quickly and discarding it before you tasted his cum quickly. 

It was just a soft lick, but it had him declaring his love for you again, and you decided that there were very few things you wouldn't do to hear those words. 

As delightful as your lips felt, though, he quickly bundled you up and forced you to the bathroom, turning on the taps in the bath and placing you on the toilet before leaving. 

Even now, after everything, he was still taking care of you. Maybe especially now. 

You finished, and he came back. More stolen kisses and moans and a bath that turned into more later, and you found yourself bundled into his spare clothes and wrapped in his arms on his couch again. 

He clicked play on another episode of Doctor Who (you'd finally reached Donna, and he was excitedly introducing you to the new character), and you finally looked up at him again.

“I love you,” you said again, loudly this time, with no fear. 

Though his training told him the response he should give, Spencer just looked down at you again and gave in to his heart. 

“I love you, too.” 

You fell asleep quickly after that, head resting over his heart, the sound of the steady beats lulling you to sleep. 

[violetarks]

"they don't love me like you do!"

anime: jujutsu kaisen

character: gojo satoru

summary: despite the countless valentines day offers he receives, satoru will only ever accept one confession. but you're confessing... to his best friend?

warnings: g/n! reader, they/them pronouns used, high school! au

"please accept these chocolates, gojo!" says the girl in front of him. satoru casually pulls down his glasses enough to see the red, heart-shaped cardboard box.

"oh, uh... thank you." he awkwardly says. this girl was two year below him, judging by the colours of her indoor shoes. he didn't even know her name. "this is... a surprise."

"i've liked you ever since orientation day. i hope you like these." she says with a nervous grin. she's stiff as he takes them out of her hands, standing up straight to stare at the tall man. "thank you for always being so funny and helping everyone you can."

"ah, you're welcome." he says, tucking the chocolates and the letter taped to it under his arm. luckily, the lunch bell had rung and everyone should've been off to enjoy their break. "well, i'll... see you around."

"b—bye, gojo!" she calls, waving at him as he walks the other way. he gives a kind smile before he turns the corner, dropping it immediately.

on the way to class, multiple other students watched him as he carelessly skimmed through the letter before stuffing it in his book bag, ready to throw it (and the others) away once home. valentines day was this week and it was two days before it today. yet satoru had received tons of confession letters and date proposals, none of which he had the intention of accepting.

plopping down in his chair, he groans, hanging his head, "ugh! i hate being so loveable..."

suguru rolls his eyes, outting his book down. "here we go again." he grunts, shaking his head.

"seriously! why can't i be left alone around valentines day?" he questions out lout, pulling his lunch box from his bag.

shoko bites into her sandwich as she listens to him. as she swallows, she retorts, "maybe it's because you flirt with every living being on earth." satoru sends him a pointed look. "so how many letters today?"

"seven." satoru responds, knocking his bag.

"and?"

"none of them were from y/n." he sighs out, picking up his chopsticks.

"wait, y/n?" suguru pipes up, putting his juicebox down, "as in y/n from class d?"

the blue-eyed boy raises a brow, halting his movements. "uh, yeah? l/n y/n." he recalls to his friend, tilting his head, "what? i've been talking about 'em for the past three months—suguru, have you been listening to me at all?"

"oh!" the dark-haired boy chuckles, nodding his head, "i know y/n. we're in the same literature class."

satoru stares at him in disbelief. the other students surrounding them are in their own little world, but the three of them didn't even mind them hearing if they tried. shoko continues to eat her food while suguru shrugs at his friend.

"are you kidding me?" satoru gasps out, waving a hand in the air, "i've been trying to get with them for three months and you tell me this just now?"

"you should've been more specific, man." suguru retorts, waving it off, "anyway, you gonna' ask them to be your valentine?"

satoru sighs loudly, hanging his head back, "i don't know... we only share bio together, i bet there's a lot of people who have asked them to be their valentine. they probably won't even accept mine."

shoko purses her lips and stretches her arms. "i don't know about that." she claims, "you're a pretty guy and everyone knows you. i doubt they'd pass up the chance to revel in that popularity."

"... thanks, shoko."

soon enough, the bell rings and the day goes on.

the next day, satoru notices something in your hand during biology class.

"whatchu' got there, y/n?" he asks, peaking over your shoulder. he sat behind you, enough room to see the handwritten letter you were writing.

"satoru!" you jump a little, covering the page. he furrows his brow. "it's, uh... i'm just writng something."

"is it... for valentines day tomorrow?" he inquires, curious to who was the lucky person. but you were still hiding it from him!

"no, of course not." you were lying, he could tell by the way you look to the left. a pout falls on his lips. "it's notes. for another class."

"oh... okay." he responds, a bit disappointed. why would you lie to him? he sits back in his chair, writing down some paragraphs from the textbook mindlessly. he saw the way your elbow quickly shifted, you were writing faster. your head was down too, never looking up. you were so concentrated.

he's known you for a couple of months now. you bumped into him on the way to school, and you admitted to him that you were a bit lost since you didn't live around here. satoru, being the gentleman he is, offered to escort you. you thought he was some creep (he tried reaching to hold your hand and when you jerked away on instinct, he played it off as it being the wind).

but once realising you two shared some classes together, you grew fond of him. you knew of the countless students throwing themselves at him. both older and younger. he was the school heartthrob. it's a shame though, only your smile could make his heart race like he makes others do.

when you gave him your lucky pen when he told you he didn't study and he was freaking out, you had this kind smile that made him think 'i don't want anyone else to see this but me'.

and he noticed that you awkwardly took it back from him, looking away as he clasped your hands tightly in the filled hallway and thanked you. your reactions were just the cutest...

when the bell rings, you perk up, putting your 'notes' in a suspicious looking envelope and signing it off with something. you stand up and satoru is quick to walk by your side when a classmates holds his arm to talk.

"huh?" satoru grunts, furrowed brows.

"gojo, i... i wanted to give you this." they say, holding out a teddy-bear saying 'be my valentine!'. satoru frowned when he took it. "you don't have to answer today... just let me know tomorrow, please."

as they continue to talk, he sees you exit the classroom. the letter sits comfortably in your palm, and you look left, right, before walking off. satoru is electrified.

"okay, thanks!" he says, running out of the classroom while he clutches the bear in his hands.

weaving through the crowd, he looks for the top of your head. after more and more people pass him, staring at the teddy and whispering 'who gave that to him this time?', he spots you turning the corner, a nervous look on your face. he mutters out apologies as he bumps into people heading to their next class.

the hallway you're in now is empty. you stand in front of a classroom door, waiting. notably, suguru's math class.

satoru stands at the end of the corridor, behind the corner, as the classroom door opens to reveal his best friend, geto suguru.

"suguru!" you call, smile. your shoulders are straightened, you hold the letter in front of you. not scared to show him...

"oh, y/n, hey." he responds, grinning as well. the comfortability around you two was so strange to see. "what's up?"

satoru feels like he's buzzing out. he can't hear everything you're saying, but you look a bit excited yet anxious. he hears your sweet voice speak to his best friend with such kindness that he's jealous. sure, suguru was attactive and nice and he definitely didn't feed into the popularity like satoru did, but...

why did it have to be you who was interested in him?

"please, take this." you say, handing him the same letter you had before. except this time, satoru sees the 'g.s' on it. 'geto suguru'. and you take out a box of his favourite snacks to hand to him. "thank you for everything, again. you're the best."

suguru takes it with ease, seeing how you looked at him. his gaze softens as he takes the treat as well. "you're welcome, y/n. anything you need, i'll help with." he puts the letter in his own bag before slinging am arm around your shoulders. "now, what're your plans for after?"

he was blatantly asking you out now! right after satoru told him he had feelings for you! such betrayal!

you two walk to the other end of the hallway, in the direction of your literature class. satoru slumps against the wall, furrowed brows and lips pressed into a thin line. after a second, he pushes his glasses up and lets out a slow exhale. he could get over this...

"gojo! may i please have a moment of your time?"

"wait no! me first!"

"gojo, can i talk to you?"

"please accept these!"

or maybe he couldn't.

valentines day was today and you danced into school with such confidence. you had a bouquet of flowers in your arms, chocolates of the sweetest kinds, and a bag of new perfume that you knew your crush would like.

you were so excited.

satoru, who was walking a few people behind you, was not.

he saw the amount of passion you put into the holiday, and it made him sick to know it was for his best friend. the guys was in such a bad mood, he ignored suguru and shoko's calls this morning to meet up and walk to school together like usual.

satoru clicked his tongue, thinking about how dramatic the whole valentines day idea was. really, who needed it all anyway?

in homeroom, he can hear your class (which is next to his, across the hall) start whooping and cheering when you walk in. and he knows it's you by the chants of your last name being heard. he sits in his chair in anguish.

"satoru, morning. finally." shoko says, sitting down as well. she grins, bitting the popsicle stick between her lips. "where are all of your valentines presents?"

"stuffed in my shoe locker and under my desk." he claimed, opening the top of it to showcase the blaring red and pink gifts. she picked at one pocky box, munching on the biscuits. "how about you?"

"i got a couple letters and cookies in my locker." she claims, shrugging her shoulders, "lots of 'em are from the badminton team. i don't know why."

satoru shrugs as well as soon as suguru sits down in front of him. the blue-eyed students scoffs, looking away.

"good morning, satoru." he says, noticing his friend's behaviour, "what's got his panties in a twist this morning? does he know we called him a hundred times?"

"i dunno'." shoko says, looking out the window to the school garden. "ask him."

"satoru, what's wrong? didn't get enough presents this year?" he teases, leaning in his chair to poke his head, "wake up late?"

but satoru angrily swats his hand away. the raven-haire boy blinks curiously before satoru glares at him. "why didn't you tell me you were interested in y/n?" he asks, hurt.

shoko looks back to the two boys, seeing suguru just as confused as she is. "you're into y/n?"

"what? no! who said that?" suguru retorts, hands up in defense, "i'm not interested in dating y/n, swear on my life."

"that's a lie!" satoru accuses, pointing a finger against his friend's nose, "shoko, i saw him and y/n all... all... familiar yesterday after period 2! he had his arm around them!"

"suguru..." shoko warns.

"wait wait, that's—you got it all wrong." suguru groans, now understanding. he digs through his bag and pulls out a piece of paper. "here. open it."

satoru pushes away the paper reading 'g.s'. "no way! i'm not reading y/n's love letter to you!"

"ugh! just open it!" suguru grunts, shoving it onto his desk.

satoru begrudgingly takes it and gently opens the letter, not wanting to rip it. once his eyes fall upon the page, he confirms that it's your handwriting.

'thank you for being the sweetest boy to me. i am truly honoured to know such a beautiful person, inside and out.'

satoru wants to barf.

'sitting near you in biology really helped me to understand you, satoru. you're not only a pretty face, but a world-class sweet tooth, a sucker for romantic cliches and a cologne-collector.'

satoru thinks this is the most beautiful thing he's ever read.

he contiues to read, expression changing, letting shoko and suguru understand his thoughts. the girl looks to the other boy, who shrugs his shoulders and rolls his eyes.

"i'm confused." shoko states, tilting her head.

"y/n isn't confessing to me, they're confessing—"

"y/n is confessing to me! me, satoru!" satoru exclaims, waving the letter around like a maniac. everyone else in the class was suddenly a listener, peaking at the trio. they were interested in finding out what the one confession that resulted in this reaction was. "oh my god, oh my god!"

suguru nods his head. placing a hand on his shoulder to calm him down. "yes, yes, they are. i was meant to give you the letter this morning to read before homeroom, but someone was pissy." he scoffs, shaking his head, "so i had to go and tell y/n that plans had changed."

"you... helped y/n plan this all out?" satoru mumbles, "but you didn't even know!"

shoko chuckles, staring out the window again.

"i just said i wasn't paying attention so you didn't think i was snooping. which i was. and i only told you i knew y/n so you wouldn't get any ideas, like this." suguru circles the air with his finger, deadpanning at the clueless satoru, "you think anyone would do this without definitive proof the other person liked them?"

satoru continues to read the letter you wrote for him before his eyes land on the ending. "'please meet me at the school fountain before homeroom ends.'" he murmurs out, blinking, "suguru—"

"you were meant to go two minutes ago." his friend sings out, standing in front of shoko's desk. he points out the window, much like other students were doing in their own classrooms. "you should..."

when his friends turn around to him, satoru is already one foot out of the door. he's rushing downstairs (down three flights of stairs, actually) with your letter clutched in his hand. he almost flies into a couple teachers on the way to the garden, only for their attention to be caught by students opening the windows and pointing outside.

when he rushed through the doors to the garden, you're staring at the floor, still holding the flowers and gifts you brought to school with you. taking a moment to gather himself, satoru runs fingers through his hair and fixes his glasses. the pair you've complimented a thousand times.

satoru walks closer to you and when he catches your eye, you stand up straight and smile.

"satoru." you chime, not missing the thousand pairs of eyes that were following your every move. "good morning. happy valentines day."

you hold out the flowers to him. it's set in a nice box, and the treats are in a gift bag. when you give it to him, your smile is awkward but hopeful.

"happy valentines day, y/n." he replies, taking it from you. he sits down on the fountain edge, and you follow along. "i'm so sorry, i... i don't have anything for you."

"no, no, no." you retort, grinning, "it's fine. this was a surprise for you, anyway."

he sighs, "no, i'm sorry... please, let me make it up to you."

you laugh a little, placing a hand over his on his lap. the flowers were sat on the fountain with his gifts. "sure thing." you retort, "hey, suguru told me that this morning—"

"i'm sorry, i know, i just thought..." he begins, cutting you off. he looks embarrassed, heavy blush falling over his cheeks. "i saw you and suguru yesterday and you gave him that letter. had me thinkin' you were confessing to him instead of me."

you let out a small chuckle, making him gulp, "oh my goodness, i'm sorry, i didn't mean for you to see that. we were trying to be sneaky."

satoru's chest feels lighter, and he feels better just hearing it from you. he links his fingers with yours, facing you fully.

"ah, no it's fine." he tells you, the most purest form of adoration in his eyes that you can see from the top of his slanted down glasses. you grin softly. "listen, i have had a crush on you for months... and i was hoping that you'd go out with me. i want a chance to get to know you personally, away from any prying eyes."

you peer to the side, seeing the people watching you. they were practically hanging out the window, waving their hands and fighting to view the whole scene for themselves. cameras took photos and videos, capturing your moment with him.

"i'd love that, satoru." you say, scanning his face, "you're the best."

it only takes him a single second to reach his hand out and brush his thumb agaisnt your cheek. you don't freeze up though, only relaxing into him. he was the most inviting guy you've ever met.

"can i kiss you?" he asks, voice unwavering. his blue eyes are staring at your face with such kindness that it cannot be described.

you don't even say anything, only leaaning forward and pressing your lips to his. he's smiling against your lips, gentle hand caressing your cheek. your eyes flutter shut, holding his hand tightly.

cheers erupt from the school. screams and whoops from guys and girls alike. most students are heartbroken due to the obvious confession. nobody had even gotten that close to satoru. no one has been able to hold his hand, let alone get him to go crazy over a letter. you got him to race out of that classroom like a madman, and everyone was surely surprised.

the shouts die down as the kiss deescalates, many of the students sighing as they're forced to move on from the heart-throb gojo satoru.

when you pull away, satoru chases, leaving a gentle kiss against your forehead. your smile is wide and you pinch his cheek softly.

"you're such a drama queen, satoru." you say, standing up, "i was wondering why everyone started yelling and staring at me all of a sudden."

satoru stands with his presents, rubbing the back of his neck as he holds your hand. h goes to answer when a voice is heard from the fourth floor.

"the idiot took some convincing, y/n!" suguru shouts, waving his hand, "glad to know he's got some sense in him!"

"shut up, suguru!" satoru calls back, showing his fist.

"first period is about to start, you two!" the principle says through a window on the third floor, "this is all heart-warming, but you've failed two of ms kinoshita's classes, gojo!"

"r—right!" he retorts, pacing to the school entrance as people begin to 'ooh' at him. he looks back at you, smiling the brightest. "let's go out after school today, yeah? i'll buy you as many sweets as you want."

you chuckle, kissing his cheek, "my hero."

[ckret2]

Chapter 71 of human Bill Cipher trying to debate his way out of still being the Mystery Shack's prisoner. Soos has found the stolen Journal 4 in Bill's possession and has to decide what to do about it in light of everything else he's learned about Bill lately.

[*this chapter was renumbered to squeeze in the Axolotl plot arc! If you. Haven't read it yet, go back to ch 61 and read it!]

Soos stared dumbfounded at the journal with a 4 on the cover that he'd pulled from Bill's hiding place. Ford had lost Journal 4 last fall—he'd said gnomes had stolen it. How in the world had Bill gotten it?

Soos sat in the attic window seat and flipped through it. The first few pages were Ford's journal entries—his observations of the dimensional rips they were glueing shut in Gravity Falls post-Weirdmageddon, a hand-drawn map highlighting various places around the globe he wanted to investigate, a few drawings and observations of paranormal beings he hadn't seen his first time in town, half a sketch of a gnome that ended with a jagged scribble across the page followed by a page that said "Shmebulock" over and over.

And then a page that said, in an unfamiliar handwriting of jagged, narrow gray letters: "CURSED BOOK! If your name is Mabon Mason Pines, STOP READING NOW or ENJOY YOUR HEX!"

Bill had written page after page of some weird code of gray and yellow-green dots and dashes. A few sentences in English—every one of them was a threatening message to Ford. "Everything would have been fantastic if you'd just helped me finish, Fordsy." "You'll regret not siding with me when you had the chance." "You should have known better than to let your idiot brother turn you against me." "Sixer, you're lying to yourself every time you say you never worshiped me, and you know it. You spent the first third of your life running away from the god you were raised with and the second third chasing after me. Don't waste your last third denying it. YOU'RE MINE." A small, worrying diagram of what looked like the interdimensional portal. And a sticker.

Wait, hold on.

A sticker. One of Mabel's. The rest of the page was the same as the others, the two-tone dots and dashes, except for the sticker, and an arrow drawn from one paragraph to the sticker.

A yellow smiley, its round edges filled in with black marker to make a triangle, over the words "Good job!"

Soos stared at the sticker.

####

A couple of weeks ago, Melody had texted to let Soos know that there was a mess in the upstairs bathroom, and the kids said they'd been fighting a werewolf ghost.

When Soos had gotten home the next morning, Melody had pulled him aside and quietly told him she hadn't wanted to worry him and the Stans, but she did not think it was a werewolf ghost.

When Soos saw the bathroom, he didn't think it was a werewolf ghost either.

It was a scene from a horror movie. Menacing magical sigils painted all over the walls in blood and toothpaste, Bill's zodiac painted on one mirror, the other mirror broken, glass and water all over the floor. It looked like the site of a really wet demon summoning. This contained none of the hallmarks of ghostly or werewolfish activity. Why would Bill do this?

Soos was kind of reluctant to ask Bill. Bill still sorta scared him sometimes. Sure, he looked like a lost 18-year-old, but Soos knew what teens were like in a fight. So he asked Mabel instead.

Mabel pursed her lips uncomfortably. "Ask Dipper."

So Soos asked Dipper.

Dipper winced and. "Promise you won't get mad."

Soos considered that. "Yeah, I guess that's a fair deal."

Dipper confessed that Bill got accidentally locked in the upstairs bathroom for like a whole day, because he and Mabel didn't hear him yelling. Not because they were out of the house when they shouldn't have been. They were just... somewhere else in the house. Doing something loud. For the whole day.

While Bill was trapped alone.

####

Soos had vented to Abuelita about cleaning the bathroom. Like sure, he got Bill was annoyed about being stuck, but that seemed excessive.

Abuelita had made the observation that sometimes people in profoundly bleak and oppressive situations would just... destroy whatever was around them. Like punching a hole in the wall or snapping a pencil when you were angry, but much more so. Not because they wanted their surroundings to be destroyed, but because that was the last and only thing they had power over, and they needed to feel like they were in control of something. Even if that thing was merely changing their environment from ordered to chaotic.

Bill didn't have control over very much. He probably hadn't since he died. Soos didn't know what kind of space triangle afterlife Bill had been in before he showed up as Toga Lady, but it couldn't have been great if he'd come straight back here.

Soos could remember the one time weeks ago he'd let Bill into the bathroom to shower and forgotten to come back and let him out. How Bill had screamed so all the Mystery Shack's tourists could hear; how he'd seethed in Soos's face, how he'd said he'd rather blow their collective cover and throw them all on the mercy of the town's law enforcement than remain locked in the bathroom a second longer than they'd agreed upon. Soos had thought Bill was just impatient and hotheaded.

Standing in the bathroom, looking at the material evidence of Bill's claustrophobic terror—the broken glass, the spilled blood—he wondered.

####

The same day, he had felt a breeze in the gift shop and found the trap doors to the roof left open. He'd climbed up, shut them, and in between tours he'd visited his office to check yesterday's security tapes. 

He saw Wendy coming into the shack to hang out the morning before. That was fine. Soos had discovered she did that from time to time on days the shack was closed, but she wasn't doing anything bad and she hadn't brought it up yet, so Soos didn't bring it up either. Maybe she just needed a private place to hang. Teen stuff. He was just glad Wendy felt that safe at the Mystery Shack. Maybe she'd just gone up to hang out on the roof and forgot to shut the trap doors...

And then, right there on screen, Soos saw Bill letting himself into the gift shop, through the door, which he shouldn't be able to open. A chill shot up Soos's back. The door curse was their only real means of containing Bill. If he could use doors now, he was out, there was no way they could trap him without doing something crazy like locking him in the bunker and hoping he didn't kill himself.

Or could he use doors? Soos thought back to the frantic messages on the bathroom wall, written in Bill's own blood—his desperation over being unable to escape. Maybe he could use doors but not doorknobs. That was okay, maybe?

On tape, he saw Wendy run into Bill. He saw Wendy take Bill onto the roof. Out in the open air, where he could just... do whatever. But he didn't do whatever. Soos fast-forwarded the tape until Wendy and Bill came back down, and Bill simply returned to the living room.

He'd had the perfect opportunity to shove Wendy off the roof or escape. He didn't take it.

If all Bill was using his new door skills for was ducking into the gift shop and hanging out on the roof with Wendy, Soos thought maybe it would be kinda mean to take that away from him. There weren't a lot of other places Bill could go in the shack. (Soos kept seeing the blood on the bathroom wall. He kept trying to imagine what kind of helplessness would drive someone that far.) Maybe Bill needed the open air.

So Soos had put the security tape on his desk, not sure what to do about it.

####

A couple of day after that, while Soos was restocking the gift shop in between waves of tourists, he'd seen Wendy reading an oddly dull-looking booklet instead of one of her usual magazines. He tilted his head to glance at the cover. The Oregon state driving manual. "Aw dude, gonna get your learner's permit?"

"Think so," Wendy said. "Don't tell my dad."

Soos remembered Wendy groaning about her dad wrangling her into doing errands if she ever got her license. "Your secret is safe with me."

"Thanks."

"What made you change your mind? You were totally against getting a license a week ago."

"It's probably those stupid Gleeful Auto commercials that have been worming into my dreams." Wendy laughed. "I'm just waking up in the morning like, neeeed caaar."

"Oh yeah! Heh, funny coincidence, Melody says she had a dream like that too. Sometimes she gets these like, dreams about monsters watching her in bed? But one time, the monster was Bud Gleeful, whispering in her ear about a big car sale. She totally woke up laughing!"

"Ha! Annoying car commercials should be banned, man. Why do we need to be told multiple times a day to spend thousands of dollars?"

"You make a salient point."

They fell silent for a moment as Wendy read a couple more paragraphs. Then she said, "That, plus... I was talking to Goldie the other day."

Soos looked up from the t-shirt he'd been putting on a clothes hanger. "Oh. Yeah?"

"About where we wanna go when we get out of town."

"Huh." Very casually, Soos asked, "What did Goldie say?"

"He wants to go on some big vacation. Like a world cruise or something, I dunno."

"Huh." Soos wondered if that was true. He tried to imagine Bill Cipher as a tourist. Floating triangle in a Hawaiian shirt with a camera hanging from a strap and a fanny pack. What kind of places would he even visit? Soos bet he wanted to visit the pyramids. Heh. (Was that stereotyping? Maybe that was stereotyping.)

"And I told him I'm moving to Portland for college."

"Oh, hey, I didn't know you were thinking about college."

"I... actually, never told anybody else before," Wendy said. "I've been thinking about it for years, but part of me felt like it's just a fantasy? But Goldie said when he got out of high school, he did the same thing—moved to another town, made a new group of friends, all that. And... I don't know, actually talking to him out loud about it just... made it feel real, you know? So I thought, if I'm gonna move to Portland, I should probably start planning for it. Starting with how I'm getting there." She held up the driving manual.

Soos nodded slowly. "Huh. Yeah. That's a pretty mature way to look at it."

And that was what Bill was talking to Wendy about on the roof? Just... listening to a teen vent and helping her figure out her future?

And so, Soos took the security tape off his desk and put it in a drawer.

####

A few days later, Soos had heard the downstairs bathroom sink running for several minutes, assumed someone had forgotten to turn it off, and went to turn it off himself—and had caught Bill, in the dark, half undressed, washing himself in the sink.

After Soos had backed out and profusely apologized, he'd asked, "But—how come you're washing in the sink? I can let you in the upstairs bathroom if you need—"

"Worry about your own grooming habits and leave mine alone," Bill snapped. "As long as I don't smell, what do you humans care how I do it. Soap is soap and water is water."

It took Soos several days to realize he didn't think Bill had had a shower since he got locked in the bathroom. And nobody had noticed, because Bill made sure nobody noticed, because he'd been keeping himself clean in the bathroom he couldn't get locked in.

####

Dipper would go all summer without showering if he could get away with it; Stan showered like once a week and had constant old man smell; Abuelita also showered weekly and had a more refined old lady smell; Soos didn't know when Ford showered, but he'd never caught him doing it and Ford always smelled weirdly like burned hair. Soos showered almost daily during tourist season—that Mr. Mystery suit was hot—but outside that might go three days at a time. Mabel showered near daily.

From what Soos had observed, Bill was showering like, at least twice a week. He didn't know how often Bill cleaned himself in the sink in between.

That meant he was showering more often than two-thirds of the house.

Yet he was the only one in the house living under the threat of being thrown in the tub at 3 a.m. if someone decided he hadn't bathed enough for their tastes.

The reason Bill had refused to shower during his first week of imprisonment was so he could use the condition of his body as a bargaining chip—with no physical possessions in the world, his own body was the only bargaining chip he had—to try to buy a little more dignity. In return, his captors had taken more dignity away. They permitted Bill less autonomy over how to take care of his body than the household's children had.

Dipper had never gotten forced into a bathroom he couldn't let himself out of.

####

The day after the eclipse, Ford had pulled Soos aside and said quietly, "Soos, as soon as you have some time—could you repair the door to the kids' room? Before the end of the day? The latch has been broken since the tooth fairy's attack."

"Uh, sure, I can probably do that," Soos said. "How come?" The latch had been broken for a couple weeks, and the Pines hadn't been worried about it before.

"Right now, the door can swing freely with just a push," Ford said. "I think Bill's figured out how to use that to get in. Which is worrisome, since he shouldn't be able to use any doors..."

"O-oh." Soos thought about the swinging door into the gift shop. "Yeah, uh... sounds bad. Byyy the way—how'd you figure out he knows how to use the door?"

"Dipper says Bill somehow got in and out of the room last night," Ford said. "Mabel fell asleep in the living room and Bill carried her upstairs. I really don't like the thought of Bill being able to get his hands on the kids while they're asleep and defenseless."

Ford was mad at Bill for tucking a kid into bed? That was the big red flag? "No problem! I'll fix the door right after work."

The next time Soos visited his office, he took the security tape out of his drawer, rewound it, stuck it back into the tape recorder, and let that day's security camera footage overwrite and erase the evidence of Bill's visit to the gift shop.

####

And now, today, carrying Journal 4 in both hands, Soos trudged downstairs, trying to figure out what to do with it. He had to return it to Ford, obviously—but Bill and the Stans were already in the middle of a discussion that sounded a lot more like an argument. Flinging a stolen journal into the middle of the proceedings would just make it worse. Maybe he should wait until they were finished and everyone had cooled down a little—?

While Soos was upstairs, the discussion had apparently moved into the kitchen. He hovered awkwardly at the bottom of the stairs, watching.

"What do you mean, you need kitchen access," Stan was asking, "you already have kitchen access. It's never been off-limits! Even after you peed in the sink!"

"It's not kitchen access if I need to ask someone else for permission to eat anything but snacks." 

"No one's making you ask for permission! You can take what you want!"

"Okay, fine. So what can I eat?" Bill gestures at the shelves. "Go on. List anything you can think of. Anything."

Stan grimaced, and glanced at Ford to see if he was willing to walk into the obvious trap first.

Ford looked at the nearby shelves. "Cereal."

"One point for Stanford Pines! Cereal! So am I supposed to eat dry cereal for every single meal, or—?"

"No, of course not."

"All right, then what else?"

"Brown meat," Stan said. "We've got plenty of brown meat. It's good for you!"

"You didn't give me can opener rights," Bill said.

"Huh."

"So no brown meat," Bill said. "No canned soup, no canned chili, no canned fruit, no canned vegetables—"

Ford cut in, "Some of the cans have pull tabs, you don't need a can opener for those."

"Terrific observation! As soon as you realized I could open those cans myself, you moved them all under the counter because you thought I'd use the sharp edges as weapons!"

"It's... possible to open cans without a can opener, I did it sometimes while roughing it in other dimensions—"

"Yeah, wearing off the metal rim with a rock, right? Lemme just go outside and grab a rock—oh wait." Bill crossed his arms.

Ford sighed, and turned to Stan to suggest something else.

Stan surveyed the available supplies, spotted the bread, and said, "You could make sandwiches!"

"With what filling?"

"Uh..." Stan kept looking.

Meats and cheeses, of course, were kept in the fridge. Along with jelly, condiments, most vegetables... tuna or spam weren't options, they were canned... "Hey, we leave out some meats that don't need refrigeration. Sausages and stuff."

"Right, right. The ones that don't need refrigeration because they're wrapped in plastic you need a knife to cut," Bill said. "Sometimes I bite the plastic open with my teeth and rip off chunks of sausage with my fingernails, that's always fun! Then you put the leftovers in the fridge, and I'm out of luck until we buy another sausage."

"You could put... peanut butter on your sandwiches?" Ford tried. "Peanut butter's nutritious."

Bill fixed him with a hard look. "For the past five weeks, every time I've gotten a meal without asking someone else to help feed me like a baby, I've had nothing but peanut butter and banana sandwiches, peanut butter and jerky sandwiches, peanut butter and raisin sandwiches, and peanut butter and potato chip sandwiches. And we're out of bananas, jerky, and raisins." He pointed at the tortillas. "Once I decided to get creative and made myself a cold peanut butter quesadilla! I can't even add spices, because guess where the breakable glass spice jars are kept?"

"Pasta," Ford tried. "We could keep the pasta out."

"Oh, wow, that'd be great! I just love pasta! But I can't open the microwave and I can't turn on the stove! How do I heat the water, Stanford?"

Ford frowned. "Hm."

"I can cook, you know—not that any of you bothered to ask! It might not suit your tastes, but it suits mine! I wouldn't need your help to eat if you didn't make me need help! I am sick to death—" his voice went thick and took on an uncharacteristic waver, "—of having to beg to... eat." He cleared his throat, squeezed his eyes shut, and rubbed his eyelids with one hand. "Sh-shouldn't even—need to eat." He clenched his jaw to keep it from trembling.

Stan and Ford exchanged a guilty look. Stan said, "You don't have to beg— I mean, we know the, uh... position you're in..."

Bill was silent for a moment as he tried to get a tough face back on. His voice came out as a rough whisper—too thick to get any louder without breaking. "I had to negotiate to get burnt eggs."

Ford winced.

Soos was dumbfounded.

When had Bill had to negotiate for food? He could all too easily understand how it might have happened—Bill was an annoying guy, sometimes they had to pull out dumb bargains to get him to do stuff. But bargaining for food should never be on that list. Meeting Bill's basic nutritional needs couldn't be dependent on whether he was annoying that day. If it was, he'd starve.

It sounded like he was starving. Right under Soos's roof. He hadn't even noticed.

He thought about the piles of junk food trash upstairs and the bag of chips Bill had hurled across the room.

Ford said, "We'll... discuss it."

"We'll figure something out," Stan said. "I mean it."

Bill nodded silently. Head down, without uncovering his eyes, he hurried out of the kitchen and toward the stairs.

He nearly bumped into Soos's chest without noticing him. Soos backed up a step, tucking Journal 4 under his arm. "Whoa, hey!"

Bill froze, head jerking up. "You." His voice was thick and his glare was watery and poisonous. "Don't you have anything better to do than eavesdrop?" He tried to elbow past Soos, smacking his leg with his umbrella. "Move."

Soos realized uneasily that Bill's face looked a little slimmer than it had when he'd arrived.

He stepped in Bill's way. "Can't go upstairs right now. Attic's being cleaned."

"I didn't ask you to clean!"

"I'm not cleaning for you, dawg. It's just gotta be cleaned."

"Fine! Whatever!" Bill veered around the staircase and stomped down the hall, muttering, "Can't decide when I eat, can't decide when I shower, why should I get to choose when my hovel's swept..."

Soos's leg hurt where Bill had smacked it. (Bill couldn't even control whether or not he cried; all he had control over was making someone else hurt.)

In the kitchen, Stan murmured, "Didn't even realize we don't keep anything decent out on the counters. They're so crowded..."

"Chip bags take up a lot of space." Ford sighed. "I assumed he'd get a serving with everyone else whenever Mrs. Ramirez cooks."

"He does, but she only does dinners. And he'll only eat it if he watched her cook it. I've seen him get lunch with Mabel, but I don't know what he does when she's not..." Stan spotted Soos on the stairs. He tiredly called, "Soos? You need something?"

"Uhhh..." Soos hid the journal behind his back. "Nope! I just thought I'd come downstairs! For no reason." He awkwardly walked up the stairs backwards, journal still tucked behind him. "And—and now I'm going up again." He stopped at the landing and scooted sideways up the next flight of stairs. "See ya."

He pressed the journal to his chest and returned to the attic.

####

When Soos and Abuelita moved into the shack, the first thing Soos had done was turn Ford's ground-floor study into a bedroom for Abuelita. Because she was a little old lady, and not quite as steady as she used to be, so Soos didn't want her constantly going up and down the stairs—because falling once, just ONCE, could send her to the hospital or worse. That was how serious it was! You don't mess around with that!

Bill tripped and fell on the stairs so often that they could use it to tell when he was awake. And nobody had thought to offer him a cane? Did anybody even ask if he was alright?

When Bill first arrived and tried to murder everyone, naturally, he came out of it pretty banged up and bruised. That was to be expected. It was self-defense. They'd gotten used to seeing Bill with scrapes on his arms and legs, rope burns around his ankles, and the angry purple-black bruises of chain links over his arms. But in all the weeks since then, Soos hadn't seen Bill bruise-free once. Bruises on his shins and arms, scrapes on his elbows and knees. Soos had seen him with a four-inch burn on his forearm. Bill had brushed it off.

In Bill's first few days in the shack, he'd resorted to peeing in the kitchen sink because nobody had bothered to give a guy who couldn't open doors a way to use the bathroom. And they were the reason he couldn't open doors in the first place!

He threw up in the living room in the middle of the night and went upstairs to sleep on couch cushions on the floor and nobody had talked about it.

He burned off all his hair and was so upset about it that he stole Soos's zodiac blanket and hid under it for half a week, and everyone but Mabel just ignored him.

In less than a month in the Mystery Shack, Bill had lost a tooth.

He had been dragged out of the house during a weird weather phenomenon while terrified out of his mind. Soos had seen Bill cowering on the ground in fear, Ford looming over him, grabbing him by the collar and snarling in rage. Bill had been pleading with everyone in hearing range not to make him go, and had come back in such a state of shock he could hardly walk. 

And yet, he'd protected the whole town from getting hurt in zero gravity—and he'd brought a pet for Soos.

They'd tried to execute Bill two days later.

####

Soos sat in the window seat, flipping through the remaining filled-in pages in Journal 4. The last few pages were packed with stickers. A cat that said PURRFECT! A smiling fish that said A REEL PAL! Bill had started a little collection of pizza slice stickers for some reason. A couple of holographic rainbows, a smiling scratch-and-sniff sun. (Apparently, the sun smelled like lemons and oranges. Astronomy facts!)

Soos reached the current page. Bill was using several pieces of paper—regular printer paper and notebook paper, folded in half—like a bookmark. Soos unfolded them. A list of animals ranked by fuzziness. (Soos was satisfied that he'd been placed under the "smooth and squishy" category, but wondered whether he should be bothered by the fact that he shared the category with pigs and slugs.) A drawing of Bill riding a looping rocket ship and waving a fishbowl helmet above him. A drawing of a blue house with a couple of kids and a pig in the window. Several drawings of shape people kinda like Bill: a pink heart person labeled "Me in Flatworld," a stern-looking red stop sign wearing sunglasses labeled "Bill's parole officer," Bill dancing, the pink heart protecting Bill from some villainous-looking shapes—all clearly Mabel's art.

Several notebook pages in someone else's handwriting detailing names, addresses, and contact information, with statements Soos couldn't make sense of—as if maybe someone had been asking somebody else questions and writing down their answers. He thought the questions might be about how some people had reacted to the end of Weirdmageddon. He got the impression the people being discussed had known that Weirdmageddon was coming. He got the impression they were disappointed it hadn't happened. There were several questions at the end: How will we rendes-vouz? (Whoever was writing didn't know how to spell rendezvous, but to be fair Soos wasn't 100% sure either.) What supplies do you need? What are your interim orders?

Soos stared at the notebook papers.

He flipped back through the journal again, looking at each page more closely.

Sometimes the two-tone dot-and-dash segments had a stray human word: a few characters he recognized from his Teach Yourself Japanese workbooks, sometimes words Soos thought might be Arabic but honestly he didn't have a clue. At one point he listed half a dozen human names that Soos didn't recognize. The most common character was a stretched-out letter M (Mabel?), followed by a 6 knocked on its side (Sixer?).

The dot-and-dash segments had occasional amateurish illustrations. Sometimes they were human stick figures; sometimes the stick figures' heads had symbols off of Bill's zodiac wheel. He saw Stan's fish symbol, Gideon's star symbol, and Mabel's shooting star symbol. Ford's stick figures were the only ones with hands; Bill consistently gave them six fingers. The doodles were like particularly esoteric cave drawings; they were so bad that Soos couldn't tell what most of them were supposed to illustrate.

Except for one featuring Bill (as a triangle) and Mabel and some other inscrutable figures in a really awesome car with flames on the side, its coolness limited only by the fact that it was all in gray and yellow-green crayon. When Soos had been in high school, there had always been a couple of kids who didn't know how to draw anything except expensive cars or name-brand sports shoes, but they drew them in extreme realistic detail. Apparently, Bill was that kind of artist. Nothing but stick figures and the sickest crayon car Soos had ever seen.

It didn't do anything to dispel Soos's impression of Bill as a lost alien 18-year-old.

On one page, in sloppy lines of handwriting that meandered drunkenly up and down the paper, Bill had written, "I don't get why you won't give me a second shot. I asked you to join my gang. I serenaded you in a pyramid. I got a fantastic makeover. I offered you godhood. I showed you my dimension. I didn't torture you until I had to. I even made you a skin couch! I know how much you've always wanted a leather furniture set! I've given you everything from chicken zombification magic to jelly beans, what does it take? What am I missing?"

Soos reread Bill's other messages to Ford. All that "you'll regret not siding with me" junk wasn't threats. It was the impotent rage of a socially inept teenager who didn't understand his own creepiness had driven his friends away. It was the whiny moan of some guy going "Why doesn't she like me anymore" about an ex-girlfriend who had told him five times she didn't like him anymore because he didn't listen to her. Like that guy Wendy dated last summer. So like, a jerk, but not a terrifying world-ending monster jerk, just an annoying creep jerk. A regular jerk. A human jerk.

Soos stood, gave one last look at this journal—clearly stolen, definitely a violation of Bill's "no writing materials" restriction, completely stuffed full of mysterious messages to outsiders and some kind of weird alien code that could say anything at all and might have been super dangerous—and he slid it back into the ripped seam in the attic seat cushion where he'd found it.

He finished vacuuming up the potato chips Bill had flung across the room, thinking about how offended Bill had been that Soos had given him any food except what he'd asked for, remembering what Abuelita had said about people who destroy the things around them when they feel like that's the last and only thing they still have power over.

Enough was enough.

####

(Hope y'all enjoyed! Next week we may interrupt our regularly-scheduled programming to post a TBOB-based chapter I'm inserting early into the fic—it depends on if I get it done by next Friday. In the meantime, I'm looking forward to hearing y'all's thoughts on this chapter!)

[messylustt]

i had this on top of my mind today

imagine ethan with a huge crush on y/n, having all these fantasies on her. once a week they would call each other for econ homework, but that day he's just too horny so he gets off to her voice. y/n is too oblivious, he would be palming himself through his pants. his breath becomes a little too loud and she kind of guess what's happening and takes advantage of it to tease him/make him embarrassed.

this makes me feel things

a little help — ethan landry + reader ( scream ) : ethan can’t help but get off to your sweet voice.

male jerking off. teasing. innuendos. ethan has fantasies. wc 2.0k

Ethan felt slightly embarrassed with how eager he picked up the phone His heart was already beating fast as your sweet voice filled his ears.

"Hey, Ethan!" You smile, placing your assigment and study papers on your bed, as you got yourself settled.

"Hey, y/n." He says, a smile he can never force down appearing on his lips.

"Did you get the new assignement from this morning's lecture?" You ask, as you flip through your pages to find it.

Ethan does the same, putting you on speaker as he placed his phone on the bed. "Yeah...I think so... yes." He says, placing the assignment details ontop of the rest of his work. "Why did Mr. Harold give out papers, instead of just sending it?"

"Ah, he's old, which can sometimes mean old-fashioned, I guess." You say, clicking your pen. "Oh my god, though did you see Sophie?" You chuckle, remembering the way she had tried to flirt with the poor old man, leaning forward as she pushed her breasts together.

"No...Sophie was in today?" Ethan knew of her vaguely as the girl who would fuck for good grades. But his focus had been on you in econ, sparing glances down your body when you weren't looking.

"How could you not notice?" You ask, shifting more comfortably on your bed. "I was scared her tits were gonna fall out."

Ethan stiffened at your words, and not because you had mentioned Sophie's tits, but because the his mind wandered to your own, and how he'd always have to readjust in his seat when you'd wear a tight top. Wondering how they'd feel in his—

"We should get started." You unintentionally break his train of thought, as he gulps, silently cursing at himself. "Because I barely understood Mr. Harold."

"Uh, yeah." Ethan coughed, forcing himself to focus. "What part didn't you get?"

"The third paragraph, where he talks about the inflation and economic growth. His question after confuses me. I'm not sure what he's asking us to answer." You speak so innocently, brows furrowed, as Ethan furrows his own for an entirely different reason.

For some reason your voice was sending small electric jolts through him. All the way down to his dick, which has begun to strain painfully against his pants. Christ, not now-he thinks to himself. He licked his lips, answering your confusion, as you hum with an "ah, that makes makes more sense."

Ethan's mouth has salivated, as all his built up fantasies of you fill his head. "So, when he spoke on analyzing the economy as a system, the list he followed on from..."

Ethan doesn't mean to drown out your words. Because he's listening. But more so to the hilt of your voice, and how it would sound much more breathy, as you gazed up at him. One of his fantasies had you on your knees, licking at his cock, as your innocent eyes held his. He had orgasmed extremely quickly, multiple times, when he found this imagine in his head.

"...he could have meant that these are the elements," you had continued, completely oblivious to Ethan's wandering hand.

He couldnt help it. He palmed his cock, as he listened to you speak. You always spoke so pretty. He could imagine your confused expression as you spoke on your problems. He began to rub himself, restricting himself to just over his pants, as he bit his lip.

He won’t do more. Just…relieve a hint of tension. You continued to speak and your words began to sound like something he wished he could grab, as his hand tightened on his bulge, his rubbing growing messy.

His breathing had grown heavier but he covered it up by saying ‘yes’s and ‘no’s, answering your questions.

“Sorry, I’m rambling. Did you have any questions?” You ask. You were there to help each other, not him only help you.

Ethan had to spare a glance at his work, scanning to see if he’d written down any problems, trying to remember if he had any. Because the only problem he could think of right now is how his over-the-clothes rubbing was doing little to satisfy his need.

His cock was rock hard, and his mind was beginning to cloud over with lust, and want for you. “I—I don’t think so.” He mutters out, his fingers reaching the button of his jeans, as he pulled the zipper down.

It was shameful, but he just couldn’t help it. “Okay, do you mind if I ask another question?—sorry I just saw it now.” You ask as Ethan absentmindedly nods wanting to hear you speak more, before he manages a ‘sure’, trying to act casual.

“Great, thank you,” and you began to speak on either the 8th or 9th paragraph as Ethan stuck his hand in his pants, feeling his pre-cum practically staining his boxers.

He imagined the way you would touch him. Would you be gentle and slow, or would you deep throat him immediately. Ethan’s breathing stutters as he strokes himself. The little hums you make when you think have begun to make his hips thrust up into his palm.

His other hand had tightened around the sheet, praying that you can’t hear him jerking off to you. Ethan grows lost in your tone as his cock twitches.

“Ethan?” You slowly ask, making his hips jolt at the utterance of his name from your lips, but he tries to keep his voice of some composure.

“Yes?” He had to press his lips together after a needy whimper nearly falling.

“Are you…okay?”

Your question makes him halt-much to his cock’s dismay. “W-what?”

“You sound out of breath.” You say, behind the line trying to think of why. Because he can’t be running, he’s in his apartment with his papers on his bed like you.

“I’m not.” He coughs.

You nod to yourself, but then you catch the smallest of sounds fall straight from Ethan’s lips. You had to be mistaken, because that noise sounded like one due to pleasure.

Your mouth opened in shock as you realise. He’s out of breath because he’s…

“Ethan.” You say again, hearing a stuttering whimper from him before he tries to cover it up by asking ‘yes?’ again. “What are you doing?”

Ethan curses himself because you sound suspicious. “I’m studying. Going over the study. Like you.” He says, really forcing down his cock’s want to just ask you to keep talking so he could reach his orgasm.

“Ah huh.” You hum, unconvinced. “And you’re sure you have no questions?”

“No. No, I’m all good.” He says, really forcing his words to sound normal, as he had slowly began to stroke himself again, his cock angry.

“No questions for me?” You ask now instead. Slowly coming to the definite realisation of Ethan jerking off.

“What do you mean?” Ethan asks, your tone going straight to his cock.

“Oh, nothing.” You hum, before you intentionally make your voice come out breathier, seeing what he’ll do. “Did I mention how nice your hair looked this morning?”

Ethan’s breath hitches as his hand quickens around his cock, seeming to have a mind of its own. “N—no.”

“Oh. Well, it looked really good, I just wanted to run my fingers through it constantly.” You pause hearing Ethan’s surprised whimper. “But that’s weird isn’t it, sorry.” You were teasing him now, your study forgotten.

“I—it’s not weird. You’re not weird. At all.” Ethan’s words are broken up by his panting.

“Aw, that’s so sweet, Ethan.” You hum, making Ethan’s hips thrust up into his hand, his legs having widened as you spoke.

“Y—yeah?” His eyelids have begun to feel heavy.

“Yeah. Your always so sweet to me. Helping with my study, making sure I have a seat in econ.” You shift on your bed, debating on if you go bolder. “You’re also very good at studying, hence why you never have too many questions. You’re also very good at teaching, making sure I know what I’m doing. Your just such a good boy.”

Ethan chokes on a moan. This makes his eyes widen, because you definitely heard that. So he quickly goes to speak. “T—that’s sweet. Really sweet. You’re…really sweet.” His tone is still breathy though, as he imagines how sweet you really are…or taste.

“Am I?” You tease, as Ethan’s rapidly nods on the other line.

“Always so…sweet.” He says, his tone unintentionally dropping an octave.

“But I never seem to be able to help you.” You say. “I’m the one always asking questions.”

“That’s fine.” Ethan says. “I like hearing you talk.” He pauses, shit. “I—I mean, I like hearing your questions because then I can help you.”

A smile had edged your lips. “But that’s exactly it. You help me…” you drift off, speaking closer to the phone. “Let me help you.”

Ethan didn’t know what you meant but the tone you had dropped to makes his hand quicken as his hips had begun to grind into his palm. “W—with what?”

“Oh, you know, with many things.” You say, appearing innocent again. “One specifically would be your tension.”

Ethans chokes on a whimper as he places his hand over his mouth, still thinking you don’t know. “My…tension?”

“Yeah.” You say lightly. “I’m very good at massaging.” You hold back a chuckle as you tease him.

“You’d give me a massage?” In Ethan’s mind that’s the closest he could get to you.

“Yeah.” You say. “I’d start with your shoulders of course, getting essential knots out.” You fake normalcy in the conversation.

“Then I might let my hands drift down your back.” You pause. “You’d have to lie down, so I could get a good angle.”

Ethan’s mouth has opened in pleasure at the thought of you touching him on the bed.

“I’d have to ask where feels the nicest, before I’d drag my hands down your body.” Your words were growing bolder and if Ethan’s mind wasn’t hazed over with lust he might have been able to pick out your innuendoes.

“Really?” He asks, his stroking quickening.

“Yeah. Though, through your clothes it mind be hard to properly get that tension out.”

Ethan moans through his teeth, as his hips pathetically thrust at your words. “No clothes?”

“No clothes.” You confirm. “Would that be okay? I wouldn’t want to make you uncomfortable—“

“Yes.” His answer was immediate, cutting you short. He coughs. “That would be fine.”

You grin. “Good. Because that way I could really relieve some tension. I’d have to straddle you of course.” You pause to hear Ethan’s heavy breathing and the faint sound of his hand gliding along his cock. “You may even have to flip around, because I’ve heard that the most tension can be by your collarbones and neck.”

Ethan nearly orgasmed at the thought of you straddling him, as your hands wandered his body. “As in straddling..my front?”

“Yeah, is that okay?”

“Uh huh.” He hums, his cock twitching with a soon need to release.

“I could give you that massage the next time we study.” You say, making Ethan’s breathing quicken at the possible reality of all that. “I could come over to yours.”

At this point he couldn’t care how desperate he sounded. “Yes. Please, come anytime.”

“Or maybe you should cum?” You ask, your innuendo strong, as pleasure began to rock through Ethans body. “W—what?”

“Come to my apartment.” You play it off, listening to the wet sounds his cock was making as you could hear how close he was to his orgasm.

“No. You should—should come here.” He says breathlessly.

“Do you prefer yours?”

Ethan just wants to see you on his sheets, all his fantasies having happened on this bed. He wanted to make one a reality, even if it was just a massage.

“I just have all the extra study stuff here.” Not that he couldn’t easily bring it, but he ignored that, and so did you.

“See, you are such a good boy.” And that did it. His orgasm wracked through him as quiet whimpers and moans left his lips his hips grinding into nothing. Wishing the air was you.

When the pleasure slowly ceased he heard words he never thought you’d utter. “Maybe next study session I could jerk you off?”

“W—what?” He chocked. Fuck, of course you had heard him. By the end he was being pretty obvious.

“Yeah, Ethan.” You grin. “Let me help relieve some tension.”

© messylustt.tumblr please don’t steal, copy or translate my work onto other platforms.

[citrus-moonlight]

As I often do, I've seen a few posts going around lately lamenting the lack of interaction with fanfiction/fanart here on Tumblr as well as AO3, but after reading a particular comment last night I just need to say this:

If someone tells you that the lack of response to sharing their writing is making them feel so upset that they're thinking of quitting writing altogether, don't tell them that's not a good mindset to have and they should just have fun with it and write for themselves. (have you just tried not being sad? you'll feel so much better!)

Even if you're a writer who felt that way once upon a time but then you changed your mindset so that you don't rely on others' feedback for validation and now you're so much happier, that's not helpful. Because that's obviously not what the person who is feeling sad and defeated is able to do right now, and for most writers/creators that's never going to be possible.

And it shouldn't have to be.

Especially here. Especially fanfiction.

Fanfiction is something that's created because someone loves something and wants to share it with others who love the same thing. And this is specifically a fandom space, somewhere that is supposed to be a community where discussion and dialogue can and is encouraged to happen between the people who write and the people who read. So when there's radio silence when you share something in this kind of space, do you really not see how that would be discouraging?

Because of course I write for myself - I would never get anything down on the page if I didn't - but I share because ultimately I want someone else out there to read what I wrote, and with any luck, to get some joy out of it. But if no one tells me they did, how am I supposed to know? As far as I know I've just been yelling into the void. As far as I know, all that work wasn't worth it.

A metaphor I've seen as an example is that it would be like having someone invite you over and cooking an entire delicious, heartfelt meal, you eat it all without saying anything, and then just leave. Do you not see how that would be upsetting?

We put so much of ourselves into what we write, bits of our hearts and souls and the things that we love and are exploring and are interested in or confused about. It's such a vulnerable thing to share something you've created, so when you tell someone that they shouldn't care if someone else reads what they wrote or tells them that they liked it, you're dismissing a very real and valid experience for so many creators out there.

Because regardless of how slow or fast a writer is, or how big or small their fandom is, it's still hard and takes time and energy and dedication and love - all of it in between our day to day lives from the mundanities to the heartbreaks - to even get something to the point where we're comfortable sharing.

Now, I know that not everyone thinks that writers are silly or selfish or entitled when they ask for feedback. Before I started writing again after many, many years, the main reason I didn't really comment on fics very often wasn't because I didn't think that the authors deserved feedback, it was more that I didn't really think that it would matter. That my comments would just be noted - if read at all - and brushed aside and then they would continue on about their day.

I could not have possible been more wrong. You might think you're just one person and it's just one comment but it's amazing how it can turn a day (or week, or month) around. How it can encourage someone to finish a story, or make a connection they'd been struggling with, or even just manage to add 500 words to a WIP. It is truly incredible to hear that someone loved something I wrote, and if you've ever commented on or reblogged one of my fics, please know that it truly means the world to me.

I've gone through a rough time with all of this lately myself, but I'm doing a bit better now (for the moment), so I just wanted to say this, in part to remind myself when it inevitably gets hard again:

If you're reading this, whether you're a friend or you've never seen me on your dash and never will again: I'm sorry it hurts right now. I'm sorry you feel discouraged and lonely, that it doesn't feel like it's worth it anymore, that you're struggling to find a reason to continue.

But I desperately hope that you keep writing. I hope you keep sharing. You're worth it. I know it's hard, and if you don't want to and you're just tired of the cycle of giving so much of yourself and getting so little in return, I understand that, too. It's ok to be in your feelings about it, it's ok to feel drained by it, and even though knowing you're not alone in your experience doesn't change anything and it still sucks, it's normal and valid and there's nothing wrong with you feeling the way that you do.

But I hope that you are able to find the joy in it again, because you deserve it. ❤️

[hannieehaee]

i love your writing i always check your page everyday! i was wonder we can get some brat reader x scoups or dk?? like we are messing with him around the members or going out somewhere without their permission? if not i totally understand and will still continue to support your writing! :)

18+ / mdi

content: jealous!cheol, possessive!cheol, brat!reader, afab reader, established relationship, smut, dry humping, grinding, etc.

wc: 1575

a/n: idk where i was going with this im sorry if it makes no sense T-T thank u for requesting </3

masterlist

if there was one defining characteristic about your boyfriend, it was his pride.

seungcheol always thought himself to be a capable and dependable man, which were a few of the characteristics he took most pride in. as the leader of his group, he was always meant to take care of his members and provide a solid foundation for his younger brothers to rely on.

similarly to his members, he always took care of you. however, along with that also came his possessive and strict nature.

as a natural leader, seungcheol always expected instruction to be followed. he wasnt a dictator nor unfair by any means, but he expected his authority to be respected. he afforded you the same respect, but he would quickly grow frustrated whenever he felt himself be challenged by you; something that happened quite often.

it was usually just fun banter. he would ask or do something, you'd be a brat and get in the way, and he would then play along until growing too frustrated at your overly playful nature and either whine at you or punish you (it'd depend on his mood, really).

today, this dynamic was presented in the form of you popping in for a quick visit during dance practice. cheol had always told you you were welcome to stop by whenever you wanted, even letting security know that you were to be admitted in upon uttering his name when inquired for the reason of your visit. you didn't visit every day, but you made it a habit of dropping in at least once a week (specially considering your boyfriend worked seven days a week).

upon your arrival, a few of seungcheol's members dropped what they were doing to go say hi to you and engage in conversation. cheol knew them to be overly excited at times, so he always sat back for a minute or two before jumping in on the conversation. today, he did the same, waiting a bit before joining you, jeonghan and mingyu while the rest of the members continued what they'd been doing before your arrival – practicing.

usually you'd interrupt them only for a few minutes, but today was different for some reason.

cheol could read you very easily, and he was suspicions of your smile from the moment you'd walked in. it was the same smile you'd have on your face any time you challenged his patience for fun for seemingly no reason. he grew completely certain that your intent today had been to be a brat when he finally attempted to get the members to settle back down and go back to practice. you'd immediately whined in disagreement, causing the members to join in, now claiming you wanted to go get a quick snack with the members, since apparently, you had been missing them lately. now he not only had to deal with one brat, but with multiple.

"c'mon, cheollie! you guys are all sweaty, i'm sure you've been at this all day. a quick break wont hurt you," you argued, fueled by the nods in agreement coming from his friends.

"baby ... we have a schedule to follow, you know that. you can come back when it's our usual lunch time."

"okay, you don't have to come. i can just go with hannie and gyu."

he knew you were just trying to annoy him. you had at no time mentioned any wish to hang out with his friends prior to this moment.

"baby–"

"yeah, cheollie. we'll keep her company, dont worry."

jeonghan joining in on your brattiness was exactly what cheol needed in this moment. specially as he walked over to cuddle against you as you both smirked at cheol in defiance.

"you coming, gyu?", you looked over at mingyu, who also seemed to grasp seungcheol's annoyed disposition.

"uh, i ... sure, i'll go, i–"

"baby, can i talk to you for a moment?", he was annoyed at your stubbornness, but he still did not wish to blow up in front of all his members, knowing they'd tease him over how easy he was to rile up.

"you can say whatever you wanna say here, right y/nnie? we're all friends here", interrupted the parasite that was his best friend, swaying you back and forth as you giggled at the way he so outwardly defied his friend.

that was enough for cheol. he knew there was no way for you to have planned on having jeonghan copy your brattiness so easily, but he blamed you nonetheless.

with that, he grabbed you by the arm, ripping you away from his friend before storming out with you. he led you to the empty resting room that was connected to the practice room before turning to look at you.

"tired of being a brat yet?"

"hmm," you tapped your chin as if actually thinking it over, "nah."

he walked over to you, making you walk back as your entertained smile remained on your face. he was glad to know you found this all so entertaining; something he voiced to you immediately after.

"i'm sorry, cheollie, you're just so fun to rile up."

"did you want me to put you in your place, baby? got bored of waiting for me back home?", he got closer to you with every passing second, eventually basically pinning you against the wall.

"maybe ... so ... are you gonna?", you grinned at him.

"am i gonna what?"

"gonna put me in my place? here, where they all know what's going on behind this door?"

"oh? you think i wont? you think their presence is gonna deter me from fucking you into whatever piece of furniture is nearest?", his eyes were darker than ever, mouth just inches away from yours. he could feel your goosebumps rising from his close proximity.

"but what about practice, cheollie? i thought you were sooo bus–"

"fuck practice."

only five minutes later and you were already bent over the couch, skirt pushed over to uncover your ass as he ground his clothed crotch against you, stimulating no one but himself.

after having abused your lips with his for a few minutes, he had felt you up in every way you loved, tweaking at your nipples and even rubbing at your cunt through your clothes. he thoroughly made you believe he'd fuck the brattiness out of you, only to then flip you over and bend you to his liking, grinding his hardened cock against your ass while you whined at him to do something more.

"no, baby ... this is all for me. gonna teach you to not be a brat by giving you the barest minimum. want more? then be good next time ... now take what im giving you and be thankful."

"y– yes, cheollie ..."

"god, what a pretty baby ... if only you were just as obedient as you are pretty."

"i am! i'm good, i was just ... just wanted your attention so bad."

"yeah? couldve just told me you needed me, baby. wouldve come home running to you. didnt have to team up with hannie to piss me off."

he angled you a little higher for his cock to finally drag against your cunt rather than your ass, now giving you some friction as you began to push back against him.

"shit, just like that, baby. push it back for me like a good girl."

"didnt– didnt plan it, baby, i swear! i was gonna take you guys out to eat and then steal you away ... didnt know hannie was gonna join in on it ..."

"oh, yeah? you were being good, then? just got corrupted by hannie? hmm. that's too bad, angel. still gotta punish you for that."

"j– just please! dont stop ... feels so good ... cock feels so good against my cunt ..."

he continued to hold you by your hips, almost bruising them by the sheer force in which he forced you to grind back against him. he knew neither yours nor his orgasm would be as satisfying as could be, but he needed to make his point.

accelerating both the speed and strength of his grinding, he found himself almost at his end, deciding to show you some mercy by digging through the front of your skirt and rubbing rapidly at your clit through your panties.

"gonna cum with me, baby? gonna give it to me even if they're listening in on the other side? huh?"

"yes, cheollie! almost there, just– fuck!"

your pretty moans as you lost yourself to the pleasure were enough to get seungcheol to reach his peak too, pushing himself up against you once more as he released inside his pants. he caressed the bare skin of your ass under your skirt as he helped you stand at your full height again, kissing at your hair as he told you what a good girl you were for him, brattiness almost wiped from his mind.

"angel ...", now was time to scold you.

"im sorry, cheollie ... just felt lonely and wanted to come visit you ... i was just gonna steal you away for a bit. forgot hannie has a boner for mischief and would try and make you blow up. sorry, baby."

he couldnt help but chuckle at that. you were bratty, but you were still his obedient girl. all was good in the world.

"c'mon, angel. let me grab some clothes so we can change, yeah? then ill take you home."

"but practic-"

"you were right. i could use a break. let's go."

[thecordelialetters]

The Art of Science

Viktor x artist!fem!reader

WC: 1.4k

An unlikely meeting of a lonely scientist and a student of the arts finding the beauty in themselves and each other.

Viktor never considered himself beautiful. His dimly lit room contained the basic human needs, a bed, a desk, and a sofa, all provided by the academy. There were no big mirrors besides the foggy one that sat above his bathroom sink. He barely glanced at it other than to fix his bedhead. The bags under his eyes and paling skin were hard to look at. Viktor believed in his work; he couldn't care less about vanity when he poured his energy into the lab daily. In the same way, he cared about his looks he gave the same effort into cultivating relationships. Like the mirror, Viktor didn't spare a glance at someone who wasn't interested in conversing about his projects or his vision for a better world. You were the complete opposite. You took life one step at a time, a personification of stopping to smell the roses come to life. As an artist, you look to beauty in the everyday. Perhaps it was fate your paths crossed, usually, you never dared enter the science wing of the academy but you had finished your painting early and wanted to go on a stroll to clear your mind. It was intimidating being around the brightest minds in Piltover. Most of them looked down on your profession. What was art compared to science? They'd mock you as you passed them, believing their work was revolutionary and way more important than a simple painting. It unnerved you but you'd never show it. A string of curses left Viktor's lips at another failed attempt at the Hexcore. Progress day was just a few weeks away and he had nothing to show for. As he hit his hand on the table in frustration, the vibration pushed the lab door open. The light from the small room shone on your face as you passed. Hearing a man's frustration you cautiously peaked your head through the door. You couldn't see exactly who was in the room but you could make out his back. The man was slender but had broader shoulders clad in a maroon button-up and white vest. His hair was a deep brown that flitted out over his ears. The room was messy, not as messy as your studio. You could see the genius behind the papers strewn over the desks and the many machines being worked on with the smell of oil in the air. Feeling the unusual sensation of being watched, Viktor turned his head to the side finding the door had been breached open. With a cramped hand, smeared graphite from all the writing he had been doing, he grabbed his cane and made his way to close the door. He pushed the opening gently finding the scene of you sitting on the floor, scribbling furiously in your notebook. His amber eyes drifted over your, messy locks tied in a ponytail, paired with gentle features that harmoniously made your face look perfect if it wasn't for the paint smudges on your cheek. He took a peak at your sketchbook finding familiar figures on the page of him in the lab. "What are you doing here little mouse?" He spoke in his soft accent. You stopped sketching and looked up, eyes widening at his presence. "I um...I was just passing by. I'm (y/n) part of the arts department." You looked down at your drawing, cheeks flushed with embarrassment at being caught. The handsome inventor crouched in front of you to sit. He held out one hand, "May I see?" You nodded and pushed your book into his hands, eyes boring into his face. Even under the dimly lit hallway of the academy, he was much more attractive. The flicker from the bulbs danced on his high cheekbones and you swore you could see the specks of brown in his amber eyes. Viktor scanned the page in detail. It was fascinating how you were able to so accurately portray his figure and inventions. Every nutt and bolt and every curve of his body you conveyed beautifully. "This is amazing (y/n)." He gave you a small smile. You beamed shyly in response. Tucking a stray piece of hair behind your ear you spoke up, "May I? Sit with you and draw you?" Albeit shocked at your request his eyes widened.

Frighted you might have scared him off you waved your hands, "If not its okay, I should be getting back anyways." You grabbed the book from his hand and shoved your supplies in your bag.

Before you could bolt away a firm grasp held onto your wrist. "You did not give me a chance to answer little mouse." He smiled gently looking down at you. "Come, sit next to me, I would love to be your muse." You smiled giddly and hopped up dashing into the lab. Viktor chuckled at your antics. He had not experienced meeting someone as sparkling as you. It was as if someone had collected a burst of a newborn star and embodied it into a girl. You carefully danced your way around the lab not wanting to knock anything over but also letting your curiosity draw you in. You turned to the sound of a chair scraping the floor. Viktor had sat down and began writing his research again. Dragging a chair next to him you position yourself at his side with enough space to give you the perfect angle of his face and upper body. The almost burnt-out candle on Viktor's desk cleared the way of the darkness while the two of you worked on your delicate craft in silence. The sounds of scratching pencils battled each other as your furious ideas filled the page. Feeling the way your eyes bore into his skin Viktor couldn't help but feel nervous. What if you actually wanted to leave and were staying here out of pity. Why would you want to stay anyways? He wasn't conversing with you nor was he doing anything worth viewing.

Unable to resist his interest any longer he turned to look at you. Your eyes met paired with the warmest smile he's received in a long time. Your smile made his heart flutter in a way that was concerning. Perhaps it was his condition acting up again. Silently you held up your notebook to his face. The breath in his lungs had dissipated. It was...stunning. Was that really him? The page contained 3 versions of himself. Every wrinkle on his face, the curve of his jaw, and even the bags under his eyes were present. Somehow you had made him look...decent, attractive even. "You flatter me too much little mouse, this looks far better than I do in person." You leaned forward pushing your book on the table. "No this is you. This is exactly what you look like." You brought up a slender finger and traced his features. "See this here? Is also here." One had felt his face the other pointed to different places in your picture. "You are beautiful Viktor." With a soft smile, the light flickered on your face showing the freckles that danced on your skin. "Well, thank you little mouse I like your drawings very much." You nodded and flipped the page to continue. The two of you worked in silence for hours. Neither of you spoke a word but the atmosphere felt like a home on a Christmas night. Quiet but comfortable, filled with some kind of magic. "I wish I had my watercolors." Viktor paused at your honey-smooth voice. "Why is that?" He questioned. His eyes fluttered back and forth over your figure. Fresh laundry, paint, and lavender filled his lungs as you let your hair down from your ponytail. "You have these gorgeous amber eyes that I just want to paint but I can't" You pout. Viktor laughed heartily at your confession. "Well, why don't you come tomorrow night. I will be here again and you can paint me." He took an insecure pause. "If you want of course." You nodded before looking at the time. "Oh my it's so late, I'm so sorry for keeping you. I should head back now." Viktor gently held your hand that laid on his shoulder.

"Do not worry, I was going to be here regardless. Actually, I would like to thank you, your presence was most enjoyable." You blushed and brushed a few locks of hair from Viktor's face. "Well, then I'm glad I could be of good company." Packing up your supplies you couldn't help but notice Viktor's disappointed face. With a smooth tear, you ripped the drawing from your sketchbook. Surprised he jumped up thinking you tore the picture.

"Here! Have it. It will be a promise I'll come tomorrow." Realizing you were giving the drawing to him, he gingerly held the drawing staring at the multitude of strokes that somehow compiled into his likeliness. He swore the room was growing warming, what else could excuse the heat filling his chest. "I'll hold you to that, little mouse."

Authors Note: This is currently unedited and a short but maybe Ill come back to it. I just got a burst of energy to write again.

[luveline]

𝐚𝐛𝐬𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐠𝐫𝐨𝐰 𝐟𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 | 𝐦𝐢𝐠𝐮𝐞𝐥 𝐨'𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚

you have to find new ways to communicate when a cold leaves you voiceless. miguel is less than happy —featuring grumpy miguel and his cheerful spider-girl. requested here. fem!reader, 2.3k.

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

Miguel's hackles hike as you appear. You have an obsession with toying with him and he's in the middle of something more important than your whims and wants.

"Don't start," he warns, barely looking at you. 

You point at yourself as if to say, Who, me? Grinning, you pull your arms behind your torso tightly, your shoulders harsh slopes where they'd usually be lax with calm. Your spider suit strains against the movement, shining with a subtle shimmer as you twirl your way into his side. You blink up at him, mock-innocent. 

"What did I just say?" he asks. 

He's expecting a charming rebuttal he doesn't get. You're awfully charismatic; Miguel often thinks you've manufactured a devilish siren call that yanks him in like a fish on a line no matter how hard he tries to split his lip and flee.

You're pretty, sure, but it isn't your looks that endear you to him. You have this way of speaking that's effortlessly carefree, despite the frankly ridiculous depth of the well that is your fondness for the world. It shouldn't make sense, and it does: you're happy because you love the world. When you speak to him, annoy him, praise him and degrade him in the same breath, Miguel thinks you might love him, too. 

You're silent. Miguel takes it as a blessing and finishes analysing the footage playing in front of him. He finishes as quickly as he can, and he's not a dick, he says, "Thank you." Then, with an unimpressed eyebrow raise, "Where have you been?" 

You come to see him so often he kind of forgot you didn't have to. He's taken you for granted, he knows, and after three days of not seeing you he should be happier. He should've asked you about it as soon as you appeared. 

You shrug and point at his screen. He can practically see the question mark in your eyes. 

"That's nothing. What, you're not speaking to me now?" he asks. 

Paper creaks in your hand as you pull a sketchbook from your pocket. Small, lilac, you flip to the first page and show him the scrawled message there with a rueful smile. 

Miguel's expecting a cartoon version of himself, but instead you've written three words. 

I have laryngitis. 

Miguel's gaze flickers between you and your book, assessing the claim with scepticism. "Why would you have that? You're practically impervious to disease." 

You flip to the next page. 

Superbug from Earth-87222 defeated my enhanced healing.

One of your Peter Parker friends lives there. He isn't jealous (because he knows that particular Peter doesn't like girls). "And you can't talk?" he asks. 

The next page. I can't talk.

You tuck the book to your chest. Lips parted, you attempt to speak, but all that comes out is hot air and a cruel croaking scratch that makes his chest ache. 

"Don't hurt yourself," he says, softer than he'd been speaking beforehand. He can't decide whether to glare at you or pull you in for a hug. If he hugs you, you might attach yourself to him like that thing from Alien. He glares. "You could've told me." 

You gesture to your throat. I can't speak. 

"That you were sick, you know how to type. You bother me every day for weeks and then one day you stop showing up, and you don't answer your watch, what am I supposed to think?" 

You stare up at him dreamily. He swears you get off on being scolded half the time. 

Miguel takes your wrist into his hand and turns your wristband forward to showcase the screen. "You see this? You see when my prompt comes up? You could take ten seconds and hit me back." 

Again, you open your small sketchbook, turning to a fourth page. You've predicted him well.

I didn't want to worry you. Don't be mad, handsome, you'll get more wrinkles. 

"Tu sabes todo," he fumes. You know everything. "If you're so smart, you can help me recalibrate the pocket dimension storage." 

You flip a page. It's finally a drawing rather than a knowing line, your familiar artistry obvious in your weighted linework and rushed shading. It's Miguel, his expression one he isn't sure you would've actually seen to reference as well as you have, lovingly concerned with a speech bubble coming from beside his softly rendered hair. Get well soon, cariño. 

He scoffs. "You seem fine to me." 

In truth, you don't seem fine. Now he knows, he can see evidence of your days away. Your lips are chapped under the balm you've applied, your hair dishevelled (though it's often unruly, in line with your personality). You wince when you breathe too hard. Miguel lowers the platform and sets you up next to him on a workbench in the back of the laboratory beside him for purely professional purposes. He has to make sure you're doing the calibration correctly, that's all. 

He can't quite explain away the tea he gets for you from the cafeteria, nor the research he does on the way back to you, Lyla at his shoulder saying, "You're such a softie." 

You find you don't need the sketchbook to communicate. Miguel places your tea down and your smile alone is thanks enough. It's pure reverential delight. He doesn't really deserve it, so he pretends he doesn't see. 

When you need help with a recalibration, you take his wrist gently. You don't even need to point at the screen, the subtle uptilt of your brows enough clue.

"Here, you're almost there," he murmurs under his breath, distracted by the complicated code you've been editing in the corner of the screen. "Oh, is this what you do when I'm not looking?" 

You tug his elbow. 

"No? You're not messing around?" he asks, rolling his eyes. "You think I'm stupid." 

Your fingers tighten. Miguel clicks a couple of things to finish the calibration. He looks at you from over his shoulder. Your face is near. It radiates heat. He bites the tip of his gloved finger and yanks it off clean to press the back of his naked hand to your forehead. 

"You're warm," he says, patting carefully downward. Your skin is as hot as he'd worried. 

Miguel drops his hand without rush, the side of his pinky tracing down your cheek. "Maybe you shouldn't be here." 

You shake your head vehemently. There's something in it he doesn't understand, an uncharacteristic shyness. He supposes he'd feel the same if he were sick like this, but you have no reason to be ashamed of a bad cold.

"Enough calibration, then. Take it easy." 

You do not take it easy. Your first port of call is to request to share his screen. He grants you permission and rescinds it soon after, irked when the majority of his monitor becomes wallpapered by digital post it note drawings of him looking cranky and of you in a crown, a ship's captain's hat, standing on the moon. He sets them each back to the perimeter of his window and tries to work. Trust you to find ways to bother him without teasing aloud. 

He thinks that… but then, his hands falter over the keyboard. You aren't a bother. You irritate him but he kind of likes it, most of the time. He turns his head just enough to see your face, blue and white light kissing your skin. You glow. 

Miguel thinks about how he used to do this alone. Lyla on his shoulder when she felt like it but usually tinkering in the quiet, trying to stop the end of the world, the pressure akin to how Atlas himself must have felt, knees locked and arms braced above his head to stop the Earth falling into the black abyss. Miguel doesn't always know what he's being punished for (or, he didn't). He doesn't know why this ended up on his plate, but the panic of doing it alone ebbs every day. With you by his side, unshakeable if not unfailing, it feels less like a death sentence and more like a problem that needs solving. He can't save everyone, but he can try. He can't stomach the agony of his life if he thinks about the past; you make it easy to stay present. 

Who would he rather have here than you? Out of everyone living that he knows, you're the only person he could stand to sit with for this long. 

It's not the same without your voice. Your murmurings, your kind doting, your put upon and less-so confusion. He misses it more than he can say in that moment, worse when you feel his eyes and turn to face him with a soft smile. 

Everything okay? you ask without asking. 

You don't need to speak. He can see it on your face. 

Miguel gets up from his bench to tower over you. Without giving it too much thought, he bends down, wrapping his right arm behind your shoulders, the left loose over your front, and kisses your forehead with the barest of pressures. It's hardly a kiss at all, and it makes no noise. More like he's resting his lips there, his nose at your hairline, breathing in. His hand rubs an up and down of its own accord into your upper arm, the soft fat of it melding under his touch. 

Your head dips back invitingly. You're like butter in the sun at his touch, a slow melting. 

"If you tell anyone about this, I'll deny it," he says quietly. 

You snort. You give his arm a pat and reach over it to grab your sketchbook. Miguel straightens but doesn't remove his arms, watching as you flick to the right page. 

I can't talk, the page says. You beam at him.

"I see," Miguel says. "You think it's funny because you couldn't tell if you wanted to." 

Your answering hum comes with the feeling of your fingers latching onto his elbow. Exactly. 

Well, fuck it. If you can't tell anyone, Miguel might as well send it. He leans down to grab you up into his hold, a squeezing hug that says everything he wanted to tell you while you were gone, his worry for you and his annoyance at your lack of communication. You don't need audible words to tell him things, and Miguel doesn't need words either. Hopefully his arms around you and his nose digging too rough into your temple says how he feels plainly. 

"I figured you got sick of taking orders," he confesses. You got sick of me. "When you didn't come back." 

You refuse to act small —Miguel doesn't want you to—, standing despite the weight he'd been resting on you, turning in the circle of his arms to look up into his eyes. It's too much, Miguel doesn't want your face this close to his, not with the rawness of his feelings aching a trail up between each of his rib bones, one by one. He clenches his jaw. 

Your hand climbs to his ear. He stays very still. As the initiator he should be forgiving, but your fingers touch his ear and he contemplates sinking his teeth into your hand. You stroke hair away from his face with a dramatised expression that says it's in the way, pesky stuff, though the final fond tuck of it behind the shell of his ear is impossible to deny.

Your thumb rubs his earlobe. 

"Are you having fun?" he asks dryly.

Your nod is sincere. Enthusiastic, you start to ease your fingertips into the thick tresses of his hair. 

Miguel grabs your wrist in an iron grip. 

"Enough." 

He guesses more than knows what your pout means —that isn't fair. 

"Life isn't fair," he says, pressing your forearm to your chest, an action fraught with apology. It's ridiculous how much can be said without words. He'd like for you to get your voice back solely to end this confusing misery. Well, not solely… Miguel misses the sound of it, distinct as your lopsided smiles and unconventional hand movements. "You can file a complaint just as soon as you get your voice back, how's that?" 

You roll your eyes and sit back down on your bench. Miguel takes a lap around the laboratory to calm down, returning to a new program blinking on computer his taskbar to be opened. 

He doesn't give you the satisfaction of looking your way as he opens it. 

"Miguel!" The program chirps, in a voice jarringly close to yours but not nearly as sophisticated as the majority of language intelligence he uses in his own coding. "I was waiting for you, handsome! Where have you been? Now you're back, I have a very special song to sing for you. Sing along if you know this one! Alright… Ninety nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety nine bottles of beer! You take one down, pass it around, ninety nine bottles of beer…"

Miguel realises he can't mute or close the program shortly thereafter. Vocaloid you counts down to sixty one bottles of beer by the time he resigns to turning off his computer altogether, a headache twinging angrily behind his eyes. 

Maybe he could use a break from your voice after all. 

You giggle breathlessly at him as he drops his face into his hands. 

"Drink your tea," he orders, words muffled by his palms.

He doesn't look up. There's the sound of a big sip. Miguel pinches the bridge of his nose between his thumb and index finger. He's kidding himself —the sooner you get your voice back, the better. 

˚ʚ♡ɞ˚

thank you for reading!

[ghostlysoaps]

Inspiration - @ghcstao3

There's something to be said about the way John "Soap" MacTavish, notorious for his fleeting fancy of any given subject when off an op, hasn't been able to get Simon Riley out of his head. Granted, even before "The Incident" his lieutenant occupied his thoughts frequently. But now, oh, not a minute goes by where his attention doesn't stray, where his eyes aren't drawn to Ghost’s hulking figure, and he wishes they'd been stationed literally anywhere else but the monotone grey of autumnal England.

His sketchbook is filled with pages upon pages of studies. Greens and browns and gold – the myriad of colours hazel can be – despite how none of them feel right. Too saturated, too dark, too light. Too much or too little. Then again... it is near impossible to recreate a work of art after a mere fleeting second of studying the original. La Gioconda del Prado wasn't made with a peripheral glance at Da Vinci's subject – so how is Johnny to do the impossible?

-

"Spar with me."

Ghost pauses with his fork mid-way to his mouth. A mouth Johnny would gladly analyze at length, or map with his own one day, if not for the unhealthy obsession he's taken with Ghost's eyes.

One thing at a time.

His irises are shadowed by the tilt of his head and the presence of eyeblack but there is a subtle difference between them. Johnny is fool enough to think he can see it no matter how shit the lighting. Deluded, even, if his long-suffering best friend is to be believed. They're also dark with question, narrowed with thoughts and opinions kept close at heart.

"Alright," Ghost says and pushes the rest of his dinner away, pausing briefly as if to say something before ultimately deciding against it.

Johnny follows him with a pronounced bounce in his step and speeds through stretching and warming up. It'll be a killer tomorrow but that's a problem for future Johnny. Sore muscles are a small price to pay if it means settling a mystery.

They take their places, circling each other lazily. Johnny, ever the impatient one, lunges first and ends up with Ghost's heavy weight straddling the small of his back a couple minutes later. He grinds his teeth and heaves himself back to his feet. Sweat beads at his temples, his neck, trickling down his spine. Alight with purpose, he throws himself back in the fray.

He sways out of Ghost’s reach, blocking and evading, bouncing on the tips of his toes, throwing punches when it's fitting while he awaits the perfect time to strike. They're both grinning. It's plain as day on his own face, more subtle on Ghost's. The way the corners of his eyes crease gives him away, the shift of his plain balaclava as his lips twitch.

Johnny is focused on them like a bloodhound on a scent and when Ghost tosses his head, tilting it up with a roll of his shoulders, the florescent lights catching them just so.

Oh, is all he can think with the truth of him laid plain to see – how Johnny had been right all along. They differ subtly in darkness but when cast in either sunshine sepia or lightbulb white the contrast between them is stark. One is the deep, dark of pine, a forest green with too many hues to accurately count. It compliments the wooden brown of tree-trunk bark, flecks of whiskey-gold therein framed by pale lashes of nearly the same colour.

A modern day Medusa who stops him dead in his tracks, mesmerised, as Ghost's fist slams into the side of his face with the concentrated power of an eighteen-wheeler barreling into a concrete wall.

-

Ghost's face swims back into view an undetermined amount of time later. Worry etched into the tense way he carries himself. His hands are cupping Johnny’s cheeks, thumbs stroking once under his lower lids before they tilt his head back a fraction. He hovers close, peering into Johnny’s eyes as if they hold the secrets of the universe therein.

"Fuckin' hell Johnny. Anything broken?"

Johnny blinks at him, a dopey smile spreading over his lips like molasses.

Ghost, if anything, looks even more worried.

"Talk to me, Sergeant."

"You've beautiful eyes."

Ghost freezes in place. Gobsmacked, if Johnny were to put an expression to it. He murmurs a string of delightfully innovative curses under his breath, manoeuvring Johnny to sitting upright, and the change in vantage point only makes him a little bit dizzy. The dark spots dancing before his eyes is nothing new, honestly, but they are annoying when they're ruining his view.

"Knocked what little sense you had left right out of your head, huh?" Ghost sounds amused and Soap realises, belatedly, that he might've said all that out loud. "Price'll have a field day with this."

"Take some responsibility an' kiss it better then."

"You're concussed."

"Och aye, an' whose fault is tha'? You and yer bonnie eyes. Could get lost in 'em, y'ken?"

"You're off your head, mate."

"Ahm'nt! An' if you'd jus' stay still for a moment an' lemme look at ye, this wouldn't 'ave been an issue," Johnny grumbles indignantly. Grumbles, because whining is for children and it never works in getting him what he wants anyway. Ghost usually looks at him with the flattest stare imaginable whenever he tries. Horrid man. Johnny kind of wants to kiss him about it.

"Tell you what, Johnny. If you're good–" Ghost slings his arm over his shoulder, kindly ignoring the way his words leave him shivering, "–i'll let you look all you want."

Johnny leans against him when he's levered to his feet, swaying like a branch caught in the wind. "I can be good."

"Mmh. You're gonna listen to the nurses once I drop you off at medical?"

Soap groans and smushes his face deeper into Ghost’s surprisingly comfortable shoulder.

"I'll take that as a yes."

-

Ghost keeps his promises, it is an irrefutable fact, and Johnny can and will take advantage of that with shameless abandon.

Crawling into Ghost's lap with a shit-eating grin, paints and brushes well-within reach, wobbling precarious on his perch until Ghost takes pity and steadies him with scorching hands on his hips feels like a victory despite the dull throbbing in his temple and purpling bruises lapping up the side of his face. There are no protests when he guides Ghost's head this-way-and-that. No complaints are heard even when the warm glow of his bedside lamp shines at his eyes and their kaleidoscope of colours become present again. Ghost keeps his gaze unwavering focused when Johnny's hands rest on his face in a mirror of the day prior – though his eyelids droop down the fraction of an inch. It's intense and intimate and Johnny, no stranger to selfishness when he can get away with it, can't help but be greedy.

"Can you be good for me now, Simon?"

His lieutenant nods as far as Johnny’s hands allow and though him closing his eyes is the opposite of good, Johnny can't fault him when his own slide shut as he brings their faces together for the first time – a new obsession flaring to life in the wake of lips brushing fabric.

[marzipanandminutiae]

I have a question, where would gnc/trans people get their clotges in the days before the selling of premade clothes? I assume some was stealing from relatives, and that soem of them did know how to make clothes, but that doesn't seem at all likely to be the most common method

That is an amazing question!

Unfortunately for a lot of people, we don't really know- many trans folks flew under the radar and as such details of their lives are unclear. Legendary stagecoach driver Charley Parkhurst, for example, left no sort of record as to where he got his clothes (especially since he lived in a cabin in the middle of nowhere for many years of his life). And figures like Mary Jones, a Black trans sex worker from the early 19th century, flit into and out of the pages of history so quickly that there's barely enough info to get their vital statistics, let alone shopping habits.

However, my guesses would be as follows:

Secondhand shops. These have existed for a very long time, and if you already have at least one outfit that makes you read as the correct gender, nobody would question you going through that section of the store/market/whatever.

Sympathetic conventional tailors or dressmakers. This is almost certainly where middle- and upper-class GNC or trans people got their clothing- one can hardly imagine legendary writer George Sand buying her suits secondhand, after all. And since humans have always been human, and Let People Dress How They Please; They Aren't Hurting Anyone is a sentiment I've seen at least as far back as the 19th century, I suspect there were far more of these than many people might think.

Clothing workshops catering to the demimonde- that is, to theatrical companies for costumes, or to sex workers. Certainly this is where drag performers got their stage gear, and one imagines people for whom gender variance crossed the line from performance to identity- like Fanny Park and Stella Boulton -might have turned to their costumers for everyday attire, too. And catering to sex workers probably got all sorts of requests that were seen as outre for the time (in a roleplay capacity- most sex workers dressed conventionally while not actively Doing Sex), but their money was as good as anyone else's.

Friends and relatives. Some families knowingly supported their crossdressing or trans loved ones. Even partners who married the person in question as the binary opposite gender could fall into this category- Lili Elbe (though she lived after premade dresses began to rise in popularity) first experimented with feminine attire in dresses and jewelry loaned by her enthusiastically supportive wife Gerta Gottlieb. In fact, Gottlieb was bisexual, and their marriage was only annulled because Lili was a woman now and same-gender marriage was illegal in Denmark at the time.

Also yes stealing from your relatives was also an option, of course. if they were less than sympathetic

The king of France???? this is the wildcard, and my absolute favorite: the Chevaliere d'Eon, when she transitioned in the 1770s, got the king to not only formally state that she had been assigned female at birth (there had been speculation about her physical sex for years at this point) but to pay for her new wardrobe of gowns. Absolute Queen.

"but didn't her mantua-makers notice Some Physical Things?" she's believed to have had some form of gynecomastia, based on her autopsy, and they'd never have cause to see her in less than her calf-length chemise. if they did see anything, they kept their mouths shut, and rightly so.

[jinogasux-fr]

Santae banned me without telling me why and won't unban me unless I send them my photo ID

Hey guys sorry for not posting in… forever? I just suck at social media lol. But you may have seen that I've reblogged some posts that advertise Santae in the past, but please disregard all that. I've since deleted those posts after learning how the site is managed and, after what happened to me a few days ago, I feel as though I should go public about this. Because boy did I just get fucked over.

Anyway, yeah, what it says in the title. On October 24th, around 10am EST, I was restocking my user shop when the entire webpage went white. I couldn't access the site at all and, when I tried to look for the Discord on my server list, it wasn't there. I knew what this had meant. I got banned from both the game, and the Discord - this is important to keep in mind for later.

I didn't receive any Discord DM or email notification about my ban, so after asking a mod what their support email was (and yes, I later verified that this is indeed their legitimate support email), I sent them this:

After a few hours, I get this back in response:

There's so much I'm confused about here. I think the one that screams out the most is that they're asking me to show them my photo ID so I can get unbanned. Absolutely not. I refuse to do this. This poses a massive security and privacy risk. They straight up banned my account, gave this half-baked explanation, and told me I need to send my personal information or... I stay banned?

Let me make something clear: The only personal thing they have on file about this account is the email address that I created my account with, which I've also used to contact them. My real name, date of birth, anything of that nature would not be connected because this was not asked for during account creation, therefore this wouldn't actually prove I'm the account holder. Theoretically speaking, I could show them any ID in the world and for all they know, that's my real information, because they have nothing else to go off of. They even say as much in their privacy page.

Secondly, "account has been compromised"? What does that mean? I think anyone's interpretation of this would be that my account got hacked. But if my account got hacked, why wasn't I informed of this? I had to reach out to support, they did not reach out to me first. That means my password, which I may share across other sites, would have been known to someone else and thus I should've been warned of this immediately, not roughly 5 hours after the fact.

Thirdly, what, was my Discord "compromised" too? If an automated system had flagged my account, does that system somehow interact with a Discord bot so they ban a user on both at the same time? How does that work? That makes no sense as to why they'd ban me on both the game and the Discord for something like this, which is why I'm calling bullshit.

Let me tell you what I think happened.

Recently, Santae has been in some really hot water with connections revealing their relation to an older petsite, Lurapets, which has a history of scamming and artist mistreatment, as well as proof coming out of them using AI art for their NPC art. You can find these posts on the @santae-salt blog if you want to see for yourself, but I'm also linking them throughout this post.

Once the post about them being directly related to Lurapets was released, several users that the Santae staff thought might be involved in the creation of the post got banned. As it turns out, I was banned at the same time as these users.

After speaking with the @santae-salt admin, we are both of the belief that I, a regular user, got caught up in this mess because they're assuming I'm an alt account of someone else and staff demanded to see my ID because they didn't think I was a different person. It may turn out to be wrong, and yeah that sounds a bit far-fetched, sure, but really, what else can I go off of here?? Santae staff has given me a very questionable and refutable explanation as to why I've been banned, and their radio silence after I refused to send them my ID is just making me believe they don't think I'm real. They don't want my photo ID to verify I'm the account holder, they want my photo ID to verify I'm not someone else.

This is unprecedented. I've never seen any petsite ask for a photo ID in any situation, and after asking around, not even those banned from Santae were asked for this. It's just me! This is an incredible attempted breach of privacy, and, with Santae now under doxxing allegations, I really don't feel confident they'd keep my personal information… well, personal.

I messaged back almost immediately after they responded to me where I told them I would not send my ID and I had asked if there were any other way I could verify myself to get my account unbanned. I've received no response so far, and after what I've learned, I feel like I'm not going to get one at all.

So, let this be a lesson to you: don't waste your time on Santae. You can be the most obedient player out there. You can abide by all their rules, be a nice and generous player, or just be minding your own business, but if they so much as think you're associated with someone who they think has wronged them, you'll be banned.

And they can't even be bothered to properly tell you why.

[gfguren]

pro hero!kirishima x reader | angst?, fluff, childhood friends→lovers, best friend!kiri my beloved, 2.8k (apparently??) | cw: cursing, reader wears a dress

-eighteen, and heartbroken, you ghost your best friend. years pass, as do old feelings; coincidence brings you back together again-

They say old habits die hard, your heartbeat rings true.

It's been years—six, at least. Since you've seen Kirishima. And he's still there, in the library of things you've loved, thumbed and beloved, worn at the spine where you once folded the pages, one over the other, carelessly. Always carelessly. As if they'd stay the same through all the wear and tear. You were—careless—after all, eighteen, and foolish, feelings too big for your heart.

But that was okay. It always was, with him. Wherever you wanted to go, whatever you wanted to do. He was happy as long as you were—and so, so good to you; it was childish of you, but you almost wished that he wasn't.

Maybe it was some kind of teenage rebellion that you pushed it too far. Some kind of lashing out, 'getting even', that you kissed other boys, pretended be head over heels in love with anyone, everyone, but Kirishima. Because you did—love him—and not in the way he loved you, you were sure.

Because if he had—really had—he would have hesitated, would have hurt. Wouldn't have vetted your dresses, or wiped the smudge from beneath your eyes. Wouldn't have told you how pretty you looked without really looking at you at all. Wouldn't have drove you to meet other boys, or dried your tears when they made you cry, like all of your other friends did. The kinds you didn't want to kiss. The kinds you imagined a future with, but not with kids and a dog and a white picket fence.

It was obvious for you, came natural as breathing, you'd known him your whole life. Skinned knees, and awkward school dances. Your very first kiss, though it meant nothing at the time. Just kids—curious, and reckless, and definitely not in love. You thought it'd be like that forever, made sense that he'd always be at your side; maybe that's why it hurt the way it did when, suddenly, he just wasn't.

That awkward boy—indecisive and boisterous, good natured and yours—Kirishima. Eijirou. Who earned his first bloody nose at the age of ten, defending your honor over something juvenile and stupid, who walked you home every day after school, hand in yours, always; (for safety, of course), who left half of his belongings on your bedroom floor, in your closet, atop your dresser—hoodies and gadgets and pens, chewed at the cap. That Eijirou—your Eijirou—would always, surely, make his way back to you, right?

But he doesn't.

When summer ends, he leaves—your school, the little town you both grew up in,

—and you.

To do something good, to be something more. And he was. And you were proud of him, so proud, to see him grow and become the hero he always dreamed of being. But maybe that scared you too, because suddenly your Eijirou didn't feel so much like yours anymore.

He's gone with hardly a notice, returns with all the confidence in the world—a completely new person in a matter of months. Red hair and a smile like summertime sunshine; your heart skips, cheeks flush, a name is put to the feelings you've felt for as long as you can remember, for the very first time.

But nothing's changed, not for Eijirou, at least, who still spends his vacations beneath your parents' roof, within the four borders of your bedroom, crisscrossed legs and laughter that sounds just like it always has. But it hits you—when he speaks—how much things have changed for you. The stories he tells, the friends he's made and the things he's experienced. They're his. Just his.

And it shouldn't bother you. That you don't know the name of his homeroom teacher, or what he packed for lunch last week. That he doesn't know about all the evenings you've spent alone, or how you broke into tears when that cute senior boy asked you to the yearly formal, because Eijirou had promised—pinky promised—all those years ago, that he'd be the one to take you.

But that was before he had training, and internships, and hero obligations; things far, far more important than you were, you suppose.

But it shouldn't bother you, right? Shouldn't hurt the way it does when he packs his things from your room at the end of summer. You lose him bit by bit; pens and gadgets, and comic books you bought for him every single birthday, without missing a year. He takes your ("his") very favorite hoodie—red and worn at the cuffs, a tear up the side where you wrestled him to the ground, at age twelve. Some petty fight you don't even remember, and how you didn't speak to him for a week; that felt like a lifetime, then.

You've half a mind to ask for it, know for sure he'd offer it happily, though you're not sure you have that right anymore. You no longer share his life, after all, and he doesn't share yours; it's not until you're older, much older that you realize just how hard he tried to make it work anyway.

The weekly calls and the long drives back home to just see you for a month, a week, a day. How he gets his license, at eighteen. Rushes home from an internship to drive you to the little ice cream parlor at the edge of town.

You're crying, over a boy—though your heart wasn't really in it. How could it be, when it's been checked out since the age of six? When the more years that pass, the more you fall for your very best friend, the stronger his absence becomes, the more bitter your heart grows. You're crying, over a boy—but not the one who stood you up.

You're just, frustrated, that he's oblivious to it all. Still. And so damn nice about it—always. That's he's perfectly content to dry your tears, has the audacity to tell you that guy was an idiot, totally unmanly, that 'any man would be lucky to have you'.

But not Eijirou. Never Eijirou.

And for the first time, you think you hate him. For missing the hearts in your eyes, and growing up just fine, without you. For talking like it's totally fine if you end up with someone that isn't him. And vice versa.

That he reaches for your hand on the way back to his car, like you're still just kids, and it means nothing at all.

—and that you let him; as if it means nothing to you either.

But fuck, it does. Always has. And maybe that's why you justify it, when you disappear after graduation—a new phone and town, and a future that doesn't include Eijirou. Kirishima. The way you're convinced he wanted; he's always been fine without you, after all.

It's petty and it's childish. And it's hard—like turning a page you've been stuck on your entire life—but you do, and the world doesn't end without him, like you thought that it might. You're fine, not even all that sad. Just a little empty for a while.

The years pass easily, as do old feelings and the ache in your chest. You get busy. With work, and hobbies, your dreams and hopes and aspirations. You don't have the time to dwell about what could have been.

At twenty-two, you fall in love, and it doesn't last. But not because there's someone stuck in your heart, like a thorn that just burrows deeper. Life happens, and you pull apart, naturally—like adults do—communication, and mutual agreement; the way you wish you'd been mature enough to handle your feelings all those years ago.

Maybe you'd still have your oldest friend by your side, then.

Somehow summer sneaks up on you, everytime—the third week of June, when you visit your parents in the same little town that's always changing. Streets busier than ever and pavement redone, ice cream parlor on the edge of town gone and replaced with a brick and mortar grocery. It makes it easier, you think, to not be reminded of Kirishima—and the way you left without so much as a goodbye.

You haven't forgotten him, far from it. Somehow you still find yourself in the comic section of the bookstore every October. But at some point, you forget his favorite foods and the way his hand felt in yours. When you see his house across the street, you think of his mother instead, and the way she greets you every time, like you're her second child. Her 'favorite', you used to joke.

It's bittersweet.

Six summers, and you manage to avoid him. Six summers and you come to terms with never seeing him again. Six summers, and he's there, suddenly—beneath your parents' roof, within the four borders of your childhood bedroom. Your heart beats like it might burst.

"Kirishima," you say, choking down your surprise with deep, careful breaths.

He turns to you then; four wooden borders squeezed carefully between two strong hands. The scar above his brow is baby pink, barely there, and he stands a little taller, you think, feels a little broader at the chest, and around his shoulders. You've seen him on tv, of course, in the news, in pictures, occasionally, but it's different—seeing him in person, after so long.

A true proper hero, standing there in your childhood bedroom, holding an old photo you'd all but forgotten about; two kids, faded ink and scuffed glass—hearts in your eyes, if he happened to look closer.

"Hi." His voice is a little deeper, smile a little softer when your eyes meet.

"Hi."

You feel a little helpless, truth be told. You'd spent so long avoiding him, so many years forgetting the casual conversation you'd once carried. You never considered what to say, if you were to meet again, never thought that you might. But here you are, after all this time.

You want to tell him you're proud, you think. The way you couldn't bring yourself to all those years ago. Want to tell him that you're sorry, for more reasons than one. Want to tell him he looks good, that you got the job he always said you would, that you worried about him, from time to time.

Instead, there's a tentative—"What are you doing here?"—that sticks in your throat.

As if it matters.

"Ran into your parents at the grocery," he answers, casually, "they asked me to stay for dinner."

And yet.

He sets the picture face up—where it once lied face down, forgotten in the eaves of your bookcase.

He's here; in your bedroom. Looking through your things, like he missed you.

You wring your hands together. Return the feelings you start to reach for, instinctively. A little book in the library of things you're predisposed to, catalogued under: Getting Ahead of Yourself.

"Are you?" the words are eager, the pages fall loose. You catch them, before he does. "Staying for dinner?"

It takes all of three steps, (you think it might have been five, once), for him to make his way from the bookcase to your bed. It creaks woefully when he sits, "Would that be okay with you?"

"Yeah," your voice nearly betrays you, "yeah, it would."

His shoulders unwind, chest falls. He breathes—easy. And then he laughs, boyish and yours.

"What's so funny," you gravitate towards him, naturally, suitcase forgotten at the door. The bed dips at his side and your shoulder playfully bumps his, "huh?"

The corners of his mouth crease at the edges, aged deep just like yours. "When did we become so boring?"

You hum—almost melancholy, picking at the splotches of red that still stain your comforter. "It's been six years, Kirishima."

"Yeah," he says, a little more pensive, "you look good."

Your heart skips, cheeks flush. Suddenly you're sixteen again, and pawing at the hem of your sundress, searching for his approval from the corner of your eye.

He's not looking at you, but it's different this time; or maybe it's exactly the same, and he's always been this way. Maybe you were just blind to it, sixteen and oblivious to the hand that wrings itself around the back of his neck, the red tinge that burns his ears.

But honestly, probably, you're searching for subtext that doesn't exist. Still, "So do you," the words come easy, "saw you at that award ceremony—on tv, I mean. Couldn't believe that was my Eijirou."

His head dips, eyes shimmer red; sweeter than wild strawberries. "Your Eijirou?"

'Yeah." You feel a bit self conscious, truth be told, though you've said it a hundred times. "Aren't you?"

His smile spreads like a yawn, from the depths of his chest, suddenly there and unshakable. Contagious—what was his, now yours as well. "Always have been."

Your chest tightens, every beat of your heart hammering at your ribcage. You still love him, after all this time. "How long will you stay?"

"Until dinner, at least."

"No, I mean," you sigh, heart spilling to your sleeves, "how long will you be in town?"

"I,-" It's lethargic, the way he blinks, throat bobs, smile falls, slow and pensive and so unlike him, "I moved back a while ago." Surprise washes over your face, rests in your brow, and he answers, before you have the chance to ask, "it's been two summers now."

You're not sure what that feeling is, gnawing at your heart and making you sick to your stomach—

"I'm sure you knew I came to visit," your voice is a murmur, eyes misty and searching for an excuse to meet everything but his, "you could have said 'hi'."

He hums, an almost sigh, "Wasn't sure you wanted me to."

—Guilt, that's what it is. It plummets, and swells, until you can feel it in your throat.

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be." A warm hand falls over yours, fingers curling—friendly, reassuring. You appreciate it for what it is. "I get it."

You've loved him for so long, known him for even longer, turned every page until the ink began to wear. But for the first time, you think you can see his heart bleeding between the lines.

"You're not doing that, don't you dare blame yourself, Kirishima Eijirou."

"You were lonely, weren't you? After I left for UA," his jaw goes rigid, every bit of shame clenched between his teeth, "should've tried harder to make it work, could've visited more often, could've taken an internship closer to home, could've,"

"—said," you click your tongue, stern as can be, "you're not doing that."

You pinch the corner of his sleeve, rolled red fabric over strong arms; he doesn't flinch at the coaxing, instead he turns to take your shoulders between his hands, "'m sorry."

You wrangle them from you, lying his palms at your lap, squeezed in between your own. "Damnit Ei, you didn't do anything wrong," you know for certain that he would've packed you in his suitcase if he could, would've dragged you along to every course and internship and oh-so-important hero happening, but you had your own life to live—and so did he. "You were following your dreams, who am I to get in the way of that?"

"My best friend, my other half, besides," his shoulders square, chest puffs, all brawn and ego and Eijirou; but his hands tremble unsurely, "I liked you," his wavering voice is still confident, somehow, confession long overdue, "and I'm sure that's not what you wanted to hear from me after so long, but," his hands leave yours to worry his hair, all finely gelled and pushed back, now tousled and falling softly at his forehead, "I didn't want to regret it for another six years."

You feel like you're drowning, pulled under a tide of feelings new and old. Confused, and euphoric, and so, so stupid. He liked you. He liked you and you never had a clue. The irony makes you dizzy.

Your head breaches the surface, and finally you can breathe, deep and burning lungs expanding, expanding, and trembling—a stream of salt and water hits your cheeks and falls past your lips. Eijirou is quick wipe away the tears, a palm at each cheek, wide eyed and worried. "Hey, hey, I'm sorry. Please don't cry, okay?"

You laugh and his expression eases, shoulders falling and fingertips thumbing softly at your skin. "Don't worry, Ei. I'm happy," you sniffle, fingers wrapping 'round his wrists; his pulse stutters at your index and you smile, "I liked you too, a lot," at age six, at eighteen, the year before last, and the year after that, and, and, "I still like you, I think."

His smile blooms, face brightens like sunlight in the peak of summer, warm against the tips of your fingers.

"Can I take you on a date sometime?" he asks, like it's the easiest thing in the world; maybe it always has been.

"Yeah." Your heart beats, a page turns. "I'd like that."