#is eighty enough proof for you?

[number1daisukefan]

Front Street by Will Wood is such a Mouthwashing-coded song actually

the. the undertones of sa and substance abuse.

THE VIBES.

[bluetimeombre]

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐋𝐚𝐝𝐲𝐩𝐨𝐨L 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐖𝐨𝐥𝐯𝐢e

Deadpool and Wolverine but your lady pool and an absolute SLUT for Wolverine.

[this is a complete self insert with just everything I was thinking about during the movie and since then I’ve watched it three times. It gets better every time. Snippets of the movie, will probably do a part two. SPOILERS!]

part two

Warning/disclaimer: femreaderxwolverine, sexual content, sexual language, offensive language, just being a whore the man, cursing, repeat daddy issues, never proof-read.

After digging up Logan and expecting to find a shirtless and oiled-up Hugh Jackman, you were a little more than disappointed to find the bones and metal. 'Damn it! Shit! Fuck! They Les Mis'd him!'

Eventually, you settled down next to the remains, against the same log that had impaled him. 'That was weird,' you chuckled. 'I'm much calmer now. Look, I'm not a woman in stem but you seem incredibly dead to me. Oh, you sexy lump of bones and metal. I would have let you slide them into me any day.'

'But it's good to see you,' you pat his knee. 'I gotta be honest, I've always wanted to ride you, Logan. Oh, whoops, I meant with you. Ha! Who am I kidding, no I didn't. Just you and me, getting into it. And I mean into it. Every style. Doggy. Sixty-nine. On the kitchen counter to the bathroom. Till my back broke. Yea, we'd have been good together.' You ranted, fantasies flying across your mind too quick to focus on one.

With your red-gloved hand, you jerk the chin. 'G'day mate, there's nothing that'll bring me back to life faster than a big bag of Marvel cash. Ha- I hear you, Hugh. But no, no, no, no you had to go and get all noble and die for real. I could really use your help right now. And a massage. Your big manly hands just rubbing all over me-'

Just as you were about to go into further detail about what you want him to do to you, the sound of portals opening and heavy boots stomping closer alerted you.

Quickly, you pulled the skeleton down on top of you.

'There are two hundred and six bones in the body. Two hundred and seven if i'm watching Van Helsing.'

Que the fucking montage.

You have a mission. Find a Logan to take back with you. First up you end up in a bar, catching an axe as it was thrown at you. 'Logan! I'm gonna need you to come with me.'

The Logan sitting at the bar slowly turned to you. 'Who's asking? ' He slipped from the bar stool to reveal a 5'3 Logan.

You coo. 'Well, who's this little ankle biter. Did you stick the landing little guy? Yes you did, comic-accurate short king. Such a cute little Wolvie.'

The little guy started stalking toward you.

'Que the fucking montage.'

You found a Wolverine for the seventies, or eighties, something close enough to that, one hand missing. 'Oh yea, sexy, you have anchor being written all over you.'

You found patch Logan. 'Oh hello, Patch. Should've worn my white suit.'

You found another old man Logan, sitting solemnly on his front porch. 'Howdy! Oh, I see, you're the daddy issues one. Good to see god has answered my prayers. So soldier, do I need to be a bad girl so you put me over your knee, daddy?'

Another was tied to a cross with red bloody skulls acting as a floor.

One was dressed in a tight yellow and brown suit, walking through the woods. 'Hubba hubba. Classic! Now, you fought the Hulk in this suit, right?' as he snicked his claws out, the green of the beast reflected from behind you. 'I am Marvel Jesus you dull creature and I will not be-'

One, your favourite, was working on a bike in a tight white vest and dark pants. You drooled. 'That's the whole goddamn package right there. You know from behind you look a bit- holy Shit!' he turned, and everything about him was Wolverine. Except for the fact he was Henry fucking Cavil. 'The Cavalry has arrived. The prophecy has been fulfilled. Can I say, sir, sorry, daddy- on behalf of all of humanity, this just feels right! We will treat you so much better than those shit fucks down the street!'

He took the cigar from his mouth, stalking to you. You had never been so aroused in your life. 'You were just leaving'

Giggling and twirling your hair, you hold a hand out, ghosting over his chest. 'Can I just, one- one touch. Oh my god! You're like Superman or something.'

He punched you right into the Logan you needed. Thank you Cavil.

'You two gonna fuck or fight?' asked the bartender. 'Both if i'm lucky,' you said.'

'Oh look at those sexy little jammies, that only took twenty fucking years!'

The trash heap was the last place you wanted to end up, but when you woke to Logan looming over you, a snarl on his face, you sighed in relief.

'Well, hello sexiest man alive, 2008. Wanna give me a hand? Or head?'

He sniked his claws out.

'Kinky! That's new for Disney!'

He dug his claws into your ribs and dragged you up with them. 'Where the fuck are we?'

'I dunno, but it looks a bit mad maxxy to me. But that would be IP infringement right?'

'Fucking jokes,' Logan uttered. He threw you over his leg, your back breaking.

'Till my back breaks, Wolvie!' you yelled out, quickly rolling yourself back up and shaking it off. 'Look, I think we got off on the wrong foot. I'm a big fan. How about we strip off our suits, take a tumble in the sand, get to know one another you know. Personally, I'm more of a cowgirl fan but I'm willing to do whatever you want baby.'

'You're unbelievable,' he grumbled. It was still sexy. He turned his back to you.

'Oh, I see, is that what you did when your world went to shit!'

He paused, his head slowly turning to you. 'Say again, bub?'

'Oh, I am so horny right now.'

The two of you engaged in a fight, and not the sexy stradling fight that would happen later, but the guns firing, swords slashing kind of fight. that was only interrupted by a familiar voice.

The only other voice that could have you dropping your panties as quick as Wolverine. He was hooded, hidden, but you knew him from your sex dreams.

'Dear god almighty, it's him.'

'Who?' growled Logan.

'Don't be jealous baby, I have two holes for a reason. Don't worry gorgeous, you're gonna encounter some delicate language, a smidge of ass play but we've been prohibited from using cocaine, at least on page.'

He raised a hand. 'They're coming.'

'Who's they?'

The three of you watch cars and trucks drive through the waste, keeping you trapped. There were familiar faces, Pyro, Toad. And Sabertooth.

The mysterious figure jumped down and mastered the superhero landing that had you clapping your hands and jumping up and down.

'Oh my god! Oh my god!' you held onto Logan's shoulder as you jumped while he just glared at you.

'I've got this,' the man takes down his hood, showing the beautiful, hot, strong, handsome, hubba-hubba worthy, Chris Evans.

'Oh yes, you do sexiest man alive, 2022!' you cheer.

'Stay close,' Chris- or Steve- called back to you.

You stalk over to him. 'Aye aye, Captain.' you wrap your arms around his stomach, fingers trailing over his abs. He removes you and you groan, sulking. You walk back to Wolverine and jump onto the side of his hip.

Instinctively he holds your ass which makes you giddy before he realises his mistake and drops you.

'You're not gonna love what happens next,' shouted the captain.

Your jaw dropped from behind the mask. 'Holy shit, omg! No way, he's gonna say it! He's gonna say it!' you flick one of your swords that was still poking out of Wolverine's chest. 'Avengers-'

'Flame on!' Steve- no, Johnny- yelled and took to the skies in a ball of fire.

It was sort of stupid in hind sight as Pyro lifted a hand and extinguished him, causing him to fall from the skies and go crotch first into a billboard.

'No!' you screamed, rushing to him and rolling onto his back to get a look at him. 'No, no baby, stay with me. Let me take a look!' you tried to pull down his pants but Logan literally pulled you off him.

You were tied up with Wolverine on the front side of you and Johnny on the back. When you woke, you giggled. 'Woah, just like my dreams.'

Johnny woke to, lifting his head from your shoulder. 'How long was I out?'

You smirk under the mask, looking back to him. 'Not all of you was asleep, say Cap, is that a Glock in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

'Is that Chuck? Hey Chuck, over here! Hope it's you young, god, we got James Macovy in this?' you yelled as a wheelchair rolled out as you entered the thing that was apparently large Paul Rudd.

'Cassandra Nova. Charles's twin,' the villain introduced herself.

'Holy shit,' said Logan.

'How was anal birth?' you asked.

Cassandra smirked. 'You two are cute. I have a good feeling about this.'

'Right!' you cheered. 'Just wait till this ends, the smut is off the charts!'

She took the chain from around the two of you but you wrapped yourself around Logan's arm, he only grunted at you. He only pushed you off when you started to go off and off about what Johnny said about Cassandra. 'People think i'm a shit talker but this guy-' you chef's kiss. 'Next level!'

Cassandra, with a flick of her hand, shed the skin from him as he fell in a heap of bones and blood and skin,

You cried out, holding onto Logan for dear life. 'My favourite Chris!'

'You silly little bitch, you just got him fucking killed!' yelled Logan.

'Fine, spank me then! P.S. Do you know what he was doing to the budget!'

You were brought to Ultimatum with Cassadra, Oliath or the other British villain, but all you wanted was to save your world, bang Wolvy and go home.

'I didn't want it to come to this, either you help us or my boyfriend here is gonna perform the whole of Greatest Showman as a one-man show,' you warn.

'I'm not her boyfriend,' Logan grumbled.

Cassandra went on a trauma dump that had you groaning. 'Couldn't you just turn into accomplishment like the rest of us?'

But I'm not like the rest of you, except maybe the Wolverine, now we could be truly terrifying together.'

'Sorry lady, he's taken!'

'Not for long,' Cassandra smirked and as Logan attacked, she sent him in the ground and away from you. You only whined at his disappearance, a whine that turned into a groan when Cassandra's fingers entered you in the worst way possible. Through your head.

'What can I see here?' she asked. Cassandra gasped. 'Oh, you are a whore.'

Oh yes, she saw the million filthy things you wanted to do to Logan.

The two of you made it out and to the diner where Logan was intent on finding food and taking rubbing alcohol shots. When he sat across from you, chucking a tin of spam at you, you pulled of your mask.

Logan stilled, looking at you with finally something a little different than anger.

'What?' you asked.

'I thought you'd be ugly under there.'

'No- no, that's the Deadpool. I'm better, and a self-insert.'

The two of you took to walking through the rather nicer side of the waste. You had his hand in yours, swinging it happily like you were a couple before he threatened to chop your hand off.

'You said Logan was a hero, what happened?' he asked.

'You died. Technically you were chest fucked by a tree, but really you just ran out of batteries trying to save this girl- a kid really. Always wanted a man who's good with kids. The shit heels who grew her in a lab called her x-23, but she was just a kid. A smaller, cute and mean version of you. Yep, you saved her, very hero, very demure.'

The two of you were interrupted when a bark sounded over the hill and the BEST DOG EVER ran out to you, ears flapping in the wind, tongue out as it always was. The little boots. The collar. It was Dogpool.

You threw off your mask and picked her up, cuddling her close. 'She's coming with us.'

'No she's not!' he argued.

'Yes, she is!'

'No!'

You pulled out your puppy dog eyes and lifted the dog to your face and slowly the resolve in his face slipped.

'Sorry!' another man ran out, chasing after the dog.

'Fucking shit bag!' you cursed.

It was another dead pool, a good-looking one with long hair.

'What's Ryan Reynolds actually doing here, I thought I replaced him?' you said.

'In here everyone calls me Nicepool.'

'Can we have your dog?' you asked immediately.

He laughed. 'over my dead body!'

You nod, thinking about it but Logan holds out his arm before you can even move.

Whatever Nicepool was saying was you didn't care as you cooed and hugged the dog closer and Logan watched.

Fuck, he was paying attention to you.

'Why are you so nice?' you asked eventually.

'It costs nothing to be kind,' he said.

'Shutting the fuck up is also free,' said Logan.

You bite your lip in his direction. 'God I am so attracted to you right now. This is Logan, he's usually shirtless but he's let himself go since the divorce.'

Finally, the Nicepool took you to his ride to get you and Logan and the dog to the borderlands.

It was a honda fucking odyssey.

Logan wasn't willing to listen to your complaints. 'Get in the fucking car.'

'Make me, Daddy,' you said.

He took one step closer to you and you backed away with the dog. 'No, we're running away!'

Logan forced her from your arms and handed him back to the Nicepool.

'The corn was to dense girl!' you called after her, pouting.

Logan shoves you into the passenger seat while he takes the wheel.

You pull of your mask, hair falling around you like you were in an advert. 'So, what shall we do to pass the time...'

Honda Odyssey coming soon, that my friends, is called edging.

[eowynstwin]

peristalsis - v

selkie!soap x reader. depression. strangers to "lovers." shower sex. cunnilingus. smut. manipulative soap. oysters as an aphrodisiac. unstable narrator. . Running away from life to the Scottish Hebrides, you meet a man who won't leave you alone. . Masterlist. Ao3.

previous

You watch him over an open book.

It’s an old romance, something from the eighties. Classic bodice ripper, billowing sleeves, tight corsets, mullets and heaving bosoms and all. Naturally, it’s set on a pirate ship, the heroine as the unlucky spoils of a merchant ship raid and the hero a lusty captain able to pierce her virgin’s desire for sexual depravity.

It could only have been more pointed at you if it had been set in the North Atlantic—it isn’t—but you glare at Soap’s back anyway.

He must be able to feel it, because he stands straight at the wheel, shoulders thrown back, occasionally flexing.

The freak.

You’d realized the joke he’d been making, once your heartbeat had slowed. Hiding the pelt somewhere obvious enough for you to see it. You live in the age of the internet—you know what it’s supposed to mean.

And you kind of hate him for it. Now, post-coitus, you can’t shove it away into a box—he is the most attractive man you’ve ever encountered. Rugged and handsome, competent at everything you’ve seen him do, seemingly at home wherever he finds himself. Everything makes him smile. Nothing seems to disconcert him.

And a nice big cock he actually knows how to use. Certainly the best lay you’ve ever had.

What every woman traveling solo, you think, longs to encounter on a solo trip across the world, but will never acknowledge looking for. An answer to an unaddressed desire; proof that satisfaction is out there to find, if it’s searched for.

A lover with no conditions. Someone willing to strip your inhibitions away, knowing your protests are only token.

You had not been searching. You’d given up searching.

And now he mocks you—with every satisfied glance he throws over his shoulder.

“Good book?” he asks, all casual and pleased. “S’ one a’my favorites. Tell me when you get to the naval battle.”

You frown. “You haven’t read this.”

He gives a little huff of amusement. “Read all of ‘em, bonnie.”

No, this is where you draw the line. A good cook, a good fuck, and a romance reader? No. No, you absolutely will not take this.

“Sure you have, Johnny,” you grouse, “you read every single stupid book on that shelf. Sure. Hell, you’ve read books that aren’t on that shelf. You’ve read every new release from the last six months, even. Why not.”

He looks at you again over his shoulder, mouth curled. “Aye. Needed ideas, once a’knew you were comin.’”

He says it matter-of-factly, with only a little bit of pride. As if it was a natural step in the process of getting ready for your arrival—renovate the croft. Stock the fridge and pantry. Plan some island excursions.

Study the erotic mind of the average woman to divine how best to seduce her.

Your frown deepens, and you lift the book higher, making it a barrier between you and him. Loser. Couldn’t he just go to the mainland for a few days if he wanted pussy? Not like it would be hard to find, for him.

You resolve to ignore him for the rest of the trip. A petty endeavor, maybe, but it’s the only one you can make.

But six hours is six hours, and you can’t read the whole time. Periodically you have to get up to stretch your legs, and the windows wrapping around the bridge draw your attention to the sea outside.

Johnny drives the trawler at a remove along the coastline, keeping close enough to the islands for easy viewing. The denizens of the Hebrides are out en masse, enjoying the clear weather, joyfully populating the land- and seascape in the absence of human interlopers.

Porpoises, so much smaller than you might have expected, periodically catch the wake of the boat, swimming alongside, playful and curious. Gulls loop in the air above the dunes, fronds of grass fluttering in the breeze. Gannets, stark white, arrow down into the waves, wings folded back pin-straight as they spear their quarry—silvery fish that boil the surface of the water in their frenzy.

Some removed part of you enjoys their pleasure secondhand. The normally-grey ocean is vibrant in the sunlight, crystalline and sparkling and as blue as Johnny’s eyes.

He seems to be in a good mood, too, although that could just be because you let him fuck you. You feel his eyes on you even as you refuse to look at him, dancing along the curves of your body the same way his fingertips might.

At one point—“Bonnie, I know you’re sulking an’ all, but c’mere.”

He gestures you over to the cockpit, and—embarrassed at being called out—you join him. He brings a hand to the small of your back, stepping behind you and pointing over your shoulder.

A gray wall of passing cliffs, and crags of rock jutting up from the churn at their base. You see ten or twelve grey-and-white seals lounging across every available flat surface, some cuddled in groups of three or four, apparently unbothered by the periodic spray of breaking waves.

“No’ where I’d choose to have a kip, personally,” Johnny says, sounding amused.

You turn your head to look at him, hard. His eyes soften when they meet yours, and he tilts his head to kiss you, undeterred even when you flinch away from it.

His hand tightens across your back, fingers digging in. He sucks your bottom lip between his and caresses it with his tongue, as he edges beneath the hem of your shirt to spread his hand across the warming skin of your back.

“I’m mad for ya,” he murmurs when he pulls away, blush high on his cheeks.

“It’s been two days,” you deadpan.

He presses up behind you, open hand sliding around to press into the low part of your belly, right at the sensitive crest of your mons; you can’t help your gasp when, at the same time, his erection nestles into the cleft of your ass.

“No’ to this,” he purrs in your ear. “Feels like it’s been forever, for this.”

When his fingers start making their way beneath the waistband of your pants, you grab his hand and wrench it away, scoffing.

“You’re just a fucking horndog,” you sneer, betrayed by the heat spilling through your core.

“Aw, you break my heart, bonnie,” Johnny simpers, but there’s a mocking edge to it. As if he knows exactly what you’re hiding.

You step away from him, folding your arms across your chest and staring out at the basking seals instead. Then—

“There’s one in the water,” you say.

A few meters away from the rocks, a round head pokes up from the surface, bobbing with the rise and fall of the waves. Its eyes are slitted closed, nostrils dilating.

“Aw, he’s bottling,” Johnny says affectionately, when he comes over to look. “Look at his wee face.”

You remember suddenly your encounter of the previous day—another lone seal, resting apart from its fellows.

“I saw one on the beach,” you say, “yesterday, after you dropped me off. A big one. You didn’t say they might show up.”

“Male?” he asks, and you nod. “Peripheral male, then. I’m no’ surprised.”

You sigh. “And that is…”

As if magnetized, his hands find you again, this time settling on your waist. It seems that Johnny’s touch is something impossible to escape, in his vicinity. He drags them down over your hips and back up almost idly, as if he’s not even thinking about doing it.

“There’s dominant males, and then there’s the rest of ‘em. Only the dominant ones get to breed at the rookeries, see? And the rest of ‘em have to wait around for the females to leave to have their chance.”

He leans into you from behind, nose in your hair, and you hear him inhale as his hands tighten.

“Once a peripheral male finds a female alone, separated from the colony, ready to go back out to sea—well, that’s his chance to pounce.”

You frown, mostly to yourself. “No matter how the female feels about it.”

“We’ve been over this,” he chides.

He brings his lips to the curve of one ear, then the soft spot behind it. His nose finds the juncture of your neck and shoulder, where the capillaries that he broke with his teeth still throb whenever you press your fingers to them. He inhales again, deeply.

“Why do you do that?” you grouse, unwilling to give him the win.

“Like how you smell,” he says, doing it again.

His tongue caresses the bruise before he closes his mouth over it—but he goes no further than to kiss your neck twice more before returning to the wheel. It leaves you reeling, half-dizzy with arousal, and when you stomp back to your seat with a frustrated growl, he only glances over at you, smirking, and laughs.

He finds a berth in the early evening to park the trawler, and at that point you’re thankful for any kind of solid ground to set your feet on, as well as enough open air to disperse whatever pheromones have saturated the enclosed space of the bridge.

You’ve been half-tempted the whole time to make him drop anchor and drag him belowdeck toward the nearest flat surface big enough for the two of you to share; as it is, you’ve simply stewed in your own juices instead, hot with angry arousal and ignoring the slick pooling in the gusset of your underwear.

Johnny steps out into the cooling air in his usual kilt and sweater, and you once again huddle in his jacket, aromatic with his musk, as he leads you onward. This time, unlike the last excursion, he insists upon holding your hand the whole way, callused fingers worming their way between yours, the captured air hot and humid between your palms.

Callanish turns out to be a henge of standing stones.

Meters-tall megaliths, squarish and narrow like broken teeth, surrounding a burial site and extending in two directions as if lining a road. Inevitably evocative of its cousin Stonehenge, with the notable exception that you are allowed to go up and touch the stones with your bare hands.

“They used ‘em for that TV show,” Johnny informs you as the two of you circuit the main ring. “Well, no’ these, they probably had styrofoam for that, but they got the idea from these.”

You lay your free hand on the nearest stone; it’s cold, and rough to the touch, a day’s worth of sunlight evidently not sufficient to warm it. Tiny spots of moss and lichen cling to the old stone, green and eggshell white.

“Why are we allowed to touch them?” you say. You think of bronze statues, rubbed to a golden gleam by millions of tourist hands.

“That’s Lewisian gneiss, bonnie,” says Johnny, laying his hand, much larger, next to yours. His thumb teases the side of your pinky. “Doubt you could make much of a mark on it. This rock here? Three billion years old.”

You look at him, seeing his profile. The expression on his face is soft—not unlike the way he looked at you earlier, on the way here. He spreads his fingers over the stone, tendons furrowing down the back of his sun-weathered hand.

“No’ just older than us,” he continues. “Older than what we used to be, a’fore we were us. Was there when we first made fire. Was there when we came down th’ trees. Was there all the way back when we left the ocean for the first time—”

He looks at you, then. The setting sun catches in the dips of his irises, setting jewel blue aflame.

“An’ it’ll be there, bonnie, when we go back.”

The wind curls around the stones with the chill of the oncoming night. Even despite the jacket, despite the walk up to the site—you feel it penetrate beneath your skin, deep into your bones.

You choose derision, to reject the shiver.

“And you have this all memorized,” you say.

Johnny doesn’t respond. He continues to stare at you, mouth in a relaxed, but inscrutable line.

You suddenly remember that you do not know this man; though he’s told you enough about himself to fill out his background—you don’t know him. You don’t know how he feels about most things, what’s important to him, why he may find one thing or another meaningful. Not the way you’d have to, in order to understand why the gaze he fixes on you feels so significant.

Whatever you’re supposed to understand in the way he looks at you now, you don’t have the ability to discern. The only thing that occurs to you is that, perhaps, you’ve finally managed to offend him.

It does not satisfy you as much as you might have imagined—

In fact, the thought drops through your belly like a rock.

Again. You did it again.

In the one place you thought you’d never have to face this—you did it again. Here is someone who seems to like even the worst of you, and you somehow found an even uglier side of yourself to show him, a squirming thing that cannot help but sling itself around with no heed for the damage it can cause.

But when you open your mouth to say something reparatory, something that certainly won’t fix what you’ve broken no matter what he might say, his expression softens into something thoughtful.

“Visited when I first came here,” he says. Completely unbothered. “After the discharge an’ all.”

You blink. Sharp heat and the numbness of cold, warring across your face.

“Why?” you ask.

“Dunno.” He shrugs, and lifts his hand from the stone, smiling ruefully. “I was a bastard back then. Didnae wan’ anything’ to do with anyone anymore. Mad at the world, a’was.”

Shucked like an oyster; scaled like a fish. Heat wins out, even in the growing chill. Tender skin scalding itself.

“And what,” you say, reflexively nasty, panic whirring up behind your breastbone, “you thought—you’d get some sort of, magical insight here?”

Johnny laughs. “Naw, a’was just pissing my money away, bonnie. Thought I’d come up here an’ try t’ knock one over.”

Tight chest. Can’t breathe. You step away from him, far away, hide it like you’re looking at another of the standing stones, but a stabbing pain spears upward through your diaphragm.

In—count—hold—out—

“Could you?” you ask, wringing something like a normal tone out of your voice.

“Nope. Paid for it later, though.”

He says it casually. He hasn’t noticed. You reach out to the new stone, drag your fingers overtop of the rough surface, imagine every little bump flipping the friction ridges of each print like pages of a book. Cold—the rock is cold. The wind is cold, and sharp with the smell of rain. The jacket is heavy on your shoulders.

The jacket smells like Johnny.

“I’m sure the park wardens weren’t happy,” you say, feeling your heart slow in your chest.

“No,” he says, and—with the silence of a lightning strike—“I drowned, afterwords, first time I went to sea.”

You look back at him. The wind picks up, ruffling the ends of his mohawk; on the horizon, a rind of darkness splits the clouds from the earth.

“You drowned?” you repeat.

The hem of his kilt flutters and dances. His gaze is intense—the angle of his brow unreadable.

“Aye, bonnie. I did.”

Your ears begin ringing—as you stare at him, you get the sense of dreaming. There’s a distinction to Johnny that contrasts the landscape framing him, a sharpness so focused that everything else lenses around him.

“Why—why are you here?” you find yourself asking, though you’re not entirely sure why. The question leaves you as if surfacing on its own power.

The corners of his mouth quirk—although for once, he doesn’t smirk at you, the way he always does.

“You tell me,” he murmurs.

He holds you in the tilt of his head; in the depths of his eyes, currents pulling you downward. You inhale, and expect, for some reason, water to pour into your lungs.

Then a gust of wind buffets the two of you. Johnny turns, surveying the sky. Breaking the spell, he says, “Come on, let’s get back. I don’ like the look a’that storm.”

Halfway back down the path, the front overtakes you; rain begins sheeting down, ice cold, needle-precise into your hair and down your collar. Johnny grabs your hand again even as you start worrying about slipping, and though the torrent veils the way, the both of you make it back to the trawler in one piece.

Back on the bridge, a red light blinks on the panel by the wheel. While Johnny attends to it, flipping a switch and bringing a microphone on a curly wire to his mouth, you squeeze your hair out over the sink nearby.

“This is Soap on the vessel Sea Ghost,” he says, and waits for a response.

“Soap. Drop anchor somewhere. Looks like a storm’s coming in,” a gruff voice comes in.

“Yeah, Cap, we noticed,” Johnny says with a laugh, turning and smiling at you. “We’re moored, dinna fash.”

“Good. Looks like it’s just for the night. Clear enough in the morning.”

“Barry. You got everything? Shops’ closed tomorrow.”

“Never will understand why. But yes.”

“It’s a holy day, Captain,” Johnny says pleasantly.

Price grumbles something about damn Catholics and their damn rules, which just makes Johnny laugh.

Then, “Gaz is here. Made it in after you left.”

Johnny’s posture shifts. Similar to a dog hearing the turning of a doorknob; amorphous attention coalescing, finding a target to point at. Anticipatory. Tail twitching, winding up to wag.

It’s a new reaction, to you—you’ve never seen it before.

Johnny lifts the transmitter to his mouth. He holds it there for a silent moment, before saying, “And Simon?”

No response from the other end of the line, pulled taut, as if snagged. Then Price responds “Haven’t heard yet.”

Something passes over Johnny’s face. Some flex of the muscle in his jaw. An expression held in check.

That’s—

That’s familiar.

“Alright. Back tomorrow then.”

“See you.”

He replaces the mic on its hook.

Thunder claps somewhere over the distant, open ocean. The trawler creaks and groans as the wind swirls around it. Yellow lamps illuminate the warm, wooden space, but are unable to penetrate the lowering blackness outside.

Tension—you can feel it drawing tight, see his shoulder blades shifting closer together. It aches in the muscles of your own back. He faces away from you, like you’re not there—

He turns to look at you. He’s smiling, but it doesn’t look quite real. As if he’s forcing the expression on his face.

“Poor bonnie,” he croons, looking you up and down. The tenor of his voice is saccharin-sweet and thick. “How’s a hot shower sound to warm up, hmm?”

Your belly pinches. “Sure.”

He leads you down a steep flight of stairs into the stomach of the boat, showing you into a single bedroom. The space is cramped, wedge-shaped—barely enough room for the double bed shoved into the middle of it, sheets and blankets gathered in rumples across the top. The unique musk of its occupant wars with the smell of lacquer; the walls are lined with orangey planks, evoking the sailing ships of old.

Directly to the left of the entrance, an open door leads into a small bathroom, into which Johnny guides you, hands on your hips.

“Go’ plenty a’ drinking water stored upstairs so take all the time you like,” he says. “Here, lemme show you how the taps work.”

You half-expect him, after the instruction, to stand there and watch, waiting until you undress. And he does hesitate for a moment, hovering in the threshold, before giving you a practiced grin, telling you to enjoy yourself, a closing the door behind him.

You stand in the middle of the tiny room for an uncertain heartbeat. Assumptions lurching. Almost—hoping.

His heavy footsteps climb back up the stairs.

So, you peel off your damp clothes and drop them into a pile on the floor, stepping naked into the shower. It’s far less mildewed than you might have worried of a single man living alone. Hot water chases cold out of your hair, streaming with pressure far superior to the cottage’s installment.

You realize your toiletries are still above deck, in your bag, beneath the two paperbacks Johnny packed that you haven’t gotten to just yet. You could step out after him—

You don’t do that anymore. You promised yourself.

The floor sways as the shifting sea rocks the trawler in its berth. You reach for the bar on the wall to steady yourself.

One version of yourself is sometimes able to fool the other. The truth is, you could have told him to stop at any time. Put your foot down, hard. Just because he owns the house you’re staying in doesn’t mean he gets to decide what your entire vacation is going to look like.

You scoff at yourself, without any humor. Vacation. Like you’d ever believed this was anything more than self-imposed exile.

The truth is, water takes the shape of the container it fills.

There’s a chill still present in your hair follicles. Impossible for you to identify until now; live with an ache long enough and it stops registering, until it’s balmed with a moment of relief. This is where the addicts begin; experiencing, for the first time, a complete absence of pain, as if it had never been there in the first place, and, once that pain is restored, the ruthless pursuit of its elimination.

Cold rain outside, warm rain within. You stand in the flow, listless. Steam rapidly clouds the empty spaces around you, gathering in droplets on the wall, drizzling down again.

That’s where the mistake is. Pain is never defeated—only deferred. Its panacea provides only diminishing returns, until it’s useless. Until you might as well be swallowing sugar pills or drinking seawater to assuage your thirst.

But you keep doing it. You remember too well how it felt. You chase it down because now you know how it feels.

At some point you have to understand that it always ends poorly.

The bathroom door opens again, and then the shower door, spilling yellow light into the shadowed recess—

Johnny.

The expression on his face is inscrutable; mysterious, as his gaze moves down your body, following the streaming water. Your arms curl around your chest in a perfunctory attempt to conceal yourself, even despite the futility of the effort.

He’s naked, and half-hard, a refrain on the previous night. One hand holds the travel-size soaps and gels that he must have dug out from your bag. He steps in behind you—enclosing the two of you in together.

“Sorry, bonnie,” he murmurs soothingly in your ear. “Had t’make sure we were tied up for the storm.”

The space is not even suggestive of being big enough for two people. You hear the squeak of the shower wall against his shifting back, hot skin slipping against yours as his hands draw you back against him by the hips.

“Dinnae want you t’slip an’ hit your head,” he murmurs, massaging the fat of your pelvis, as if there’s any reason to make excuses for what he’s doing.

Half-raised hackles petted down too easily. You relax into his touch, even as you disdain it. Your heart tremors in your chest.

“What’s going on tomorrow?” you finally ask. “Who’s Simon?”

Pathetic. A jealous lover, after less than forty-eight hours.

“Old task force,” he answers, kissing the back of your head. “Little reunion, food an’ beer, mostly.”

You half-expect him to go immediately for your breasts, or maybe your pussy. His cock is stiffening against the small of your back. But instead, he opens one of your bottles, squirts some pearly body wash into the palm of his hand. Rubbing a little to lather it, he puts his hands back on your hips, and begins massaging it into your skin.

Inward, up your stomach. Pressing into the soft parts of it, with the water slicking his way. His mouth touches the back of your neck—softly. Tenderly. With all of the languor you rejected the previous night, and not enough space for you to slap it away again.

His lips press inward, looking for the bite he left, which he lays his tongue on as if in contrition, licking it like a dog with a wound. The comfortable warmth of the shower swelters with his added body heat; the steam pulses in time with the heavy beats of your heart.

One hand slides up your body, fording your thoracic arch, the wedge of his hand ascending the length of your breastbone. He cups your jaw, bubbles between his fingers, one of your breasts nestling between his bicep and forearm.

He tilts your head to the side as he cranes his head further into your neck, lipping at the space behind your ear, kissing delicate, sensitive skin, as his other hand drags soap around your ribs, beneath and over both breasts, up into your pits and back down again.

A doll in his hands, bent along the shape of his will. He shifts his hips, frotting his erection against you.

“Johnny,” you breathe. “Johnny, this isn’t anything. This doesn’t mean anything.”

“Aye, bonnie,” he hums. “Whatever you say.”

He licks a hollow in your throat.

His other hand dips lower, sweeping down into the crease of one thigh to round the lower swell of your hip; then back up again, fingers spreading.

The stall compresses your arms close against you; the only space you have available to lay your useless hands is on his arms. The dark hair you find with your fingertips is coarse, wiry, plastered to hot skin with water. The spray seeps between the both of you, streams in the runnels of flesh pressed together.

Between your legs, your clitoris heats, awakening even though untouched. You give a small whine, and Johnny huffs a little chuckle in your ear, suckling your neck as his fingers make the descent back, rinsed in the falling water, teasing your pubic hair before nudging your folds apart.

He finds you slick and aching. He only dips lower briefly to wet his fingers, and then, as he settles a light touch over where you’re most desperate for it, relief razes through your nerves in a sudden wash.

You search for the back of his head, slotting your fingers into the ends of his mohawk at the nape of his neck. He hums against you, hand dropping down from your jaw to cup one breast in his palm, weighing it, thumb flicking around the pert nipple in the same tight circle he draws around your clitoris.

Orgasm, usually so obvious on approach, sneaks up on you, quick and quiet, but when it takes you it floods you, rather than knocking you down. You tremble all over, the follicles on your scalp standing on end, the nerves down your back and sides bending like dune grass to a wind.

Your long, breathy cry reverberates against the shower walls, and you lean heavily back against Johnny’s body, grip tightening where you have your hands on him.

He twitches against your back, but he makes no move to chase his own climax. He only turns you carefully, when you recover, and lays his hot, open mouth on yours, tugging your hips close enough to trap his cock against your belly. This time, the wall is cool at your back, the crown of your head moving against it as Johnny angles himself deeper, sliding his tongue between your lips.

“C’mon,” he says, when he finally pulls away. His pupils are huge, black dilation swallowing the blue. The spray fills the empty spaces between the strands of his mohawk, fluffing the hair a little as it courses down the shaved sides of his scalp. “Need to get my mouth on you again, bonnie.”

This time, when he eats you out, he does it at his leisure. Licking honey off a spoon. So lightly that you whine at him, find the energy to bitch at him to do it like he means it, but tonight he does not indulge you.

No—he mouths at you, eyes closed, curly lashes against his cheek as you lay belly-up on the rumpled sheets of his bed. The heat of his tongue in your cleft is the only source of warmth you have as the rain lashes at the outside of the trawler, but the hot shower still lingers in your skin—

Humid. Sticky. Sweat gathering beneath Johnny’s palms where he holds your thighs to his ears, as if mimicking the way your sex will clutch around him when he enters you. Slick and tight and viscous.

When he crawls up your body—nosing at your belly, your breasts, inhaling as if your musk is something he’s trying to get drunk on—he fucks you slow and deep. You stop being able to tell if it’s the storm rocking the boat, or the weight of his hips rolling against yours, one of his hands on the headboard for leverage and the other on your mons, pressing down with the heel of his hand to feel the head of his cock moving in you.

Tacky skin catching on the grind; heart speeding up as he grins at you from above, thumb tapping your clitoris. Enough to wind you up. You reach for his hips with your clawed hands, digging your nails into the meat of his ass—firm, muscle tensed, twitching every time he bottoms out.

“Johnny,” you finally beg, on the edge of a sob, “please, Johnny, please—”

Breath leaves him like a steam valve turned, pressure carrying an uninhibited moan. He ignores your plea, hips rolling slow, forcing you to feel every inch of him in and out of you, every ridge—every vein pulsing on the surface of his cock.

His eyes are closed still; when the widest part of him catches the rim of you around him again, his mouth drops open, lips pink and bitten.

Lost—he’s lost in pleasure, in the feeling of you around him, pulling him in. You watch his chest as it heaves, the flex of his stomach as it tightens—the twitch in the muscles of his arms as the impact of each thrust ripples up his body.

Look at me, you want to say. Look at me. I’m right here. Look at me.

“Again,” he groans, choked, restrained, hands gripping your hips. “Say it again, bonnie—”

“Please—” you whine, on the edge of a sob, “please, please, please—”

Thumb metronoming at a quick tempo where you need it—you seize, back arching, tightening around him so narrowly you could force him out—

He snarls, sharp and hard, thrusting into the resistance, hands falling to fist in the mattress. Breath coming rough and fast, sweat dripping from his forehead into the cups of your collarbones and down between your breasts. Hard and fast now, pushing in as far as your body will let him, and a final, long moan tears from his parted lips, liquid heat flooding you as Johnny goes rigid with a climax following only moments after your own.

Pelvis flush with your thighs. He doesn’t let a drop escape, pushing against you, lifting your hips from the bed.

“Tha’s right,” he slurs, eyes hazy when they open. “Tha’s right, that’s where it belongs.”

He collapses on top of you, almost crushing you with his weight, as he seeks your mouth out with his. He moves his hips against yours with shallow thrusts, whining in his throat.

“Didn’t you—” you pull your lips away, too hot, too cold, buzzing and exhausted, “didn’t you just finish?”

He tongues at your cheek instead, and then down your neck. “Doesnae matter, is no’ enough. C’mon, bonnie, wrap your legs aroun’ me, please…”

After he is finally spent—long after you’ve had enough energy to do more than lay beneath him and let him use you as he pleases—Johnny diverts briefly to the galley, bringing back with him a plate of oysters and a pry knife. It’s his bed, so you don’t complain about shell fragments, but you resolve to make him change the sheets anyway, shifting uncomfortably to find a spot that isn’t soaked.

“Was on this boat,” Johnny says, as if picking up the thread of a conversation only recently dropped. He picks up one of the oysters and shucks it open. “When I drowned.”

The way he says it, you’d think it was a casual thing, something he barely thought about anymore, but the line of his brow is low and serious.

He hands you one half; you bring the shell to your lips and tip it upward. Brine slides across your tongue, flesh smooth and buttery. Johnny watches you with soft eyes before having his own.

“Price was with me. I told him to fuck off, but he said he wasnae gonna let me take it out alone the first time ever. I was a bastard back then, I told ya. We went out in a storm, like this one, even though any eedjit could take a look outside and know it’d kill him.”

You flick at the edge of the shell with your fingernail, looking down at your hands. “Why’d you do it?”

“Dunno. Had somethin’ to prove, I guess.”

“That you could still do stuff like that?”

He doesn’t respond, so you look back up at him. He angles his gaze toward the mess of your hair—the new hickies he’s left on your neck—the bead of your nipples in the cold. The hard angles of his face soften.

“All my life,” he says, measuredly, “all I wanted to be was a soldier. An’ I couldnae anymore. Even though I was better. Hell, I was better than better. But I couldnae go back. That was it. It all wen’ on withou’ me.”

He breaks open more oysters as he talks, hands steady and deft around shells and knife. When he finishes, he slides the plate into your lap, and reclines to face you on his side, propping his head up with his hand.

“We wen’ out when the waves were as tall as a man, an’ us hangin’ onto the railing for dear fuckin’ life,” he continues. There’s a faraway quality to the tone of his voice. “Only life wasnae so fuckin’ dear, was it? I could’ve held on tighter, I think. I fell off.”

“And Price pulled you out?”

That feeling again, meeting his gaze; caught in the arms of a whirlpool, being dragged down. A vial in a centrifuge, constituent parts separating.

“No,” he says, “he didnae.”

“Then…”

“Eat, bonnie.”

There’s a stillness to him that feels unnatural. Johnny is a man who should be constantly in motion, gesturing with his hands, bouncing on the balls of his feet, tapping any available surface with rolling fingertips. Instead, here in front of you, he’s still as a statue. Chest softly rising and falling, but otherwise completely placid.

He gazes steadily at you, down at the plate, and then back up. You sigh, and pick up another shell.

“I don’t remember exactly what happened. I remember getting pushed down deep, real deep, then getting forced up again, on a current or something. Not far enough to get any air, mind. I thought, I’m gonna die out here, an’ I didnae want to.”

He shifts then, a little forward toward you.

“That seemed important, you know? I didnae want to die. Dinna think the sea would’ve given me up f’ I did. It knows. Sometimes it doesnae care. But I guess that time, it did, ‘cause after I blacked out, next thing I know I’m wakin’ up on the shore.”

Something hard shifts in your belly.

“Cap found me a bit later, bringin’ the boat in. Gave him a real scare. Think it turned some of his hair gray overnight. After that…a’was no’ the same. How could y’be, after that?”

You—you don’t want to know any of this. You don’t care. You didn’t ask. His story drops expectation on your shoulders, heavy, custom-tailored, laden with understanding that sands your abraded nerves.

All of this is too much. The damp sheets beneath you, the food, the sex. The fact that you picked the last place in the world thought you could ever meet anyone, let alone someone who—

“And now you have a seal fetish,” you sneer.

Who understands.

Indulgent. This is indulgent, reckless, idiotic in the extreme.

Soap reaches out, and wraps a large, sun-brown hand around your wrist, the one still holding the oyster. Pulling it towards him, he opens his mouth and then tips the flesh from the shell. He slurps it down, noisily, mimicking the sound of his mouth and tongue on your pussy.

“Something like that,” he says, with a sharp, cocky grin.

He changes the sheets. Dims the lights. Plasters himself around you as the storm blows itself out, arm heavy over your waist, thigh and knee nested inside yours.

He’s warm at your back, musky with the mingling aroma of dried sex and sweat.

Sturdy. More real than anything that’s ever put its hands on you.

Johnny, who the sea loved so much it spat him back out. So treasured by the world that a bullet to the brain couldn’t even take him away from it.

Who, by the sound of it, means so much to the people in his life that they would follow him to the middle of nowhere just to keep an eye on him.

Bile churns in your stomach.

next chapter early access

a/n: two chapters left!

[rainydayarcaneimagines]

One Last Night(Jayce x reader)

Warnings: SHIELD YOUR EYES FOR THE UNCOVERED ANKLES (smut. There is smut.)

It was all a shock. To land in an alternate reality where everything was fucked up. But it was an even bigger shock to him when he went to go back to his own and still ended up in the wrong reality.

There he was and everything was…

Great?

Life was almost a damn Utopia. What was crazier was Zaun and Piltover were put together and better functioning than his own damn reality. He walked the streets absolutely fucking baffled by what was happening before him. He heard tidbits and realized that in this reality his creation killed Vi, but was destroyed in the process.

From what he managed to understand, he had basically gone through his trial by getting his experiment confiscated. Even weirder, Jayce was successful in other ways but not… actually hextech.

It was beyond bizarre. Especially since… you were alive. No hextech meant no advanced weapons, no explosion, no explosion meant you were alive. Now he was fixated on finding you. If he was stuck there, he had to find you.

He had looked high and low.

And nothing.

Not a freaking sign. He sighed, sitting at a booth in a bar with his head in his hands when the gods seemed to finally answer his prayers.

“Can I get you anything sir?”

Jayce’s head snapped up and his eyes widened. You were fucking beautiful. Your hair was longer, dyed a vibrant color, just like you always said you wanted but weren’t ballsy enough to go through with it. Your eyes were brighter. You seemed happy.

“Y/n..” he breathed.

“Yeah that’s my name dude, don’t abuse it.” You chuckled.

“Jayce— it’s me Jayce.” He said staring at you. You squinted.

“Uh… do I know you man?” You asked confused. Oh fuck. No hextech meant you never got hired at the academy to be his assistant…

“Fuck uhm…” he sighed. You looked at him confused.

“You okay?” You asked. Your kindness was definitely still there.

“Uh… Shit I uhm.” He couldn’t form words. You were alive. The love of his fucking life was alive. But didn’t know who he was.

“…Need a drinking buddy?” You asked.

“…Yeah that uhm… Yes please.” He nodded.

“Vander! I’m taking my break!” You called out. Holy crap— Vander and Silco were alive?! And running a damn bar—“what’s got you so weirded out right now?” You asked.

“Why do you think I’m weirded out?” He muttered.

“Because you looked… bugged out, like you just took a fucking ice bath dude.” You shrugged. Glad to see your bluntness was still intact too.

Jayce smiled sadly before sighing. “I uhm… well I just… feel like a fish out of water.” He admitted.

“Why’s that?” You asked.

“…” did he risk sounding nuts, potentially causing you to freak the fuck out? Did he risk pushing you away from him? Fuck it. Things were still out of control in his reality, he needed to find a way back and there was someone he knew had a brilliant enough of a damn mind to make it work. “This is going to sound crazy but—“

He explained it all. From start to finish. You of course, stared at him like he was nuts. “Yeah but do you have proof dude, because right now you sound batshit.” You said after the explanation.

He sighed leaning back. “Your favorite song is Midnight blues. But you always say it’s Eros.” He says. You snorted.

“Okay weirdo maybe you just lurk on my Next tune—“

“You are allergic to peanuts. You always wanted a poro but your allergies stop you so you have a hairless cat instead. You love to sit on top of the old factory at night because it overlooks everything and you love to see the city at night, you love ionian literature, you hate the sounds of trucks that run too loud and flip off the driver every time you see one.” He listed off. Some of those were habits you knew no one would know. And he knew this. “You wear your grandmother’s locket. It has a picture of both your grandparents inside, the damn thing is almost eighty years old and has their initials engraved on the heart.” That. That detail made you believe him. Because you wore your locket, yes. But it was tucked inside your shirt so the pendant wouldn’t fall off.

You stared at him “..How did you—“

“Because in my reality we were together.” He said softly.

“…oh” you said. That’s why this guy stared at you like you completed his life just by merely existing. “Did we break up or something—“

“You died, Y/n… some girl— uhm… she went nuts and shot off a missile into a council meeting. Killed half the council, my partner got severely injured and… you died.” He muttered.

You blinked “…No offense, really. But if… your reality is really that shit, why are you so eager to go back?” You asked.

“Because before I ended up in this one, I saw what happens when I don’t succeed. I gotta say. It’s bad.” He said. You sighed.

“Why… tell me all this?” You asked.

“Because I know your mind. I know your talent Y/n, if anyone can help me I know it’s you.” He said softly. You stared at him before sighing again and running your fingers through your hair.

“…I mean I don’t even know how to start with time travel.” You admitted.

“I don’t either.” He admitted. “But… I think if we work together we can figure it out.” He said softly. He put his hand over yours that rested on the table and you pulled away. He mentally scolded himself that you didn’t know him in this reality.

“Okay I mean I can try but don’t be disappointed if me in this universe isn’t a damn genius.” You said leaning back in the booth. You seemed to have a lightbulb moment. “But my dad might know.” You added.

Your dad. You never mentioned even in your relationship in his reality who your dad was. He assumed he wasn’t around in his reality.

“Hey! Dad!” You called. Silco looked over.

“Yes kid?” He asked. Jayce froze. Silco? Silco the gods damned inventor was your dad? The man who basically made Vi’s sister into Jinx was your dad? That’s why you never mentioned this?!

“Come here for a sec.” You motioned. He walked from behind the bar and sat down. With zero hesitation you explained everything Jayce had told you. You trusted Silco. You clearly loved your dad too.

“…Well this is… interesting.” He said.

“Yeah. Any idea where to start?” You asked.

“My best educated guess is string theory. You made a major event. You came back here from a major event. So maybe make a major event. Your uh… hex something or other, doesn’t exist in this world, do you know how to make it again?” He asked.

“Yeah..” he admitted.

“Then I’d start there. And maybe try to do what you did to your core in your timeline to that one?” He suggested.

“That’s… solid advice. Thank you silco.” He nodded. The fuck? Silco never said his name..

“Right. Be careful Y/n.” He muttered before getting up.

“Thanks dad.” You nodded. Jayce looked at you. “What?” You asked.

“Your dad is Silco?” He asked quietly.

“Yeah. Why? Was he not in your reality” You asked.

“No he was but… nevermind.” Jayce sighed.

“We can use my dad’s workshop. Plenty of space. Come on.”

You started working. Days Jayce spent close to you, working on calculations and making a hexcore. Many nights he found you sleeping at your desk. And every time his coat would be wrapped around you in the morning when you woke up.

It was strange. A man you swear you had never met loved you so much that you could tell that the closer you got to cracking this, the more he struggled with the idea of losing all you over again.

It had been a week. You walked over to him sitting on the couch with calculations.

“Can I ask you something?” You asked. He looked up and nodded. “…Were we happy?” You asked softly.

His focused gaze cracked to a soft fondness. “We were.” He told you.

“…And even though I don’t really know you… do you still love—“

“Without question.” He said softly. You stared at him in silence. You almost felt sad. To have such a firm romantic love from someone, even if it was from another timeline but not be able to know, to share that feeling with this man that seemed to unconditionally love you…

There was guilt. You thought of throwing him a line, flirt with him. But you didn’t want what you knew were his last memories with you to be a lie. You couldn’t force yourself to love this stranger either.

“Jayce?”

“Mhm?”

“What if we went on a date?” You asked. He seemed shocked by this suggestion. “I mean… you feel this love for me. And judging by the way you mentioned your memories of other me, it was mutual and it… bugs me that I can’t really share that.” You said.

He looked at you like he was happy yet still… sad. “Sure, Y/n. Where would you like to go?” He asked softly. He couldn’t refuse one last lasting memory with you. Not when this wound still felt this fresh.

“Uh… well I dunno. This version of me never went on a date before so..”

“Mm. I can figure it out. Come on.” He said getting up.

“Oh— now?”

“Yeah. I know where we should go. Come on.” He said softly.

So you went. On a date. From that moment on, every night was a date. Spend the day working with this strange little blue glowy ball, then go off to dinner. What was worse? You knew this version of you was going to lose him. But you still fell in love with him anyway.

It was the final night. The last piece had been clicked into place thanks to Ekko and Heimerdinger in the same damn predicament. Heimerdinger insisted he needed to make adjustments. In reality he was giving the boys time to say goodbye.

You sat across from him in your apartment. “So this is it… after tonight you’re going back.” You said softly.

“Yeah… yeah I uhm… I am.” He nodded clearing his throat.

You looked in his eyes “…I didn’t expect this to be hard.”

“For what to be—“

“You leaving.” Jayce went silent. You drew in breath “…after these dates, these… times… I get why I loved you, Jayce.”

He swallowed hard. “Then… let’s treat this night like it really is our last.” He said softly.

You looked over at him “how?”

He pulled you closer to him from the chair you were sitting in. “…Let me love you for one last night.” He said softly. You broke at that. This was your last night. You were losing the only romantic love you have ever known. You had had “situationships” that pretty much were just sex but nothing like this. You had two options. Cry….

Or cherish it.

You kissed him. For the first time you kissed someone. Was this absolutely bizarre? Oh fuck yeah. But you didn’t regret it.

He pulled you even closer, into his lap, holding you like you were the most precious thing in the world to him. He needed you like fucking air right now. One final victory before the bigger fight he knew he’d come back to.

He kissed you, over and over again, his fingers in your hair, his other hand on your back holding you close. You slid off your shirt and his eyes widened.

“Y/n are you sure—“

“I don’t want to think anymore Jayce… I just… I want to feel.” You whispered. So that’s what he did. He kissed your neck, unhooking your bra, cupping your breast in his hand. He rolled your nipple through his fingers and you buried your face in his neck.

“We can back out at any time Y/n—“

“Don’t stop” you breathed out. No. Not breathed. You moaned. Any semblance of control the man may have had flew out the window as he pushed you onto the couch.

Kiss after kiss, hickey after hickey his hand moved lower undoing your pants. He slid his hand past the hem of your panties and you gasped, your hands covering your mouth.

He pulled them away with his freehand. “Let me hear you.” He said in your ear, rubbing circles over your clit. Your eyes fluttered closed, your hands moving to his hair as you took moaning breaths.

“J-Jayce I need—“

“I know baby. I know.” He said pulling off your pants. There you were sprawled out naked under him as he pulled off his belt. He let it hit the floor with a soft clatter and he gently spread your thighs.

“Gods if we had time I’d be worshipping you right now,” he murmured. You kissed him as he lined himself up. With a gasp from you he pushed in and you gripped the couch moaning as he moved. He went the pace he knew you loved. Deep, and fast.

“Oh gods— don’t stop please don’t fucking stop!” You moaned.

“That’s it. Let me hear you.” He whispered in your ear. Gods his voice as he was absolutely railing you was making this very difficult not to finish on the spot. It didn’t help that his fingers found their way back to your clit rubbing circles as he kept going with his thrusts.

In.

Breaths kept mingling

Out.

Kisses and moans filled the room.

Back in.

“I love you”

“I love you too”

Back out.

Your nails dug into his shoulder as he thrusted, your head tilting back. The release hit you both, his face buried in your neck as he panted against you.

After a few minutes he pulled away looking in your eyes. You looked at him with that same warmth. That soft smile. But from both of you it had an underlying sadness. You looked in his eyes before you swallowed hard, looking down.

“…Jayce..?” You murmured

“Yeah?”

“Do you… really have to go?” You mumbled. He sighed softly.

“Believe me. If I didn’t, I would stay right here with you.” He muttered.

“What if I went with you..?” You muttered.

“Baby, I don’t know how that would go… you died in my reality. If I brought you from this one… you might die… again.” He said softly.

You looked sad. “I’m never going to see you again… am I?” You murmured.

“…I don’t know. I will find a way to come back once all this shit in my reality is over.” He murmured. You swallowed hard.

“And if you can’t?” You muttered.

“I will.” He said determined. You looked in his eyes. You could tell he meant it.

“Then let’s get you to that weird little core then.”

[formulaforza]

Haiiiiiii i love your writing, could i request Lance Stroll with the prompt the first initial kiss being a simple peck, then they immediately go back in for a stronger, more passionate one?? I feel like that’s very him vibes.

—nowhere in particular

pairing: lance stroll x reader wc: 1.1k summ. everything with lance is so damn... friendly.

It’s been nearly three months of “Oh, Lance and I? We’re… we’re nothing,” followed by a pursed smile on your lips and an eye roll from whoever was bold enough to ask you. Three months, some eighty-something days of we’re nothing, when the two of you were most certainly fucking something. 

You weren’t dating, that was for sure. And you weren’t fucking, either. So, to anyone else it might look like you were nothing. But even if you thought you were crazy—the dozen or so people who seem to ask you about him every time they see the two of you interact is enough proof that you really are something. 

It’s hard to place exactly what it is, but it falls somewhere on the fault line between friends and dating, moving through like with the promise not to date anyone else, but without the balls to just date each other. 

It’s not that you don’t have the balls, it’s that you refuse to. You’ve always been a firm believer in him making the first move. You just never thought you’d be as desperate for someone to make the move as you are for Lance to just up and get it over with already.

Always a firm believer in the guy making the first move, but christ. Three months of waiting, and you’re about two days away from reaching your breaking point. 

Lance sits next to you on the flannel blanket in the park. The “friendly flannel blanket,” as he’d said shortly after proposing the idea—made skittish by your lack of response within the five second window he gave you to do so— “that I always have, like, in my car, y’know.” You couldn’t see him through the telephone lines, but you could imagine it, the way his hand nervously ran over the back of his neck. 

He was always adorable like that, all nervous and fidgety when you did anything more than give him the time of day. It’s cute. You’ve always thought it was cute when he was nervous, because he spends the rest of the time so stupidly confident. You like that you can make him nervous, but it seems like you’ve made him too nervous. 

Because he sits next to you on the friendly flannel blanket with the friendly picnic he’d prepared and the friendly cake he’d brought with carefully placed raspberries and the friendly bottle of red wine. You sit next to him, wearing the friendly hoodie he’d pulled over and off his head when you shuddered with the breeze, a friendly centimeter of space between your crossed legs and his wild brown hair, your eyes fixed to his friendly pink lips when he talks. You want to scream—fuck friends, Lance. Fuck friendly, and just kiss me already. 

Lance’s head, meanwhile, fucking spins. He’s such an idiot, he thinks, can’t stop himself from speaking—from feeling the need to inform you (lie to you) that everything he touches is friendly. There’s nothing friendly about the way he feels about you, but his stupid fucking mouth is too worried that making that fact known is only going to screw him over—that he’ll mess it up enough that not only is he not dating you, but now he’s not even your friend. 

Because… well. You’re you—all pretty hair and pretty lips and pretty smile and pretty skin and pretty personality. You’re soft when he’s brash and you’re brash when he’s soft and nothing ever feels balanced unless you’re the one balancing it. 

And now he’s lying here, on this thick, itchy blanket, just wondering when you’re finally going to have enough of him and his inability to just. To just kiss you, and let the rest of the world make sense. 

You eat, and you talk, and you make him laugh—you’re always making him laugh harder than he should. Anyone who watches probably thinks he’s a total fool, head over feet and half in-love with the same girl everyone else would be half in-love with. No joke in the history of the entire world has been funny enough to elicit the laugh you hear from him every time you crack one. 

He’s carefully slicing the cake when you swipe your finger through the white frosting, wiping the sugary substance off on the tip of his nose with a giggle. His head shoots up while you do it, catches your eyes and the completely human way they crinkle when you laugh, the way your lashes settle when you smile, and all he can think is that you just look so pretty.

You’re so pretty, and he doesn’t even have time to talk himself out of it, because he’s kissing you—quick, simple, like he was trying to shut you up. It’s a peck, nothing more, and certainly not the way he wanted to kiss you for the first time. He can’t believe he just managed to fuck up the first time he kissed you—that he definitely just made certain the first time was the last time. He’d strangle himself if he could.

“I’m sorry,” he’s saying before you can even process what just happened. “You just… I’m sorry.”

A smile pulls on your lips, and your cheeks ache from how much the muscles have been used this afternoon. “It’s okay,” you nod.

“You… there’s frosting on your nose,” he says, wiping the remnants of your swipe off his nose.

“I don’t care,” you say. “Kiss me like you mean it.”

His eyes shoot up before his head does, like he’s checking if you’re being serious or not. You are. You’re dead serious. The kind of quick peck a middle aged wife stuck in a miserable marriage gives to her middle aged husband will not be the first move you've been waiting three months for. If he’s going to kiss you with frosting on his nose, he better do it right. 

He makes up for it, though, when he wipes the frosting from your nose, licks it clean off his thumb and slots his hands on either side of your jaw, pulling you to him like he’s been waiting to do it for ninety days. When his lips finally meet yours, the rest of the park falls into the background. The sweetness of the frosting lingers, blending with the warmth of his lips. This is not a peck—this is a declaration, a revelation. 

“Better?” He says, his forehead warm against yours. 

You nod, smiling. “Much better,” and then you kiss him again like time might run out, even though you both know it won’t.

[leeknow-thoughts]

WINTER FALLS

tw : Jack Frost!Hyunjin, mortal!reader, sub!hyunjin, dom!reader, p in v, pillow humping, praise, slight edging

Your head hurt, when you touched it you saw the blood on your hands. Your ribs hurt. Everything hurt.Your body decided to close its eyes. You felt someone carrying you for a moment before everything went black and fuzzy.

When you did come to, you were in a warm bed. You scanned your surroundings. A cozy room made of wood. "You're finally awake," a man's voice exclaims.

You look around, finding the man, "what-"

"You were in a skiing accident, you fell down the side of a mountain," he explains.

He was blonde with tan skin. Possibly the prettiest man you've ever seen. He looked familiar somehow. Like you had seen him many times in the past. "Do I know you?" you ponder out loud.

"My name is Hyunjin," he smiles, his teeth pearly white.

You'd never heard that name before. Not even in your dreams. "You look familiar," you state.

He smiles, "where you're from they call me Jack Frost," he chuckles.

Oh you definitely had a concussion. "Prove it," you chuckle.

He takes the glass beside your bed you watch as his touch turns the lukewarm water into ice. "That proof enough?," he asks.

You simply close your eyes and pray that this is a dream. "You can't wish me away my love," he sighs, "I've had my eye on you for the longest time."

"That's creepy," you blurt.

He laughs, "not like that, for the past three years you've just always caught my eye whenever I've brought snow."

"Me?" you sit up to face him.

He nods, "you."

"Why?"

"Because you're perfect, and beautiful. At least you are during the winter," he cracks a warm smile.

You recall the memory fondly as you wait for midnight. That was the third year you had waited for him to show up. You waited until midnight on the first night of winter. He would show up. He promised you he would every year.

For the past three years he would stay with you during the winter. "You changed your hair," his familiar voice rang in your ears.

You turned around and there he was, standing in your living room. "Just cut it a bit," you reply.

He smiles warmly, "it looks lovely, you look lovely."

You cross the space between the both of you, wrapping him in a hug. He was cold like usual, at first it used to bother you, now you felt comfort in his coolness. He ran his fingers through your hair. "Missed you Hyune," you murmur into his chest.

You hated to admit it, but you had fallen in love with Hyunjin. He knew it, you told him last year before he had to leave. "Been thinking about what you told me last year," he says.

You pull apart from him, looking him in the eyes. "Wish you could stay forever," you mumble.

"There is a way, but it's just," he pauses, "I don't think you'd want to do that," he smiles.

"Well what is it?" you question him.

"We would uhm," he chokes it out, "have to fuck."

Your face went blank, you'd have to fuck the Jack Frost. "I'd do it," you say immediately.

He sighs, "I know you would but I don't want to force this on you, let's just be together, we have all winter," he smiles.

You nod, "c'mon let's go to bed, I'm tired."

First day of winter. You woke up to Hyunjin cooking you breakfast, "let's go ice skating," he suggests as he watches you eat the pancakes he had made.

You agreed, you both walked to the ice rink. And of course he had to show off when he was there.

Fourteenth day of winter, you and Hyunjin had a Christmas movie marathon. Christmas with the Kranks, The Grinch, and Christmas Vacation.

Every night he would hold you close to him, running his hands through your hair.

Twenty eighth day of winter, Hyunjin took you skiing for the weekend.

Sixtieth day of winter you both went walking in the park while it was snowing.

He would kiss you every night, holding you tenderly.

Eighty eighth day of winter, the last day. You went out to the store to grab groceries to make dinner while Hyunjin stayed back in your apartment. When you put the key into the door and swung it open, the first thing you heard was whines coming from your bedroom. You placed your bags on the ground, making a b-line to the bedroom.

The sight inside was enough to make you feral. Hyunjin was hovering over one of your stuffed animals, grinding on it, completely naked. Your mouth was watering at the sight. "You couldn't even wait hmm?" you ask.

"Fuck, I'm sorry," he whimpers and tries to cover himself.

You cross the space between the two of you, "no baby, keep going, would you feel better if you saw my tits?" you hum.

He nods feverishly. You quickly remove your top, undoing your bra. Your eyes trail down to his pulsing cock. Long and veiny with a flushed tip. "Mistress, please, ngh touch me please" he whines.

"Why should I little love?" you pause, taking your nipple in your hands, twisting it gently, "you couldn't even wait for me hmm?"

"Please," he whimpers.

"If you want to cum at all Hyunjin, you'll keep humping that fucking toy," you grab his jaw making him look at you.

His hips resume their movements against the toy. He bites his lip. His eyes roll back into his head. You felt yourself getting wetter and wetter. You brush your hands through his hair.

"Mama, please, ngh I need to fucking cum-" he announces.

"Stop," you command.

You see the tears spill out of his eyes as he forces himself to stop his movements. "Want you to cum in my pussy little one," you grin.

You remove your pants and panties, kicking them somewhere in your room. You lean back on the bed, opening your legs for Hyunjin.

Hyunjin leaps at the opportunity to fuck you. Moving from on top of your toy, and lining his dick up at your entrance. "Such a good boy, go ahead and put it in," you coo.

He whines as he puts it in, his face contorting. Stopping once he had filled you completely. "Mama- ngh so wet," he whimpers.

"Such a good boy, c'mon fuck mommy good," you grin.

He whimpers with each stroke of his hips. His cock filled you so deliciously. The veins of his dick rubbing against your walls. You threw your head back whenever he hit your g-spot. "Atta boy, just like that, roll your hips just like that for me," you praise.

Your head fell back when he did it again. By this point he developed a steady rhythm. "Shit you're such a good boy for mommy," you praise him again.

You closed your eyes for a moment, but reopened them when you felt Hyunjin's hand rubbing on your clit. "Fuck, that's it little love, such a good boy," you smile.

"Can I cum- ngh please-" Hyunjin begs with hooded eyes.

You nod, "cum inside me Hyune, c'mon be a good boy."

He grips onto your hips as he cums inside you. You feel it filling you up, causing you to cum with him. He threw his head back, panting hardly.

"Thank you, mama-" he thanks you, "thank you for helping me stay."

[digoutskin]

Ｈｏｍｅ ｔｏ Ａｎｏｔｈｏｒ ｏｎｅ

Eren Yeager x BlackFem!reader

18+ CONTENT

Warnings: One shot, Y/n is a 'cheater' in this, explicit language, Angst, Tears, Sad Eren, Connie x Reader, Eren x Reader, Love triangle, very light smut, Fem reader, A LITTLE PLOT TWIST AT THE END

A/N: Hey guys, this time it's a just a little angsty one shot, I was feeling a little lazy so instead of updating Halfcrazy I decided to listen to music and I came up with this. THIS WAS LIGHTLY PROOF READ SO EXCUSE ANY TYPO'S FOR NOW!

-

-

"Call me, "Baby"

I know you go home to another one

Say you hate me

It's okay, boy, you're not the only one

Another year, we're still here

Call me, "Baby"

I know you go home to another one" - Madison Beer

-

-

Eren didn't remember the specific time or date he fell in love with you, all he remembers is why he fell in love with you.

Since college began it was you, Eren and Connie. You had met them both in the local coffee shop close to campus. They saw that you had the same school logo on your bag and they decided to approach. Two turned into three very quickly and all of the sudden you were attached at the hips. Going out to eat, clubs, even having late night study sessions grew all of you guys relationship.

The two best friends and roommates absolutely adored you.

Eren would note the styles of your hair, your fashion sense, and your remarkable intelligence, You saw him, but the shy young man wasn't vocal enough, because he quickly discovered one morning after attending a frat party, that Connie had already made his move on you.

He walked out into the common area only to see you laying on his friend's chest, asleep. He could see the bra you had on partially covered up by the rogue comforter around your bodies.

Scattered clothes surrounded the couch and your signature name chain discarded onto the coffee table. Tears quickly welled up in his eyes, his footsteps almost silent as he glided his way back to the room.

He locked his door and plopped onto the bed, tears threatening to spill. He decided to wait it out so it wouldn't be awkward.

He looked at the clock, 6:23 AM,

'damn'

he thought 'it's still early. I could just go back to sleep.'

His mind didn't allow that, because he quickly found himself opening up his photos app, scrolling to the section called 'BESTFRIENDS' in bold letters.

Picture after picture of you and him, your smiling face flickering across the screen in every photo and video of you. It was this one, his favorite one of you and him, that Connie took.

There you sat, straddled on his waist, him laying back on the bed head propped up on a pillow. It was the time you had convinced them both to try on your makeup, letting you turned them into the 'prettier' versions of themselves. "God, you would be so beautiful as a girl~" Your voice echoed in his head.

He remembers how you felt on top of him, how the scent of the cinnamon flavored gum you were chewing smelled in that moment. He remembers Connie's lingering eyes, and how soon after the video was done he had begged you to go pick up some food with him. 'he couldn't just let us be, could he?'

You were always so gentle and calm to him. Soothing almost. After that day you did a complete one-eighty.

Your quiet voiced could be heard throughout the apartment, almost every night, sometimes during the day, mostly in the bathroom. Your moans echoing out while his best friend did his best to make you scream his name.

Your back arched off of the bed with a pillow underneath your stomach to make you stay in place, you could feel Connie going in and out of you, so wet from when he ate you out he could slip out any second now. He was inside you, much to his oblige, with a condom on.

Your slick coated his length as you screamed his name out loud, gripping onto the sheets "Fuckkk- Connie wait- s' too deep" You moaned out, begging him to stop over stimulating you. "Take this shit ma, you know you wanted it like this. Shit!" His voiced groaned, getting closer and closer to his orgasm.

He quickly came and pulled himself out, you let out a mewl, feeling the cold air hit your now empty hole. He left you there, throwing on his basketball shorts and heading to the bathroom.

You quickly got up and off of the pillow, looking into the mirror above his dresser. 'god' you thought 'he ruined my hair and makeup but couldn't wait till' I was finished?' You fixed yourself up and threw your clothes back on, tank top and sweatpants with no bra or panties.

You hadn't heard from Eren in such a long time, and when you asked Connie where he was he'd always say that he was at work, or had a late class when he knew that was a lie.

Since the party Eren barely had moved, as you and Connie occupied so much space that it felt like his name wasn't even on the lease, like he wasn't even wanted in his own damn home.

You exited into the kitchen, opening the fridge and chugging the water bottle you'd put in the fridge pre-sex with Connie.

You couldn't hear the faint footsteps behind you, Eren approaching. He didn't even want to look at you, knowing that minutes before his best friend was so deep into that he could hear you through the walls.

He walked pass you, book in hand. "Hey wait, Eren!" He turned to face you, hair so shaggy you could barely see his eyes.

Dark circles clouded the skin under his eyes, and the long sleeve shirt his was wearing hugged his body in the right places. It had been a while since you'd saw him, but you didn't think anything in particular about it.

He obviously looked troubled, so you decided to ask "What's going on with you? I haven't seen you in almost a month!" You exclaimed, getting closer to him. He could see your nipples poking through your white spaghetti tank top, so he quickly looked you into the eyes to avoid his face getting any more hot.

"I'm fine. Just been busy." He let out, deadpan and in a low voice. It kind of shocked you from his regular perky demeanor. "So, what are you about to do?"

"Nothing interesting. Read a little, maybe sleep." you took a look at the book he was holding. His body language was tense, and he looked away from you and sighed, obviously annoyed that you were taking up his time. You both sat in silence for about five seconds before you made up your mind.

"Wanna hang out? it's this Aquarium I've been meaning to go to. I know that's your thing so.. wanna tag along? I'll drive!" You said, in a vibrant voice. He couldn't turn you down, but what would Connie say about this? He already knew that Connie wasn't stupid, that the man that was currently skulking in the hallway knew the feelings Eren shared for you.

He knew that Eren wouldn't try anything. From the day they met in the 4th grade he had let him have everything.

His crushes, his food, hell, even Eren's family looked at him as a second child they never had. So why wouldn't Eren let him have you? That's what was logical to Connie. Pretending like he didn't heart the conversation, he walks into the living room, backpack in hand.

He was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, matching jordans to go with it. "What y'all talking bout?" He said, looking you up and down.

"I was just trying to convince Eren to come to the Aquarium with me! Pleaseeee, it'll be fun! I promise!" You whined. A smile came across Eren's face. He couldn't say no to you, not when you had no idea how he felt. 'this is Connie's fault, I can't stay mad at her' he thought to himself.

"Okay, okay, I'll go." He huffed out, walking back to his room.

-

-

The ride over to the Aquarium was fun, Connie walked you guys out, claiming that he had some last minute class he couldn't miss. Eren silently was screaming on the inside, as you had asked to borrow one of his hoodies to match the black sweatpants you had on from earlier.

Before you two got out of the car he took a good look at you. Long box braids that reached your waist, curly ends sweeping the rim of the jacket he'd given, your bracelets and bangles jingling on your arms, babyhairs swooped to perfection, and glossy lips to tie it all in.

He could've just stayed like that, admiring you all day, but it quickly made him snap out of it when he saw your phone lighting up.

Connie sending messages and you haven't even gotten out the car yet. Typical.

You two hopped out and entered, immediately bombarded by the dim lights and the luminous blue water around you.

You hooked your arm with Eren's so you wouldn't get lost in the crowd. He decided to take charge and lead you two to the back, where the Koi fish were.

"It's been a long time since we've hung out like this. Jus' me and you." You nudged him, taking him out of his thought process.

"I know, I missed you." He wore a warm smile, glancing over at you. You looked up at him and returned the smile.

You did miss moments like this where it was just you. Sure, Connie was great and all, a true player but he didn't share that same spark that you had with Eren.

He could figure you out, and Connie couldn't even do that. The slightest change of expression, or the smallest brow furrow would have him asking, 'are you alright?' stroking your back. You two shared the same geeky love of literature, while Connie didn't even bother to read anything outside of his homework or assignments.

The truth is, You'd only hooked up with Connie because he was there. In a drunken haze you two had sex, but you never meant for it to be anything more. He had roped you into the whole thing, telling you that you were 'his' and that no one could have you, all because he claimed you.

The Aquarium trip sparked the same feelings you both held, and you found yourselves at your favorite ice cream parlor, treating you to a late night cone. You two laughed all the way to the apartment, to find that Connie hadn't even been back, yet.

You convinced Eren that it would be okay to watch a movie or two, so he turned it on a random 80's horror and plopped down on his bed beside you.

"Oh my god I can't believe you're scared, it's so fake! It's just corn syrup and food coloring!" Eren said, chuckling at the way you cowered into his side, putting your face into his chest.

"It's still so violent! He didn't have to cut his head off like that.." You said, muffled.

You inhaled his scent and then broke away, letting his arm fall around your body. The movie scene turned into credits, and the room went hushed for a second. "Eren?"

"Yeah?"

"Tell me the truth-" you sat up, positioning your body to face his "Why'd we stop hanging out? All of a sudden your too busy?" you said, looking away from him. "You're the one who started sleeping with Connie. You don't think that made things awkward?" He scoffed.

"The first time was a mistake, but who I sleep with shouldn't affect us. You're my best friend. I missed you so much, and it feels like nothing is the same anymore." You said, lip beginning to quiver.

"Nothing is the same anymore, Y/n. It's hard. Listen, I hope what I'm about to say doesn't freak you out-" He started, taking your hands into his "I had a crush on you. I liked you, no, borderline was in love with you, and Connie knew it. He just had to have you, I don't know why, but he had too. He was always in my ear, telling me that you didn't feel the same way for me and I just believed him blindly. He's probably right, but it doesn't stop me from felling for you." He finally admitted it.

Your heart skipped in your chest, and tears started trickling down your cheeks.

"Eren I feel the same way about you. I was just so drunk that night, and I woke up next to him. All of a sudden he started claiming me. He didn't even ask me what I wanted, so I just went along with it. So we just kept hooking up.. I'm sorry that I didn't tell you sooner. I should've." you said in a quiet voice, looking downwards.

"No, I should've." He got closer, foreheads almost touching.

"Fuck it, I can't wait any longer.."

He kissed you, taking you in deeply, features softening as the kiss progressed into you getting on top of him. You broke away taking the zip up off and throwing it across the room, exposing the tank top underneath.

He did the same to his long sleeved top, and before he knew it you were grinding into him, your bare top halves were exposed, cold air hitting you both. He flipped you onto you back and ripped down the sweatpants you had on, exposing your heat to the air of the room.

He could see the slick already dripping down, throbbing for him. He was about to dive in before he heard his room door slowly creak open.

Moonlight shown inside of the room, highlighting the person that was standing at the door. Connie was back, and discovered that your car was outside, yet when he got into his room you weren't in there.

The air stilled, and you sat up, propping yourself up on your elbows, face with a light sheen on it. Eren was still kneeling, still in front of your unwavering heat, waiting for something. A fist to fly, you to jump up and beg Connie to listen to you, but you did the complete opposite of what they both were expecting.

"Close the door, Connie. Get the fuck out." you said, a low voice. Connie's face contorted into a look of confusion "What the fuck you just say?" He said, widening the door more.

"Get the fuck out-" You said again, louder this time, with more bass in your voice. "Keep going, Eren."

-

-

-

[13as07]

Friends #2

(Shikamaru Nara Smut)

[Art work is not mine! Credit to Nachotart]

Requested by: Myself

Word Count: 3,590

Warnings and/or Pre-Notes:

Lee and Shika love triangle cause why not

Fingering

Hickies/Scratch Marks

Creampie

Nickname/Name Calling: Pretty Girl, Good Girl

———————————————————————

Shikamaru's hands are clumsy as they crawl up my body, almost as clumsy as his lips sliding against mine. His speech might not be lacking with the alcohol in his system, but his body language sure as hell is. "Are you sure about this?" He whispers into my cheek, his sloppy kisses trailing across my face.

"Ya," I mutter the answer as Shika's hands tumble down to my hips, pressing them against a door he found.

Teeth sinking and sucking of my skin is an untracked mess, a one-eighty from his usual 'no face, no case' attitude about our hookups. "Good, great," he mumbles into my neck, his fingers sliding against the wood in search of the door handle. "It's terrible of me to say but all I thought of was you on my date yesterday."

"You're full of shit," I bite back, clinging to his shirt when my balance is offset by the door swinging open.

Shika's hands fall back down to support my weight, making the both of us stumble into the room. "No, I'm not."

His answer gets cut off though, almost hiding the bickering forming between us. "Yo, Shika. Get the fuck out," Someone groans, making me dip my head backward to see who's in the room.

Sat on the bed is Kiba with a shirtless kunoichi a year or two younger than us who seems eager to be with the want-to-be furry. Kiba's head tilts in confusion, his sights set on me. "The hell are you doing with - "

"Get out," Shika cuts him off, hands slowly crawling under my shirt.

"We were here first," Kiba grumbles, not budging from his spot.

"Fine, stay, I don't care," Shikamaru answers, fingertips digging into my ribs so he can lift me. He goes back to attacking my neck, leaving more proof of himself on my skin.

He collides with the bed, making us stumble. I land on my back, a small ‘puff’ further proving Shika’s temporary inability to support us. His acts stall for a moment, just long enough for him to regain his balance. Shikamaru’s hands tug up my shirt, his mouth cupping the smooth skin of my stomach to further litter proof across me.

“What the fuck, Shikamaru,” Kiba grumbles, his eyes rolling over me.

“I told you I didn’t care, do you, Kiba? Do you care?” Shika repeats, head tipping up to look at me. He looks hot right now, his narrow eyes are focused, set on me as his hands grip my thighs, and his mouth still nipping at me.

“No,” I whisper, enjoying the feeling of him slowly tearing my thighs apart.

Shikamaru wiggles his way between my legs, setting my legs around his waist before his hands cup behind my thighs. His eyes stay locked on me as long as they can. His head dips, nudging my shirt up as he continues bruising me.

“I… ah… got to go,” the kunoichi yelps before jumping off the bed. She scurries out of the room, the door slamming behind her.

“Way to go, guys,” Kiba groans, flopping on the bed. He’s laid next to me, eyes crawling over me. His hand scoots forward, toying with the material of my pants as he drinks me up with his eyes.

“Ya, no,” Shika grumbles, his head tipping up to glare at Kiba. His hand shoots down, gripping the other boy’s wrists before tugging his touch off of me. “Get out.”

“Tease,” Kiba whispers under his breath, sitting up straight before tugging his wrist out of Shikamaru’s hold. “Later girly,” he adds on, sending a kissing face my way before he sulks out of the bedroom, off to go find another girl to spend his night with.

“I don’t care,” I mock, lifting my arms to toy with the ends of Shika’s ponytail.

He sends me a glance before tugging my shirt over my head. Like before, his head dips down to nip at my skin again. “Maybe that was a lie,” Shikamaru whispers, lips brushing just above my belly button. “I don’t enjoy other people seeing you in this way. It’s a drag.”

“Ya? Why’s it a drag?” I mutter, dipping my fingertips under the elastic in his hair. I shimmy it down, leaving it to fall to the ground as his locks tumble free.

My eyes settle on Shika’s face as I run my fingers through his loose hair. His nose is still pressed to my stomach, eyes cast up to look back at me, and his jaw shifting as he’s buried in his mind. “I don’t know,” he continues to whisper, his hands sliding up to my waistband.

“I think you do know and just won’t say it,” I counter, keeping my tone quiet to match his.

Shika’s slender fingers dip under the band, shimming my pants down my legs. “I just… like you, I guess,” the confusion comes out soft but sounds so loud as it echoes in my ears. “But that’s a dumb thing to say,” he quickly adds on, fingertips falling to brush over my clothed core.

“Shika,” His name is filtered out in a breathy moan as I tighten my legs around his waist. “What… what do you - ”

My question is cut short by him tugging my panties off before his middle finger quickly dips into my pussy. Shikamaru’s eyes are locked on me, watching the way I react to his touch. Even in his drunk state, his stoned strategy-planning face is present as he watches me, plotting out his next move. “Don’t worry about it. We’re focusing on you.”

“We’re always focused on me,” I mutter, tightening my hold on his hair.

“Well ya,” he says, a small smug on his face as he adds a second finger. His thrusts are slow and deep, making sure his digits are buried before he curls them against my walls. “It’s hard not to focus on you when you are pretty like this. Slightly breathless, mouth hanging open a bit, pussy trying to milk my fingers,” he teases, picking up his pace.

“Shikamaru.”

“Say it again,” he mumbles, his thumb clumsily searching for my clit. “Say my name again. It’s a drag hearing you say Lee’s name all the time. Say my name.”

“Shikamaru,” I mutter again, tugging his head back by my grip on his head.

His free hand wraps around my fingers, trying to release my grip on his hair. I do what he wants, dropping my hands to his shoulders instead. Shika’s head shifts back to place, eyes locked on me again. “I’m going to make you say it louder than that.” The promise is followed by attention to my clit, quick circles being rubbed into me as his eyes flicker from my chest to my face.

My nails dig into his shoulders as my hips thrust to work alongside his touch. “That won’t do,” Shikamaru mumbles, tugging his fingers out of me. I let out a disappointed whine, clinging to his shirt as I try to shove him downward. “Oh hush, whiner. Wait a second,” he teases, his smug smile only growing from my actions.

Shikamaru’s hands drop to the hem of his shirt, tugging the cloth off himself. His fingers rub against his torso as he does so, coating his muscles with my slick present on his fingers. My eyes trail over the drips of myself, only making my legs clench around him more.

Once his shirt is off, he places my hands back on his shoulders before hovering over me. “That’s better, now I won’t be the only one leaving my mark,” Shika voices, brushing kisses to my lips as he goes back to tuning my needs.

“You don’t like markings. ‘No proof, no gossip’, remember?” I whisper against his mouth, my focus heavy on not digging my nails into his shoulders.

“I changed my mind,” Shikamaru whispers, kissing the corner of my mouth. “Mark me, Pretty Girl. Make me yours. I want to be yours. Let me be yours.” Shikamaru’s begging breaks me, making me clench around his fingers as my orgasm washes over me. I let my nails dig into his shoulders, trailing over his shoulder blades as I whine for him. “Good girl,” he husks out, his touches slowing down as he works me out of my orgasm.

Kisses coat my face, Shika’s lips set on brushing against every inch of it as he lets me calm down. “Shika,” I whisper, closing my eyes as lips try trailing over my eyelids.

“Say it right.”

“Shikamaru,” I whisper, the spark of arousal igniting again at the command. “Do you mean that? Or was it just a heat of the moment thing?”

“Did I mean what?” He asks, the snap of his belt buckle following his question. “Did I mean what, Pretty Girl?” He repeats, tongue sliding over my neck before he sucks on a section of my skin, mind set on stamping another hickey to my neck.

“Did you… did you mean that you want to be mine?”

“Yes.” The answer is short, left in the air as Shika rests his dick in my folds. His head tilts, his nose bumping against mine as he looks into my eyes. “I want to be yours, Pretty Girl. I want you to be all mine,” he mutters, sliding his dick against me to coat it in my cum. “Be mine,” he whispers, slowly sinking into me.

“Shika I - ”

“Say it right.”

“Shikamaru,” I hiss, clinging to his shoulder blades as he bottoms out. His head lays against my neck, brushing encouraging kisses to my throat. “I don’t think I’m - ”

“I know you’re not ready, Pretty Girl. I’ll wait. I’ll wait forever if I have to.” The - probably - empty promises calm me down, even if I don’t believe it. It’s enough for right now to live in the fantasy that Shika and I are meant to be, that he’ll be right here when I’m ready. “Do you want to stop?”

“No, I want you to fuck me. Fuck me.”

I can feel the smile pressed into my neck, Shika being as cocky as ever from my plea. His hips move, thrusting into me like I asked. “Say my name,” he whispers into my skin. “Please say my name, Pretty Girl. Please.”

“Shikamaru,” I call, my nails sliding down his back as his thrusts pick up.

“Say it again,” he groans, small whimpers falling from him despite his attempts to cover them up.

“Shikamaru. Shikamaru. Shikamaru,” I say on repeat, clinging to his lower back as he pounds me. His hand falls back to my clit, running the pad of his fingertips over it. “Fuck, Shikamaru,” I whine, arching my back at the extra stimulation.

“Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he groans, shoving himself into me as the pace of his fingers picks up. “Damn it,” he whispers, dropping his hands to my hips as he stays still in me.

“Did you…?”

“Ya,” he groans, letting more of his weight settle on me.

“We talked about this.”

“I didn’t mean to last eight seconds.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I push out around my laugh. “Last time you promised you’d pull out.”

“Ya, I know. I didn’t mean to,” he huffs out, chest pumping for oxygen.

“I bet you get off to cumming in me,” I tease, toying with the ends of his hair.

“No, I don’t.”

“Oh ya?”

“Maybe that was a lie.”

————————————

"This is such a drag," Shika grumbles as huffy as ever.

"This is such a drag," I mock, pitching my voice to come off as more annoying than the lazy man walking behind me. "Maybe if you'd learn to pull out we wouldn't be here."

Shikamaru grumbles under his breath, shoving his hands in his pockets as he trails after me down the aisles. "So..." he starts, voice less pissy this time. "About that last night - "

"We were drunk," I mutter, scanning the aisle signs in search of the family planning section. I dart away, both to avoid Shika's confusion and because I found the section I was looking for.

Shikamaru's footsteps are heavy behind me, quick to match my pace and give into the half-assed chase. "You can't run away from me," he grumbles, turning the corner, still a step or two behind me. He scans the aisle for a second in search of me, his eyes softening when they find me. "We should talk about it."

"Yes, let's talk about our relationship in front of the condom and morning after section at the convenience store, great idea."

Shika sighs, hands buried in his pockets again as he stands behind me. The man is tall, easily enveloping me in his frame as he stands a little too close. I can feel his attention on me, his sight burnt on my bruised neck. "I'm going to get you color corrector while we're here. The last thing we need is Ino up your ass about your hickies."

"I can pay for my make-up, Shika," I mutter, scanning the caged pills. "And I can pay for the medicine myself too. I don't know why you bothered to come with, especially since it's 'such a drag'."

"If I didn't you would have disappeared until our next mission together and like I said, we need to talk," he answers, head dipping so his lips brush against my ear. "If you're not ready - which you're not - I can wait until you are. I don't just want casual - "

"You should go find a worker to unlock the case," I cut him off again, leaning closer to the glass to read the packages. I keep my focus on the small writing on the boxes, skimming them to figure out which one is the best to use.

"Fine," he grumbles, flipping my hair into my face before walking away to do as I asked.

I roll my eyes at him, fixing my hair out of my face before I let my body relax. I settle my forehead on the cold glass, snapping my eyes shut in the process. Shika's confusion rings in my ears, making me feel both stupid and confused.

How could I be so pissed at Lee for not releasing I liked him when I've been oblivious to Shikamaru's feelings for so long? How could I be upset about Lee not liking me back while also feeling so comfortable, safe, and loved by Shika? How could I like the idea of being with Shikamaru when I was crying about Lee last night?

Maybe I poured so much of my feelings into Lee because I settled on the fact Shika and I wouldn't ever be together. Maybe I'm just convincing myself that's what happened. Maybe I convinced myself I like Shikamaru back when really I'll just end up using him as a rebound.

But on the other hand, I've been hooking up with Shika for so long; that has to mean something right? We've been so close for so long. We've been attached at the hip our whole lives. I go to him for everything from a paper cut to my panic attacks. I would never go to Lee for something that big or that small. That has to mean something too, right?

My head hurts, a mix of my overthinking and my hangover from last night. It only hurts more when my name is called out. "Shika, I think we should have a movie and nap day," I mutter, lifting my head and turning in the direction of the voice.

When my eyes adjust to the bright white of the lights, it is not Shikamaru standing next to me. Anger bubbles in my chest as Lee's signature body suit and his dumb blown-out eyes settle in my sights.

"I'm not Shikamaru but that sounds nice. I'd be willing to do that with you today, Lotus-Chan," Lee answers, a close-eyed smile carved into his face.

A snort falls out before I can stop it, my arms crossing my chest to shut myself off from the man next to me. "What? Is Sakura too busy fantasying about Sasuke to give you any of her time today?" I know it's rude of me to say and it's not fair to Lee, but it feels so good to get my anger off my chest, even if it's tinged with regret.

Lee's smile falls away, eyes snapping open to look me over. "I don't know. I haven't talked to her today," he mutters, eyes repeatedly jumping around. "Are you mad at me, Lotus-Chan?"

I roll my shoulders, shifting my weight as my eyes jump around the aisle in search of Shika. I want him to come back, to swoop in and save me from the situation I'm in. The thought only makes me feel worse. Do I want Shikamaru to show up because I feel better with him around or because I want to use his admiration of me to make Lee leave? Maybe both? I don't know.

"Lotus-Chan?"

"Stop calling me that," I murmur, shifting my sights back to Lee.

Lee seems sad at my request, or maybe I'm just reading into the shift in his expression too much. "Oh, okay. My apologies Nara-San. Are you mad at me?"

"I'm not exactly happy with you right now," I whisper, dropping my eyes to my shoes. I don't want to have this conversation. I want Lee to disappear, I want Shikamaru to disappear, I want to disappear. Why do people have to be so confusing? Why do emotions have to be so confusing? Why do relationships and friendships and situationships have to be so confusing?

"Why not?"

"We made out earlier this week, Lee. I asked to make out again and you responded that 'I can have it whenever I want' and then you turn around and said you thought we were just friends? How the hell did you come to that conclusion?" I can feel my anger bubbling even more at his stupidity. I don't like being this upset, I don't like being in this situation with someone so dense.

"As I said, I talked to Neji and he was like 'Sometimes friends do things without being together'. So I asked him if it was normal and he said yes and... I just thought that maybe since you and Shikamaru - "

"That what?" Shika's voice rings out from behind me, cooling off some of the anger I'm feeling. "That since we hook up, you could hook up with her to feel better about Sakura not liking you back?"

"Shikamaru," I hiss, shoving my elbow into his ribs. "Don't be a jerk."

He ignores me, hand falling to cup my elbow so I can't use it to jab at him again. "I don't know why Neji and you are gossiping about us anyway. It might do you some good to keep our names out of your mouth."

"Shikamaru!" I hiss again, trying to jab at him with my other elbow. He beats me to it though, taking hold of both my elbows as he glares at Lee.

"No! God no, I would never use someone like that and I'm sorry it was taken that way. I just - " Lee starts, hands waving around like crazy alongside his panicked tone.

"But you did," Shika grumbles, using his hold to tug me closer to him. "Regardless of whether it was on purpose or not, you still did."

"It's not that big of a deal, really. Can everyone just calm down? Calm down," I repeat, tilting my head back to shoot the command at Shikamaru.

Shika rolls his eyes, turning himself as a way to end the discussion. His hand drops one of my elbows, but his fingertips cling to the one still in his hold.

"I'm sorry, Lotus-Chan - "

"She told you to stop calling her that," Shikamaru butts in, hold tightening on me as his jaw clicks.

"Oh, right," Lee mumbles, eyes glancing at Shika before settling on me again. "I'm sorry, Nara-San. I didn't mean to hurt you or make you feel used. I swear. I just... I should have talked to you about my thoughts and expectations. I'm really sorry."

"It is what it is, Lee. I'll get over it," I mutter, shifting backward to be closer to Shikamaru. His arm presses into my back, easing what little anger I have left. Maybe I do like Shika, maybe my overthinking has been for nothing. "I just need some space."

"Right, I can do that for you," Lee chirps, giving me another close-eyed smile. Shika rolls his eyes, a sigh spilling from him as he does so. "Okay, I'll... see you later," Lee mutters, eyes flickering between us for a second before he turns on his heels.

"That was a drag. What a dumbass," Shikamaru grumbles, head shifting around the aisle. "A worker should be here soon. They're searching for the keys."

"You didn't have to be so rude," I mutter, tugging myself from his hold.

"Lee might be stupid but even he should know friends don't hook up."

"We're friends and we hookup."

Shika's hand shoots forward, gripping my arm again and tugging me back against him. His head dips, his narrow eyes locked on mine, and as unamused as ever. "We are a lot of things, none of which fall under the friend category. You're a hell of a lot more than a friend."

———————————————————————

———————————————————————

[akko-kagori]

I calculated Diluc's Wealth

The number may not be 100% correct, so feel free to fact check me or do the calculation yourself. I literally had to redo this whole process like 5 times taking a total of like an hour to do because of the amount of errors there were so feel free to fact check me.

Since I know most people are here just for the number: 188,389,420,000,000 Mora and 779,845,926,816 USD.

How I got that number:

I'm using Germany as a real world stand in for Mondstadt since Mond is based on Germany. Firstly, I looked up how much money the German government has and the tax rates. The first results said 2867 billion euros and 45% respectively. For the German tax rate it's higher depending on how much money the person makes, and I just picked the highest possible option since he's rich rich. These are the numbers I feel the least confident in, but I still feel confident enough to post them.

The reason I looked up both of these numbers is because on a board outside angel's share it says that last year 11.4% of all of Mondstadt's tax money came from Diluc/Dawn Winery (picture as proof, you can also check in game if you want)

So, I subtracted 2867 billion by 88.6% and got 326,838,000,000. I then timed it by 2, since 45% + 45% = 90% and got 653,676,000,000. I then used a website to determine what 10% of 653,676,000,000 is and got 65,367,600,000, I then added that my calculation and got 719,043,600,000.

After that I converted the euros to USD and got 779,845,926,816. I looked up the conversion rate between mora and USD, and a Reddit Thread said that 1 USD equated to 262 mora, so I simply multiplied 779,845,926,816 by 262 and got 1.8838942e+14. I then used another website to convert that into a number I actually understand and got 188,389,420,000,000, or one hundred eighty-eight trillion three hundred eighty-nine billion four hundred twenty million. For context on how big those two numbers are, Elon Musk is worth 208 billion, diluc is more than 2.5x richer than Elon Musk. Diluc has more than double the money of the richest man alive. Holy cow.

[mappingthesky]

"just let me take care of you" for ✈️🍌, pleeaaaseeee!!!

Jane is curled up on one end of the couch with a book in her hands. She’s read the same paragraph four or five times now, and would really like to move on to the next one, except she can’t, because-

UUGgghh!

“Oh my god,” Jane’s head hits the arm of the couch when she throws it back in frustration. “What?”

From the other end of the sofa, beyond where their legs are intertwined, Nymphia groans at her laptop screen. She’s uncharacteristically disheveled: her long hair is pulled into a messy, bumpy ponytail, and she’s wearing her glasses, which almost never happens. Not nearly enough for Jane’s liking, anyway. The black frames are thick and rounded and perched perfectly on her button nose, and if she wasn’t being so annoying right now then Jane would find her absolutely, irresistibly delicious.

“It’s all wrong,” Nymphia whines, pushing her stupid, sexy glasses up to nest in her hair while she rubs her eyes with her palms. The laptop, the source of her misery for the last two and a half weeks, rocks in her lap.

“It’s not,” Jane rolls her eyes and rehashes this conversation for what must be the eighty-seventh time. “It’s fine. It’s great, even! It’s probably the best fucking artist statement anyone’s ever read in the entirety of their miserable lives. They should be so lucky!”

Nymphia whines and stretches, a sliver of skin peeking out at the edge of her t shirt when she lifts her arms over her head. Jane momentarily forgets whatever it is she’s supposed to be annoyed about.

“Can you proof it for me?” Nymphia says when she’s tugging her shirt back into place and reaching for her laptop. Jane groans at the request, and definitely not at the lack of exposed skin.

“Ugh, Nymph,” Jane pleads. “Again?”

It’s only days before Nymphia’s final assignment is due - a full collection of garments complete with a written artist’s statement. It’s all they’ve talked about for what feels like weeks on end. Jane hasn’t been nearly as annoyed as she says she is. In Jane’s eyes Nymphia is something like a magician, turning whatever she touches into something miraculous and profound. It’s the reason why she’s let their living room become a war zone, littered with bolts of fabric and stray ribbon and a pincushion that somehow seems to be underfoot no matter how far she hurls the thing. She doesn’t mind that much, not really. It’s only until the end of the semester. Besides, Jane loves having Nymphia around. She’d much rather have her working at home, where she can make sure she eats and sleeps and remembers to wash her face before bed. It’s better than having her cooped up in a studio across town all night, working too hard to remember to take care of herself. Plus, Jane loves to watch Nymphia work - when she loses herself in a sketch or in the draping of fabric and her hair starts to slip from her ponytail, and her glasses are sliding down her nose, and her tongue rests at the corner of her mouth-

“You’re so much better with writing than I am!” Nymphia wails. Her voice is whiny and desperate and Jane’s head is in the fucking gutter.

While Nymphia could produce an entire wardrobe in a matter of days, brilliantly tailored and united under some pristine vision that Jane can’t fathom how her girlfriend ever came up with, the artist statement has thoroughly stumped her. It’s a meager assignment, 500 words maximum describing the inspiration for the collection, and has been the bane of Nymphia’s existence for the past four days. Naturally, it’s become the bane of Jane’s existence too.

“Baby,” Jane begs. She’s enjoyed all this time at home with Nymphia, and she’s proud of her, truly, but she would really like her cheery, horny, reliably unfocused girlfriend back.

Nymphia’s bottom lip curls outwards and her eyes flutter. “Please?”

Jane blinks. Nymphia is a little too good at getting exactly what she wants out of her. The worst part is that she knows it.

“Fine,” Jane concedes through gritted teeth, tossing her book to the floor and sitting forward. Nymphia cheers and claps and leans close to grab Jane’s face, almost succeeding until-

“On one condition,” Jane holds her hand up before Nymphia’s lips can find her cheek.

“Anything,” Nymphia coos, like she expects Jane to go easy on her.

“This is the last of the work you do tonight,” Jane says firmly, watching Nymphia’s mouth twist with anxiety. “I mean it. I can’t fucking hear you whine anymore.”

Nymphia’s anxiety is all too quickly replaced with a devious smile, a practiced sort of coercion, “I thought you loved to hear me wh-“

“That’s beside the point,” Jane doesn’t budge. Nymphia is a tease, a very tempting tease, but a tease nonetheless. Jane knows this well enough, she’s fallen victim to her traps more times than she cares to admit. “Do we have a deal?”

Nymphia falls back to the other end of the couch with a defeated hrmph. “Deal” she pouts.

With that, Jane snatches the laptop. She reads Nymphia’s essay intently, because she really does care, making minor grammatical tweaks here and there. The piece is well written, even without the bit of fluffing Jane’s done over the past few days. Nymphia is absolutely selling herself short. It may not be her preferred medium, but her unique vision shines through her words just the same as it does with her clothing.

“What?” Nymphia asks when a small, proud smile tugs at Jane’s lips. “What is it?”

Jane beams, her eyes lingering on the last few sentences. “It’s perfect.”

Nymphia lights up, “You really think so?”

Mhm, Jane hums, looking over to Nymphia where she’s curled into the corner of the couch, grinning. “I’m proud of you, babe.”

“Okay, because I was thinking I could-“ Nymphia starts to ramble, but Jane has already hit ‘save’ and is slamming the laptop shut. Nymphia’s eyes widen.

“We had a deal, didn’t we?” Jane places the laptop on the floor.

“Yes, but-“

“Uh-uh,” Jane shakes her head, leaning forward. “I think you’re done for the night.”

Nymphia could try to make an escape, but it would be pointless. They both know it. “I am?”

“Yeah, you are.” Jane grabs at Nymphia’s ankles, dragging her closer until she’s lying flat on her back. Her glasses slide down her nose.

Nymphia is still muttering something about picking the right font when Jane silences her with a gentle palm over her mouth.

“You’ve done more than enough,” Jane tells her. “Just let me take care of you. Can you do that?”

Nymphia nods, wide-eyed and suddenly breathless. Jane pulls her hand away from Nymphia’s mouth. “Good girl.”

Her other hand is already sliding beneath Nymphia’s t-shirt, grazing her bare skin. She goes to pull it over her head, and Nymphia reaches for her glasses.

“No,” Jane catches her hand, kissing her knuckles before pinning her wrist above her head. “Those stay on.”

[medusapelagia]

20 Never fall for a client

written for @steddieangstyaugust (prompt: Careless Whisper – George Micheal ) and @augustwritingchallenge (Prompt: Joker: guardian) Rating: Mature Relationship: Steve/Eddie TW: violence, gun violence, open ending. injuries, blood Words: 1607

The black suit is perfect on Steve’s toned body. The shirt is slim but not so much to prevent movements. His hair is perfectly brushed. A pair of dark sunglasses and a transparent earpiece complete the outfit.

He’s not expecting any surprise, Eddie should just accept an award for his last song and get back home, but he has worked with Eddie for so long that he knows that he can expect anything from the guy, especially now that he’s royally pissed with him. He’s the exact kind of guy who would do something stupid just as payback.

Steve has tried to ask to be assigned to someone else, but with such short notice, Nancy didn’t find anyone available to be Eddie’s bodyguard for the night.

“You ready? Eddie is already throwing a tantrum. He has just yelled at the room service because the fries weren’t hot enough.” Robin’s familiar voice complains.

Yeah, Eddie’s typical behavior.

“I’m on my way. Is Gareth there?” the only people who can somehow manage to do some damage control with Eddie are Wayne and Gareth. Well, Steve too, but that was before.

“He totally refuses to put up with his childish behavior, and I can’t say I don’t agree.”

“I can hear you, Buckley! And you’re fired!” Eddie screams from somewhere in the back but so loudly that Steve hears him clear as the day.

“Max, is the limousine ready?”

“Yes. Just waiting for the big stars, you know?” Max, it’s at her first job but she’s already tired of those VIPs attitude. Steve has tried to explain to her that most of the VIPs are like the Corroded Coffin and she has rolled her eyes, grabbed the limousine’s keys, and declared that she wasn’t going to talk with them. Clever girl.

After a last look in the mirror, Steve leaves the room. Hidden under his jacket he has a gun, a pair of handcuffs, and a Kevlar bulletproof vest. Even if it’s just a short event he wants to be ready and the only time he didn’t wear his bullet proof vest a fucking psycho attacked the actress he was assigned to in front of the grocery shop. 

Walking in the elevator, the eighties music fills the air while George Michel sings, “We could have been so good together. We could have lived this dance forever. But now, who's gonna dance with me?”

Steve tries to ignore the pang of pain in his heart. There’s a reason why he’s so adamant that he wants to change clients and the reason is that the things with Eddie got too personal, and that’s bad. The first rule of being a bodyguard is never to get feelings for the client you’re working for because it will make you less attentive and ready to act. He knows many bodyguards who made that mistake and regret it deeply, but he’s not going to follow that path.

He knocks politely at the door, while Eddie is screaming something about his outfit.

It’s Robin who opens the door weary and lets out a big sigh when he sees him.

“Please, stop him. I’m tired of listening to him screaming about everything.”

“He doesn’t listen to anyone, Robs.”

“He listens to you.”

Maybe before. But after they shared a heated dance and a kiss in a seedy bar a few nights before he’s pretty sure Eddie won’t even consider him.

“Hey, Eds. Are you ready? Max is waiting for us.”

“Make her wait! Can’t you see my outfit is a mess?! It’s way too big! And I can’t pay guitar with a fringed jacket. And who uses fringed jackets anymore anyway? Call Chrissy! I need a new outfit and I need it now!”

Seated on the couch with one leg over the armrest, Gareth is looking at some videos on TikTok, completely ignoring Eddie’s meltdown, but when he sees Steve he turns off his airpods and smiles brightly at him.

“The lion tamer is here! Finally! Can you kick Eddie’s ass and drag him outside this stupid suite? We have an award to accept in… less than one hour.”

“I’m not leaving until my outfit it’s perfect!” Eddie yells again, glowering at the two of them.

“What’s the problem?”

Eddie lifts an eyebrow, looking at Steve through the mirror, “The stupid fringed jacket.” the guitarist complains, “I can’t play with that stupid thing on.”

“Then don’t wear it.” Steve simply declares, grabbing the jacket and stripping him of it.

Under the jacket, Eddie’s wearing a mesh shirt covered in dark crystals that do nothing to hide his black tattoos on his pale skin.

“Are you fucking kidding? The paparazzi will eat me alive if I don’t wear a jacket to cover my nipple piercings!” Eddie replies offended, grabbing the jacket from Steve’s arms.

Fuck this. They have to go.

“Wear mine.” Steve proposes, giving him his suit jacket. Eddie’s is thinner than Steve but they almost have the same size.

For a moment Eddie’s eyes stare at the black holster under Steve’s arm, but he quickly grabs the jacket and looks at himself in the mirror.

“I can work with this.”

“Glad to hear it. Now are you ready to start this show?” Steve asks, putting on the fringed jacket. It’s not as comfortable as his and definitely way more shiner, but it’s Steve's last work for Eddie so he doesn’t think too much about it even if Robin stares at him with huge eyes.

When they finally get back into the elevator, George Michael is still singing softly, and Steve surprises himself by singing along softly. Eddie turns toward him, confused and amused.

“Trying a new career as a singer? Because as a bodyguard you suck.” he declares coldly.

“Maybe. Do you have any advice?”

“Don’t do it. You're absolutely out of tune.”

Steve chuckles, used to their banter, but he doesn’t reply.

It’s the last day, he keeps repeating to himself during the car ride toward the event, the last day he’ll ever see Eddie. It hurts a bit but Steve knows it’s the right choice.

The event has already started and they are getting in from a separate door so there aren’t many screaming fans waiting for them.

Steve gets out first, takes a deep look at the surroundings, and then, shielding Eddie with his body, he drags him inside, while Robin does the same with Gareth. They met Freak and Jeff backstage since they refused to assist with Eddie’s tantrum and preferred to go ahead to the location.

“Nice jacket.” Freak mocks Steve for the flashy fringed jacket he’s wearing.

“Thanks. I heard it’s really on trend right now.” he winks, then he turns toward the other two bodyguards, “Did you already check the perimeter and the fitting room?”

“Everything clear, Steve. No crazy fans hiding in the fitting room or in the vents.”

That was another experience to remember. A couple of fans managed to move through the vents only to fall abruptly into Eddie’s fitting room, breaking a few bones but gaining an autograph.

Chrissy’s high heels click on the floor while she gets closer, “So the plan is staying behind the curtains until they call you for the award. A brief thanks and then back to the hotel because tomorrow at five am we have a plan to catch. Is that clear?”

“Can I grab a smoke? Steve didn’t let me have one.” Eddie immediately complains. 

It’s not true he didn’t let him smoke but he shrugs, ready to follow him outside.

Chrissy sighs, brushing a hand through her hair, “Please be quick, ok?”

“Don’t worry, doll,” Eddie replies, blowing her a kiss and moving toward the backdoor without even waiting for Steve.

As soon as he gets outside he lights the cigarette but takes just a few puffs before starting to play with it.

“Do you really mean what you said the other night?”

“What?”

“That you’re falling in love with me.”

“I do. That’s why I can’t be your bodyguard anymore.” Steve sighs, “I’m sorry.”

“Maybe it’s better this way.” Eddie replies, stomping the cigarette out, “I don’t want you as a bodyguard.”

Steve nods, Eddie has had many lovers but none of them lasted more than a couple of months.

“That’s good,” Steve says, but before he can add anything else Eddie is pushing him against the wall, kissing him hard, his wet tongue licking at Steve’s lips asking for permission while his teeth graze against Steve’s skin.

It’s just a moment of distraction, but it’s enough.

Steve doesn’t even see the shooter, he just feels Eddie jolts in his arms. Instinctively he holds him tight to his chest turning his back to the shooter to protect him with his body.

“Eddie? Eds!” Steve calls, while Eddie caresses his face.

“You ok, big boy?”

“Robin, call an ambulance! Someone shot Eddie!” Steve yells in the little earpiece in his ear, but when the girl starts to yell back he just takes it out and let it dangle down his shoulders. He quickly tears his sleeve to stop the bleeding.

“Aren’t you going too fast?” Eddie chuckles, “It was just a kiss.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Steve yells.

He fucked up.

He knew it would have happened if he remained Eddie’s bodyguard, but he thought he retreated in time to avoid any problem. Instead, Eddie is lying in a pool of blood with a mesh t-shirt covered in crystals.

“Make sure the pictures are good, will you?” Eddie asks him, before closing his eyes.

Steve doesn’t hear the ambulance coming or the Corroded Coffin and his team joining them, he just holds Eddie tight.

[fickleminder]

bound by blood (4)

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"Epic win for Leviathan!" The otaku crowed the next day. "I should've kidnapped a random human and done this sooner!"

"Mammon, you're such a poor excuse for a demon; she played you like a cheap kazoo!" Asmodeus jeered.

"SHADDUP!"

Even Satan was grinning with closed eyes as he pulled out Kirana's chair for her. "Yes, very impressive," he said as she took a seat. "Except that Mammon is a complete and utter fool, so really, you didn't have to do much at all."

All smiles were nothing but an act, Kirana reminded herself. The way Satan's words contradicted his actions was proof enough. He'd been pulling out all the stops to charm her ever since she arrived in the Devildom: escorting her between classes, buying her drinks at the cafeteria, holding doors open for her… The perfect gentleman, and a complete one-eighty from when they had first met.

It was obvious what he was playing at. All he wanted was to get his hands on her power for free. No pact, no deal, just a human stupid enough to fall for his seduction and give him everything he wanted.

(That being said, she had to admit he had a very nice smile…)

"You won't be able to tame me as easily." The edges of Satan's grin sharpened. "If you want a pact with me, you'll have to do better than that."

"Even if I order Mammon to never steal from you again?" Kirana asked sweetly, relishing the way his eyes sprung open in surprise.

Disingenuity aside, since he was going to be nice to her, she might as well return the favor. It would be so much easier on her too. Kill him with kindness, as they say. Or Uno Reverse. Whatever.

Satan looked stunned for a moment before glaring at her. "I don't need your help to manage that idiot," he declared before marching away with his nose turned up.

Taking that as a win, Kirana giggled to herself.

Belphegor scoffed loudly and pushed his chair back. "I've lost my appetite. Let's go, Beel."

"But I'm not done with breakfast—"

"I'll buy you more food at the cafeteria."

And off Beel went, lumbering after his twin to RAD.

Lucifer took a slow sip of his coffee and sighed.

.

.

.

At least the human knew how to listen, Mammon thought. He'd brought Kirana to the modeling agency after classes with strict instructions not to leave the lobby while he signed off on some paperwork. She was still there waiting patiently for him by the time he was done, so he begrudgingly allowed her to grab a drink before heading back to the house.

"Here." She emerged from Café Lament holding two cups of bufo egg milk tea and pressed one into his hands. "This is for you."

"…What're you up to now?" He squinted at her as they continued on their way.

"Nothing! I just wanted to say thank you for walking me back, even though you didn't want to." Kirana smiled, trying to convey her sincerity. "I'm sorry about this morning too. I thought your brothers were being really mean to you. Are you okay?"

Mammon froze in his tracks and stared at her with wide eyes. "The fuck… Are you serious?"

"Yes?" She clutched her cup to her chest, suddenly looking uncertain. "Sorry, I didn't mean to offend—"

"No, you— I mean, gah! What's wrong with you?" He spluttered. Why was this human being so nice to him?

Kirana shrugged helplessly. "It just doesn't seem fair to be ganged up on all the time. You look like you're used to it, but that doesn't make it okay."

"You're a real weirdo, you know that?" Mammon pretended not to feel the warmth on his cheeks as he turned away and resumed walking. "And just so you know, I spent all your money already so you can't order me to give it back, got it?!"

Lucifer had given Kirana a ridiculous amount of Grimm as part of her monthly stipend, but she had nowhere to stash it except under her bed. Aside from what was already in her wallet, the rest was gone the next day.

She felt bad enough that she had essentially bankrupted Mammon into settling his debt with Leviathan. Her budgeting ensured that she would last until the end of the month, so it wouldn't hurt to let it go, right? Just this once.

"Fine," Kirana sighed. "But don't steal from me again, okay?"

"Demon's honor!" Mammon whooped, fist pumping the air. "For a human, you ain't so bad!"

His pact mark sizzled against her skin, and Kirana rubbed at her chest with a wince.

[sebsxphia]

bambi. | dream a little dream of me.

rhett abbott x little!reader.

￫ description: rhett spends the evening winding down with his bambi. based off this drabble here.

￫ word count: 2.4K.

￫ c/w: age regression. other than that, fluff, fluff, fluff.

￫ a/n: i understand this is niche, therefore if you’re on my taglist, i completely understand if you don’t read this! | woodland creatures | agere masterlist | main masterlist |

If it was any other Friday night, you and Rhett would be found down at the Handsome Gambler or sinking down a couple beers on your sofa and watching a corny action film from the eighties and debating weather Rhett could pull off that stunt or not. But tonight was different.

The week had been gruelling for you both, with heavy workloads and exhausting physical labour on your ranch for five days straight. There were still bits and pieces to do over the weekend, but you both always tried your best to get most of the work done during the week so your weekends could be spent lazing around with each other in a heap of bedsheets and day-old clothes. Understandably so, you were exhausted and you let yourself float in that familiar and fuzzy headspace.

Rhett could gauge that you were feeling really tiny within your age regression and he set up everything appropriately. Your living room floor had been coated in soft blankets for you to sit on and he had surrounded you with an array of plush cushions and pillows. He knew when you were feeling small within your age, your limbs would get floppier alongside it and Rhett had baby-proofed your surroundings.

The coffee table was pulled up to the sofa in your living room and you were comfortably sat between both. Colouring books aged three years and up had been put to the side and Rhett opted for a stack of coloured paper and pencils for you to scribble whatever your little mind would see. Alongside the scribbles you were deeply focused on, there were toys scattered across the table.

There were baby building block toys, that you would put in the matching shaped holes. There were plastic farm and zoo animals that Rhett ensured were big enough and had no rough edges. Your gathering of Sylvanian Families was placed neatly together and your beloved toy horse that he fixed up was placed at the corner of the table, with a compromise from Rhett.

“‘m sorry, Bambi, I don’t wan’ these little creatures' tiny furniture to get lost ‘nd I don’t wan’ Peach gettin’ any more ouchies, okay?”

You happily complied with the comfort of having your beloved, velvet creatures nearby.

You were snuggly sat in your baby grow that was patterned in delicate and detailed drawings of woodland creatures, including tiny baby fawns. Your pacifier clip that was attached to your romper was decorated in cartoon illustrations of cowboys. The pacifier itself was resting lopsided in your mouth and decorated with cartoon animals. Occasionally in between your drawing, you opted for your Giraffe-shaped chew toy that was layered with different textures.

Off to the side of the living room was the kitchen where Rhett was cleaning up the last of the pots and pans from your comforting and warm meal of macaroni cheese. He had never made macaroni cheese before he met you, but with love and patience, you taught him how and by now he knew the recipe like the back of his hand. He always had the ingredients in your home, ready to create the meal when you needed it most.

Unknown to you, Rhett was watching you cautiously from the kitchen as he dried up the remains of the pots and pans from your dinner. He had baby-proofed your surroundings and there were no real harmful elements around you, but he understood that your headspace was no older than one and he worried.

He took on the role of your caregiver high and mighty on his shoulders. He would protect you to the ends of the earth and the trust you put into him was something he didn’t take for granted lightly. Watching the way the cogs turned behind your eyes and how your body physically de-tensed in his hold as you regressed, was something he would always hold dear and close to his heart. The feeling of cradling you gently as you let yourself become vulnerable in his arms was something truly special. It was an unbreakable and undeniable bond, and he was devoted to you.

From the kitchen, he watched the way your tongue poked outwards from the corner of your pacifier as you concentrated feverishly on your drawing in front of you. Your hand came upwards towards your eyes curled in a tight fist. You rubbed at your eyes haphazardly, in an attempt to stifle an exhausted yawn on this Friday night. Rhett smiled knowingly to himself and turned his back momentarily to place the last of the cook pots in the cupboard and tuck the dishcloth on the rack of the oven.

As he opened the cupboard, he retrieved your milk bottle, strawberry milkshake powder and your milk of preference from the fridge, and placed them all in line on the kitchen countertop. When he turned back around to face you in the living room, another attempted stifled yawn was futile.

The exhausted yawn took over your body whole and you scrunched your eyes shut tight, the pencil in your hand almost going limp against the colored paper. When you came to, Rhett let out a chuckle quietly to himself and made his way over to you. He was gentle on his feet as he padded across the floorboards to your bundle of plush cushions and pillows.

“Hey, Bambi,” He soothed out in a low and quiet tone. As he steadily placed himself down next to you on the cushioned floor, you gave him a sleepy yet gleaming smile from behind your pacifier. “How y’ gettin’ on?”

Rhett knew that within your tiny headspace right now, for you to be nonverbal was normal. You gave him a gleeful verbalized hum, acknowledging his presence and question, still letting your hand scrawl on the paper with your pencil.

He tucked himself next to you and drew his broad arm around your back. You fell into his chest and side almost instantly, positioning yourself against his familiar warmth. His hand came up to the side of your head and he scratched his fingertips soothingly on your scalp, helping you regulate with his touch and subconsciously soothing you into that sleepy state. He knew it was nearly time for bedtime and he would be gently winding you down with his touches and quiet voice. His other hand stretched out and his nimble fingers pointed at the coloured paper. He let out a quiet gasp.

“Bambi!” A hushed exclamation, “Did you draw this?” You nodded vigorously, the ring on your pacifier knocking against itself. “Baby, it’s beautiful. My little one is s’ talented.” He tickled at the side of your ear with his other hand and you let out a giggle.

You tapped the pencil on the paper at the scrawl of a shape and let out a squeal, before turning to meet his eyes. Rhett clocked it instantly.

“That’s me?”

You squealed again and let out a single, “Dada!”

“Where’s Bambi? Can you point them out to Dada?” You tapped at the paper to another shape and he hummed approvingly, a prideful smile twisting on his lips.

Rhett pointed to the last scrawled-out set of shapes and colours, and he watched how your eyes drifted to the corner of the table where your beloved toy horse he had fixed up was sitting.

“Is that, Peach?”

You nodded again and mumbled out from behind your pacifier, “Tu’ day.”

Rhett let out a silent, “Ah!” and a rumbled chuckle, pulling you impossibly closer to his chest. His hand was now cradling your head against him and you wrapped your whole body into his. He put the pieces together and he knew you were referring back to the Tuesday just passed. It was an almost alarming hot day that came from nowhere and you took the evening to ride out on his horse to the wildflower fields, far, far off from your home. He remembered how after you both made your way back home, you were both tuckered out, but you smiled to yourself and told Rhett with a loving and whole look in your eyes, “I needed that. Thank you, Cowboy.”

He was silently touched beyond words that you would remember that day and that you treasured it so fondly that you would draw it, even within your tiny headspace.

“Bambi was s’ sleepy after that horse ride with Daddy, weren’t you?” He craned his face down to take in your sleepy eyes and the way your eyelids were struggling to stay open. The knuckle of his index finger came up and gently brushed against your nose and he still watched with adorning eyes how your nose twitched slightly.

You gave him a small nod and completely succumbed to his grasping hold, burying your face into the crook of his neck and latching your arms around his neck. Rhett read how your body was melting against his, how your muscles relaxed and your breathing was starting to even out, getting slower and slower with each passing second.

“Alright, little one. I think it’s time we get y’all ready for bedtime.”

There were occasions when at these words from your caregiver's mouth you would protest and plead to stay up for just one more hour, but your body had completely succumbed to the exhaustion. You weren’t putting up a fight anymore. You just wanted to sleep, curled into your Daddy’s chest.

Rhett waited for a beat and at your silent admission, he let his arms drop to your legs, scoop you up and hoist you to his hip as he stood. He took you into the kitchen where he placed you down gently on the wooden chair seated at the kitchen table. You let out a protesting whine as his comforting warmth left your body, your face contorting into a frown and a small pout behind your pacifier. Your hands reached out as fast as they could and you held onto the cuffs of Rhett’s plaid shirt, tugging on them to not let him take a step further.

He cooed at you and took your hands in his, squeezing them tightly and placing two kisses on the backs of them. “It’s alright, Bambi. Daddy’s right here. M’ not leavin’ your side. I’m just gon’ make you a bottle, okay?”

You gave him another verbalized hum in agreement to acknowledge what he had said and you tentatively let go of his calloused hands. You attempted to watch what Rhett was doing with big eyes, but your eyelids were drooping at every blink. The milk was poured into the pot and left to warm slowly on the stove.

At this point, Rhett came back (which was only two steps away from the oven, but it felt like miles) and lifted you, sat himself down on the kitchen chair and brought you to sit in his lap. You resumed your previous position of wrapping your arms around his neck and burying your face into the crook of his neck. You inhaled his familiar and comforting scent of cedar wood and leather, and Rhett’s hands placed on your back felt your ribs expand and then let out of any tension you had.

Gently he began to rock you against his chest and in his arms. All that could be heard was the crackling whoosh! of the gas on the stove and quietly in your ear, Rhett’s low voice, humming a lullaby.

“Stars shinin’ bright above you, night breezes seem to whisper, I love you. Birds singin’ ‘n the sycamore trees, dream a little dream ‘f me.”

He continued for another two verses of the lullaby, his drawl getting lower as he went on before his head picked up and he heard the bubbling foam of the milk rise to the top of the pot. Slowly, and without causing too much disturbance to your nearly asleep frame, he untucked you from himself, placed you back on the kitchen chair and drew together your bottle. It was a combination of milk and a little dusting of strawberry milkshake powder.

With an instinct from yourself, as Rhett came back over to your side, you slipped off the kitchen chair and outstretched your hands to him. He carefully and gently hoisted you to his hip and carried you back to the living room, with the warm bottle in his hand.

“Alright, little one, let's get you cosy against Dada, yeah?” Rhett hummed as he placed himself down on the sofa. He propped himself up in the corner at the end and sat you in between his thighs with your head resting on his upright chest. One hand still held the bottle for you and the other reached for the television remote on the sofas arm. The television had already been quietly playing in the background for the entire evening and he switched it on to an episode of, ‘In the Night Garden’ before you could blink.

Rhett brought the bottle to you and began feeding you, with it still held in his hand. From this angle, he could ensure your safety and could carefully hold the bottle to not let you drink down too much too quickly, or wipe your chin briefly with his thumb. His spare hand was soothingly rubbing your arm, with his fingertips ghosting over your arm hair and tickling you gently. As you parted from your bottle in parts, he would return to running his fingers through your hair and scratching firmly enough on your scalp to regulate your sleepy-induced state. Occasionally he would dip down and place fluttering kisses on your temples, murmuring quiet words of praise against your warm flesh.

The sweet taste of the milk was dancing on your tastebuds and as your eyes were focused on the television in front of you, they were struggling immensely to stay open for more than five seconds.

Rhett clocked the remaining droplets left in your bottle and gently lowered it down, to not get the droplets caught in your throat and tickle you with a horrible cough. Instinctively, he knew this would signify the end to you, but he waited for you to confirm this before pulling the bottle away entirely.

“Fin’, Dada.” You murmured out with sleep lacing your words.

Very few words had been spoken by yourself this evening, but Rhett took this as your sleepy admission. The bottle was placed to the side and he brought you in closer to his chest. His nimble fingers found your pacifier in quick time and placed it between your lips. Another flurry of kisses was placed to your temple and as your breathing evened out to a slower pace, you felt the low rumble of Rhett’s chest underneath you as he spoke the last words you remember that night.

“Atta’, Bambi. Close your eyes, little one. Daddy’s got you.”

taglist: @beachbabey @tallrock35 @currentlybradshaw @unmistakablyunknown @iloveprettyboysblog @wkndwlff @flames-thebitch @randomfandomgirl96 @kmc1989

tagging those who may be interested: @sunblchdfly @lewmagoo @bradshawsbitch @peachystenbrough @becks-things @mangokitkats

[workingdownthewordmine]

Love Thy Neighbour - Chapter 5 Every Man Is Guilty

Bucky struggles with the attitudes of his so-called friends and Hive makes themself scarce.

Read this chapter on AO3 here.

Chapter 1 | Chapter 4

Fandom: Marvel Cinematic Universe Characters: James "Bucky" Barnes, Nonbinary OC, Steve Rogers Rating: T CW: Guilt, bullying (mention), violent child abuse (mention), homophobia (mention), mild dissociation Prompts filled: @lgbtqbingo : Hickeys @fluffbruary : Day 6 - Embarrassment @multifandom-flash (Compliments) : You are better than you think you are

@fandom-free-bingo (World Book Night Edition card 1) : "I don't need you." @fandom-free-bingo (Flight Edition) : Can't make it to dinner, Teasing @anyfandomangstbingo : Best friend's boyfriend @febuwhump : Day 24 - "I'm doing this because I care about you." @seasonaldelightsbingo (Winter Wonderland) : Situationship

Dividers by @unfortunate-beetle-and-friends

Chapter 5 – Every Man is Guilty

“But I have my life, I’m living it. It’s twisted, exhausting, uncertain, and full of guilt, but nonetheless, there’s something there.”

Banana Yoshimoto

“You’re not selling me on this, Steve.” Bucky leant back on the kitchen wall, chin lowered and arms crossed.

“I can’t give you specifics right now. Security’s too tight. If you’ll just come and talk to Fury-”

This was the guy who’d lied to every draft office in the tri-state area? When had Steve become so damn hidebound? “I’m not interested. I told you before, I’m not going to work for SHIELD. And you can save Barton and Romanov’s very touching Different Call story. I’m grateful for what you did for me, really, but I never agreed to get away from Hydra just to sell my soul to someone else.”

Steve’s hands dug deeper into his pockets. “SHIELD isn’t Hydra, Buck. It’s not the same at all. Just let me set up a chat with the director and you’ll see that.”

“Why won’t you let this drop? You’ve got your whole Captain America deal with your team. I’ve got an actual life of my own now. You don’t need me.”

“Fine. You’re right. I don’t need you.”

Never had someone agreeing with him felt so much like a fist in the gut. Bucky didn’t get the chance to tell him to go fuck himself. Steve kept going. “This isn’t about me needing your help, Buck. I’m here because I want your help. I need people around me that I can trust and I trust you. You’re my oldest friend. And I gotta say, Bucky, this whole ‘new life’ you say you’ve got going on looks a lot like walling yourself up in a different cell. I’m doing this because I care about you. What good was getting them to let you go free if you’re just going to lock yourself back up? You look like shit, Buck. When did you last eat? Or drink anything that wasn’t coffee or at least eighty proof? You aren’t one of the bad guys anymore. You can do something worthwhile with your life. You don’t have to be all alone. Why won’t you let me help you?”

“Fuck you, Steve. I’m not gonna be your goddamn bad guy outreach program poster boy. And I had a cheese sandwich just last night, as though it’s any of your fucking business.” And I’m not alone…

They both looked up at the same moment, both heads turned towards the hall closet. “Shit’s always falling down somewhere round here. Place has gone to hell.” But even Steve wasn’t dumb enough not to recognise a sneeze when he heard it.

“For a guy with his windows rigged to blow, you’re weirdly calm about someone climbing around inside your walls.” The tinge of suspicion he heard in Steve’s voice hurt more than Bucky had expected. Who the hell did he think he’d be hiding in a wall cavity? Then he cringed inwardly as Steve began looking around with more intent than he had before. Bucky practically felt his eyes rest for a moment on the extra sleeping bag. His eyebrows visibly rose when he spotted the mug with its weird cute cartoon dragon thing. “Buck?” The suspicion had gone from Steve’s voice and Bucky missed it already.

“Hey, kid, it’s okay. Just a social call.” He listened for a beat of silence, then he and Steve both hear the departing scraping of Hive heading up to the roof. Knowing what he did, Bucky could pick up the unevenness in their movement and made a note to ask to check their injuries later. If he ever saw them again, of course. They might be too spooked to come back at all. He looked down at their mug. They’d be back. He hoped.

“I guess it’s cool that some things don’t change. But I don’t remember you being this coy about your girlfriends even in the forties.”

“‘Girlfriend’ is a real strong word for anyone I passed the time with back then. And that’s not… what this is. They’re just a friend.” Or something. This was definitely not the time to start seriously questioning the weird-ass situation he’d found himself in the last twelve hours or so.

“A friend who hides in the wall when your other friends drop by?”

Other friends? Did Steve think Bucky was having poker nights with the guys every week? What other friends?

“They’re shy, okay?”

“Buck, you don’t have to be embarrassed. I’m glad you’ve found someone you don’t mind having around. I hated thinking of you cooped up here with nothing but a bunch of old memories.” Steve, buddy, you have no idea… “Think I’ll ever get to meet them? What? I can’t be curious about the first person apart from me to ever know the notorious Bucky Barnes well enough to leave a mug at his place?” He couldn’t help but be mildly impressed at Steve’s rapid and unquestioning switch to the neutral pronoun.

“I doubt it. They’re shy, like I said. And it’s not really an ‘introductions to old friends’ kind of thing.” Of at least that much he was sure. Hell, it wasn’t even a thing. Just a really weird couple of days… that had left an extra sleeping bag on his floor.

Steve was frowning again. “You, uh, you’re not in trouble, right? I’ll believe you, whatever you say. I just can’t help noticing you’re a bit more banged up than I’ve seen you in a while. And you smell like that stuff your mom used to cover my hives in when we were kids.” He tried a weak grin.

Well, believe it or not a Hive was responsible… Buck almost returned the smile before he shook himself.  “I’m good. Just had a run in with some kind of funky old insulation while I was doing some repairs. Nothing to worry your pretty head about. The scratches are all healed up anyway.” He turned his shoulder to indicate the one Hive had uncovered. “Only covered them up so I wouldn’t get blood on anything, just didn’t get round to taking off the rest of the bandages before you stopped in for the little recruitment drive. Speaking of which –”

Steve held up a hand to stop him. “Speaking of which, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said… a lot of what I did. It wasn’t my place to judge what you’ve got going on here. I’m sorry.” The renewed anger Bucky had been preparing to unleash petered out more quickly than he had expected. “I meant it though, about wanting to work with you again.”

Buck grunted. “Howling Commandoes reunion tour? This time with one hundred percent less falling out of trains, right?” He hadn’t expected Steve to take the weak joke so hard. Steve hadn’t looked this green since a kid landed a kick in his stomach that left him puking his guts into a trash can. He’d been waiting on the ground by the can when Buck came back with split knuckles and a grin of triumph. They’d gone back to Buck’s place to clean up before Steve’s dad could see the mess on his shirt and add a bloody nose to Steve’s problems. Buck’s place. This place. The sink where they’d rinsed out that faded threadbare shirt had been torn out long ago or it would have been right about where Steve was standing now.

“I should have looked harder.”

“Huh?” Maybe Hive’s attention span was catching, somehow. It took him a second to reconnect the dots.

“I went back. To the pass. I went back about a dozen times, looking for – well – for a body, I guess. Maybe if I’d been smarter about it, I would’ve… would’ve found you. Maybe we wouldn’t be where we are now.” Steve’s words sounded like he was trying to swallow them rather than speak them aloud. “But we are. And I can’t fix what I abandoned you to, but I can’t walk away again. Please, Buck, stop by the compound sometime – nothing to do with SHIELD, just come say hi. Or answer your phone once in a while. I miss my best friend, Buck. The guy I knew back in forty-five, back when our lives made some sort of sense.”

“That guy died in the fall, Steve.”

Steve shook his head. “No, I think he’s very much alive. I see him in there. Don’t bury my best friend in this place, Buck, please. You might feel like you deserve that but you don’t. I’m not talking about showing off how ‘rehabilitated’ you are or anything like that. I mean that guy still deserves the life he should have got the first time around.”

Was that part of you given a choice?

Yes.

There’s always a choice.

No. I would never have chosen that…

Bucky managed to look up at Steve’s eyes. Still fucking insane that he was taller than Buck now. “He’s getting a life. And, I guess, if you’re going to be clingy dork about it, that life can involve spending more time with you than it has done so far. Happy?”

“Yeah, happy. Jerk.”

“We’re in the twenty-first century now, for fuck’s sake, Steve. Learn to curse, I’m begging you.” For just a second they shared a grin. The moment was broken by a beep from Steve’s phone. The sudden awkward energy that radiated from him came as a surprise. “I don’t care if you check your phone, you know? World might be hours from destruction or something.”

“That’s unlikely.” Steve blushed. “It’s probably personal.”

“Stark sending out mass dick pics or something? You’re practically glowing there, Rogers.” The blond head ducked, Steve pushing a hand through his hair. He successfully blocked the blush from view but the new angle… “Steve, that’s a fucking hickey! That’s… at least three hickeys!” Captain America’s complexion was a riot of crimson, the blush spreading down to the livid bruise just below his jaw. “You bruise like I do – those are new and vicious. Christ, Steve, you been hooking up with a moray eel?”

“I, ah, I’m seeing someone.”

“No shit.” Probably he should have expected it. Steve must be one of the most eligible bachelors in the country now. Superpowers, a name like “Captain America”, and serum-enhanced looks on tops of his natural Steve-ness… The girls were probably all over him. Weird thought. “Well? Who is she? Do I need to check she’s good enough for my best friend?”

The tips of Steve’s ears became practically scarlet. “It, uh, look, Buck, I–” Bucky frowned. “The person I’m dating is… he’s a guy.”

Well, Bucky couldn’t say he’d never wondered. The immediate mental maelstrom was much the same as it would have been in the forties. How much trouble was this going to cause him? How many more beatings because hiding himself was absolutely alien to Steve’s nature? It took a few seconds for the twenty-first century to impose itself on his thinking. No, probably no beating for Captain America, but public opinion could be a hell of a thing to reckon with – especially for the nation’s golden boy. And Steve was standing there right now closer to cringing than Buck had seen him since his dad was alive. God, there was a man – if he even deserved the word – who would have exploded at the news that his son was a fairy. He probably would have tried to thrash it out of him, Avenger or no.

“He’s not off the hook for best friend judgement just because he’s male, you know. Do I get to meet him?” He felt the pressure in the room change as Steve relaxed. Had he really expected hostility over his confession? From Bucky?

He doesn’t trust you…

“Uh, I guess, sometime. No one else has yet but it’s not… not really a secret. The team knows.”

Bucky nodded. “Well? You gonna see what he wants?” On cue, Steve’s phone chimed again. Reluctantly, ears still hot, he pulled it out of his pocket.

“Just asking where I want to get dinner tonight.” He tapped out a reply, making Buck smile at the geriatric concentration he had to put into the exercise, betraying the boyish face.

“Cute.”

He knows, deep down, what a monster he unleashed by letting you go.

Stop.

That’s why he’s scared of you, even now. Guilt for leaving you behind? More likely guilt for not finishing what he started when he let you fall.

He didn’t “let me fall”.

We’ve been over this, asset. You used to be less naïve. You know the resources he has at his disposal. Do you really believe he didn’t just decide you weren’t worth the trouble?

Steve pushed his phone back into his pocket and grinned sheepishly. “Sorry about that.”

Bucky waved the apology away.

“I should probably get going. I’ll see you? Soon?”

Bucky nodded, but…

Empty offer. You really think he and his new friends want someone around who tried to kill them – however poorly you executed your assignment? Stark didn’t even trust you unsupervised in this dump, let alone in his precious Tower.

“Steve, you sure the others won’t mind me just stopping by? Doubt I‘m popular over there. Not real eager to get teargassed soon as I set foot over the perimeter.”

Steve smiled, his confidence returning. He’d swung his leg over the sill already. “Sure, I’m sure. It’s not like everyone trusted Natasha when she first showed up either. They’re the good guys, Buck. They believe in second chances.” His smile was warm as ever as he ducked out of the window, not seeing the way the temperature of Bucky’s blood had plummeted. “And charge your phone,” Bucky heard him say as his feet landed on the tarmac.

Second chances… isn’t that sweet? So much for his assurances of your deep and abiding innocent soul, it seems. You could have almost believed that choir boy act, couldn’t you?

It was three hours before Hive returned the way they had left. The hum of the generator wasn’t quite enough to drown out their scuffling descent. The faceless apparition was unnerving until they loosened their hood strings and pulled their hoodie down to uncover their lower face. “Protection,” they explained, though Bucky had already guessed as much. From the looks of the stretched fabric round their wrists, they’d had the sleeves pulled down over their hands too.

“Good call. Skin still itches like shit.” He’d had another go with the cream – Steve was right about the smell barely having changed in almost a century – but ran into the same problem as before. He’d had to spend a good twenty minutes scrubbing the stuff out of the joints in his arm with a toothbrush.

He was turning to offer Hive some of the beans he’d been heating on the camping stove, when he realised what else had bothered him about their appearance. They were huddled in the hallway, dressed as they’d been when they made their exit earlier – hoodie, cargoes, black and purple striped socks…

“You’ve been hanging around Brooklyn with no fucking shoes on?”

“You’d be amazed. Saw one guy with no shoes, no socks, and only half a pair of trousers. Guess I should be grateful for what I’ve got. Anyway, I wasn’t stopping for pre-flight checks while I was busy fleeing for my life, was I?”

“You need to check that you’re wearing shoes?”

“Told ya,” They seemed almost proud. “My brain is wrong.”

“Won’t be the only thing that’s wrong if you do shit like that. You’re lucky you haven’t got tetanus or something.”

“Probably too soon to be sure if I have or not,” they pointed out as they dropped down by the fire and stuck their feet out to warm near the flames.

“Not real comforting, kid.”

Hive watched him for a moment, maybe wondering the same thing he was: at what point had their continued well-being become a matter of comfort to him. Then again, maybe not.

“You call me that a lot. Kid. ‘M not a kid, you know.”

He grunted in reply. “I’m an old man, kid. Don’t take it personally.” That was apparently acceptable. They huffed but smirked. They wiggled their toes. Unsurprisingly, the soles of their socks were filthy, damp, and holes in more than one place. One big toe poked free. They saw him looking and wagged it pointedly at him.

“Rude to stare.” They were grinning.

“Sure your feet are okay? There are landfills cleaner than the streets round here. No cuts or anything?”

“Will you feel better if I check?”

“I’ll have less concern about my apartment stinking of gangrene tomorrow, yeah.”

They rolled their eyes but folded their legs and peeled off their socks.

He doled out beans, giving Hive the bowl and keeping his own in the pan, while they performed their inspection.

“All good,” they pronounced, hopping up with only a bit of a wobble to rinse their hands under the lonely sinkless faucet. Bucky wasn’t sure if it had been seeing Steve standing in the old place, looking not so much like he’d grown as like the room had shrunk around him, or if it was just having someone else inhabiting the space with him for a while, but the apartment’s wasted, skeletal feel was more noticeable to him now. He was making food over a camping stove. His bed was a sleeping bag. For someone who’d finally come back home, he looked pretty homeless right now, didn’t he? Was that what Steve had seen? Did Bucky have that same look? An abandoned shell, like the building?

What makes you think you deserve any better? You could have been so much more…

“Cheers.” Hands clean, Hive had grabbed their bowl and clunked it lightly against the pan. Seeing his confusion, they repeated, “A toast to toes not turning grey and dropping off! Which… now that I hear it again, may not have been the most genteel toast ever raised at a meal. Oops. Hope I didn’t put you off.” They tucked into their own food with no sign of discomfort.

“A toast to not losing body parts gets my vote,” he conceded. They shared a grin. “Where did you go earlier anyway? Guessing you didn’t find a café that didn’t care about the lack of shoes.”

“Rooftops, mostly. Nearby ones. Figured if it was a social call I probably didn’t need to flee the state. Thought about a library but figured I’d attract a bit too much attention.”

“Library?”

“They have books there! The wild kind, not the kind you have to pay for. Like a book zoo – except members can foster the animals. The analogy got a bit lost, sorry.”

“I followed, most of it anyway. I do know what a library is. We had ‘em when I was a kid too, you know.”

While he did the sparse dishes, Bucky could see Hive moving around out of the corner of his eye. A glance found them rolling up their sleeping bag and gathering the small quantity of trash they’d been accumulating into a sack. He dried his hands and grabbed his phone; it had turned up beside the plant pot. The generator fell quiet. Bucky turned the phone on and almost immediately wished he hadn’t. It lit up with message after message, the device rattling in his metal grip.

Steve: Been a while. How are you getting on?

Steve: Hope you are doing okay. There is a briefing later today that you might be interested in. Let me know.

Banner: Shuri sent me over your updated records. I think we should discuss a pain management regimen. Contact me.

Steve: Clint and Natasha are planning a movie night. How about joining us?

Steve: You really need to answer a text (or a call) once in a while.

Fen: You’re 30m late

Fen: Where are you??

Fen: Call me, James

Steve: I tried to call twice and didn’t get an answer. I’m going to drop by this morning. There’s some SHIELD business I want to discuss and it’s been a long time since you checked in. Miss you, man.

Fen: This is real shitty of you. You’re decent at the job and I like you but you can’t just ditch for the day without a word. The garage was busy today. We need to talk.

Steve: ETA 10 minutes.

“Fuck.” Hive looked up. “Everything going on since yesterday… Seems I forgot to go to work today.” He started moving automatically, grabbing his jacket off a picture nail, and toeing his boots upright. Hive must have taken them off for him while he was unconscious. He’d have expected to feel more latent objection to the idea but he definitely did not have time to stop and consider the unfamiliar close, warm sensation he experienced instead.

“I should have thought… sorry.”

“Huh?” He stopped, half inside his jacket.

“I mean, I knew, didn’t I? Where you work. That’s how I found you in the first place. Should have occurred to me that you ought to be there.”

He was already four hours late. What difference was five more minutes likely to make to his boss’s bad mood. “Wasn’t your problem if I went to work or not. I’m a big enough boy to handle my own routine.” He was a bit unsettled to see Hive huddling into a corner again, much as they’d done last night. They were still on their feet but they’d shrunken down into their hoodie and were not looking at him. “Hey, kid, it’ll be okay. My huge personal charm will smooth things over with my boss and anyway it is not up to you to have shit to do with my schedule.” They nodded but still wouldn’t meet his eyes. Their gaze was unfocused, drifting around the floor. Trying not to wonder why he cared, he cast around for something to ground them.

“Know what? I’m gonna try to make a dinner tonight that doesn’t come straight out of a can. What do ya think? Sound good?”

“I mean… it’s pretty vague.” He was relieved to see some… presence come back into their face. “Are we talking closer to a dead pigeon you found on the roof or delicately braised sustainably-farmed salmon?” Bucky’s expression apparently satisfied. They grinned a little.

“I guess somewhere in the middle but a little closer to the dead pigeon. I’ll do my best.”

The grin brightened. “Sounds good. I don’t like salmon much anyway.”

He nodded. “No salmon. Got it. See you later – gotta go save my job.”

The garage hadn’t been too bad. Fen had been obliged to rake him over the coals a little – sure it was real useful having a guy on staff who could jack up a car on one hand, in addition to being able to handle basically any bike issue she could remember being brought, but only if he was gonna decide to turn up when expected and not just when it was convenient to him. He knew she took no pleasure in playing the hard-ass, except with assholes who didn’t believe she was more than capable of dismantling their tricked out dick substitutes down to the nuts and then reassembling it faster than they could jerk off over a climate change denial manifesto; she just wanted her garage running smooth. He’d worked out the rest of the day and hung out past close to put away some late deliveries by way of apology and all ruffled feathers had settled. His extended shift had meant it was already past dark when he got to his supply run, though. He hoped Hive wasn’t getting too hungry waiting.

If they were, it wasn’t causing any notable chaos. The building was quiet and dark. Maybe they were taking the opportunity for some much needed sleep. A smile crept over his lips at the thought. He tried to keep quiet and not disturb them when he manoeuvred his awkward haul through the window, catching the new wok as it made a dash for the floor. But he’d no sooner set things down than he knew the apartment was deserted. It felt empty in a way he couldn’t recall it feeling before they’d arrived. He stuck his head out into the hallway but the whole building had the same mournful, abandoned echo. A shiver gripped him – all the more dramatic in a body that always ran so hot. He searched the apartment. Their sleeping bag was folded neatly in a corner of the hall. His own he found moved to his bedroom, spread out with pillow, blanket and a sheet of paper laid on top. He recognised their handwriting.

Hey Bucky,

Wasn’t sure when to expect you back. I’m so sorry – looks like I might have to miss dinner after all. I need to go do something. Should be back by 9 at the latest so… maybe save me some if I didn’t piss you off too much by ditching? Sorry, again. Sorry sorry sorry. See you later.

Hive x

Bucky stood in his bedroom doorway with the note in his hand and shot a look at the things he’d left in the kitchen – the wok and utensils he’d been managing without, the extra bowl, plate, cutlery, and the bag spilling spring onions and packets of noodles beside them. Gotta do what they gotta do, he supposed. The note creased in his fingers. No problem. Might take him a while to get this right anyway. He’d cook, and they’d probably be back by the time he was done, sure.

With how many people who’d love to know where to find Bucky Barnes in tow?

They don’t want to be found themselves. They wouldn’t bring anyone back here…

The nightmare act really sucked you in, didn’t it? Who knows who they really are? Even if they are in hiding from someone, aren’t there plenty of people who’d trade the whereabouts of the Winter Soldier for better protection than hiding out with a monster who already nearly killed them? Not a high bar, is it?

So what’s your suggestion?

What time is it?

What?

They said they’d be back by nine.

Probably so we’d stay put and off guard.

What time is it?

He’d never bothered to get a clock. He pulled out his phone.

22:27

His eyes shot to the window.

Note: Thanks for reading, y'all! And thank you to all the wonderful providers of prompt events without which I probably wouldn't have started writing again. Special thank you to my boys for inspiring me and keeping me motivated.

[randomcartoonbro]

I am a fucking person. Not a product. Fuck Mark Zuckerberg, but also fuck Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and anyone that thinks "technological advancements" are more important than humans. AI stealing art was bad enough, but something we could work around. But now in Europe, Meta is testing out using people's personal data and pictures (as in themselves, family members, important events, pets, etc.) to train AI. Are you fucking kidding me?? And you can't even opt out unless you literally use the AI and show them proof that you're in it and they can still shrug and say it's not their problem. Even privatizing your account doesn't stop the AI. There's literally nothing you can do. Yes, there's backlash happening, but since when has that stopped Zuckerberg? To all the AI bros that said we were overreacting when we were upset about AI art: congrats. Your dead grandma is about to be in the algorithm. I hope she comes up and haunts you on your next AI art creation. Those that have continued to fuck with AI programs despite the warnings and upset, you are a part of why this is happening. You gave them numbers to show that people like AI and gave them the go ahead to keep going further and further with it. We are losing our humanity and it's just going to get worse. Ever read Nineteen Eighty-Four, The Giver, or even Hunger Games? We're inches from there and it's gonna be a bitch to turn back. The fact I can't even put in a job application without either an AI talking to me or knowing one will be going through what I submit instead of a person. It literally is affecting every single aspect of our existence at this point. I'm fucking scared and you should be too.