#it me and my coffee-fueled self

[arcshy]

🔞r-18 🔞

its me and my weird and unholy art ideas at midnight

"NAUGHTY NAUGHTY CHII" -someone, a friend maybe...

[elixirina]

based on this request! | batsis!reader headcanons

you’ve been bruce’s daughter since you were born (duh!), and honestly, it’s hard to imagine him not being your dad. despite his brooding nature, he’s incredibly soft when it comes to you.

you’re younger than jason but older than tim, perfectly wedged between the two in age—and in chaos. your siblings would probably describe you as their comedic relief. they love the energy you bring.

with bruce and his vigilante lifestyle, he made it a point to keep you safe while balancing being your father. he may be emotionally reserved, but he’s always been fiercely protective of you.

you’ve been trained in basic self-defense since you were young—bruce’s paranoia runs deep—but he’s always been adamant about you having a choice in how involved you are with the family’s activities.

even though you’ve chosen to stay off the streets, you’re part of the family’s mission in your own way. whether it’s gathering intel, coordinating from the batcomputer, or just keeping the atmosphere light during debriefs, you have a knack for making everyone feel grounded. due to that fact, you’ve grown particularly close to barbara.

your laugh is the kind of thing that can cut through tension like a knife. even bruce has cracked a smile on rare occasions, though he’ll deny it if anyone points it out.

as the sibling closest to you in age, tim naturally became your partner-in-crime. you both share a deep appreciation for dry humor, clever banter, and coffee-fueled chaos.

while tim can be a workaholic, you’re the one who drags him away from his screens when he’s pushing himself too far. your go-to tactic? threatening to unplug his computer while holding his coffee hostage.

while physical affection isn’t a strong suit in the family, you’ve always been the exception. you’ll hug damian just to annoy him, ruffle jason’s hair to mess with him, lean on bruce’s shoulder when you’re feeling particularly sappy, and always sandwich between steph and cass when watching a movie.

“not the hair!” jason grumbles when he feels your hand on his head.

you once convinced damian to dress up as a cat for halloween. it took bribery and a lot of persistence, but the photo evidence was so worth it.

“stop touching my sword,” he snapped one afternoon. “i’m just checking if it’s real,” you replied, twirling it like a baton.

while you’re not out on the streets like your siblings, your role in the family dynamic is just as important. you’re the emotional glue that holds everyone together when tensions run high.

after jason returned as red hood, you were one of the first people he felt comfortable opening up to. 

“you’re annoying,” jason muttered after you’d cracked another joke during a mission briefing. “yeah, but you’re smiling,” you shot back, earning a reluctant chuckle.

your bond with bruce is one of the most wholesome aspects of your life. while he struggles to express his emotions, he’s always shown his love through actions—like staying up late to check on you or surprising you with your favorite takeout after a rough day.

“thanks, dad,” you said once, catching him off guard with a hug. his response was quiet but heartfelt: 

“you don’t have to thank me. you’re my daughter.”

moral of the story, love your family. cause they sure as hell love you!!!

[sadnymi]

「 ✦ My Boy Only Breaks His Favorite Toys. ✦ 」

[Mattheo riddle × reader] [TTPD Masterlist]

Summary: Mattheo's breakup leaves you heartbroken, shattered, you know his true intentions were far from what they seemed.

Warnings: angst, fluff

Words:1k

Sunshine warmed my face as I settled into the comfortable swing on our back patio, a contented sigh escaping my lips. It had been a perfect week. Mattheo had finally confessed his love, the words erasing months of unspoken feelings. Just as I was lost in a daydream fueled by newfound happiness, a shadow fell over me.

"Hey, Mattheo," I chirped, anticipation bubbling in my chest.

"I came to tell you this is over." His words hung heavy in the air, shattering the idyllic moment into a million pieces.

I stared at him, open-mouthed. Just last week, his eyes had held the promise of forever. Now, they were cold and indifferent.

"What?" I finally managed, my voice barely a whisper.

"You heard me," he said flatly, as if breaking up with me was as trivial as ordering a coffee. "We were fun, but now I'm bored. So, take a hint and accept it Have some dignity."

He didn't even wait for a response, turning on his heel and walking away with an air of casual cruelty. I sat there, frozen in place, the swing creaking eerily in the sudden silence. The warmth of the sun felt mocking, the scent of roses acrid.

Mattheo's "breakup" was a cruel joke. One day declarations of forever, the next, a dismissal delivered with the coldness of day-old coffee. Since then, he'd morphed back into his old self – a walking scandal magnet.

He reveled in making sure I witnessed his conquests: lingering kisses with Ravenclaw girls, neck nuzzles from Hufflepuffs. Whispers swirled of a Slytherin threesome – all delivered with the precision of a well-placed punch.

I had no one to confide in. Mattheo wasn't just my boyfriend, but he was the only connection I had. The only person I truly felt comfortable with. And love. There, I said it. Not ashamed .

Did Mattheo love me? You'd probably laugh in my face. But I knew him better than anyone.

My Mattheo, he only broke his favorite toys, the ones he swore he'd keep forever. He smashed them, discarded them, a twisted form of affection. That's what all this was – a twisted, public display of… something.

Love wasn't a term Mattheo Riddle would be caught dead using. But this elaborate charade, this self-destruction fueled by a silent pain I recognized all too well – that was his way of showing he cared. In his own messed-up way, Mattheo Riddle loves me, or at least, he used to.

He saw forever so he smashed it up.

The memory of Mattheo announcing me as his "girl" still brought a bittersweet smile to my lips. Back then, he was undeniably smitten. His friends teased him mercilessly, but he'd simply shrug, his eyes locked on mine, He'd lean in, his voice a husky murmur, "Nothing else matters, just you."

Mattheo, however, was a stranger to love. Affection wasn't a language spoken in his household, something I vowed to keep buried deep. So when I confessed my love, his mumbled response, rushed and panicked, was the first clue to the impending storm.

He ran. It was what he did best, fleeing from anything that threatened to crack the carefully constructed facade. And me? I was left in the wreckage of the castle he'd built and then demolished.

But our connection, it ran deeper than anyone knew. I'd glimpsed a vulnerability in him hidden from the world, a tenderness he reserved only for me.

Now, as I watched him flaunt his supposed conquests, a smirk played on my lips. He cursed under his breath ; I saw through the act. He knew I wasn't fooled by his theatrics. He might be able to fool everyone else, but not me.

This charade wouldn't last forever. Once I picked up the pieces, once I was whole again, he'd realize what he'd lost. The girl who saw him, the girl who loved the broken parts he kept hidden, the girl who held the key to a love he both craved and feared.

So today I was Ignoring the seedy stares in Knockturn Alley, I marched towards the dingy bar Mattheo frequented.

There he was, slumped over a counter, a half-empty bottle of something potent in front of him. Before he could down another shot, I snatched the glass from his hand.

"Y/N? What are you doing here?" he slurred, a flicker of surprise crossing his features.

"This place is dangerous," He said, "You shouldn't be here."

"So are you,"I say.

He mumbled something about me not understanding, but his defiance seemed hollow. Outside, the cool night air slapped him awake a bit.

"Look, can you give us a minute please ?" I pleaded to Theo , he was the one who told me about this mess and get me there , he nodded in understanding.

Leading Matteo to a dimly lit alley behind the bar, I took a deep breath, trying to find the right words. He sank down onto the cobblestones, avoiding my gaze. "Why did you come?" .

"Because I care about you," I said simply.

He scoffed. "You don't understand."

I shook my head, a smile tugging at my lips. "Actually, the problem is I do understand too well. If I hadn't, I would have walked away after you broke things off. But I know you better than that, Mattheo."

His eyes flickered up to meet mine, a flicker of vulnerability replacing the drunken bravado.

"You're better off without me," he muttered, pushing his hair back.

"No," I said, taking his hand. "And I don't care. I knew what I was getting into. This is my choice, Mattheo. I choose you, with all your crazy antics and trouble. I'm not trying to change you – I love you just the way you are, And you Mattheo Riddle. You deserve that love."

The words hung heavy in the air. He stared at me, stunned. "And I promise," I continued, "we can take things slow. If you do love me, I'm willing to—"

He cut me off, his voice rough with emotion. "Dammit, Y/N, I love you more than anything in this world. That scares the living hell out of me."

Before I could respond, he pulled me into a kiss. It was desperate, hungry, as if he'd been holding himself back for far too long. My heart hammered against my ribs as I kissed him back, the alley momentarily fading away.

When we finally broke apart, his eyes were filled with a mixture of fear and relief. "I'm sorry," he mumbled, leaning his forehead against mine.

I nodded, gently pushing his hair back. "I know. Just promise me you won't do that again. I love you, but it hurt."

"Never again," he promised, his voice thick with sincerity.

This time, it was my turn to initiate the kiss. It was slower, softer, filled with a new understanding. As we pulled away, breathless, he mumbled, "I never did anything with those girls."

A playful smile crept onto my face. "Oh, believe me, I know. if you did, you wouldn't have a pretty face left."

With a mock grimace, he pulled me closer. "Now come on," i said, "let's get out of here before your little knight in shining armor gets impatient with us."

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ── ─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆

[hyperfixationhobo]

Headcanons of the LADS!!!!!

———————————

If there’s one thing that i absolutely love it’s headcanons! I always take my time to study characters and just take the info and sprint with it cause ain’t no one gonna stop me. So why not do it for the Lads? Just some little things I think make them a bit more fleshed out.

Xavier:

. Sleeps wearing running shorts and a sweaters.

. Said sweaters constantly have star themed designs and are pastel.

. Speaking of pastel I really want him to wear more pastel colors. Like I get the color scheme but dammit he’ll look so good in them!

. Uses 3 in 1.

. Please make him stop using that.

. Has the best puppy dog eyes and definitely uses it to his advantage.

. He’s definitely the type to give some guy a quick punch to the throat if he deems it necessary. He does it so fast no one really has the time to process it before he’s using his ‘innocent eyes’.

. Definitely has a ton of plushies after meeting you.

. I think his bedroom would be a bit cluttered.

. The type to research your favorite hobby then proceed to pretend he doesn’t know about said hobby but asks you just the right questions cause he did his research.

. Bunny house slippers…need I say more?

. Definitely watches anime with you.

. Flexible…just gonna leave that here.

. Not the best at being aware of temperature, has worn shorts in the middle of winter.

Zayne

. To me Zayne seems like the type to cry if you cry. I mean like you have to be sobbing and he’ll comfort you and once you fall asleep he starts to cry cause he isn’t capable of taking away what is causing you pain.

. Isn’t the best with expressing emotions so he writes you letters to try to make up for it. Makes communicating much easier tbh.

. Biggest cuddleslut out there. Absolute cuddlewhore. He doesn’t see you much and his power is ice so I think the warmth that comes with cuddling is something he’s addicted to.

. Loves holding your hand, again for the warmth.

. Naturally cold hands so he rubs them together to warm them before touching someone.

. Freezing feet. Just straight up frozen.

. “Zayne I love you but keep your feet on your side of the bed or put on some socks.

. Doesn’t admit it but addicted to coffee.

. Terrible hand writing.

. Hates Brussels sprouts.

. Loves jigsaw puzzles.

. Also loves eggnog, especially with some cinnamon sprinkled on top.

. (I can’t remember which arm of his gets frozen I think it’s the left) His left arm is a bit more tender than his right so he loves when you massage it.

. Wears every scarf you buy him.

Rafayel

. Anytime I image Rafayel in clothes it always contains lace and silk. I have no idea why but to me it seems like something he would wear.

. Has mixed opinions about aquariums. On one hand some aquariums do help out sick and injured sea life and yeah that’s amazing especially if the sea animal wouldn’t survive in the wild anymore. On the other hand some aquariums are greedy money hogging bastards and just keep sea life just to keep it.

. Is the type to give the silent treatment then proceed to break it cause he misses talking to you.

. Has watched the little mermaid, absolutely loves it even if it’s completely wrong about his species.

. “Man if I could steal voices I would.”

. Can’t dance for shit.

. Self care king.

. Gets sick quite easily.

. Can’t hold his alcohol and gets drunk pretty easily.

. Definitely soaks in bubble baths.

. The second idiot in ‘the two idiots’ love trope. Absolutely fuels impulse decisions.

. “That seems very dangerous….lets do it!”

. Two words to describe his studio. Organized mess.

. Really really serious about promises. You’re not allowed to break anymore.

Sylus

. Eats steaks medium rare. He tried rare and absolutely not.

. Unknowingly taps his foot when irritated.

. Also unknowingly clicks his pen when focused.

. Only writes in cursive.

. Picks you up just to pick you up.

. Definitely hates when people wake him up by opening the curtain.

. Gets sunburnt easily.

. Hides your shoes to make you stay longer.

. Is the type to get mad at someone being too loud cause he’s on the phone even though he’s in the middle of a fucking shoot out.

. “Yknow it’s pretty rude to be loud when someone’s on the phone.”

. Definitely has fuzzy house shoes.

. Has had his hardwood floor waxed then proceeded to slip and fall from the waxed floor and now when his floor gets waxed he stays out the entire day.

. Loves ice cream.

. His body is a fucking heater. Cuddles are only done with the AC set to below freezing.

[starsjulia]

drunk on love // alexia putellas

a/n : just a short one i came up with

warnings : really sweet, drunk, alexia.

The warm, golden glow of fairy lights strung across the living room set the perfect ambiance for a cozy movie night at Mapi and Ingrid’s place. The remnants of dinner—empty plates and half-eaten snacks—littered the coffee table, and an impressive collection of wine bottles stood like a trophy display of the night’s indulgence.

Mapi lounged back on the couch, her arm draped lazily over Ingrid’s shoulder, the two exchanging soft smiles and whispers. The television flickered with a forgotten movie—something about an epic heist, though no one was really paying attention anymore. The night had already moved beyond the film’s plot, fueled by laughter and stories.

On the other side of the couch, you sat comfortably, sipping your wine and chuckling at a joke Ingrid had just cracked. Beside you, Alexia’s cheeks were flushed, a telltale sign of her low alcohol tolerance. She had long since abandoned any pretense of being her usual composed self; the second glass of wine had done away with that.

Alexia shifted, leaning into your side with a dreamy expression, eyes shimmering in the dim light. “Mi amor,” she whispered, her voice drawing out each syllable like a song, “you’re sooooo pretty.” Her fingers traced lazy patterns on your arm, and she rested her head on your shoulder.

You laughed softly, glancing at Ingrid and Mapi, who exchanged amused looks. Mapi bit her lip, barely stifling a giggle, while Ingrid’s eyes sparkled with mirth. They had seen Alexia in many moods—focused, fierce, serious—but never quite like this.

“Ale,” you said, the smile on your lips wide and warm, “we’re not alone, remember?”

Alexia’s brows furrowed as she pulled back just enough to meet your eyes. Her gaze was searching, earnest. “Pero ven aquí, bebé, siéntate en mi regazo, te echo de menos,” she murmured. “But come here, baby, sit on my lap, I miss you.”

You raised an eyebrow, trying not to laugh. “How can you miss me? I’m right next to you.”

Alexia giggled, the sound soft and melodic. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, eyes never leaving your face. “Sé que estás aquí, pero no es lo mismo,” she said, pouting slightly. “I know you’re here, but it’s not the same.”

“You’re impossible,” you teased, but moved to sit on her lap anyway, feeling her arms wrap tightly around your waist.

“¿Estás segura de que eres mi prometida?” Alexia asked suddenly, her expression serious as she searched your face. “Are you sure you’re my fiancée?”

You blinked, taken aback by the question. “I’m pretty sure, Ale,” you replied, a smile creeping onto your lips.

“No puedo creerlo,” she whispered, eyes wide with admiration. “I can’t believe it.” “Mírate, eres demasiado bonita.” “Look at you, you’re too pretty.”

“Oh, stop,” you said, a hint of bashfulness coloring your cheeks.

Alexia shook her head, a playful glint in her eyes. “Entonces bésame,” she said, tilting her head up. “Then kiss me.” She leaned forward, pressing her lips to yours before you could remind her that Mapi and Ingrid were still watching.

“Ale,” you mumbled against her lips, gently pulling back. “Remember where we are?”

“Mmm, no,” she hummed, chasing your mouth with hers, eyes fluttering shut. “Demuéstrame que eres mía.” “Prove to me you’re mine.”

“I love you, and I’m definitely yours silly,” you reassured her, cupping her cheek. “But we’re not alone.”

“Ay, sorry,” Alexia mumbled, though a smile tugged at her lips, unbothered by her embarrassment. “But you’re still so pretty,” she added, unable to resist brushing her thumb against your jawline.

“I’m flattered,” you whispered, pressing a soft kiss to her forehead. “I love you, even when you’re a big lightweight.”

“Especially then,” Ingrid teased, raising her glass in a mock toast.

Mapi leaned forward, eyes gleaming. “This really isn’t the captain we see at training,” she said, winking at Alexia, who only buried her face into your neck, giggling.

As the night wore on, the movie continued in the background, but it was the shared laughter, the warmth of bodies pressed close, and Alexia’s soft, wine-sweetened whispers of affection that became the real story—one that needed no script or spotlight to be cherished.

[noceurous]

lights, camera, action

your boyfriend gets his hands on a handycam, later on you

warnings: mentions of divorce, mentions infidelity, Dave’s family is also mentioned, some self-doubt and angst, looots of feelings (sorry idk what took over me ehehe), swearing, smut: fingering (f receiving), oral (f receiving), p-in-v sex, slapping, daddy kink, usage of various nicknames (baby, darling, etc) minors dni (18+) reader is able bodied + has some length of hair + afab.

a/n: my birthday is officially on 10th of september, but this fic turned out to be longer than i expected, so i said post it with a fic you feel good.

a/n2: this fic takes place in the same universe with [take the heat away, make the girl stay] but they can be read separately.

Carol was a really nice woman after the divorce.

It was nice of her to call you a homewrecker, among many other names.

It was nice of her to fill Molly and Alice’s heads with wrong ideas about you.

It was nice of her to call Dave in the middle of your date and tell him that he’ll come back crawling back to her after he’s done with you. just like the girls before and made sure you heard it.

Lastly, it was nice for Carol to send all of his belongings to your tiny apartment. You didn’t even know how she got your address. Just after a simple ring of the doorbell, you were standing between piles of light brown boxes.

“Shit, did she really do that too?” Dave asked over the phone as you stood inside the labyrinth made of boxes.

“Yep, what’s left of your relationship is now inside my living room.” You said as you eyed over the boxes. Trying to find out if your relationship was enough to fill one box.

“They’re mostly clothes, family photos and Father’s Day gifts. There is nothing left of the relationship.” You were familiar with the last sentence. Dave used that to reassure you during the beginning of your relationship. 

He also used that sentence to girls, and Carol. When any one of them accused you of breaking them up.

“Yeah, probably. I’m gonna take a shower. When will you be back?”

“Fifteen minutes tops. Do you want anything?”

“No, just you.” His chest hurt when he heard how your voice cracked before you ended the phone call.

He hated Carol when she did that. Blaming you for everything went wrong in the marriage. Taking her anger out on you, when in truth you came into him long after he decided on a divorce.

—

“Darling? I’m home.” He didn’t hear your reply, but the water sound came from the bathroom.

He took off his long coat, his keys still in his hand when he walked towards the living room. Greeted with a pile of boxes. He couldn’t imagine how you felt when a box after a box came into your place. He would call Carol again, but he knew pretty well whatever he said to stop her, just would fuel Carol’s anger.

He raised his key, slashing and opening one right through the tape with it.

Fake plastic trophy of being the Best Dad Ever, broken hand painted coffee mugs, a photograph in a frame from Alice’s first soccer game. 

He went through some of the boxes more. As he assumed they were mostly clothes and stuff related to girls. Mainly photo albums which were half empty since Carol only sent him photos he was included. Nothing more.

When he was going over his last box, something silver at the corner of the box caught his eye. When he took it out, he was greeted with an old handycam.

“No way.” He smiled as he took it out. Shocked when he found out it was still charged.

He heard your footsteps when you came towards him, wrapped a towel around your body and another one around your head.

“What is that?” You walked towards him, the scent of your shower gel filling his nostrils.

Orchids.

“That’s my old handy-cam. Got stuck between stuff, still works.”

He explained as he checked if there were any pre saved videos. He remembered using it for Alice’s school plays and Molly’s soccer practice. Half remembering that he already saved them to Carol’s computer.

He pressed on the record button, when he saw the red blinking light he raised the camera to you.

“What are you doing!” You chuckled, covering your face.

“Recording my lovely girlfriend.”

“I’m in a towel.” He shrugged, still keeping the camera on you.

“That’s better.” He said as he zoomed on your legs, slowly lifting the camera to your body. “Don’t be shy. Camera loves you.”

“Is it the camera? Or is it my horny boyfriend?”

“Both. Give me something baby, come on.” You rolled your eyes, blew a kiss and winked at the camera.

“That’s better.” He said as he placed his hand on your towel, raising an eyebrow.

Before you could understand his next move, he tugged the towel down, watching it pool around your ankles.

“Dave!” You protested, hands covering your breasts.

“Don’t be shy honey. This is just for me. Show it to me.” You huffed, placing your hands at your waist. Sticking out your chest more as he pointed the camera at your breasts, recording every inch for you.

He licked his lips at your sight. “I’m a lucky bastard aren’t I?”

“Try the luckiest.”

He chuckled, motioning you to the couch. “Take a seat.” You rolled your eyes, swinging your ass as you walked towards the couch. You knew he was zooming in there.

He whistled, “That’s my girl” as he followed you. Sitting further from you on the coffee table. “Open your legs for me, come on.” The sight of your glistening pussy was on camera, Dave’s hand was slightly shook, blurring the view for a second. He tried to play it like he was affected less from the sight of you than he actually was. 

“Hmm, you’re wet baby.” You smirked at the camera, slowly nodding. “Who made you this wet?”

“You did.” You pressed your fingers on your lips, spreading them to show him your swollen clit covered in your silk. “See? It’s all for you.”

He felt his pants tighten, he didn’t even find the time to take off his tie since he got back. Now you were standing all naked for him, showing off your perfect body. And he had too much clothes on to feel you on his skin.

“Be a good girl, play with yourself for me. But don’t cum.” He said as he slowly placed the camera on the coffee table. Angling it to the perfect angle.

Your eyes were looking into his eyes, as he clicked his tongue pointing at the camera. “Eyes on the camera baby.” You swallowed down your whimper. Thumb pressed onto your clit, feeling your walls clench around nothing.

You pushed a finger inside you, moaning at your wetness. You closed your eyes, for a second, your other hand was on the cushion, grasping it tightly.

You started moving your finger, in and out, playing with your clit then back in. “Open your eyes.” You opened them, seeing Dave in front of you, behind the camera.

He was naked, his cock in his hand, slowly pumping himself. You could tell he was rock hard, it was painful for him not to touch you. “See what you’re doing to me?” You gulped, nodding quickly.

“Add another finger.” You did as he said, your toes curled, walls clenching around your fingers. You didn’t have to look down to know your juices were dripping down on your couch, making a mess.

You continued to finger yourself slowly, eyes locked on the red light on the camera. You could feel you were close to reaching your orgasm, trying to hold it as long as possible.

Your whimpers filled his ears, his eyes locked at the way your naked chest came up and down. Each second it became harder for him to not feel you on his skin. You were a sight for his sore eyes, all he carved for his life.

“Show me.” He said as he knelt between your legs. You took your fingers out of your pussy, the wet sound of it crying made both of you moan.

Your fingers were glistening with your juices, you took them inside your mouth, sucking off your juices.

His warm breath fanning your weeping pussy. He quickly hooked your legs on his shoulders. Diving into your pussy, drinking your juices right from your core. 

Your body trembled as his warm tongue touched you. Drawing long strokes with the tip of his tongue. “Oh Fuck!” You said as your hand went back to cushion. Supporting yourself as Dave continued to lick over your folds aggressively. 

He raised his face, his lips and chin covered with your juices. The corner of his lips raised into a smirk. “You taste so good.” He said before he dove back in. Sucking down your clit.

You smirked at the camera, hand going to your breast. “Fuck! Dave! You are so good!” You pinched down your swollen nipple. Pulling him closer to your core by pressing your ankles on his back.

He pushed a finger inside you, eyes pointed up to your blissed face. You were looking right at the camera just like he told you. His pretty girl always followed his orders without making him give them twice.

“Fuck!Fuck!Fuck!” You were chanting out as he was brutally fucking you with his finger. His lips on your thigh, kissing along the soft flesh, pressing his teeth on your inner thigh.

He pushed another finger inside. “Are you going to cum?” You looked down at him, eagerly nodding.

“May I? Please daddy, I’ve been so close.” He chuckled, curling his fingers inside you. Earning a loud moan from you. “Please.”

Who was he to deny you from pleasure?

“Cum for me.” He said as he sucked your clit once more, fingers still moving inside you. Your body shook when he brushed along your sweet spot. Pads of his fingers pressing on it just right. “Fu—“ Your body jolted backwards, your mind went blank as the white pleasure surrounded your body.

You were panting heavily, as he got up between your legs slowly, his hand wrapped around his cock. Fingers shining with your juices. Your mouth watered with the sight. You wanted him. You wanted more.

With the dark look in his eyes, you knew he wanted the same. “Get on the floor. On your hands and knees.”

You got in the position like he asked, shaking your ass a little when you got on your knees. He slapped you harshly causing you to fall on your hands. Your lips parted, showing him one of his favorite views; your ass in the air, your hole greedily waiting for him.

He pressed his tip on your entrance, “Look at the camera, don’t close your eyes, or I’ll stop.” You knew this was more of a statement than a threat. Before you could say something he gradually pushed himself inside of you, letting go of his breath when he reached your limit. His cock twitched inside you when your walls welcomed him inside.

“Oh.” You moaned at feeling full, still sore from his fingers. Your pussy greedily accepting him, already addict to the sweet pain.

He could see your glossy, lustful gaze thanks to the camera. Cursing himself for not thinking this sooner. Not thinking of saving these moments of you. Not starting saving anything he could save from you.

He placed his hands on your waist. Getting his momentum as his hips started slapping against your ass, not wasting any time with being gentle. Today was not one of his gentle, love making days. He needed you. He needed to take what was his.

He was not having a great time at work. Now he also had to handle Carol and stop her from attacking you.

He had to protect you and he had no objection to that. If it was allowed, he would tear up the limbs of anyone who dared to hurt you. It does not have to be physical abusive, just a simple word was enough to get him violent. There was nothing in this world that would stop him to protect you.

You were his purpose in life, his guiding light.

“Please.”

Your crying voice turned him back to reality, his eyes snapped back to the camera from your shaking ass. Your eyes teared from pleasure, thin layer of sweat covering your cheeks.

“Yes?”

“Please cum inside me. I missed feeling your cum inside. I’ve been empty for days.”

He had some stuff to take care of in Denmark. Unfortunately his little business trip took longer than he expected. So all you were able to do were some quick calls and exchanging text messages. Whispers of “I miss you” were exchanged as you bit your tongue not to say “I love you” too soon.

“Baby…” He said, getting faster than before, chasing his pleasure. You moaned, when he pushed in a bit too hard. Your hand stopped you from falling forward. Forehead almost hit the coffee table.

He cursed his ignorance, wrapping his arm around your neck, leaning over figure. He pressed his lips on your sweet spot behind your ear, feeling your body tremble between his arms. He nudged your temple with the tip of his nose, taking in your smell.

“I’ve got you.” He whispered, eyes locked with yours on the screen.

“You look so good, baby. I feel how you tighten around me, you want to cum again don’t you?”

“Yes, please.”

“You want me to make you?”

“Ye—yes...” His hand went to your clit from your waist, flicking it rapidly. “F—fuck! D—dave!”

“Go on, come all over my cock baby! Fuck you’re milking me so good.” He slapped your ass, grabbing a handful of the soft flesh before whispering to the shell of your ear. “You want me to cum inside don’t you? Fill you right to the brim?”

He groaned at how your walls tighten around him with your question. “Yes! Fuck yes! Please fill me up. I’ll do anything, please.” He sucked a bruise your neck, his hot breath from his nose fanning on your throat.

“If you really want to…” He said as he spurted out his cum inside you, pressing down on your swollen clit. Holding your body with his arm still wrapped around your neck as it trembled with your orgasm.

“Dave!” Your voice shook as you tried to keep yourself up. Feeling his hot cum spill inside you. He turned your head to the side, smashing his lips to yours. You moaned into the kiss, opening your mouth for his tongue to enter. Your salty taste on his tongue as he sucked yours.

Taking everything you offered to him.

He slowly took himself out, some of his cum spilled out from your hole. He tsked, gathering them with his fingers and pushing them back in. You hissed with the contact, looking over your shoulder to him.

“I’ll send someone tomorrow, to take care of the boxes. I don’t want you to worry about them.” You nodded, as he lied down next to you. Pulling your naked body to lie on his naked chest. You buried your head on his chest, kissing right above where his heart his.

You took the camera from the table, stopping the recording. You smiled at the video, thinking how better you looked than you guessed.

“Like a true temptress.” Dave said, as he buried his nose in your hair, his fingers drawing circles on your upper arm.

“Can I keep a copy as well?”

“Anything you want darling.” He said as he kissed you, slowly moving you to his lap between kisses. “Anything for you.”

—

The next morning Dave’s men came to collect the boxes. And Carol had an anonymous email in her inbox with no subject.

It was a small photo where Dave was eating you out. When she scrolled down, she saw your text added underneath.

Mine, back off.

Needless to say, the email disappeared a few minutes later it was read, without leaving any trace.

—

please provide comments/reblogs if you liked this fic. they always mean a lot 💙

[diamonddaze01]

Fake it Til You Make it [TEASER]

pairing: boo seungkwan x f!reader | teaser wc: 1.2k genre: coworkers au, fake dating au, fluff, humor, suggestive, angst warnings: language, alcohol consumption, suggestive scenes a/n: for cam&em’s lonely hearts cafe collab (everyone go read every fic or i will Find You) // the biggest of hugs and kisses to @ylangelegy and @haologram for beta-ing this for me! this is a continuation of morning rush (not required to read this, but might help with some context!

join my taglist here <3

summary: You could honestly throttle Seokmin right now. Of all the half-baked, caffeine-fueled ideas he’s ever had, convincing the entire office that you and Seungkwan—your sworn nemesis and parking spot thief—are madly in love might just take the cake.

Seokmin has a plan. A really, really, really good plan. He’s sure of it.

Mostly.

He leans against the breakroom counter, nursing the world’s saddest cup of instant coffee, and considers the potential fallout. Sure, you and Seungkwan will probably strangle him (or, in your case, make an entire PowerPoint on “Why Lee Seokmin Deserves to Be Laid Off”), but the rewards outweigh the risks. Seokmin glances toward the hallway, where the faint sound of Aera and Ayoung’s laughter echoes, their voices just a pitch too smug. No, this plan is flawless. Foolproof. Nobel Prize-worthy, even.

All he has to do now is sell it to the two people who loathe each other the most in the office.

He hadn’t meant to open his mouth, but God, Aera and Ayoung had to have been demons crafted by the devil himself, the kind that thrived on overpriced lattes and the scent of shattered self-esteem. Seokmin had just been passing through the hallway, minding his own business—okay, eavesdropping a little—when he caught wind of their conversation.

“Honestly, I don’t know why she even bothers coming to these galas,” Aera had said, inspecting her manicure like it held the secrets of the universe. “It’s not like anyone actually notices her. She’s basically furniture.”

“Right? What’s the point if you don’t have someone on your arm?” Ayoung had added, with a theatrical sigh. “But then again, who would even want to go with her? She’s so…. ugh.”

The “ugh” had been the final straw. Seokmin hadn’t thought twice—he’d stormed over, ready to unleash a tirade about how you were the hardest-working person in the office, how you’d single-handedly carried your team through last quarter’s hellish project, and how you absolutely deserved more respect.

Instead, what came out of his mouth was: “Y/N has a date. Obviously.”

The two women blinked at him in unison, their perfectly sculpted eyebrows raising in surprise. “Oh?” Aera recovers quickly, tilting her head. “And who’s the lucky date? You?”

Seokmin laughed, loud and unconvincing. “Me? No, no, I’m going with Soonyoung, like I always do.”

Ayoung narrowed her eyes. “Then who?”

And this is where Seokmin’s brain had short-circuited. He glanced around the room, as if the walls might offer some divine intervention. Nothing. Just the faint hum of the vending machine. His mind raced, searching for a name that would shut them up, and then—

“Seungkwan,” he blurted out.

Both women stared at him, stunned. “Seungkwan?” Aera repeated, incredulous.

“Yep! Seungkwan,” Seokmin had said, doubling down because he knew there was no turning back. “They’ve been together for ages. Super lowkey about it, though. You know how Seungkwan is.”

The silence was deafening.

“Seungkwan,” Ayoung echoed, her expression twisting into disbelief. “Boo Seungkwan. As in, ‘my parking spot is sacred ground’ Seungkwan?”

Seokmin’s grin tightened. “The very same.”

For a moment, the two women exchanged a look, processing this unexpected development. Then, to Seokmin’s immense relief, Aera shrugged. “Huh. I guess that makes sense. They’re both kind of…intense.”

“I mean, they fight like an old married couple,” Ayoung had added, smirking.

“Exactly!” Seokmin said, clinging to the lifeline they’ve unknowingly thrown him. “Soulmates, right?”

The rumor spread faster than an office email about free donuts, and by lunchtime, it seemed like everyone had an opinion about your supposed relationship with Boo Seungkwan. The first domino fell when Mingyu slid into the seat across from Seungkwan in the cafeteria, tray in hand and a knowing smirk plastered across his face. He casually tossed his napkin onto his lap, but there was a glint in his eyes that made Seungkwan pause mid-bite.

“So,” Mingyu began, spearing a piece of chicken with far too much casual flair, “you and Y/N, huh? Cute.”

Seungkwan, who had been halfway through chewing a mouthful of rice, immediately choked so violently he nearly toppled the entire tray. The force of his cough was so dramatic that Joshua, seated a few spots away, paused mid-bite and gave Seungkwan a couple of hard thumps on the back, muttering a half-hearted “Jesus, dude” under his breath. The rest of the table fell silent, watching the spectacle unfold with varying degrees of concern and mild amusement.

“Excuse me?” Seungkwan sputtered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes wide with a mixture of horror and confusion.

“You know…” Mingyu leaned in, lowering his voice conspiratorially, the way someone would when revealing state secrets. “You. Y/N. The whole undercover thing.” He paused for effect, looking around as if making sure no one else was eavesdropping. “Honestly, I didn’t see it coming, but it makes sense. You two do bicker like an old couple. It’s kinda cute, actually.”

Seungkwan froze mid-chew, his chopsticks hovering in midair, as his brain scrambled to process Mingyu’s words. Undercover thing? Old couple? Y/N?

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Seungkwan said flatly, his voice a mix of exasperation and genuine confusion, although a tiny bead of sweat had already begun to form at his temple. He glanced around, noticing the way a few of his coworkers at the nearby tables were suddenly pretending to be deeply invested in their food, but the side glances they were stealing were hard to miss.

Mingyu squinted, his expression becoming exaggeratedly serious. “Don’t play dumb, Seungkwan. Aera and Ayoung said you and Y/N have been secretly dating for ages. Ages. Like, seriously. You two are practically the office power couple.”

Seungkwan stared at Mingyu, not entirely sure whether he should laugh or start hyperventilating. His eyes flickered to Joshua, who was now giving him a sympathetic glance, and then back to Mingyu, whose grin had only grown wider with every passing second. The conversation around them had slowly started to fade into the background, leaving only the sound of Seungkwan’s rapidly beating heart in his ears.

For a brief moment, the only sound was the clatter of utensils against trays, and the faint sound of someone sneezing a few tables over, as though the entire room was collectively holding its breath. Then, with the force of a dam breaking, Seungkwan exclaimed, “WHAT?!”

The sound was so loud and high-pitched that the people around them flinched. Mingyu’s smirk only deepened.

“Yeah, you heard me,” he said, as if the news was the most normal thing in the world. “You and Y/N—together. Lowkey, sure, but people are noticing. Honestly, I'm impressed. You've got good chemistry. You bicker, you glare at each other like it's a sport, and boom—no one can resist you two.”

Seungkwan’s eyes widened even further, if that was possible. His mouth opened and closed, but no words came out for a solid five seconds. “You... Mingyu, this is—this is insane. We’re not—”

“I mean, you guys do fight like an old married couple,” Mingyu added, completely unbothered. “Classic relationship stuff.”

Seungkwan let out a high-pitched groan, dropping his chopsticks onto his tray as he slumped back in his seat. Joshua patted him on the back with a sympathetic look. “Honestly, man, at this point, I think everyone’s already betting on how long you two last.”

Seungkwan turned a death glare on Mingyu. “Mingyu, I am not dating Y/N, okay? Not. I don’t even—”

“Sure you’re not,” Mingyu said with a wink, leaning back and taking a leisurely sip of his drink. “But hey, if you need help smoothing it over, let me know. I could use a good laugh.”

[sanyu-thewitch05]

Yandere Jock X F! Bookworm! Reader

Pt. 2 Pt.3

TW: Non-con, dubcon, spankings, mention of isolation, bribery

A/N: I’m excited to write my first smut like this. It was a much needed writing exercise.

Kofi: Wanna buy me a coffee?

🍒🍒🍒🍒🍒🍓🍓🍓🍓🍓

You were always a bookworm. You didn't like talking to other people much, but you value the few friends you have. That was until he came along. The school jock, the lightly tanned skin with sun-kissed hair boy, with six-foot stature. Along with muscles to match his build. He rarely came by you, but that day fate decided to let his eyes shine down on you in your corner of the library.

He grabbed a book about muscle mass and sat next to you in the blue bean bag.

"Have I seen you around anywhere? You look familiar," He asked, looking at you as you focused on your book more. "Not a talker, huh?"

You refused to give this guy the time of day, especially when you didn't want to be a one-time hookup. You close your book and leave the library, not paying attention to the football player behind you. If only you knew how much he wanted you.

Eventually, as the day went on, he would try to talk to you, but to no avail. You simply didn't want to be one of his sexual conquests. Then, the pep rally came for the big game, and that's when your life changed forever. As usual, your bookworm self skipped the pep rally to head out to the library. You didn't like the noise and screams of other students, and you especially didn't like being crowded in a gymnasium during a hot day.

You grabbed a shiny blue book from the middle shelf and settled into the bean bag near a dark and quiet corner. The librarian had already gone home but left the keys under the doormat since she knew you liked to come after hours. Although, it was a pain having to lock up before going home.

The last bell rang, but unfortunately, you couldn't hear it due to falling asleep from reading Caraval. But that wasn't unusual for you. You'd just wake up and walk out of the library minutes to hours later. Unfortunately, your absence at the pep rally had caused the final straw to break in this poor jock's mind. He had been trying to get your attention for days. Flowers in the locker you hardly visit, notes that ended up in the trash, and even $500 cash in your backpack. Nothing got your attention. You were always more interested in your damn books than him. But when you were nowhere to be seen during the pep rally, something broke inside of him. You obviously needed help noticing him, and he knew just how to fix it. He knew how you’re a virgin but still had the urge to touch yourself until orgasm. He was going to give you better than that. He was going to fuck your brains out. He was going to give the best fucking of your life. He was going to be oh so soft and gentle as he took your virginity away. That is if his testosterone-fueled rage didn’t make him overdue it.

He walked into the library and found your sleepy figure about to leave. Everyone had gone home, and the sun was starting to set. No one was going to help or catch you with him.

Like a predator in the dark, he made his move and slammed you into the brick wall, slightly tilting your glasses. He held both your hands above your head with one hand and used the other to grab your face.

“You’re going to pay attention to me. Not your books, not your phone, just me. Me!” He growled, his body twitching with rage. “Do you know how long I’ve tried to gain your attention? Your affection? Only for you to ignore me or brush me to the side!”

“I’m sorry! I truly didn’t mean to ignore you! I just thought you were messing with me!” You cried, tears streaming down your face as your glasses fogged up.

“Oh, but you did! You ignored me earlier today in this very library! You’ve ignored me whenever I tried to talk to you! Fuck! All those other girls I’ve let taint my body were for you! All for you! Your affection! Now it’s time I showed you how I feel since you won’t notice me without help!” He barks out, slamming his lips on yours.

His tongue didn’t even fight for dominance just took over your mouth. Occasionally, he’d wrap his tongue around yours, but his tongue was mainly greedy.

“Screw these! You don’t need them for this!” He growled, throwing your glasses off. “Perfect.”

Your hair was a mess, and drool trailed down your chin. His eyes began to stare at the baggy plain shirt covering your pretty ass. He roughly flipped you onto your stomach and lifted your ass up by the leggings. Despite your ass being small, it was still a cute bubbly round that he could pound into euphoria. He didn’t care you didn’t have a standard beauty body. That just meant more people would stay away from you. It was less work and bribing for him.

“Your choice, spankings, oral, or fingering? Though if we do fingering, we’re going straight to sex afterward,” He asks, slowly rubbing your ass.

“Spankings,” You answered immediately, wanting to stall him for as long as possible.

“Haha, I see you like my hands on your ass. Very well, I’ll spank you, but I’ll sneak in some kisses to ease the pain,” He said, slowly peeling your leggings to your knees.

His massive hands began to spank your ass roughly, occasionally slapping your sex to get more juices to spread around on your ass. It was only the beginning of the pleasure. You didn’t want to feel so good from him spanking you, but you were finding it hard to hold back your moans. He delivered the final slap to your ass, then dove straight into your ass to kiss your clothed pussy.

“I’m so glad you wore such thin lace panties today,” He moaned, beginning to kiss your sex more. “I don’t mind that you’re a jungle down there. It only means that everything will stay longer.”

You didn’t pay attention to a word he said as the pleasure from his praise was beginning to get to your head. Your eyes began to get unfocused, and eventually, you came in your underwear as his kisses quickened.

“Ah!” You moaned, realizing your mistake. He began to feast on the delicious cum served. “Agh! Ha! Fuck! Don’t slurp on it while you’re near me like that!”

He finished the last of your cum and peeled off your underwear. He gently flipped you onto your back and took your baggy shirt off, revealing a beautiful chest. He smiled and kissed your chest until he met your bra.

“You’ve got to show that rack more, darling. It suits you. I’ll buy you a matching set in your favorite color. Of course, I’ll only be able to see it, though,” He proposed, taking off the bra with one hand.

Your arms immediately went to your chest, but he stopped you from covering them up by gently rubbing a nipple.

“Sh, sh, sh, it’s ok, dear. Your chest size doesn’t bother me. It’s beautiful,” He cooed, kissing each breast. “Let me worship your body. You need to learn how much of a goddess you are.”

You nodded yes, but everything about it seemed wrong. But the kind words, the way he complimented you, made you feel loved. It made you feel the way those boys in the novels did. He had done all this work for you. Maybe you should give him a chance.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be gentle. You’ll only feel a bit of discomfort,” He said, lining his member up with your vaginal opening. His member matched his height and proudly displayed its six inches.

You wanted to look at him, but you couldn’t. Not only had he thrown your glasses across the room, but you couldn’t look him in the face. It felt so humiliating being in this position in your sacred space.

“It’s your glasses, isn’t it? I shouldn’t have thrown them. I know how protective you are of them since your last pair got broken by that reckless freshman playing football. Here, I’ll get them for you.” He got up and grabbed the glasses from the floor. He gently placed them on your face, letting you see the adorable face full of love and concern. “Is that better, beautiful?”

“Yeah, it is better. Thank you,” You said, earning a soft and gentle kiss.

He returned to his original position and gently wrapped your legs around his waist. He stuck the tip in and waited for your approval to move further.

“You can move more. I’ll be ok,” You said, trying not to let tears out.

“I’ll be slow,” He put his whole length in and waited for you to adjust.

Your legs tighten around his waist, and he begins to thrust in and out of you. Each thrust released a wave of pleasure, pleas, and moans. Both fed off each other’s arousal and pleasure, until the poor jock got pushed over the edge. He lifted your legs as far back as they could and straddled you, beginning his rapid-fire thrusts. Your genital hairs tangled with his causing more friction and tension with each thrust. Your moans for him and his moans for you echoed through the empty library.

“Hah, oh fuck! I’m cumming!”

“I know, darling! So am I!”

He put both hands on your cheeks and looked at you as his climax approached.

“Let’s cum together!”

He thrust one last time, and you both came. Although he came inside of you, you couldn’t care less. You were his now. Besides, you were taking the pill, and you were always perfect with following the schedule for it.

“I love you, darling, more than you realize.”

You couldn’t help but lay on the floor, naked, next to him and say, “I love you too.”

[ddandelionfluff]

moonlit recollections | viktor x reader

modern-ish? au; fluff; no relationship established; it's my first time posting pls forgive any mistakes; englishmajor!reader; inspired by Astrophil and Stella Sonnet 71

***

Who will in fairest book of nature know

You knock on his door at two in the morning, startling him out of the coffee-fueled haze he had been in for the past few days. Your voice carries through the thin door, asking if he was still awake. Joints creaking, Viktor pulls himself out of his desk, self-consciously smoothing out his too-wrinkled shirt and running his hands through his too-long hair as he opens the door, stopping quickly. The inside of his dorm is a mess, and if you saw it, you’d probably start trying to help him clean.  

He draws a breath as you look at him and laugh, the corners of your eyes crinkling as they trace his hair.

“You look rough.” An admonishment.

He shrugs.

“I have an exam tomorrow,” An apology.

“Which is why I’m here,” You say by way of explanation, which does not actually explain anything.

His brows furrow as he leans against the frame, taking some pressure off his leg. “I do not understand. We did not have a study session planned today.”

And even if you did, it wouldn’t have been at two in the morning.

You laugh again, a short, incredulous sound, and Viktor wishes he was funnier so he could be credited for it more often.

“No, genius, I’m here to get you to take a break. Also, you did miss our last session, so you owe me.”

How virtue may best lodged in beauty be

So here he was, following you through the dark university buildings as you, for the lack of a better word, broke into the arts lounge.

“It’s not breaking in if I’ve got the keys,” You justify, keys jingling in your hands. Viktor studies you as you fiddle with them, your face scrunched and tongue poking through your lips in concentration. You hadn’t taken off the lip oil you usually wore for moisture, and it glittered under the flashlight’s scrutiny.

“Hmm?” He says, realizing that you had said something, and that you were standing.

“Is the sleep deprivation getting to you, Viktor?” You tilt your head, eyes roving over his face, searching for the obvious signs of exhaustion painting his features. The purple under his eyes, drawing his face in even harsher lines, the line of tension between his brows. The way his features tended to draw into themselves like a plant unwatered. He watches you watch him, tracing your lips, touchless, trying to remember a word that wasn’t your name.

“I think it is,” He admits softly, afraid of letting you catch onto him.

You smile, hands finding the doorknob and twisting. You leaves the lights off, navigating through memory and the stray light of streetlamps streaming in. Viktor stumbles behind you, feeling his way through clumsily.

The doors to the balcony had been left open, a major oversight you grumble about as you slide them open. The air is chilly, making you shiver as it slithers past the warmth of your sweater. His sweater, Viktor notices. He had lent it to you a week ago, at your last session.

 Let him but learn of love to read in thee,

You had shown up to the library soaked through, the rain outside painting the world gray with its weeping. You tried to hide the shivering, but it was clear in the way you clenched your teeth, body drawn together with tension as you laughed off his concern.

“I don’t need my sweater, go change in the bathroom,” He had offered, both pitiful and exasperated at your lack of planning. With a sheepish smile, you had accepted the help, promising to return it as soon as possible.

Sunk into worn leather couches warmed by the nearby fireplace, you’d almost disappeared under the wool. As your hands danced across the page of the textbook in your lap, underlining and annotating the poem as you explained the basics of close-reading, Viktor couldn’t help but notice how you halted to push the sleeves up now and then as they got in the way.

It was supposed to be an easy class, but as of late, it had been taking up more time than his core courses. Not that Viktor could be bothered. You two had been in the library for hours now, on the couches near the fireplace—a frequent haunt. It was the best place to curl up with your anthologies in your laps, the lack of tables allowing  forcing Viktor to lean closer to see what you were pointing at, and—unbeknownst to him, for you to sit so your thigh would press up against his. Though he wasn’t aware of your design, he was plenty aware of the electricity firing up his nerves, even when the warmth of the fire threatened to drag him under.

He yawned, confused. Not only because he couldn’t make sense of your explanation or the sonnet itself, but also because he wasn’t used to the extreme bouts of fatigue that overtook him around you. It must be the literature, he had thought to himself, the words were literally putting him to sleep.

Stella, those fair lines which true goodness show.

“Tired?” You’d asked, sounding equally exhausted and perhaps a little hopeful. But Viktor had shaken his head—he’d needed to get through it that night, for the test was less than twenty-four hours away. The first one, his chance to set a standard for himself and to make an impression.

“Confused. I still do not understand what this last line adds to the poem. It is so…” Viktor had sighed, mouthing the line. “…random.”

“Well,” You’d started, tucking away a stray strand of hair. “If you look at the rest of the sonnet, Astrophil has been focusing on the virtuous parts of his love for Stella, basing it in admiration of her character and beauty from this very pure, respectful perspective. Almost like he was worshipping a deity rather than, I don’t know, loving a person. Keeping that in mind, what do you think the sudden interjection of desire might mean?”

Even half-asleep, you made the perfect teacher. Viktor wondered if he was making you question your decision to be an educator with his idiocy. Mulling over your words, he’d tried to formulate a response that would please you.

There shall he find all vices' overthrow,

That was the most difficult part of this subject—finding an appropriate answer. In his field, there was only ever one. But here? It felt like he was shooting in the dark, randomly putting together semblances of analysis in hopes of making the puzzle fit. It frustrated him.

“Hm,”—is what came out. Sighing, he’d tried again.

“Well, desire in this case would refer to a…carnal feeling, would it not?” The word was awkward against his tongue as he’d looked to you for approval, lighting up slightly when you nodded. Congratulations, you absolute genius, you remembered a basic definition, he thought sarcastically. It was a clear testament to his skills that even such a rudimentary recollection made you happy.

“Desire expresses, well, a desire for sustenance,” He’d continued. “So, it is being starved by the virtue of Astrophil’s love for Stella, then? Is that it?”

You smiled, teeth peeking out from behind your gloss-painted lips. “That is one interpretation, and a pretty good one at that.” Then, you’d paused, leaving Viktor confused again. A good interpretation did not mean the best one.

Not by rude force, but sweetest sovereignty

“Some might say that it’s a reminder that any true love can’t just be focused on virtue and purity, but also needs to encompass more carnal, ‘lowly’ aspects to be complete.” You explained, noticing his look. “But it really doesn’t matter what interpretation you argue for, as long as you have a strong argument.”

“But which is the better answer?” Viktor had asked incredulously, a hand threading through his hair.  

You laughed lightly. “There isn’t one, I suppose. Just whatever you can argue for.”

“That makes absolutely no sense.” He said with finality.

You shrugged as you scribbled down the analysis in his margins, leaning over so your hair was too close to Viktor’s face. He drew in a sharp breath, smelling the fresh scent of your shampoo.

“It’s just an exercise in close-reading, Viktor. The entire point is to discover the poem,”—you’d punctuated this statement with a flourish of your hand, rings glinting—"not to tie it up and beat it until it gives you the ‘right’ answer.”

Your voice had taken on that trademark gentleness, the tone it always took when you talked about anything you loved. Poetry, your favourite book, even a particularly good cup of coffee. It made Viktor’s chest ache, like it was pulling into itself, trying to shy away from you. He wondered if you could ever talk about him in that tone.

He’d been silent too long, eyes resting on your face absentmindedly. You laughed, snapping your fingers in front of him. He startled, sheepish. You’d been talking.

“Wanna call it a night?” You’d asked, shifting to face him properly, knees still tucked under your thighs.

Viktor had shaken his head. “No, I still do not feel entirely confident about this test,”

“Relax, Viktor, it’s only worth four points. Have fun with it,” You yawned, leaning your head against the couch, right beside his shoulder.

He’d mimicked you, leaning his head back to relieve the ache in his neck. “I would have thought that our semester-long acquaintance would have shown you how impossible that is.”

You had shrugged, blinking slowly. “Worth a try,”

Silence was a blanket over the two of you, your eyes shut lightly while Viktor tried to draw his away. He’d dreaded the end of this quiet, when you inevitably opened your eyes and sighed, a complaint about how you still had to go home and make dinner slipping from your lips. And Viktor had, once again, been too afraid to betray himself, to ask if you wanted to come over for dinner, to punctuate that question with the fact that his place was closer anyway. Instead, he’d stolen glances as you packed up, stopped you from returning his sweater, assuring you he’d just take it later.  

Of reason, from whose light those night-birds fly;

“Do you remember when we first met? You looked exactly like how you do right now,” On the balcony, you pull him out of his thoughts, leaning against the railing. He steps forward to join you, the cold metal a welcome shock compared to the nearly uncomfortable warmth your presence inspired in him.

“Are you trying to tell me I look horrible?” He replies flatly.

You shrug, smiling. “Maybe,”

He laughs, swallowing the faint bitter taste of self consciousness as he takes his place beside you.

That inward sun in thine eyes shineth so.

He’d been late on the first day, having to brace far too many stairs for his liking. The night before had been spent sleepless with pain in his leg, and the stairs that morning only made it worse. The only seat left was beside you, in the second row of all places. Cane thumping embarrassingly as the professor paused, Viktor had dropped beside you, trying his best not to disturb your arm as he settled in. The old hall, tucked away in the windowless basement of the Arts department, had creaky chairs and tiny pull-out desks, quite different from the state-of-the-art labs Viktor was used to. Despite his best efforts, his arm bumped against yours as he brought out his notebook.

You’d startled slightly, throwing him a small smile as he muttered a hasty apology. He began trying to decipher the page number by looking at your book, half-hidden by the arm you rested your head on. Unfortunately, you’d noticed that too. With another kind smile, you’d reached over and turned the book to the right page, pointing to the exact sonnet being discussed.

Though he thanked you, the lecture still flew over his head.

He could feel your eyes on him as you put your things away extra slowly, as if to match his pace in an attempt to not embarrass him further. If so, it didn’t work. He’d been painfully aware of the delay he was causing.

 “Are you in this faculty?” You’d asked as Viktor stood up. He was a deer caught in headlights as you swung your bag onto your shoulder.

“No, this class is, eh, a required option,” He’d said, feeling the paradox of the category.

“Really? The engineering students usually take the lower-level literature courses.”

“How do you know I’m in engineering?” Viktor had asked. Being easily discerned didn’t sound like a good thing.

You’d laughed. “Don’t worry, it’s only because I know most of the literature students, we’re a pretty small group.”

“Fair, but I could be in maths, or biology,” He’d titled his head. Around him, new students had started piling into the room. The two of you had been standing here for a while now.

“Well, you smell like motor oil and formaldehyde, so I think I got it half right.” You’d winked, stepping past him. You smelled like jasmine and books.  “I’ll see you around?”

And, not content to be perfection's heir,

And you had seen him around. The next lecture, you’d grabbed a seat closer to the entrance, saving the one beside you for him. He saw you as soon he entered, drawn to familiarity. Stopping just a step away, he noticed the bag, self-consciousness seeping in for a second as he wondered if he wasn’t as welcome as your last conversation had led him to believe. Perhaps that was just politeness, to help him save face? He had taken up a lot of your time.

Somewhere in the middle of his internal conflict, you had looked up from your book.

“Oh, hi, I saved you a seat!” You’d said cheerfully, a hint of tension in your smile. Later, you would tell him you were afraid to come off as too eager to be his friend. He found it unbelievable that someone could be embarrassed of wanting to be kind.

Viktor had never been so grateful for both his inability to decipher literature or his disability than the effect it had on his friendship with you. After the egregiously long reading list was distributed, you’d turned to him:

“I was thinking of going to get the books after class, do you want to come with? There’s quite a lot of them, so it would be easier for us to carry them together.”

Only when you were walking back to his dorm did he realize that in his eagerness to form an acquaintance, he had skipped over something quite obvious.

“You do not need help carrying these,” He said, slightly accusatory.  In one arm he carried a tower of half of the total required books, and, he realized again, only the thinnest ones.

 “Well, I didn’t want to come off as patronizing by asking you if you needed help,” You said, voice strained. From embarrassment or the effort, he could not tell. “Besides, my reasoning was so half-assed, I thought you saw through it.”

Viktor’s annoyance had only lasted a second before he noticed the breathlessness in your voice, no doubt from carrying almost double the weight you’d have to if you’d bought only your own books.

“Well then, I think I owe you for this,” He’d said, trying to keep his voice even. The truth was, even with you taking on so much of the burden, his arms and legs ached. There was no way he could’ve made it all the way back without your help. “Thank you.”

Now, you were definitely embarrassed. “You don’t have to thank me, any friend would do the same.”

Friend. He had other friends, but Viktor had still warmed at the fact that you’d decided his company was worth pursuing.

Thyself, dost strive all minds that way to move,

Now, here you were, a semester’s worth of study sessions and late-night talks later, still finding each other’s company worthy. Even as you stood silently, admiring the city’s skyline, basking in the presence of the other wordlessly.

“I must apologize,” Viktor begins suddenly. You shoot him a quizzical look but let him continue.

“For missing our last session,” He explains. Now your lips part, but Viktor continues. “No matter how busy I had been, I should’ve let you know I couldn’t make it. But I had just returned from an exam after two sleepless nights and fell asleep despite myself.”

You turn towards him, concern drawing your eyebrows together. “Viktor, why would you need to apologize for getting sleep? Speaking of which, why are you depriving yourself of rest?”

“I need to study, you know how it is,” He waves a dismissive hand, trying not to get anxious over the fact that he was currently wasting time.

“I must admit, I do not know how it is,” You reply. It was true, Viktor had noticed the delicate balance you struck in your own life, somehow always finding the time to socialize and keep yourself healthy without failing all your courses. Though you always said it was because your degree was easier, Viktor didn’t believe it.

“Unfortunately,” He sighs exaggeratedly, “we cannot all be gods of excellent time management.”

You laugh. “Not time management, just an easier program,”

Viktor shakes his head. “After taking just one of the courses that make up your schedule, I must disagree. I would have failed without you.”

You roll your eyes. “Yeah, sure, Vik.”

The nickname makes his heart stutter, even though you’d used it a thousand times. The lack of sleep truly was getting to him. In the silence that followed (because he couldn’t think of how to continue), you sigh.

“What’s the end for you, Vik?” You ask, looking at him sideways. “What’s the point of all this—the sleepless nights, the skipped meals, the self abandonment?”

The question was uncharacteristically heavy, and he wonders for a moment if he should inquire after you. But then again, it was half-past two and you were here, with him, instead of getting the minimum eight hours of rest you subscribed to, so perhaps that was a non-question.

Instead, he ponders the question you’d asked, mulling the words over in his mouth before speaking. He hadn’t really vocalized it before. “Well, I want to help people, I suppose. Help them and be remembered for it.”

You hum in understanding, expecting him to continue. And he does.

“I suppose I’ve felt…invisible. For most of my life, that is. Most people were embarrassed of looking at me, and the universe itself seemed to be telling me that I didn’t matter. So I made myself matter. Became the smartest in the room, the most accomplished, excelling intellectually so that no one had a chance to notice anything else.”

“Did it work?” You ask, barely above a whisper.

“I…do not know,” He admits, laughing slightly. “The recognition, the awards, the opportunities—they help, but the attention only lasts a few minutes, and it’s always…incomplete.”

“How so?”

He hesitates slightly, scared of the words about to leave him. “People don’t see all of you, I suppose. Just your mind, and your work. They still shy away from all the parts of you that don’t fit in,” He motions towards the cane still clutched in his hand, and the leg that now ached tenfold.

You hum in understanding, your eyes now finding his. “Like people only value you for what you can do, rather than who you are.”

“Exactly.” For a moment, Viktor is in awe of your ability to understand people, before he notices the tension in your shoulders and the tight way you’d said those words.

“What about you?” He asks. “What do you hope to achieve from all this?” 

Who mark in thee what is in thee most fair.

You take a breath, exhaling deeply as you look around. “Same as you, I suppose.”

“I was referring specifically to all this,” He waves a hand, gesticulating to your surroundings. “Taking care of so many people, in so many small ways. It must add up. It must take time away from studying, from actually working towards your goals.”

You laugh, but it’s more of a formality than genuine mirth. “I don’t really have big goals like you, a need to be remembered in history for doing something great. I don’t care about a classroom of kids studying history decades in the future, I care about my siblings remembering me the moment they’re, I don’t know, illegally drunk and have no ride. I want to love and be loved now, in the immediate. Screw legacy, or whatever,”

 Somewhere during your brief monologue, the fire behind your eyes had started blazing again. The traitorous ally that was the air in his lungs betrays him, as it usually does around you, but Viktor wouldn’t be surprised if he could just survive on the sight of you alone. Your shoulders tense, face taught, defenses raised, a vestige of having to defend your choices and your life from those who could never truly understand you. As much as he wished to reach out, ease the tension holding you tight, it was exhilarating to witness—the ferocity that inspired your love.

“What?” Your eyes meet his, finally, after roving everywhere else for the past few minutes. He realizes he’s been staring too long, too quietly. Licking his lips, coming up empty for words. Woops.

“Is there something on my face?”

A shake of the head. “No, no. You’re fine,”

“Alright,” You say, suspicious. “You don’t think I’m stupid, do you?”

“Of course not!” Viktor scrambles to correct you. “I was just…at a loss for words.”

“Whatever you say, Vikkie-boy,” You sigh, faking exasperation.

Viktor cringes at the nickname, which was novel.  “Please never use that term again.”

You pout, a teasing glint in your eye as you lean towards him. “Aw, you don’t like my new pet name?”

“Yes,” Viktor replies, deadpan. Partially because he cannot, with any self-respect, entertain such a monstrous butchering of his name, and because you were entirely too close to him. Close enough that he can see the pores in your skin and the pupils of your eyes, and the glittering liquid in your waterline.

So while thy beauty draws thy heart to love,

He catches the exact moment you notice it too, the proximity. Your gaze flits somewhere lower, and though he would like to flatter himself, Viktor resists the thought that comes. He hears your breath falter, tripping before correcting itself, your lips parted slightly.

Another thought, loud and overwhelming. Much harder to resist. Much harder to think past. So he doesn’t—think, that is. Doesn’t speak. Lets the silence and your confusion stretch on for a few more moments as he takes you in.

“You’re acting a bit strange,” You say, voice and eyes low. It sounds divine.  He could listen to it all night. “You wanna go to bed?”  

As fast thy virtue bends that love to good:

Viktor shakes his head. There’s never been anything he was surer of. Perhaps he should feel a bit guilty that through your profession of your morals, your defense of your values, he could only think of stepping closer to you. Of taking your breath away. Of, perhaps, taking care of you, for once. Repay you for all your favours. Perhaps he should feel guilty that instead of engaging with you intellectually, he could only think of softness, in your hair, your lips, your skin. But then again—

He recalls dimly the poem that started this all, its lines blurring past him to the beat of his own heart.

But "Ah," Desire still cries, "Give me some food!"

He could do it. Step closer, quiet the tidal waves in his mind that left him so mute. There was a ninety-five percent chance you wouldn’t mind, a similar chance you would enjoy it.

It wouldn’t feel like a forest fire, he could imagine that much. A hearth, perhaps. Steady and warm and comforting, the warm space between your lips where your breath mingles with his—peppermint and coffee, the taste of the chocolate you’d been nibbling before a palimpsest he could trace with his tongue.

He could do it.

Could he?

[hestzhyen]

An Extremely Subjective HakuHiro Romantic Trope Breakdown

Greetings, void. This arc is rough and the brainworms won't let me write my own hurt/comfort fan fiction- they demand half-baked analysis instead of lovemaking. So have the closest thing that passes for fluff from yours truly.

In essence, this is just a list of the explicitly romantic tropes I love applying to HakuHiro with varying degrees of gushing ship babble as justification. Some are definitely skewed hard towards headcanon but there's always at least a tenuous connection to something that's demonstrated in the work itself. Proceed if this kind of brain rot sounds like your jam! Otherwise just please let me die from cringe in peace.

Battle Couple

Offense and support working in perfect harmony.

So this is just one of my personal favourites, but Chihiro and Hakuri definitely have strong vibes for this trope. They fought together in an absolutely stunning display of mutual trust and understanding in the Rakuzaichi Arc. Seriously, these guys pulled off some truly spine-tingly good moves to take down Kyora despite Hakuri only just awakening to his powers the very same day.

They demonstrated this again in the train fight protecting Uruha- Hakuri and Chihiro only need the bare minimum of communication between them to fight in style. I look forward to more chances for them to show off their teamwork! If they end up fighting back-to-back in canon I'll probably just straight up ascend to fudanshi heaven on the spot. I LOVE BATTLE COUPLES.

Love at First Sight/Rescue Romance

"This is the kind of man I need in my life."

Love at First Sight is pretty self-explanatory: person A sees person B and immediately falls head over heels. It's easy to slap that on Hakuri in his introduction chapter- he's only missing an invitation to get to know each other over some coffee when they finally meet up, really. Unless asking someone to help you kill your family is the Kagurabachi universe's equivalent...?

As for Rescue Romance, it's another very simple scenario: person A is saved by person B, which causes them to fall in love. Chihiro saves Hakuri with the other random people at the site of Sojo's massacre attempt, and Hakuri... yeah. You get it.

I think there's a better trope to associate to this later on in the list, but Love at First Sight and Rescue Romance are still apt and very funny tropes to apply towards Hakuri's first impression of Chihiro. The way he waxed poetic over the mystery samurai who saved and inspired him had me in stitches. Seriously, my oldest notes on Hakuri from that chapter are mostly just laughing about him being really passionate about Chihiro for someone who's not intended to be a love interest! Go get 'im, Hakuri. He needs you in his life just as much as you need him in yours.

There's also something to be said from Chihro's side, though...

You bet your sweet Bippy Chihiro's solution to this also ties into his feelings about Hakuri.

Chihiro has expressed that Hakuri saved him twice so far (as of chapter 64). He's guilty as hell over it but he's putting those feelings to good use to become stronger. He's going to become the person Hakuri said he needed, and who he already thinks Chihiro is- but more on that later. Still, improving yourself to meet the measure someone else has of you is pretty romantic, isn't it? Especially so they stop getting hurt for your sake!

Mindlink Mates

Don't need to hear each other at all if you just "get" them.

This is something I like to apply as a Fanon concept based on what happens in canon. Hakuri and Chihiro aren't literally linked mind-to-mind via telepathy, but both of them have a deep understanding of what the other's thinking and feeling at any given moment. I really like the concept that they understand everything about each other on an instinctual level. It's mostly fueled by the Aun concepts that have been associated to them, which I'll get into during a later section. But yeah. Hakuri and Chihiro being borderline telepathic in how they can sense the other's status. That's crack cocaine to me and it's not too far removed from canon so I'm running with it.

I also really like the idea of their strong emotions and desires bouncing off of and amplifying each other's, but I don't know if there's a specific trope for that, so it gets placed here at the end of this tangentially related section. Also not something far removed from canon given how they both fuel each other's self-destructive savior tendencies because they feel the same way!

Moe Couplet

They're so cuuuuuuuuuuuuuute

A Moe Couplet is essentially a pair of characters that enhance each other's cute traits. Separate, they are perfectly fine individuals with their own appeal. Together, they are adorable and capable of some tooth-rottingly sweet moments. This trope isn't typically associated with romantic duos in stuff aimed at general audiences, but it's common in BL as the basis for "fluff" works and wholesome pairings.

This is probably the biggest stretch to apply towards canon on the list, honestly. We haven't seen that much moe moe action from Hakuri and Chihiro- they're kind of busy fighting for their lives or hurting themselves to save others most of the time. But the few moments we get send me straight into cuteness agression-induced brain rot every time I think of them.

Most of this trope label for HakuHiro comes from little details. Like Chihiro often being shown reassuring Hakuri, and Hakuri getting some of the sweetest smiles out of him in return. Hakuri brings out Chihiro's soft side when Char's not around to do so and Chihiro helps Hakuri be his absolute silliest. These guys are are so good to each other! They melt the ice around my cold, dead heart into a slurry of hnnngh and incoherent shipper screeching.

What's it actually based on though? Well, I thought I was just doing normal delusional fudanshi things by thinking Hakuri is extra cute when he's around Chihiro and vice versa. But then Hokazono-sensei threw me a bone in an interview by saying he intended for Hakuri to "bring out Chihiro's personality and add some cuteness". And I. Just. I exploded into confetti on the spot. MOEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

One True Love

This ship is not merely an OTP to me, if you haven't noticed.

Note: "ai" is not inherently romantic despite it being the end-goal of pretty much every romance novel out there. It's for deep, profound affection felt for someone- friends, family, even pets. It's rare and not commonly said aloud outside of the climax of a love story is all!

This is mostly tied to Hakuri's experience with love growing up and how he can find out what 愛 [ai, purest and deepest love], really means.

Hakuri probably has no fucking clue what love of any kind is really supposed to look or feel like, much less the ultimate form of it. His father threw ai around as something to manipulate his children into serving the family tradition. Soya used it as an excuse to torture him. This was deliberately done to contrast with the love that Chihiro knew growing up- true ai between father and son, which was cruelly ripped away from him.

So let Chihiro teach Hakuri, and Hakuri provide in return. They're already each other's perfect partners anyway so just put a romantic spin on it!

Hakuri finding unconditional love he doesn't fear in Chihiro and Chihiro finding the same in Hakuri once more. Neither of them ever needing to fall in love again because they slot together so perfectly to fill the gaps in each other's hearts. Oh I'm gonna die...

Opposites Attract

If not meant to be canon, why colour coded as opposite compliments? :thonk:

This is the trope that activates a primitive part of my brain that overrides all thoughts with eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee noises when it comes to HakuHiro. Hakuri and Chihiro are true opposites that are perfectly balanced to contrast and compliment each other, resulting in a duo greater than the sum of it's parts.

Hokazono-sensei made his intentions about Hakuri and Chihiro extremely clear by going so far as to colour code them for us. This is the protagonist and his foil/deuteragonist guy who is Important as Fuck. The level of detail in designing and writing them reads like he took this trope extremely seriously and said "let's save the Hero + Lancer coding for Hiyuki instead". 'Cause as much as I love her, Hiyuki's got nothing on Hakuri when it comes to this trope. Her thing is closer to being the same person as Chihiro with the opposite frame of mind and mode of expression- it's Hakuri and Chihiro who are the true manifestation of Opposites Attract down to the tiniest details. I'm ready to die on this hill so come at me and put me out of my misery.

I mean just look at these guys:

Chihiro: black and red, stoic, reserved, serious and polite, slim and straight profile.

Hakuri: white and blue, emotive, outgoing, silly and casual, loose and boxy profile.

They invert the same ways under pressure; Chihiro stresses and falters while Hakuri focuses and buckles down. Their fucking backstories are in on it too: they both lost their father's love but under distinctly opposite circumstances. Even the love they received was contrasted since Kunishige was a perfectly wholesome dad while Kyoura used love in an abusively manipulative way! And that laid the foundation for the premise of the Rakuzaichi arc- Hakuri wants to destroy his family's legacy while Chihiro still wants to do right by his. It would take a whole 'nother post to list everything between them because every single detail about one is carefully crafted to be present in the other in order to complete their characters. It's absolutely insane and it's what really sold me on the ship.

The level of care put into writing Hakuri and Chihiro as opposites who complete each other is out of this fucking world. I'll feel sorry for whatever girl gets assigned to be a mandatory heterosexual love interest for either of them because there's just no way to compete when two people are written to be so thoroughly intertwined with each other.

(To clarify just in case: I don't think Chiyuki is a bad ship. I'm not trying to trash it and say HakuHiro's better or more legitimate somehow. I just have an issue with shounen romance in general because the girls don't get nearly as much narrative effort to make them compelling companions to the MC compared to the "best friends" and Kagurabachi is doing nothing new in that regard so far. Hokazono-sensei can actually make a bigger impact by refusing to tease Chihiro and Hiyuki at all instead of going down the tired old path of obligated sub-par heterosexual ship tease/romance IMO.)

The Power of Love

Nice Heroic Second Wind you got after thinking about Chihiro there, Hakuri.

So this is definitely skewed towards pure delusion on my part, but that's what we're all here for anyway. Power of Friendship? Never heard of it.

Basically, person A uses their love for person B to power up and overcome the hardship they're facing. In this case, I'm interpreting Hakuri's tendency to think of Chihiro when he's in dire straits as romantic!

Hakuri comes in clutch a lot and his feelings abut Chihiro are the reason he can do it. The memory of his samurai refusing to yield gives Hakuri the strength to keep standing and finally put Soya down in chapter 36. He does it again in a sadder way in Chapter 58 when he thinks of Chihiro and musters the last of his strength to summon him too late to save Uruha. I have no doubt that he'll have more of these moments as the series goes on, too. Chihiro is kind of hope incarnate to Hakuri.

Chihiro's drawn strength from his feelings for Hakuri too, but not in a pinch kind of way like the Power of Love trope typically implies. I'm just waiting for the day when it's his turn to use memories of Hakuri to keep standing (never gonna happen)!

Chapter 64 update- Chihiro had his own moment! And oh boy is it amazing.

"That's you!!"

He thinks back to Hakuri saying he needs a Samurai in his life, and combined with the guilt he feels over Hakuri's current bed-ridden status, powers up so he can be the person Hakuri said he needed. Chihiro wants to get stronger so Hakuri doesn't have to risk his life and health for him ever again. He's going to become Hakuri's samurai. Holy shit. This is canon! Let all the doubts surrounding how Chihiro feels about Hakuri be dispelled- he cares a hell of a lot.

Ship Tease

Putting this here for lack of a better term, but there's a running gag about Hakuri and Chihiro's relationship that's been escalating in intensity since the early parts of the Rakuzaichi arc. It only comes across in bits and pieces in English compared to Japanese, sadly, but I'll do my best to explain it.

Basically, I'm interpreting the jokes about Hakuri acting like a dog as deliberate ship tease for the lols from the author.

"Paw. Shake. Good boy."

It starts in chapter 28 with Hakuri dropping everything he's doing to run over to Chihiro when his name is called. It's really cute and funny and not something that can get lost in translation- Chihiro calls, and Hakuri comes. Just like a loyal dog to it's master.

It's set aside for a while until the Sword Bearer Assassination Arc starts up and Hiyuki drops this banger during the trial in chapter 46:

"But where he [Hakuri] stands is a big pain in the butt. He's not the one calling the shots." - official TL

Of note is the term Hiyuki used to say that Chihiro's the one in charge: 舵取り [kajitori]. The normal meaning for it is "steering a boat" or "helmsman" with the secondary being leader/director, so it's not like the English TL messed up. Same meaning different wording. What's lost is the subtext: 舵取り as Hiyuki's using it can also imply that Chihiro's in charge of Hakuri like the owner of a dangerous guard dog would be lmao. Hakuri kind of earned that jab after threatening to leave her in the storehouse to die if she hurt Chihiro, though.

And then there's this completely unnecessary scene from Ch. 50...

"Who's this? This little squirt smells like Chihiro, but he's not Chihiro."- official TL

The TL again isn't bad here but it really downplays just how fucking weird Samura is (which downgrades the rocket propellant to mere ship fuel). Samura's phrasing about Hakuri smelling like Chihiro was so batshit insane in Japanese that fellow JP shippers felt compelled to reach out to the rest of us in English to let us know, which is almost completely unheard of.

Basically, Samura wasn't saying that Hakuri merely smelled like Chihiro. He actually said that Hakuri was wearing Chihiro's scent by using 纏う, conjugated and written as まとって (matotte)- completely enveloped in it to the point of smelling identical to him. A native JP reader (in the link above) said that in their interpretation, the phrase "香りをまとって [kaori o matotte], wrapped up in/wearing a scent" isn't really used for friends smelling like each other, but more for lovers, family members, or dogs and their owners in the sense that being so physically close all the time causes their scents to rub off on each other. Hmm.

It's not a normal term used to describe smelling like someone in the first place. When Samura meets younger Chihiro in the flashback and says he "reeks of Rokuhira", he just emphasizes the typical word for "smell/scent" (香り [kaori]) in quotation marks in the Japanese version: [六平の"香り"濃い...ッ!!] and uses 濃い [koi, concentrated/thick] like someone normally would to describe it as "reeking". So for some reason we just had to know that Hakuri smelled like Chihiro in the way dog or a lover would, huh... so much so that Samura thought he actually was Chihiro... (I can't get over this, it sends my sides into orbit every fucking time).

So yeah. That's some top-tier ship tease if I do say so myself. What that dog doin'? What did they get up to on the train before meeting with Uruha? That's for us to decide!

Soulmates

It's not exactly hard to see that Hakuri and Chihiro have a bit more going on between them than standard friendship or brotherhood, even for a shounen series. Even some dudebros acknowledged this before the fandom gave over to homophobic trash anyway.

It all stems from Hakuri invoking one of the most potent romantic tropes there is as soon as they meet:

"That day, a samurai lit my helpless existence on fire."

Jesus Christ Hakuri, that's some passion!

I think the "soulmates" trope is the most fitting description of what's going on between Hakuri and Chihiro from the very first time they meet. I'll even go so far to say that it actually has a pretty damn good case for being canon in a platonic sense!

For the uninitiated (like I was), the soulmates trope is invoked when two characters feel a strong and immediate connection upon first meeting each other. It can be one-sided or even completely rejected by both at the start, but they will always find their way to each other since they are fated to be. The whole world falls into kilter when they get together even if they were perfectly functional people on their own before. HakuHiro is this trope to a fucking T in my mind. Absolutely flawless execution, 10/10 no notes.

Hakuri's part is obvious- he sees Chihiro and decides he must have this amazing person in his life no matter what. He feels the pull of destiny and answers the call with an overabundance of enthusiasm.

Chihiro's part is more subtle. He does the one-sided rejection thing at the start by running away, but fate pulls them together via circumstance and he takes Hakuri back with him. And somehow, for some reason, Hakuri is the first person he opens up about his genuine feelings to in a surprisingly raw way:

"If I don't do something, and a sacred blade takes the lives of innocent people... I wouldn't be able to bear that..."

He met the guy minutes ago, tried to run away from him, then decided to bear his heart to him in the elevator. Chihiro's a natural stoic who doesn't show much of what he's feeling and generally keeps thoughts like this to himself. But Hakuri brings out this softer, more vulnerable side to him that no other character has before. Then as the arc progresses, Chihiro comes to rely on Hakuri more and more until it's crazy to think that he ever ran away in the first place. It's like they were always meant to find and save each other.

I'm not looking too hard at this with shipping goggles strapped to my face. We get confirmation that this is what's going on with them via The Word of God Himself:

From the Volume 4 description: 一方、兄からの愛と暴力によって地に伏した伯理。今際の際に脳裏を過ったのは、ある少女との日々だった。極限の中、二人の少年の魂が呼応する。

"Meanwhile, Hakuri is struck down by his brother's love and violence. On the brink of death, he remembers the days he spent with a certain girl. In the midst of this extreme tension, the souls of both boys resonate with each other."

The last sentence is basically more total harmony/Aun imagery for Hakuri and Chihiro. 呼 (ko) means to call and 応 (ou) means to respond. Together, 呼応 means to act in concert. So Hakuri and Chihiro's souls call out and respond to each other in perfect sync when they're in dire straits. It's canon!

If that's not enough, then there's also the Aun imagery. It was left out of the EN Chapter 38 colour page as usual (never gonna forgive the EN version for removing the text), but basically the author used deliberate religious imagery to tell us that Chihiro and Hakuri have an inherently harmonious relationship. A and Un, in perfect sync- whatever one starts, the other will finish. The beginning and end of all things. A perfect pair.

They demonstrate this lethal effectiveness by working in tandem during the storehouse fight, with Chihiro only needing to yell Hakuri's name for Hakuri to perfectly interpret everything he's thinking and execute on it flawlessly. It's absolutely insane stuff even if we disregard Hakuri only woke up to his power less than an hour ago in-universe isn't it?! And they repeated the stunt the next day while protecting Uruha, so it wasn't just a one-off for a cool moment. It's core to their dynamic for their souls to resonate in total harmony!

And just to top it off, we got a funny little gag of Chihiro and Hakuri passing out and waking up at the same time side-by-side after the auction, totally in sync.

All of this within a week of meeting each other.

Some actual romantic soulmate couples don't get this much effort put into coding their relationship, just saying. I also don't think people would be so quick to jump on the sibling interpretation after Shiba's "What are ya, twins?" joke if Hakuri and Chihiro were a heterosexual ship option, just sayin'.

Unknowingly in Love

No sad pictures of dead Kunishige in this post!

This is another one that's far closer to fanon than canon. It banks on the fact that both of them grew up isolated and, quite frankly, probably poorly socialized compared to the rest of the world.

Chihiro lived with just his dad in a remote mountain home and only occasionally visited the town nearby with Shiba. No friends, no school even. Hakuri lived on the secluded Sazanami estate surrounded by his family and saw some of the outside world, but likely only the criminal elements of it. Plus there's the whole growing up only knowing love as something abusive and manipulative thing; even his parent's marriage was strongly implied to be arranged and joyless. Neither of these guys have anything decent in their personal lives to reference from!

So in my mind, while Hakuri and Chihiro have certainly heard of romantic love and thought about it themselves, they wouldn't really have an idea of what it feels or looks like to them. Couple that with being each other's first friends ever and you've got some extremely potent fluff (or angst) about them being unaware that what they're feeling isn't platonic.

You Are Worth Hell

I will follow you into the dark.

And to round things off, one of my favourite romance tropes ever! But it's not canon at all- YET.

You see, Hakuri and Chihiro are constantly pulling each other forward. When one stumbles, the other's there with a helping hand. But what happens when one descends into hell like Chihiro says he's doing this very arc? Will the other try to throw them a lifeline and hope for the best?

Nay! The other will stay by their side out of love.

This trope can veer too close to toxic situationship scenarios for comfort, it's true. Characters staying to "save" someone or letting themself get dragged down at their own expense is not healthy at all. But the core sentiment of this trope is that anything is bearable if you're with the one you love. The emphasis isn't on the mutual suffering but rather the comfort of being together despite it all.

My personal interpretation of the relationship between Hakuri and Chihiro is that one was born in hell (Hakuri) and the other has condemned himself to it (Chihiro). Hakuri's trying to rise up while Chihiro has consigned himself to sink further into the darkness. They met at at a crossroads on their respective journeys and are walking together for a while. And when Chihiro takes a turn to keep going further down, I think Hakuri will stop him from going too far. Hakuri will be the light in the gloom until the mission's over. Then they'll figure out if they can make it back up or not. And if they can't? Well, he was already at rock bottom before Chihiro came into his life. It's worth it to stay in hell at his side and face everything together.

So I think this can apply very well to HakuHiro as the current arc progresses. Hakuri choosing to stay as a partner to provide support rather than trying to save Chihiro at his own expense would be huge character growth for him. And Chihiro accepting Hakuri's gesture would be growth for him too- he doesn't have to do this alone. There's no truly Bad End for their stories if they are walking side-by-side to face the hardships together until the end.

That's it. If you got through all this, thanks. Yap at me about tropes I missed! I love hearing the myriad ways other people interpret this ship. Unless you think fixed left-right boring seme/uke stereotype ChiHaku is the only valid interpretation, in which case we can never be friends. Sorry not sorry.

[appleblueberry-pie]

I just read your fic and my brain went into thinking mode again :(

Reader just being wholesome with children. Like using Mayday as a therapy method for self-trust issues.. Def babysits May to trust herself with touching other people 😭❤

IT'S 3 AM HELP ME.

What Isn't There To Love About You?

im just writing these for pure amusement now. HATE being formal with my own writing and realized i can literally have fun.

"So, this was where he was last night." Miguel pulls up footage from last nights fail at capturing some random universe's villain. It wasn't that doing investigation work was boring or anything. It's just that it's been four hours trying to get to the bottom of this disappearance into some other universe. And then trying to find the probability of capturing this villain and the whole shazam. You don't know how Miguel did it. Maybe it was the 6 coffees he had in one day or the random sass and anger fueling him to keep running, but you weren't made out of whatever he was made out of.

You kept your stone face as you watched the footage and leaned forward to point out his glitches here and other possible universes that had a strange pop-up weirdo at around the same time frame. "...because right here..." You zoomed in and before you could further explain, a childish squeal broke you out of your trance. You and Miguel look up and see the beautiful baby girl that was Mayday hanging off of her few webs from above.

You dramatically gasped and called out to her. "Now, who left you here hanging unattended?? Who would do such a thing??" You playfully placed your hands on your hips and she babbled back at you, lighting up your clouded mind. Miguel rolls his eyes. "Actually, she's been there for about 30 minutes." He grumbles. You turn around to glare at him. "You let her stay up there for that long?" "She's a distraction."

You scoff and hold your arms out to her. She wastes no time in dropping down to you, letting you squeeze her like the teddy bear she was. "There's my favorite girl! How've you been?? Aww, look at your hair, you messed it up again. Where's that brush I had, Miguel??" You held her on one hip, bouncing her as you dig through the drawers to find the comb that was no longer in the room. "......." Miguel tries to slyly steal glances at you as you handle Mayday like she was your own child.

Your loud and bubbly talking to her eventually calm down to you holding her to your chest as you calmly talk to her. "I wonder how you'll be when you start school. You're already so smart, swinging around the place like it's nothing." You laugh to yourself and instead comb your fingers through her hair. It was honestly such a breath of fresh air compared to staring at screens at hours on end. You stop leaning on the desk and hum quietly to her, looking back over to the monitors, only to find Miguel staring down at you over his shoulder.

".....What?" He sighs and turns back around, typing again. "......it's her nap time." You raise your eyebrows and look down to actually see the girl falling asleep in your arms. You wonder why Peter left her unattended like this. Speaking of the devil, the man comes swinging onto the platform before you can go down and sees his daughter asleep. "Oh my god, Y/n, you are a lifesaver. I was looking for her everywhere. And you are a magician to get her asleep on time. She usually makes a fuss...." He goes on to talk for the next few minutes, not before shifting her into his arms to take her back to his universe.

This time, you couldn't really pay attention to his long speech, instead staring longingly at the girl asleep in his arms. When he leaves, Miguel is already leaning back on his work table, staring longingly at you. ".....I've always wanted a little girl." Miguel smiles at you and walks up behind you, wrapping his arms around your waist, burying his face into your neck. "Yeah? Serías una madre increíble." (You would be an amazing mother)

You smile at his words. "Me vuelves loco con lo talentoso que eres. Y verte así con ella me enloqueció. Déjame tenerte." He almost seemed to growl the words, making your stomach flutter with butterflies. He holds you tighter and trails his hands to where your zipper began. "Here?" Miguel groans at the fact that he's still at work and stops himself from unzipping you. He removes himself from you entirely to angrily type up another report and you instead stand behind him and rub his back. "That's okay, you can just show me how you feel when you get home." A growl erupts at his throat and you laugh. (You drive me crazy with how talented you are. And seeing you with her like that drove me wild. Let me have you.)

Miguel looks over his shoulder and down at you to glare into your mischievous eyes. "Watch that mouth." "I'm serious." Miguel doesn't like hiding from you. Seeing him stare down at you like you were a piece of meat made you look away and he curses under his breath. He hated how restricted he was to just sit with his cock hard until he had the option to leave. And how it seemed like you were free to torture him with your bratty attitude and beautiful face and body. He hates this and loves you. The only angel he'll let fall into his arms down from what he calls heaven.

[estellan0vella]

File It Under N For No One Gives A Fuck: H.JS Han Jisung x fem!wife!reader (Police AU)

WC: 8.1K

CW: mentions of drugs, mentions of anthrax, threats of divorce, talks of sex and inappropriate use of department handcuffs, Chan being a stressed out Captain

General Masterlist SKZ Masterlist

You step into the bustling precinct, your senses immediately absorbing the energy around you. Phones ring, radios squawk, officers shout to each other across the room, and every so often, there’s a burst of laughter from one of the clusters of desks. It’s your day off from the ER, a break from the endless flow of patients, the constant blare of monitors, and the adrenaline-fueled rush that never seems to end. You still want a taste of that energy, though, so here you are, coffee in hand for your husband Jisung and a few of his colleagues.

You navigate your way through the bullpen, a light blue summer dress brushing against your knees, and your white wedges clicking softly against the tile. Your white sunglasses sit perched on your head, holding back your hair, and the scent of freshly brewed coffee follows you as you carry a tray with four cups, each labelled with a different name: yours, Jisung’s, Felix’s, and Minho’s.

As your eyes sweep the room, they land on Felix, slumped back in his chair with a familiar air of exhaustion, his head tipped back, and his arms dangling off the sides as if the world’s weight has finally crushed him. You grin, making a beeline for him. Dropping into the chair opposite his desk, you slide his coffee across to him with a smirk.

“Look what the coffee fairy brought,” you announce, leaning back with an amused glint in your eye.

Felix blinks down at the cup before his face lights up with pure, unfiltered joy. “You absolute angel! I swear, I love you right now. Like, I’m dangerously close to kissing you.”

You laugh, the sound bubbling up before you can stop it. “Jisung would shoot you. No warning, just bang. Right between the eyes.”

Felix chuckles, shaking his head as he picks up his coffee, inhaling the aroma before taking a grateful sip. “Fucking worth it. Honestly, I’d risk it.”

As he drinks, his eyes drift over you, assessing your outfit with a dramatic once-over. He tilts his head, lips curling into a mischievous grin. “Okay, but why do you look like you’re about to star in some cheesy rom-com? Seriously, who are you trying to impress here, and why isn’t it me?”

You roll your eyes, glancing down at yourself as if seeing your outfit for the first time. “Can’t a woman look nice on her day off? I’m visiting my husband, Felix. I get to look like something other than a sleep-deprived ER nurse covered in mystery fluids. Plus, it’s hot outside.”

He smirks, the glint in his eyes growing sharper. “Suspiciously nice, if you ask me.”

Before you can fire back, Minho appears at Felix’s side, his eyes zeroing in on the cup with his name scrawled across it. With a smirk, he grabs it, taking a slow, satisfied sip. “Hmm, just the way I like it. Thanks. You know, you really should leave Jisung and marry me instead. Think about it: we’d be a power couple.”

You deadpan, barely blinking as you retort, “Absolutely not. I’d have to explain your ‘disappearance’ to a jury, and I’m not confident I could sell a self-defence story.” You pause, then add, “Also, your actual wife might take issue with you running off with your buddy’s wife.”

Felix bursts out laughing, nearly choking on his coffee. “Oh my god, I’d pay good money to see her kick your ass, Minho.”

Minho raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. “I’m just saying, you talk a big game. But between you and me, I’m pretty sure I could handle you.”

You lean forward, a challenging grin playing on your lips. “Jisung handles me just fine, he doesn't need your help.”

Just as Minho opens his mouth to respond, Jisung walks up, and you see the flicker of amusement in his eyes. “Excuse me, what did I just walk into?”

“Nothing. Just Minho being his usual self,” you reply sweetly, holding out his coffee. “I brought you this.”

Jisung’s face softens, his eyes warming as he takes the cup from you and leans down to press a kiss against your cheek. “What would I do without you?”

“Crash and burn, probably,” you say, grinning up at him.

“Can confirm,” Felix chimes in, lazily leaning back in his chair and clearly enjoying the banter. “You’d be fucked without her, man.”

Jisung rolls his eyes, looking between you and his friends. “Glad to know my friends have so much faith in me.”

He glances back at you, taking in the dress, and a small smile tugs at the corners of his mouth. “You do look amazing, by the way. Makes me want to ditch the precinct and-”

“Absolutely not. None of that in here,” Minho interrupts, raising a hand as if to physically block whatever Jisung was about to suggest. “I get enough of your lovey-dovey nonsense on a regular basis. This is a professional environment, thank you very much.”

You snort, rolling your eyes. “Right, because you’re the embodiment of professionalism, Minho. Never crossed a line in your life, right?”

“I am a paragon of professionalism,” he says, deadpan, puffing up like a proud peacock.

Felix snickers, shaking his head as he takes another sip. “Oh yeah? ‘Paragon of professionalism’? If that’s what we’re calling it now, sure. But remember that time your wife came to visit and Chan caught the two of you going at it in the men’s locker room?”

Minho’s face flushes slightly, but he tries to play it off, lifting his coffee and taking a long sip, refusing to break his stoic facade. “It was a passionate reunion.”

“Oh, we all know,” Felix says, grinning. “We all heard her moaning. Pretty sure they heard it over in the evidence room too.”

You snicker, raising an eyebrow at Minho. “Paragon of professionalism, huh?”

Minho’s face turns even redder, and he mutters into his coffee, “One incident. Just one.”

Jisung chuckles, wrapping an arm around your shoulders. “See, that’s why I stick to public displays of affection in small doses. Less memorable.”

“Yeah, like that time you two were making out in the break room,” Felix says, smirking.

You feign innocence, looking up at Jisung. “I have no idea what he’s talking about. Clearly, he’s delusional.”

Jisung nods, playing along. “Absolutely. Must be all those late shifts, messing with his mind.”

Felix rolls his eyes, leaning forward with a mischievous grin. “Alright, alright. But just remember: if there’s any scandal around here, it’s usually because of you married lot. Meanwhile, I’m the model of restraint.”

Minho opens his mouth, likely to lob a sarcastic comment Felix's way, but the door to Captain Bang Chan’s office swings open with a sharp, foreboding creak. Chan strides out with a look of grim determination on his face that instantly makes your stomach drop. You know that look. Everyone does. It’s the kind of look that’s never followed by good news.

“All right, listen up!” Chan’s voice cuts through the chaotic murmur of the bullpen, slicing the noise in half as everyone freezes and turns toward him. “We’ve just received a credible threat of an anthrax attack on the station. Until further notice, we’re in lockdown. No one gets in or out.”

A stunned silence follows his words, the gravity of it crashing over the room like a wave. Anthrax. Of all things. It feels like the air itself thickens, every eye in the room locked on Chan, processing the information. You’re the first to break the silence.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” you groan, throwing your hands up with dramatic exasperation. “I swear, I am never doing anything nice for any of you ever again. Here I am, on my day off, bringing real Italian coffee straight from my hometown, like the good wife and friend that I am, and now I’m fucking trapped here because some maniac decides today’s a great day to mess with a biochemistry set?!”

Felix snorts into his coffee, trying to hide his laughter, while Minho’s mouth twitches in barely contained amusement. Jisung’s shoulders shake as he attempts to keep a straight face. He reaches out, taking your hand gently and rubbing calming circles over your knuckles. “Jagiya-”

“No! Don’t ‘jagiya’ me right now,” you huff, narrowing your eyes at him. “This is exactly what I get for trying to do something nice.”

Jisung, his lips still curved in a soft smile, gives your hand a gentle squeeze. “Come on, let’s go sit at my desk. You can yell at me there, and maybe the world will make sense again.”

With a dramatic sigh, you allow him to lead you across the bullpen. You drag your feet with exaggerated reluctance, muttering a steady stream of colourful Italian curses under your breath. Jisung, still holding back laughter, takes the two remaining coffees from you as you settle yourself in his chair, folding your arms and glaring at the room like an affronted cat.

“That’s my seat, you know,” Jisung says, raising an eyebrow at you, clearly amused.

You fix him with a glare, your voice dripping with mock indignation. “It was your seat until your wife, out of the kindness of her heart, decided to do something nice for you and wound up smack in the middle of an anthrax threat. So, I think I deserve the chair, don’t you?”

Jisung chuckles, sitting down in the spare chair beside you and sliding your coffee over. “Fair enough,” he concedes, grinning. “And, for the record, thank you for the coffee. Even if we’re potentially in a biohazard zone.”

Your annoyance softens, just a bit, as you take a sip. “You’re welcome. I should start charging extra for hazard pay, though.”

You reach over to one of Jisung’s desk drawers, half-listening to the murmurs around you as people process the lockdown news. Your fingers brush a small packet at the edge of the drawer, and suddenly—

PFFFFT!

A white cloud bursts from the drawer, coating you and Jisung in a fine layer of white powder. You freeze, eyes wide, and for a second, the bullpen goes completely silent. The two of you stare at each other in shock, blinking through the powder.

Jisung sputters, wiping at his eyes with a grimace, before deadpanning, “I’ve never hoped something was cocaine more in my life.”

“Oh, my god,” Minho groans from across the room, his hand rubbing over his face in disbelief. “During an anthrax lockdown, you open a drawer, and a packet of white powder explodes. Seriously?”

You sit there, a mix of horror and resignation, before letting out a long, exasperated sigh. “Well, if it’s anthrax,” you mutter, throwing your hands up, “at least we’ll die together. So fucking romantic, right?”

Jisung lets out a resigned sigh, rolling up his sleeves. He gives you a sly smile. “You considering divorce yet?”

You snort, still trying to dust the powder off yourself. “Not a chance. I need that sweet, sweet overtime money.”

He laughs, his warm, familiar laugh that lightens the absurdity just a bit. As he leans back, wiping powder off his arms, you both notice Felix leaning, wide-eyed, clearly in awe of the sheer absurdity.

“Y/N,” he says, barely holding back laughter, “please, for the love of all things caffeinated, do not stop bringing us coffee. Even if you’re dead. Like, send it from the afterlife or something.”

You roll your eyes, a grin tugging at your lips. “Trust me, if this is anthrax, we’re all toast anyway, so get praying, Lix.”

Felix gives a melodramatic sigh, glancing at the powder-dusted desk with exaggerated despair. “Well, if you die, and I survive, I’ll make the most epic playlist for your funeral. It’ll be a symphony of tragic bangers.”

You chuckle, brushing some powder off your hand. “Appreciate the thought. I’ll haunt you if it isn’t perfect.”

Jisung leans back, watching you spin slowly in his desk chair, one hand still gripping your coffee. He raises an eyebrow, eyes twinkling with barely contained laughter. “You know,” you say. “I always thought a brush with death would be a little more dramatic.”

Jisung chuckles, sipping his coffee. “If it is anthrax, we’re in for a hell of a time, though, right?”

“Oh, for sure,” you nod, launching into a cheerful explanation. “It’ll be nausea, chest pain, coughing up blood, then more pain, and then bam! Dead. Pretty straightforward.”

Minho, still dusting powder off himself, makes a face. “Jesus, Y/N, couldn’t you sugarcoat it?”

You lean forward with a wicked grin. “No, but I could anthrax-coat it.”

Jisung laughs so hard he nearly spills his coffee, shaking his head. “You’re awful,” he says, eyes crinkling with amusement.

Minho stares at the two of you, visibly disturbed. “You two are fucking insane. I’m not dying with you clowns.”

As if on cue, Minho reaches to open his desk drawer and PFFFFT! Another puff of white powder explodes into his face. He jerks back, sputtering and swatting at the cloud around him.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” he shouts, coughing as he frantically waves his hands to clear the powder. His eyes dart around the room in horror as he sees the fine dust settling on his shirt.

And then, as if on cue, there’s another PFFFFT! from Jeongin’s desk, sending a similar cloud of white powder into the air.

One by one, desks throughout the bullpen erupt in clouds of powder, each explosion met with gasps, curses, and shouts of “What the hell?!”

Now, at least seven officers stand in powder-covered horror, looking around at each other like deer caught in headlights.

You lean back in Jisung’s chair, arms folded, and let out a theatrical sigh. “It’s like a damn anthrax snowglobe in here.”

Chan stands in the middle of the chaos, looking around with a deadpan expression and slowly rubbing his temples. “This- this is just fucking fantastic,” he mutters. “Seven packets of possible anthrax. All opened. In my station. At once.”

He turns to you, eyes narrowing with a desperate look. “Y/N, you’re a nurse. If this is anthrax-”

“Oh, we’ll all die, no question,” you say far too casually, waving a dismissive hand. “Very unpleasantly, but yeah. It’ll be over soon. Painful but quick”

Jisung gives you a nudge, his smile widening. “You sure you’re not sugarcoating it just a little?”

You tilt your head, pretending to think about it. “Nope. Just straight facts.”

Minho, wiping powder from his face with a look of pure frustration, groans. “You’ve got to be kidding me. All these years on the force, and this is how I go?”

“Tragic,” Felix says, eyeing the powder on his desk like it’s a mortal insult. “I always thought I’d go out in style. You know, something heroic like leaping from a helicopter or rescuing someone from a burning building. This is just fucking depressing.”

You look around, dusted, exhausted, and oddly exhilarated by the chaos. “Well, when life gives you anthrax…” you trail off with a shrug.

Felix raises his coffee cup in salute. “We all go out covered in powder, blood and vomit.”

And with a weary shake of his head, Chan walks back into his office, muttering something about a "transfer request form" under his breath as the bullpen erupts in laughter once more.

Four hours later, the precinct feels like a tomb, the initial panic over the anthrax threat having decayed into a sluggish boredom that clings to the room like a fog. 

Felix stares dead-eyed into his cup, as if expecting it to reveal some hidden truth, while Minho, growing increasingly restless, has resorted to flicking crumpled paper balls at the back of Jeongin’s head. Each hit makes Jeongin flinch, but he’s too tired to even retaliate, just accepting Minho's antics.

You’re leaned back in Jisung’s chair, spinning lazily every now and then as if the motion might somehow break up the monotony. Your coffee, now cold, sits forgotten in your hand, and Jisung, ever the optimist, sits beside you, trying to make light conversation.

“Hey, at least we have each other’s company, right?” he says, nudging you with a hopeful smile.

You raise an eyebrow, unimpressed. “It’s my day off, Jisung. I didn’t exactly plan on spending it in lockdown with a possible anthrax scare and shitty coffee.”

Before he can respond, the heavy clomp of boots echoes down the hallway. Your head snaps up, eyes locking onto the doorway just as two men in hazmat suits stride in, their suits rustling like whispers of salvation. You sit up slightly, watching them like they’re some sort of mirage, the long-lost cavalry finally arriving to end this dreary nightmare.

“Well, it’s about fucking time,” you mutter, your eyes following the men as they approach Chan, who looks about as thrilled as a man in his position could look.

Jisung leans over with a small smile, his voice barely above a whisper. “At least they’re here now.”

“Here now?” you scoff, turning to him with an incredulous look. “If this had actually been anthrax, we’d be dead already. What kind of response time is this? They took four hours, Jisung. Four. Do they think we’re immune?”

He stifles a laugh, but you can see his amusement in the crinkle at the corners of his eyes. Meanwhile, the hazmat men gesture to Chan, their voices muffled by their masks as they deliver what must be a lengthy explanation of protocols and procedures. Chan nods, his shoulders slumping just slightly as he listens.

After a few minutes, Chan clears his throat, his voice cutting through the room with forced authority. “Listen up, everyone! Hazmat just informed me that we could be here for another four to nine hours, depending on how long it takes them to conduct all necessary tests.”

A collective groan rises from the bullpen. Before anyone else can react, you whirl around to Jisung, fixing him with a dramatic, accusing stare.

“Divorce,” you declare, pointing at him with a flourish. “Effective immediately”

Jisung nearly chokes on his coffee, eyes wide. “What?!”

You stand up, throwing your arms out in exasperation, your voice dripping with sarcasm. “I’ve been stuck in this station for hours, with a looming potential biohazard threat. Anthrax or not, this is not how I wanted to spend my day off. This-” you gesture wildly at the room, encompassing the bored, powder-dusted officers around you. “is your fault, Jisung. All of it.”

Jisung stares at you, mouth half-open as he searches for words. “I…how is this my fault? I didn’t exactly order an anthrax scare for our quality time.”

“Oh, but it’s your job that dragged me into this mess!” you say, throwing your hands up again. “I could be at home, in a bathrobe, binge-watching crime dramas from the comfort of our couch. But no. I brought coffee here because I’m a supportive spouse, and now I’m paying the price for marrying you.”

Before Jisung can defend himself, Chan steps in, his voice cutting through like a referee at a boxing match. “Y/N,” he says, an amused smile tugging at his lips, “I’ll call the hospital and get you the day off tomorrow if that’ll make this any easier.”

You cross your arms, narrowing your eyes at Jisung with exaggerated triumph. “Well, would you look at that, Jisung? Your captain just saved our marriage.”

Across the room, Felix, who’s been slumped over his desk in a near-sleep state, perks up, chuckling into his hand. “Shit, Chan is pulling out the big guns. Saving marriages and shit.”

Jisung sighs, holding his hands up in a gesture of defeat as he chuckles. “Guess I owe him one.”

“You owe me more than that,” you mutter, sinking back into the chair and resuming your lazy spinning. “The day off and a full spa day when this is over.”

Jisung grins, leaning back with a playful look in his eyes. “Whatever you want, jagiya. Just as long as I don’t have to file those divorce papers.”

Minho, who’s been watching the entire exchange with a smirk, decides to chime in. “If she divorces you, Jisung, I’ll swoop right in. I mean, who wouldn’t want a spouse who brings Italian coffee in a potential biohazard situation?”

Felix snickers. “If you and Y/N got married, the world would implode. Too much chaos in one household.”

You shake your head, stifling a laugh as you look at Minho with a teasing smirk. “You’d never survive, Minho. One bad day, and I’d have you crying into your cereal.”

“Challenge accepted,” he says, his eyes glinting with mischief.

Chan sighs from his spot, still half-listening to the hazmat team’s explanations. “Enough with the matchmaking. If I have to sit through another hour of marriage talk, I’m filing a transfer request.”

Felix chuckles, leaning over to you with a conspiratorial grin. “Captain Bang, mediator of biohazard romances. Didn’t know it was part of the job description.”

“Must be in the fine print,” Chan mutters, shaking his head. "And I wish I had fucking read it properly"

One of the hazmat techs finally steps forward, addressing the room in a slightly garbled voice through his mask. “All right, folks, we’re going to start testing samples now. Please remain calm, avoid unnecessary movements, and try not to touch anything you don’t need to.”

The room collectively exhales in tired resignation. Minho raises his hand, deadpan. “Define ‘unnecessary movements.’”

The hazmat tech stares at him, either confused or completely done with the situation, it’s hard to tell through the mask. “Just sit tight, sir.”

Felix snickers, muttering under his breath, “The real anthrax scare is how bored we’re all going to be by hour nine.”

Jeongin, who’s been silently enduring Minho’s paper ball attacks, speaks up, a note of desperation in his voice. “If we’re going to be here for that long, can we at least get some food? We’ll starve at this rate.”

“Starve?” Minho raises an eyebrow, picking up his discarded coffee cup. “Nah, we’ll be fine. If we get desperate, we can always resort to cannibalism. Starting with Felix.”

Felix sputters, looking genuinely appalled. “Excuse me? Why me?”

“Self-preservation,” Minho replies smoothly. “You’re the smallest. Least resistance.”

Jeongin, unable to hide his grin, chimes in, “Plus, I bet you’d be like the chicken nugget of the group, Felix. Small, bite-sized.”

Felix rolls his eyes, tossing a paper ball at Jeongin. “I’m a gourmet meal, thank you very much. You’d all be lucky to have a piece.”

Jisung leans over, watching the hazmat team set up their equipment with growing fascination. “Is it bad that I’m sort of curious now? I mean, if this actually is anthrax, we’re kind of making history here.”

You look at him, incredulous. “History? History? If it is anthrax, we’ll be coughing up blood and dying in a very unglamorous way, Jisung. That’s not exactly the kind of legacy I had in mind.”

He shrugs, grinning. “Could make for a hell of a story, though.”

You stare at him, shaking your head. “The next time you want a story, we’re sticking to action movies, not anthrax.”

The hazmat techs start running their samples, and the room falls back into a dull, exhausted silence. You recline in Jisung’s chair, closing your eyes, already imagining the blissful tranquility of a spa day—a very overdue, very earned spa day.

After a while, Felix breaks the silence, his voice low and almost wistful. “You know, if we make it out of this alive, I think I’m going to adopt a cat. Just something small and not life-threatening.”

Jeongin snorts. “You’ll have to survive this lockdown first, man. Don’t go making promises you can’t keep.”

You chuckle, throwing an arm around Jisung’s shoulder. “Fine by me. But if one more puff of powder goes off, I swear, I’m taking the first plane back to Italy and leaving you all to fend for yourselves.”

Jisung just laughs, resting his head against yours. “Whatever you want, jagiya. I'll get on the plane with you.”

Another five gruelling hours crawl by, and the precinct has transformed into a restless prison of boredom and frustration. The air is thick, and stagnant, punctuated only by Felix’s occasional sighs and the relentless tap-tap-tap of Minho’s fingers drumming on his desk. Everyone’s slumped, sprawled out, or halfway to sleep when the two hazmat guys finally reappear, their footsteps echoing like a siren of salvation.

You sit up, barely daring to hope, as the hazmat team heads straight to Chan. After a low, muffled conversation, Chan’s face twists into a mask of pure exasperation. He turns back to the bullpen, the entire room watching him with expectant, tired eyes.

“All right, listen up!” he calls, and every officer straightens slightly, waiting. “The tests are done.” Chan sighs, pausing for what feels like an eternity. “The powder is harmless. A mix of…skin irritants. Talcum powder, cornstarch, and”—he pauses, clearly trying to keep his composure—“itching powder.”

A split second of stunned silence, then the room erupts.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Minho’s hands slam down on his desk as he surges to his feet, his voice a full octave higher than usual. “Nine hours locked down for itching powder?!”

Felix lets out a long, theatrical groan, slumping back in his chair like he might just dissolve into the floor. “Nine hours of this hell, and all we needed was a good rinse in the shower?”

Everywhere around you, officers are grumbling, voices overlapping as they process the absurdity of the past hours. You can’t take another second of it, not Minho’s complaining, not Felix’s endless sighing, not even Jeongin’s eye-rolling. You reach into Jisung’s desk drawer, grab one of the remaining powder packets, and before you can think better of it, you hurl it directly at Minho’s face.

The packet explodes on impact, a cloud of white dust billowing around him. There’s a split-second of silence before laughter explodes through the bullpen, ringing off the walls. Felix slides off his chair, practically wheezing as he gasps for breath, and Jeongin is clapping, grinning like you’ve just performed the greatest prank in the world.

Minho splutters, wiping powder from his eyes, his expression a blend of betrayal and disbelief. “Y/N! You took an oath to do no harm!”

You fold your arms, raising an eyebrow. “Nope. That’s the doctor’s oath. I’m a nurse. Totally different.”

He glares at you, dusted in white powder like a disgruntled snowman. “Unbelievable. Nine hours of hell, and this is how I’m treated? I’m filing a report, mark my words.”

Jisung snickers, reaching over to pat your shoulder. “Go ahead, file it under N. For No one gives a fuck.”

Felix, still practically in tears from laughter, chimes in, “Or under T, for Talk to someone who fucking cares.”

Jeongin joins in, his face lit up with mischievous glee. “Or S, for Shut the fuck up, no one gives a shit.”

Hyunjin, who’s been scrolling on his phone the whole time, doesn’t even look up. “Or D, for Don’t give a fuck.”

Minho’s eyes widen, his jaw dropping as he looks around the room, his face a mask of disbelief and faux betrayal. “I’m being bullied by my own subordinates! This is harassment!”

From his desk, Chan finally speaks, his voice weary and deadpan. “Minho, shut the fuck up.”

Minho’s hands fly to his chest in mock agony, his tone an exaggerated whine. “Now I’m being bullied by the big boss! This is it. No one loves me anymore!”

You lean back in your chair, grinning as you taunt, “I bet even your wife is done with your shit. She’s probably using this lockdown as the perfect chance to call her divorce lawyer.”

Felix’s eyes gleam with wicked delight as he gasps dramatically, “Filed under D, for Disappointing dick game!”

Minho’s face flushes a deep crimson, his eyes bulging as he points a finger at Felix. “Disappointing dick game? You little—”

Chan raises his hands, his face pale with horror as he plugs his ears. “Nope. Nope. Not touching this one. Not taking it to HR.”

You lean forward, eyes glinting with mischief. “You could always file it under O, for One-pump chump.”

Jisung nearly falls out of his chair, laughing so hard his coffee almost spills. Felix has rolled onto the floor, clutching his stomach as he gasps for air, and the rest of the officers are chuckling, some tossing balled-up paper and pen caps at Minho, who looks moments away from either combusting or joining in the chaos.

Minho straightens, arms crossed as he tries to look dignified. “All right, don’t think I won’t shoot every last one of you and then myself!”

Felix, propping himself up on one elbow from his spot on the floor, grins up at Minho. “With your aim, Minho? You’d miss yourself and take out half the precinct’s ceiling instead.”

Laughter ripples through the room again, some officers nearly falling out of their chairs, and even Chan has a hand covering his mouth, clearly struggling not to join in.

Minho raises an eyebrow, trying to regain control as he looks over at Chan. “Captain, I’m seriously filing a complaint. This is hostile work environment behaviour.”

Chan’s gaze turns steely, but his lips are twitching as he struggles to hold back laughter. “Minho, one more word, and I’ll personally throw you out of the window.”

Minho huffs, crossing his arms like a petulant child. “Fine. Just know that when I finally lose it, none of you will be safe.”

You glance over at him, raising an eyebrow. “Lose it? Minho, you lost it the day you joined this precinct. You’re a ticking time bomb of mild inconveniences.”

Jeongin nods, grinning. “Pretty sure your wife would agree, too. She’s probably planning her exit strategy as we speak.”

Felix smirks, winking at Minho. “Filed under M, for Maybe if you were better in bed.”

The room howls with laughter as Minho’s face turns an even deeper shade of red, and you can almost see the smoke rising from his ears. He holds up a finger, shaking it at Felix. “You better hope I don’t catch you in the locker room after this, Lee Felix.”

Felix shrugs, unphased, throwing a playful salute as he leans back in his chair. “Bring it on, grandpa. I can take you.”

Without warning, you walk over to Minho's desk, grab the last remaining packet of powder, and in one smooth motion, smush it directly into his face. There’s a split second of stunned silence before the bullpen erupts in laughter and cheers. Felix lets out a gleeful whoop, practically falling off his chair, while Jeongin laughs so hard he’s clutching his stomach.

Minho sputters, wiping at the powder coating his hair and face, his eyes wide with indignation. “You! I’m going to arrest you for assaulting an officer!” he shouts, launching himself from his chair and charging after you.

You’re already darting across the bullpen, laughter bubbling out of you as you throw a cheeky glance over your shoulder. “Oh yeah? And who’s going to patch you up next time you hurt your wrist being handcuffed to the headboard with your departmentally issued cuffs while getting down and dirty with your wife?”

The bullpen falls silent for a second, jaws dropping as they process your words. Then Felix lets out an ear-splitting scream. “Oh my god! Minho’s sprained wrist was a sex injury?!”

Minho halts mid-chase, face flushing crimson as he slaps a hand over his eyes. “We swore to secrecy!” he protests, his voice cracking with embarrassment.

You duck behind Felix’s desk, grinning wickedly. “Did we? Because I don’t seem to remember that.”

Felix, now nearly in tears, doubles over in his chair, barely able to catch his breath. “This is officially the best day of my life,” he manages to gasp out.

Minho lunges toward you again, but you spring over the desk like a gymnast, dodging his grasp with ease. He stops in his tracks, watching you with a mixture of exasperation and grudging admiration. “Are you some kind of burglar in your spare time?”

You laugh, tossing him a wink. “Had to be, to pick those damn cuffs you left lying around!”

Laughter erupts around the room again, with even Chan chuckling under his breath. Minho, panting and glaring at you, looks around for backup but finds only grins and raised eyebrows. He turns to Jisung, who’s leaning back in his chair, thoroughly entertained. “I’m arresting your wife, Han. You better be ready to bail her out.”

Jisung’s grin widens as he stretches back comfortably. “Go ahead and try. I’ll tase you before you can even get the cuffs out.”

Minho narrows his eyes, crossing his arms. “Oh, so now you’re threatening to tase me?”

Jisung shrugs, lifting his coffee cup in a lazy salute. “If it means protecting my wife, absolutely.”

The room breaks into another round of laughter, with Jeongin egging you on, a glint of mischief in his eyes as he hands you yet another packet of powder. “Here. Third time’s the charm.”

Minho stares at you, eyes wide as he holds up his hands in surrender. “I am serious about this arrest, Y/N,” he growls, his face still dusted with powder.

You raise an eyebrow, grinning. “Great, but if you do, can you at least use someone else’s handcuffs? I don’t want any residue from your…extra-curriculars.”

The entire room dissolves into hysterics again, Felix’s cackles echoing off the walls as he practically falls out of his chair. Minho’s face grows redder and redder as he points accusingly at Jisung. “This! This is who you married?!” His voice is incredulous, the words practically dripping with mock disgust.

Jisung only shrugs, his eyes gleaming with pride. “Minho, you were at our wedding. You even made a toast. You know I wouldn’t change a thing.”

Minho throws his hands up dramatically, shaking his head in dismay. “At the time, she was the sweet, sexy Italian nurse you somehow tricked into marriage. We were all baffled by it! But now…now she’s just an evil, powder-wielding menace!”

Jisung leans back in his chair, draping his arm over your shoulders with a smug grin. “Yeah, but she’s my evil, powder-wielding menace.”

Seungmin, who’s been watching the whole scene unfold with amusement, finally speaks up, his tone incredulous. “No, seriously, Han. How the fuck did you manage to marry her? I need to know.”

Felix, still half-laughing, adds, “Did you slip something in her coffee, man? Because this feels like a miracle.”

You swat Jisung’s arm playfully, grinning. “Trust me, if there’d been anything suspicious in my coffee, I’d have come to my senses and left ages ago.”

The laughter crescendos as officers toss playful insults at Minho, who looks as though he’s about to burst. Finally, just when he seems on the edge of a breakdown, Chan steps in, his voice a mix of amusement and exasperation. “Minho, you’re not arresting her. If anything, she’s doing us all a favour by keeping you in line.”

Minho looks at Chan, his jaw dropping in exaggerated offence. “I don’t even have my captain’s support! What happened to having each other’s backs, huh?”

You lean back in your chair, crossing your arms with a smug grin as Minho mutters, still clearly in shock from the betrayal. Felix, ever the instigator, can’t resist tossing in one last jab. “Hey, Minho, why don’t you go cry to your wife? Oh wait—she’s probably signing those divorce papers as we speak.”

The laughter roars again, and Minho looks as though he’s on the verge of a meltdown. Before he can retaliate, you lean back into Jisung’s embrace, his arms wrapping protectively around you as he chuckles.

“So, after all this,” Jisung murmurs near your ear, “will you still bring us coffee?”

You tilt your head back slightly, smirking up at him. “Only if you start keeping a blanket and pillow in your locker so I can nap next time there’s a lockdown.”

Jisung raises an eyebrow, grinning. “If you’d asked, I’d have told you. I’ve had a blanket and pillow in there for months.”

You stare at him in disbelief. “You’ve had a blanket this whole time? And I’ve been stuck here, caffeine-deprived and nap-deprived? Jiiiiisung!”

He laughs, pressing a quick kiss to your forehead. “Hey, on the bright side, we can go home now. I’ve racked up a solid six hours of overtime, and we’ve got the whole day tomorrow for movies, naps, and, of course, proper Italian coffee.”

You sigh contentedly, letting your head rest against his shoulder. “Fine. But I’m holding you to it.”

Jisung chuckles, loosening his hold on you just enough to stand up. “What are we waiting for, then? Let me change out of this uniform, and we’ll get out of here.”

He gives you a playful wink and heads to the locker room. The second he’s out of earshot, you swivel back to Minho, who’s still brooding at his desk, and raise an eyebrow.

“Surprised you’re still here, Minho,” you say, grinning wickedly. “Your wife’s probably already got her lawyer on speed dial, ready to serve those papers.”

Minho narrows his eyes at you and scoops up a handful of powder left on his desk, flinging it at you. It flutters through the air, dusting your hair and shoulders. Unphased, you brush it off with a smirk.

Felix, watching with barely contained laughter, leans back. “Y/N still looks like a goddamn model, and Minho looks like he’s auditioning for a low-budget winter horror movie.”

Minho’s face grows redder as he scowls around the room. “I hope this is anthrax. I hope it’s actually anthrax, and you all get what’s coming to you.”

Chan, not even looking up from his paperwork, sighs. “Minho, you’ve inhaled more of that stuff than anyone. You’re going first if it is.”

You laugh, pointing at Minho with a dramatic flair. “So we’ll get to laugh at you one last time before we go. Sounds perfect.”

Jisung returns from the locker room a few minutes later, looking relaxed and cozy in his black sweatpants and hoodie. He reaches for your hand, giving you a warm smile as he leads you toward the exit.

As you pass Minho’s desk, you can’t resist one last poke. “And, Minho? I’m off-duty tonight, so you’re on your own for any sex-related injuries. Better keep things vanilla—no handcuffs, no nipple clamps.”

Minho’s face flushes bright red, and the entire room pauses to stare at him, expressions ranging from shocked to delighted. Felix’s head snaps up, eyes gleaming with curiosity. “Hold up—did someone say nipple clamps?”

You and Jisung exchange a look, grinning, before turning in unison to point at Minho. The room explodes in laughter once again as Minho slams his hand over his face in mortification.

“Fine! So, I like a bit of spice. Sue me!” he shouts over the uproar.

The laughter only intensifies, but Minho lifts his chin, crossing his arms and attempting to look dignified. “At least I’m not the only one with skeletons. I know all about what you two get up to!” he says, pointing accusingly at you and Jisung.

Felix perks up, eyes wide with excitement. “Oh, I have to hear this.”

Minho leans back, smirking. “They do Grey’s Anatomy roleplay. Full doctor-nurse scenarios.”

Felix’s jaw drops, a slow grin spreading over his face. “Wait—how do you know that?”

Minho grins, clearly enjoying the attention. “I was picking up some old furniture from them. Let myself in, and there they were in the living room. Y/N in a slutty nurse outfit, and Dr. Han was conducting a very unethical exam.”

The bullpen erupts into laughter, louder than ever, and Jisung grins, pulling you close, unbothered by the revelation. You roll your eyes, fighting a smile, knowing Minho’s just getting you back.

Felix, wiping tears from his eyes, stammers, “Oh my god, this is the best thing I’ve ever heard. You guys are absolute legends.”

You shake your head, throwing a grin Minho’s way. “All right, all right. Keep those stories for next time, Minho. We’ll be back tomorrow if you want to keep sharing.”

Minho gives a mock salute, a grin spreading across his face. “I’ll save the best for last. But just you wait, Jisung. I’ve got more where that came from.”

Jisung chuckles, guiding you out of the bullpen, giving one last wave. “See you tomorrow, Minho.”

The door closes behind you, and the cool night air washes over your face as you take a deep breath, finally free from the laughter, the powder, and the relentless teasing. Jisung leads you to his car, and as you sink into the passenger seat, you can’t help but smile, feeling a giddy sense of satisfaction.

“Well,” you say, leaning back with a sigh, “that was a day.”

Jisung lets out a soft chuckle, starting the car. “It was something all right. But hey, now it’s just us. Tomorrow’s ours. Movies, naps, and that Italian coffee you’ve been promising me.”

You open one eye, giving him a sidelong glance. “No Minho?”

He smirks, reaching over to give your hand a squeeze. “Definitely no Minho.”

Jisung pulls into the driveway, the familiar warmth of home glowing like a promise as he shuts off the engine. You step out of the car, your heels clicking softly against the pavement as you stretch, arms raised above your head, sighing in relief to finally be back. Jisung joins you, his fingers intertwining with yours as you both head up the walkway, and for a moment, everything feels blissfully calm and quiet. Worlds away from the precinct’s chaos.

Inside, Jisung locks the door behind you, leaning against it with a weary but contented grin. “Shower?”

“Oh, absolutely,” you reply, laughing. “The last thing I need is that damn itching powder haunting me all night. Not dealing with nine hours of that just to be scratching in my sleep.”

He chuckles, squeezing your hand. “Good call. Let’s head up.”

You both kick off your shoes, and you grab the handrail as you make your way upstairs, your dress swishing softly with each step. In the bathroom, Jisung is already tugging his hoodie over his head, tossing it to the floor without a second thought. His grin turns wicked as he catches your eye. “What, no stripping from you?”

You roll your eyes but smile, unzipping the back of your dress and letting it slide from your shoulders, pooling around your feet. “Happy now?”

“Ecstatic,” he says, his eyes twinkling as he slips off his sweatpants and steps into the shower. He twists the handle, testing the water temperature with his hand. “Come on, it’s perfect.”

You step in beside him, the hot water pouring over you, washing away the remnants of powder, sweat, and every ounce of stress. Jisung closes the glass door behind you, reaching for the shampoo and pouring a generous dollop into his hands.

“Here, let me,” he murmurs, massaging the shampoo into your hair with gentle fingers, his thumbs rubbing small circles along your scalp.

You close your eyes, melting under his touch. “God, how much powder did we inhale today? I feel like it’s in my hair, my lungs…my brain.”

He laughs, rinsing the shampoo from your hair. “Honestly, we’re probably sneezing up talcum powder for weeks. Worth it though—you looked like a total badass hurling that last packet at Minho.”

“Couldn’t resist,” you say, tilting your head back to let the water flow over your hair. “Besides, the whole thing was ridiculous. Nine hours of lockdown for itching powder?”

“You made it memorable, though,” he teases, his fingers running through your hair to make sure it’s completely clear. “Thanks for sticking it out with us.”

You scoff, giving him a playful nudge. “Like I had much choice. I’d have been thrown in lockup if I’d tried to escape.”

He snorts. “No way would I let that happen to my beautiful wife, stranded in her sundress and all. I’d fight anyone who tried to lock you up.”

“Anyone, huh?” you laugh, glancing over your shoulder at him. “Even Chan?”

Jisung lifts his chin defiantly. “Even Chan. Sure, he’d wipe the floor with me in seconds, but I’d make it look heroic. I’d do it for you.”

You laugh, turning to face him, your eyes sparkling. “Babe, you’re right. Chan would flatten you without breaking a sweat. One flex of those shoulders, and you’re done.”

“Hey!” he protests, scooping a handful of water and splashing it at you, eyes narrowed in playful accusation. “I thought you were on my side.”

Grinning, you wipe the water from your face. “I am on your side! You’re the one who said it!”

He huffs, though his grin is unstoppable as he lathers up the body wash, his hands moving over your shoulders and down your arms, lingering at your waist. “Sure, sure. Thanks for the support, traitor.”

“Just being realistic here,” you reply, biting back a laugh.

He smirks, his thumb tracing a soft circle on your hip. “Yeah, yeah. ‘Realistic,’ my ass.”

You nudge him lightly, but he only laughs, taking a step back to grab the body wash for himself. You let the hot water cascade over you, rinsing away the last of the powder, and sigh as the warmth melts the final bits of tension in your muscles. Once he’s finished washing, Jisung twists off the water, reaching for a fluffy towel on the wall.

Stepping out, you grab your favourite long robe with the marabou trim, wrapping it around yourself. Jisung, watching you with a smirk, secures a towel around his waist, eyebrows raised in admiration.

“You know,” he says, tilting his head as he eyes your robe, “they call those ‘femme fatale robes’ for a reason. You look like you’re about to seduce me for a stack of cash and a getaway car.”

You snort, pulling a comb through your damp hair. “Please. That’s the last thing on my mind right now. Food and sleep are the only things I’m interested in.”

“Couldn’t agree more,” he says, grabbing his razor from the sink and applying a dollop of shaving cream to his face. “I’m starving. How about takeout?”

“Sounds perfect,” you say, reaching for your skincare products. “Cooking anything tonight sounds like absolute torture.”

He chuckles, carefully shaving the stubble from his face. “Takeout and…a Harry Potter marathon?”

You grin, catching his eye in the mirror. “Now you’re speaking my language. Ravenclaw supremacy, all the way.”

“Uh, excuse me?” He pauses mid-brush, putting on an expression of exaggerated shock. “We all know Hufflepuff’s the real hero house.”

“Oh, Jisung,” you say, shaking your head as you smooth on some moisturizer. “Ravenclaws would outsmart everyone in seconds.”

“Psh, Hufflepuffs would win on loyalty and determination,” he counters, rinsing his razor. “We’re the ones who bring snacks, make sure everyone’s good, and still get the job done.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night,” you reply, patting on some eye cream. “Meanwhile, I’ll be doing what Ravenclaws do best: winning.”

He rolls his eyes, grinning as he wraps an arm around your waist and pulls you close. “Fine, Miss Ravenclaw Supremacy. Let’s go order some food before I pass out right here.”

Together, you head down the hallway to the bedroom, where Jisung grabs his phone and flops onto the bed, scrolling through food delivery options.

“So, what are we feeling? Pizza? Thai? Sushi?” he asks, glancing at you as you turn on the TV and pull up Netflix.

You curl up beside him, resting your head on his shoulder. “Let’s go with Thai. Feels earned after today.”

“Thai it is,” he says, quickly placing the order. He sets his phone down and wraps an arm around you, pulling you in closer. “And tomorrow morning, once we’re itch-free and well-rested, I’m making us the biggest breakfast ever. Pancakes, eggs, the whole deal.”

You sigh, melting into his warmth. “That sounds heavenly. But for now, we’ve got Thai on the way, Harry Potter ready to go, and we’re finally powder-free.”

Jisung grins, pressing a kiss to the top of your head as he clicks play on The Philosopher’s Stone. “Nineteen hours and thirty-nine minutes of pure wizarding magic ahead of us.”

You snuggle deeper into him, grinning. “Perfect. Only way this night could be better is if you’d actually pick Ravenclaw.”

“Keep dreaming,” he chuckles, giving your side a gentle squeeze. “Everyone knows Hufflepuffs bring the real magic. Besides, what do Ravenclaws even bring? Trivia?”

“Intellect,” you say, sitting up slightly to give him a haughty look. “And let’s be honest—Ravenclaws would make amazing Aurors.”

He shakes his head, amused. “And Hufflepuffs would be the best Healers, the ones who’d save everyone after your ‘intellect’ gets you all hexed.”

You throw a pillow at him, laughing as he catches it easily. “You’re impossible.”

“Nah, I’m adorable,” he replies with a smirk, leaning in to give you a quick kiss. “And I’ve got Thai food on the way.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that,” you say, settling back against him as the movie starts.

When the doorbell rings twenty minutes later, Jisung jumps up, grabbing the food and quickly coming back to the bedroom, arms loaded with takeout bags. He spreads them out on the bed, grinning.

“All right, feast time!” he declares, opening the containers. “Green curry for you, Pad Thai for me, and spring rolls for both of us.”

You dig in, savouring the warm, spicy flavours, and let out a contented sigh. “This is exactly what I needed.”

Jisung grins, his mouth full of noodles. “Told you. Nothing like Thai and Harry Potter after a day like that.”

The movie plays on, and you both devour the food, laughing over scenes you’ve seen a thousand times and arguing over the merits of each Hogwarts house. As the night wears on, you find yourself drifting off against him, his arm a comforting weight around your shoulders.

Just as you’re about to fully doze off, Jisung gently shakes you awake. “Hey, don’t fall asleep yet. We’ve got a whole marathon to get through.”

You smile sleepily, snuggling into him. “Can’t help it. You make the perfect pillow.”

He laughs softly, shifting so you’re both lying down, pulling the blankets over you. “All right, fine. We’ll marathon it tomorrow. For now, get some sleep.”

You drift off with his fingers tracing soothing patterns on your back, the sound of the movie playing softly in the background. For once, there’s no powder, no noise, just the quiet warmth of home, Jisung beside you, and a full night of uninterrupted rest stretching out ahead.

[heartfeltcherie]

Hi! I was wondering if you can do a Alastor x paralysis demon fem! reader (basically reader is like Freddy Krueger and can haunts peoples dreams and kill them. If the person they kill in their dream dies, they also die in real life.) The reader can always be tired since when the reader themselves fall asleep they’re transferred to someone else’s dreams so they don’t get sleep. Like none. So it’s just some fluffy stuff with Alastor and very sleepy reader! Extra points if you include reader having a demonic sheep pet with them. (Like how when people sleep they count sheep 🌝)

— my first piece of alastor literature! i’m very nervous that this isn’t accurate but nonetheless, i hope you enjoy :)

☾. °.   ࿐  ` , •

oatmilk flavoured coffee, the type of beverage that comforted you and filled you with a sense of warmth and comfort. a yawn escaped you as the bags under your eyes were becoming more prominent with every night that ended up sleepless.

it was yet another tiring night of drifting off to someone else’s dreams and adding pure nightmare fuel to the peace and quiet of an innocent victim, only to off them and add them to your kill count — you didn’t mind. it was entertaining to watch them try and escape and think that they’ve won, only for you to be the last thing they see before everything goes black.

but oh boy, was it exhausting.

you were sat on one of the sofas in the main entrance of the hazbin hotel, your legs resting to the side of you on the plush cushions as you rested against the arm rest, warm mug in hand, sipping peacefully.

you really wanted sleep. even a simple nap would do. but that was never going to happen, and you knew it.

“heavens, my dear, you look exhausted!” you look up from your outer-space-daze on the floor to see alastor. he’s got that usual smile on his face; you’re happy to see it. you give a meek grin in response. “you know me, always tired”

your feet are on the floor now as you give alastor a place to sit beside you. something about his presence beside you makes you feel warm; just like the coffee your drinking. that’s almost cold by now, but it’s fine.

“oh trust me, my dear, i’m well aware of how exhausted you’ve been as of late,” you take small glances at alastor as he cleans his monocle with his red coat sleeve, the way his oh-so fluffy hair flops with grace atop his head. perhaps it’s the exhaustion taking over your body as you begin to feel fuzzy on the inside.

yeah, definitely exhaustion.

“these hotel walls are missing your lively personality, sweetheart”

“…you’ve noticed?”

he doesn’t wanna admit it, bites his tongue as to not speak of such a thing. he wants to use the excuse of ‘his shadows see everything’ — which wasn’t half a lie in this particular scenario. but he has been noticing your tiresome self a lot more. he rolls his eyes “i’m the steadfast hotelier, i have to take notice in some things, don’t i? otherwise this establishment would be an absolute mess!”

“damn, too bad you didn’t take notice sooner, maybe i wouldn’t be an absolute mess right now” you take a sip of your drink, hiding your now blushing face behind your coffee mug.

oh, you really shouldn’t’ve said that.

“hmm, are you saying that you wanted me to take notice of you?” he takes up another space closer to you. of-fucking-course he’d do that. teasing bastard.

“i’m tired, al. i have no idea what i’m saying. what did i just say?”

you hear alastor chuckle as he stands up from his spot beside you, his presence now cold air beside you.

“perhaps try counting sheep tonight, darling. at least it would put that… pet you have to good use” you stop mid slurp, looking up behind your mug at the radio demon in front of you with scrunched eyebrows. cute.

“you leave lambie out of this”

like/reblog/comment if you liked my work, i greatly appreciate it!

[comfortless]

sylly (like silly yk yk) what are your könig hcs? 🌹

SYLLY?! i…. Ok…. fair warning this is a little long… all that i do is think about this guy someone get him out of my head.

tread carefully reading this! there is a lot of sensitive content here: mental health stuff, abuse, mentions of sex and pornographic material, suicidal ideation, etc etc.

Generic, silly headcanons:

He prefers coffee (black) over tea, but he does have a bit of a sweet tooth (will never resist caramel if it’s presented to him). Honestly, he’s pretty self-reliant when it comes to food, too. On lazy days, he makes enough to where a takeout bill is hardly a concern, but for the most part he cooks! Not a chef by any means, but nothing he ever makes is bad!

Definitely wants a big, loving family, the polar opposite of what he had growing up as an only child in a far less than perfect household. Not a dealbreaker, but he does yearn for all of the love that he’s missed out on and then some.

Not big on video games, but… I do think he is absolutely spending every lonely leave playing Elder Scrolls. Would be so easy to convince to go larping or to a renfaire. I see everyone’s car/bike guy headcanons and I raise you… obsessed with fantasy König. He loves history and myth!! Why not combine the two and see him in chainmail.

The scent & kink posts. But to add… he’s an affectionate biter. (,: Knows the correct places to do so that won’t cause damage or hurt too terribly much. Likes to sniff you just as well! The embodiment of the “merge souls with me” post; in love, he just wants to feel you any way that he can and have some part of you lingering on him, even if it’s just a stray hair or your scent clinging to his shirt or pillowcase.

Cheating is never on this guy’s mind when he’s in a relationship. If he’s found a lady not running for the hills the second she catches sight of him, that’s his one and only. Sure, he may find himself attracted to someone else at some point or other during the duration of a relationship, but he’s devoted and disciplined! There’s never the fear of anyone coming in between he and his lover. He’ll spoil you with gifts, clingy to a point it’s overbearing, always giving you the utmost care… but is not opposed to bullying you into being a submissive, trembling mess either. He’s balanced!

Adores animals. Like any of them. There’s a special place in his heart for cats, but having a constant companion that he can take on hikes like a large dog would be ideal. Would definitely consider owning a tarantula or a snake, too. ^^ He isn’t scared of anything, let alone a creature that most are misinformed about… (he projects a little..). He would treat them just as well as anyone would treat a more “normal” pet. Understanding if you wouldn’t want to hold a giant arachnid (they’re delicate and you squirming over it would make him a bit protective over the poor thing. ): ), but it would mean a lot to him if you were more accepting.

König would not be a pretty sight (to most people) the majority of the time… I doubt that he takes care of himself past training his body and his allotted one-two minute military showers. His character description describes what is rumored to be under his mask as scary. Let him have his buzzcut, and scars, and teeth or old wounds a little too fucked up to fix! Unconventionally attractive is still attractive! (i think his ‘face reveal’ is actually so cute…)

Lots of sporadic little thoughts, but… Ambidextrous, can not ride a bike, whistles/hums to fill lapses of silence, flexes his fingers/cracks his knuckles when he’s nervous, definitely snores (loudly), brushes his teeth like 3-4 times a day (when he can) because he eats so much, not a picky eater at all, thinks it’s cute if you’re affectionately a little grossed out by him from time to time, absolutely the kind of person that thinks fuel and fire smell good, fluent in English and German but certainly knows many words and phrases from other languages.

Kind of clumsy. Overthinks the way his body looks to the point where sometimes his movements are a little stiff. Overestimates how tall a door frame may be if he’s distracted in the presence of others, hits his head and plays it off like he didn’t even notice. He’s (obviously) highly confident on the field, but in regular circumstances it’s totally reversed.

Though. Yeah. Sometimes this does translate onto the field. Can’t stay in one place for too long, once knocked an enemy soldier out by barreling into him. He’s a quick shot, skillful with any weapon that falls into his hands, but his focus can get a little skewed.

He collects some things. Nothing exactly pricy, but antique knives, coins, and a pocket watch or two. And he isn’t the most apt at putting things together in an appealing way… The first time you’re allowed into his house it looks like he’s robbed some vintage hunting shop/is planning something nefarious with the way he’s just got a few daggers strewn about his kitchen table. Just push them to the side, it’s fine! (His favorite is certainly one with a handle carved from a stag’s antler.)

Definitely takes a physical approach to bad feelings. @melancholic-thing mentioned to me that he bites himself when he’s feeling dejected or frustrated and yeah. (All of Ghost’s hcs for him are factually correct.) Not going to punch a hole through the wall but may aggressively slam a door or raise his voice before he can catch himself.

I have many thoughts about König’s childhood/early adulthood. Like, too many. But to summarize…

I think that everyone experiences bullying to an extent but what would make it so bad that it managed to make its way into the scraps that we do have of him? What made him so fundamentally unlikable to his peers? /: With my König I’ve settled on it being a blend of neurodivergency and a nightmare home life and alienation from his peers.

Height is predominantly viewed as a good trait. I don’t think it was necessarily his appearance at all that got him picked on so heavily (albeit… I do think that he would have had some scars, crooked teeth, regular facial bruising or cuts from scraps with other children/his father). Perhaps not the most conventionally attractive guy around, but normally viewed as a solid 5/10, just average. The kind of person who you wouldn’t remember from just a face alone.

His personality was always memorable though.

Whilst the other children/teenagers were interested in the regular trends, sports, whatever was shown on the television or heard on the radio at the time, I think he probably would have had a great interest in escapism!!

Comics, books, researching history and geography, etc, anything that could keep him from thinking of where he was/what other people viewed him as. He had a lot of strange things to say: odd facts (like the kind of person to tell you the longest word in the dictionary because he thinks it’s cool, “um actually—“ to correct something, monologuing about some bug you’ve just squashed and how it was not just a pest but very useful in nature, borderline concerning reactions to being shunned (feigned threats of violence that he would laugh off, things he’s probably heard from media and his own parents), over explaining himself for the simplest of misunderstandings, and… quoting his Oma’s very old-fashioned turns of phrase (think of little Kö regularly saying “Du gehst mir tierisch auf den Keks.” when he’s annoyed whereas the others say things far less dated like “Du gehst mir auf den Sack.”)

With him being difficult to relate to and having the most uncanny things slip out of his mouth, others probably did view him as a bit of a freak. He didn’t particularly stand up for himself often either apart from a few fights (and would never hit a girl). He would stay quiet, pretend to focus on his studies or whatever else was before him while the other children jeered and taunted. Regularly a target for fake confessions and offers to hang out outside of school, too.

König did have crushes, did have people he thought were cool and wanted to befriend, but after the third time of showing up someplace that he had to walk to on his own to find that no one had actually wanted to spend their time with him, he gave up.

I don’t think he had a good relationship with his parents or much of anyone. Seriously, leaving for the military at seventeen sets off a ton of alarm bells! He left the week of his Oma’s passing, because what else was there for him — no girlfriend, no prospects, hardly a relationship with his mother or father.

His father was your standard shit parent— womanizing, loud, physically abusive towards König. “Bonding” activities with him always had a heavy lean towards violence: hunting and arguing that usually resulted in fist fighting his own son seemed to be his favorites. A small man with an equally small ego— he probably would have boasted about his affairs to König, exposed him to pornography as a way of making sure his son wasn’t anything other than straight (which: never stopped his curiosity). He would never hold back from telling König that he would never in a million years find a girl willing to put up with his supposed stupidity and shortcomings. Generally just viewed his own son as utterly worthless if not for use as a punching bag.

In turn, König always loathed him, would dread hearing the bastard just walking around the house because he knew he would always find something to bicker with his wife or son over. Nothing that they ever did would be deemed correct, and his social anxiety initially developed from his dealings with him.

His mother was withdrawn, emotionally neglectful. König was just… there to her; another mouth to feed, another person begging for the attention she would have rather spared on herself.

She wasn’t a bad mother and she did try, but the product of dealing with his father’s nonsense + letting her own mental illness go unchecked (as in, his father controlled the family financially and why would he let her blow through their funds to see a therapist and “lose her lucidity with pills and ridiculous talks”). There were some days when she would be feeling more like herself and take König along with her for walks through the park where she would try to ask him about his life, about school, and… he would end up spilling his guts to her only for her to return to silence. Still, those were his favorite days. His fondest memory was picking a flower for her on one of those walks, one that she kept pressed and later framed.

There were never family dinners, no movie nights, no day trips or vacations. The most blissful of days were spent in the comfort of his room where he could keep the door locked and muffle the sounds of his parents arguing with loud music.

So, König did not have much of a safe space within his own home, but he had his Oma and her cluttered little house. She had books and plenty of food, even a cat, too. Though she was like his mother, stern and withdrawn, she would at least sit with him and tell him stories of her own life. She would at least tell him “Ich lieb dich, Käferchen!” in her quiet voice, stroke his head where he would sit with his nose buried in a book beside her. She would show him her dusty antiques, her old photographs, and in turn taught him to be a proper man by making him tend to what needed to be done around her house. And the garden. He loved his Oma’s garden, full of orchids, petunias, and tomatoes she would mash up to make him goulash or tomatensalat!

With Austria’s leading religion being Catholicism, I do think his Oma would have dragged him with her to service plenty, too. Not that he ever particularly enjoyed it… just zoned out with a plastic soldier in his pocket to fidget with or some trading card he spent the money he earned doing chores for her on. He’s never considered himself religious, thought himself to be bound for Hell no matter what, even if most of the time he felt that he was already there.

You take a puppy that’s been beaten down his entire life, but still remains eager and throw him in a barrack with people more horrible than any bully he’s ever had, though…? He starts taking his father’s advice more and more then. He wouldn’t harm anyone that he didn’t view as deserving of it, but it didn’t need to go that far that often, anyway. König is aware of the space he takes up by then, aware that all of his training has made him more broad and sturdy, and those playground fights are nothing compared to what he’s capable of now.

He gets his callsign from a quip about him owning nothing. His barrack is empty, devoid of pictures or any sentimental belongings. He rarely checks his phone, there might be the occasional missed call from a spam number, what is there to even see? He has no social media presence, every leave is spent in a shitty apartment only a days travel from his hometown, and he is utterly silent when the other soldiers invite him out for drinks. So yes, he’s a king. The king of absolutely nothing.

One of these rowdy boys does eventually coax him into talking to a woman. He loses his virginity in a disgusting bar bathroom, where he asks her after the two minutes he’s spent inside of her if it means anything to her at all. She laughs, washes herself in the sink and calms him down, but doesn’t give him her number or anything more than her first name.

He’s starved for love, utterly miserable without it, but doesn’t have much of a desire to seek it out, either. He’s seen how people are, how they treat him. But time and time again he will grapple onto any thread that may lead him to a pinhole of hope when it’s offered to him. For the most part, he has his hand and a perpetually almost-empty bottle of lotion.

And it’s not much of a surprise that König has contemplated suicide more times than he can count. It has never culminated in any way, only fearing that he would disappoint his men, even further disappoint his parents, maybe even a small part of him still believes in a Hell; that maybe with enough vigilantism on his part he’ll earn his way to a pleasant afterlife, one he teeters on the separation of believing in and not.

He doesn’t think about his mental health, always haunted by his father’s words, thinking that assuredly it would make him weak if he were to seek help for something like his own thoughts. So he overexerts himself during workouts, bottles everything other than rage and love inside: no one is going to see him cry, not ever again after being laughed at for him hundreds of times during school where he sat being called an “ugly giant” a “daydreaming freak” and an “idiot” near daily where silent tears did escape, only spurring further laughter.

Though I do not write him with these things in mind for every au, there are always subtle hints scattered about. ^^ I could probably prattle on forever about him, but I will leave you with this for now…

[pnfc]

20 or so years in the future, doof and perry talk in a pool, at 3am, about the past. for about 5k words. that's it

[ on ao3 here ]

~

Even in dead of night, sounds rattle up the tower’s old iron skeleton to the top. The noise of the residents below, their talking and thumping and TV, warps through metal pipes and chutes into a muffled mechanical soundscape. The aging building’s life functions, thrumming from underfoot, as the fan wheels gently in the air above their bed.

Perry wakes in the room to Heinz’s absence.

Alone like this, he’s left with the many necessities of Heinz’s sleeping arrangement. The carefully selected quilt with the chunky stitching, the snuggly texture. Systematic obliteration of the wrong lights, the wrong sounds. All the particularities that Perry loves. And there are remnants: the old teddy retired to a decorative chair in the corner. The grind guard she doesn’t wear so much now, some little weight has lifted.

Perry squints at the Big Ben miniature on the bedside table to confirm the late hour, and gets up.

He finds her out on the balcony, crosslegged at the side of the pool. The moon’s out of view, but it lights the clouds up like seedpod puffs, and they mirror on the water, underlit by turquoise pool lights. The air is hot.

Perry goes over and places a hand on her bare knee, makes an asking sound.

“Just the usual, Perry,” Heinz says in reply. “I had a stupid dream.” She slides a foot out into the water, where it glows, white in blue. Perry sits at her side. “You were out of character.”

“You’re always uncharacteristically mean in my dreams,” she continues, half smiling. “And you talk. You talk way too often, I think that’s the worst part. In like whatever stupid voice my subconscious thinks you should have. Which changes. I think you sounded French one time, which makes no sense.”

The light is enough for Perry to sign by. What’d I say?

“Oh you know,” she says, her tone compressing. “You regretted this.”

Perry sits with that, with her, pressed against her leg. It’s not an accusation, Perry knows well enough by now, not one made in earnest. They both have to live with Heinz’s self-ravaging mind. He rubs her hand with his.

Hard to know what to regret. He’s put a lot of work in, building this life for himself. Like his boys used to build those miraculous one-day contraptions in the summertime, or Heinz would make reality-cracking machines fueled on coffee and malice, so Perry had built something of his own, more common and slow, but something he was happy with. This partnership with Heinz, this thick-knit network of people he’s living for.

It’s a struggle to even remember the days when he’d been workshopping its contruction. Hard to blueprint a machine, harder to blueprint a life lived in flux, tripwired with secrets and obligations. He used to sweat through nightmares, trying to see the shape of his future, seeing only how easily it could be lost.

Her sitting next to him on smooth cement, 3 AM, poolwater ringing her calf, the bright night sky. He can’t express to Heinz how he never imagined having this much.

So he gets up, with a parting squeeze of her hand, and backdives into the pool, a lazy arc piercing silent and smooth. Might as well give her something to watch. He skims along the bottom, where the LEDs cast sixfold yellow shadows, overlapping like insect wings as he goes.

A few minutes of trawling the circumference, twisting, shooting through the duck-shaped floaty ring, rocketing off the sides with strong pushes of his feet. He weaves and skips between water and air in sinoid leaps. He’s learned to oscillate his body like a seal for these jumps — it’s proved useful sampling the broader animal kingdom for swimming techniques. They keep him limber, in this low-gravity environment his body was made for.

He pops up to check on Heinz, who’s looking. “No no no, keep it up, Perry the Platypus,” she grins at him. “You’re like my Windows screensaver right now. It’s soothing. I dunno if it’s putting me to sleep though, if that’s what you were going for.”

Perry floats over to where she’s sitting. She’s stirring both legs through the water. They’re pencil-skinny and they spirograph ripples that lap into Perry’s neck.

“Y’know what I thought when I found out this place had a pool?” she asks him.

“Well — I thought I’d be doing so much water aerobics. I definitely didn’t think I’d have someone semiaquatic in my life. But that didn’t pan out, the aerobics. So later I thought I’d put in some electric eels or piranhas, for you when you’d visit. Keep it zesty. But I always thought of it right when the aquarium was closed. And you know, after that first spark of excitement has passed, an idea like that just ends up being on your list. So it never happened. You got lucky.”

Perry rests with an arm around her calf, underwater. She’s wearing one of her long hotweather nightshirts, millennial neon geometries advertising a dance camp that Vanessa once attended. It has glow in the dark squigglies. So many little things to keep Vanessa around, her never-worn hand-me-ups.

Perry darkens the shirt fabric in his wet fist, and tugs it toward him. Heinz laughs. “You are not getting me in there,” she says, pushing a foot at him. “I came out here to brood, not swim.”

Perry doesn’t accept it. He pulls her in successfully, and she drops off the edge into the pool without much fuss, splashing him. “This is of my own volition,” she says. “You don’t get to boss me around in the middle of the night. You don’t own me.”

Yes he does. Perry swims a ring around her waist, framing her. The light’s playing off her grey hair, staining it teal. In this view you could mistake them for a matching set. He likes that.

“That is literally still on a list somewhere,” Heinz adds, “the piranhas. In one of my old notebooks.”

They’re piled in storage now, the plans and the blueprints, though she keeps a few sitting around from the later years. A while back they cobbled together a scrapbook of the better schemes, Heinz’s more impressive drawings, fonder memories. Perry got the B.O.A.T. schematic professionally framed, one birthday. Heinz had rolled her eyes at it and hung it in the foyer.

“I feel weird looking at those,” Heinz says. “It’s like oh yeah, that idea was living in my head for years. Thought for sure that one was gonna put one over on Roger, as soon as I got around to it.”

Years, multiple? Really?

“Oh yeah,” says Heinz, as Perry blinks up in question. “You know how I procrastinate, Perry the Platypus. But it was mainly the big plans that I kept putting off, over and over. The ones that required a real surge of hatred, to kick my scheming into gear. Ambitious stuff, you know,” she says, tilting her head. “Mind control, intimidation — stuff that works. Not like the stuff I’d do with you, most days.”

She lilts an arm out, snaring Perry’s hand. He lets her pull him through the water in a curve.

“The bad ideas were more fun — I think I was just trying to give you a laugh, at a certain point. Not that you ever did. The chicken replaceinator, the beam that made people’s ties comically long. I did not think turning everyone’s shoes into heelys would actually win me dominion of the tristate area, Perry, if I’m being honest.

“All those big diabolical plans, they kept me up at night. But I put them off, ‘cause it was more fun getting sugar high with you and bouncing off the walls. Making up an entire song and dance number for the satisfaction of watching you try not to tap your foot to it. Every year it was: oh, just a few more months with Perry. Next year I’ll get serious, for sure.

“And, you know. I can’t regret any of it,” Heinz says. “Because it worked. I got you to dance with me, spend time with me. I didn’t think that was my goal at first — but you know, in retrospect, what else could possibly stack up?

“. . . But I didn’t get to know that, that my time was well spent, until later. Because you can’t really know if you’ll regret something when it’s happening. Like all those bad relationships, all those times I went into debt. You have to wait until you can look back on it all in a decade or two and go: oh yeah, that was a wash.”

Heinz pulls Perry out in a slow-motion twirl, bopping at the water’s surface. She gives him a considering look as their hands detach.

“That’s why I think about you. Because you haven’t been around as long. It takes time to figure out regret. And you don’t have the luxury,” she says with a tight smile, “of regretting a decade. You didn’t fuck up the 90s. You didn’t even have the opportunity.”

Perry can tell she’s got some spleen to vent. Potentially a whole rainbow of humors. He sets up on a paddleboard shaped like a ducky foot — perches zen-legged in its center, balancing what little weight he has. He comes up past her chin now.

“Do you know how many times I’ve invented time travel, Perry the Platypus?” Heinz asks.

“Well, once. When I was in my twenties. For a generous definition of ‘invent’ — we all learned the Onassian principles in college physics. It’s not too hard to plug in the missing variables — sort of an open secret, in the evil science world, how to manipulate time. We’d all dabble, here and there. You overstep and there’s consequences, of course. By the time you met me I was using it for trifles and whimsies. Hyperspecific stuff, that’s less of a risk.”

She fidgets shapes through the water with her hands.

“You remember me, like — summoning the Roman army. That sort of thing.”

Perry remembers it going wrong, yeah, and him sending Heinz back 800 years, in a perfunctory brush-off of that day’s scheme. He remembers finding Heinz back at DEI the next morning, in a sour mood, with a tirade prepared on the difficulties of refining metal ores in 13th century Mongolia. Heinz had lived there a month. Her age was now out of whack with the present date, and she had said something incomprehensible about it, like:

You’ve made me a Leo, Perry the Platypus. A Leo. That’s . . . well I’ve always felt like I should be one, deep down, so thank you. But it explains why horoscope advice has never worked out for me, which in hindsight is just plain embarrassing.

Perry doesn’t recall there being a scheme that day. Even with the freedom to bubble out extra time, Heinz hadn’t bothered prepping more than a long complaining story for Perry — adequate payback for the thwart, he supposed.

“But the first time I got it working,” Heinz continues. “I did some stuff I never even told you about.” She glances up at Perry. “I didn’t even make a plan, I just went back first thing. To Gimmelshtump. Wasn’t even dressed for the weather. And I saw myself there, walking around the outskirts of town. Carrying old breadloaves and rags, and whatever else — I had to be a packrat, back then.

“And I wasn’t even that far removed, at the time, from that kid. But he had a whole system worked out to survive. If you plunked me down in his haferlschuhs now I’d just collapse where he stood, in a matter of hours. Or I’d go crawling back to the ocelots — which wouldn’t end well, I don’t think they’d recognize me.”

Perry’s rather agog. What a length of time to hold this information inside. He realizes he’s perched unstably forward, off the foam board.

What did you do?

Heinz makes a dismissive noise. “What could I do? Nothing. Could I have stayed? Been a parent to that kid? I guess. At least until causality cried foul and wiped me out. But who wants to be a parent at 23?

“And it seems selfish, right, wanting to keep what I made myself into, at his expense. He had to suffer so I could sit warm and cozy in the 80s, failing out of American college because I was too smart for it, schtupping my way through town, selling bratwurst. But I am selfish, Perry the Platypus.” Heinz sets a hard look on him. “All I did was confirm to myself that it was real, all those awful things that happened to that kid. I wasn’t making it up. And I never went back.”

Perry stares at her — he’s sitting pensive on the board, cross-legged, and pushes himself an inch closer with his tail ruddered in the water.

I would’ve stayed, Perry responds, for that kid.

Heinz gives him a quizzical smile. “Would you? That’s easy to say. Would you live out the rest of your days helping him put his rumpkinhosen on the right way? Explaining puberty, that it’s not really the devil growing out of his body, like Mother says? Stealing him acne cream?”

Heinz’s face angles in a mean way.

“Are you gonna convince that kid his parents will never love him? Because that’s all that was keeping me there, apart from Roger. The dumb, burning hope that they might, eventually.”

Ok, so it’s a terrible idea. Perry nods anyway, to be contrary, cheek squished upon his fist.

You’d run away with any cute animal you met, he signs. And I’d kick their asses.

This repairs the mood somewhat, makes Heinz giggle in surprise.

“Oh would you?” she says behind long fingers, eyes sparkling. “Because I’d kind of like to see that. Grizzled platypus with a mysterious score to settle shows up, terrorizes my childhood home. Makes my parents beg for mercy.”

Perry nods. I’d treat you like a princess. Heinz can’t see that he’s blushing. She laughs, louder than before.

“Oh that’s cute, Perry. The Vanessa treatment! Wow. I would’ve turned out different, that’s for sure.” She’s trailing her fingertips across the pool tiles. “But going back in time, taking care of each other . . . let’s not, okay Perry the Platypus? Let’s not and say we would.”

But you did, Perry signs, because once he’s chimed into conversation with Heinz it’s hard to stop himself. Even when he realizes, too late, that he shouldn’t have said anything.

He drops his shaking hands to his lap. Heinz cocks her head with the same pretty smile, now thinner. “You’re gonna bring that up? When we learned how they got you? That . . . that was a mistake,” she says. “We were just getting to be friends, back then. It was exciting. I didn’t have my head on straight. ... And that would’ve been a different situation, in continuity terms, that was . . . ”

She opens and closes her mouth. Perry sees her stare fall to the water, thumb still tracing the putty grooves between the tiles.

“. . . I never really explained to you the technical nitty-gritty, the physics of it. There’s time-space transplantation, moving a body in its current state back or forward through time — that’s what I did going to Drusselstein. But there’s other ways to slide around.

“See, Roger was getting into golf — just excruciating, trying to spend any time with him, it was always ‘Pencil in a timeslot with Melanie and we’ll hit the back nine,’ or whatever.

“I found a way to fast-forward him, that I never got to use. Premature inator-destruction. It happens to the best of us. Usually to me, whenever you got too eager.”

Perry’s propped on his fist, contemplative. I wouldn’t know anything about that.

“See I think you would,” Heinz says, narrowing her eyes. “I’m pretty sure you were my caddie. In fact I’ve gleaned that most, if not all, of the platypuses I encountered in my evil heyday were you. That little guy had your eyes, and he looked unusually hot in golf shorts.”

Perry blinks, mouth trained in a line.

“C’mon, Perry the Platypus,” she wheedles. “It’s not nice leaving a girl in limbo, for so many years. This’ll keep weighing on me.”

Okay fine, Perry signs, shrugging. I was the hot caddie.

“I knew it!” She grabs the foam board and shoves it hard, sending Perry backwards with a splash. “You are such a jerk gaslighting me all the time! Steven.”

Perry shakes water off his bill and punches forward into her, though the effect is more of a cuddle. She tangles him in her arms.

“So that means you know,” she says, scrunching fingers into his chest, “why I wanted to speed through that. And if you can isolate a body, move it forward and back, you can isolate a mind, or a consciousness.

“That was the technique I used, for when . . . you know, when I did the.” She falters. “Really, really bad idea.”

Except you didn’t, Perry signs up at her.

“Yeah, but like. I think about it. How I almost did. How I could’ve screwed everything up. For both of us.”

Perry remembers it more through her recollection than anything. The day she’d cracked into the OWCA admin portal and Perry had let her. The day she found the timestamped geolocation from which Perry had been acquired. He remembers Heinz’s outrage, mourning Perry’s fate at OWCA’s hands, and the wave of giddy revelation that had quickly taken over at the chance to go back, intercede, take Perry for herself instead.

From where Perry had stood Heinz hadn’t vanished, hadn’t even blipped. He just knew that one instant he was rocketing a punch toward someone diabolically driven and the next, post-inator, was socking his fists into the braced forearms of a downed Heinz, cowed under Perry on the lab floor. And Heinz’s eyes had been so haunted, looking up at him from behind those arms, that Perry knew something had passed.

It was years before she’d tell him the full story. How she’d run out of the house as her 41-year-old self, to track Perry down. The bluegreen and red at the riverside. How Perry’s mother had died on the shore, bleeding out of bite wounds, accepting Heinz’s touch as she cooled under frantic hands. The last look she’d given Heinz. The wariness of the OWCA-trained animal control agents who’d found Heinz sitting there, keeping vigil. How Perry had nestled in the palm of her hand, impossibly little, and ate up what milk of his mother Heinz brought to his bill, fingertip to mouth.

He can’t remember any of it, of course, how could he. But he would always carry close to heart the knowledge that Heinz had inserted herself, in this small and careful way. Had been the first human touch he’d felt.

But it made Heinz cry, retelling it. So Perry never brings it up.

He holds the back of her hand, as she winds a thumb through his fur.

“It would’ve been so easy to change what you were to me, and ruin the weird thing we had with each other — even back then, when it didn’t seem like as much. I didn’t know at the time, y’know, that you’d want to stick around this long.”

Perry gives her a sad smile.

“Time travel’s the worst, it’s like an automatic culpability machine,” Heinz says. “It’s a terrible idea to go backward: everything becomes your choice. Any pain in the past is now stamped with your approval, you don’t have the right to complain anymore. Choosing to leave you with Monogram, choosing to abandon myself in Gimmelshtump. It’s so easy to change everything, with a few key edits.

“And greed always makes me want both. I wanna give that lonely little kid a charmed life, and I want to keep the one I have. I want to get to raise you into my perfect little companion,” she says, cuffing the back of his neck. “And I want to get to fuck you, too.”

Her fingers threaten to pince a collar round his throat and he stares up as her words shock his gut, her sick rapacity bearing down on him, heavy. But her face is unplayful: tired and vaguely nauseated, a disgust turned back in on herself.

So Perry swallows down arousal and steadies his composure, in turn. Heinz just closes her eyes, with a sigh, and pushes Perry’s body away from her into the water.

“I dont know how it worked for him,” she says. And Perry doesn’t know who she means, which averted version of herself, so he waits.

“How he could stand to have that power every day, to make any possible reality. And to risk not having one that really matters.”

Oh. Of course.

“I never did got the full story out of him. Professor Me. I wished I knew more — but there’s something so off-putting, seeing yourself from the outside like that. It’s like listening to a voice recording.

“I don’t think he had any extra-special skills, didn’t know anything I don’t — except whatever it was that convinced him pinstripes and a pink cravat were the go-to look for branding himself a big time travel genius. That I’ll never understand, why I’d wanna look like I’m selling snake oil from the future to the past. In fact I get the sneaking suspicion that’s exactly what he was doing. I can’t imagine wearing that costume full time.

“But maybe he didn’t, you know? Maybe he got home at the end of each day and he put his stupid top hat on a peg and he . . . I dunno, worked on jigsaw puzzles with you. Like we do,” she says. “Maybe he was more like me than I knew.”

They never saw him again, after that year. A decade plus of Heinz waiting, stressing, disavowing, dreading. And then at a certain point it dawned on both of them that their trajectory had quietly split from his. And relief overwhelmed curiosity at whatever might have been.

But when she first found out, Heinz had been excited, in a cute nervy way. It was every delusional dream coming true at once and smacking her in the face — right at a vulnerable moment, when another close-call spacetime catastrophe had left her shellshocked and aimless, in need of reinvention.

It’s crazy, right? Heinz would ask anyone who happened to be in earshot. And they’d agree, that it sounded crazy.

It’s like I predicted it! I — I wrote a TV show about it, me being a time traveler. They ripped it off and made me a girl — and then they made Perry the Platypus a human and cancelled it after one season — but I did! I was this hero from the future, and I knew karate. Do you think he knows karate? I bet he knows karate, too, he’s just being low-key about it, because that’s what cool karate experts do, when they know karate.

But then there was the month, the lowest of her life, as Heinz described it, when they weren’t talking. And in the depressive wreckage of their falling out Heinz was left to ponder how, in that glimpse of the future, bright with glory and wealth and eternity, Perry had not been in frame.

He was off to the side, probably. Surely. Though Heinz’s then-drinking buddy hadn’t offered any reassurances. If the future included Perry the Platypus, he was no famous partner of the great Professor Time.

And that’s rookie mistake number one, Heinz had said to Perry later. Traveling through time without a trusty companion. You just don’t do it. I . . . I learned that from cartoons.

Back in the present Heinz is chewing her lip. “It’s just that I had all this baggage, around time travel, that I didn’t even realize — I hadn’t sorted through any of it yet. I just knew I couldn’t go back. And I figured if I couldn’t give myself a perfect past, I’d just have to give myself a perfect future. I never actually wanted to learn about it though, never wanted to skip ahead and spoil myself, in case I got bad news.

“But getting good news was like . . . weirdly so much worse. Like — all that glory I wanted, people shouting my name. He already got it. And with a stupider name. So I didn’t know what to want.

“Except for the uncertainties,” she says, quieter. “The stuff I didn’t know he had, that I knew I had to keep.”

She reaches out a hand. Perry takes it in his paws.

“That’s a lot, I guess, just to say —” Heinz says. “I’m really happy where I am.”

Perry spent years of his life not holding Heinz, not touching. He’d never admit that fear was a reason. It was just a matter of propriety, truly, of acting right under OWCA’s watchful eye, under the spycams they’ve long since eradicated from around Heinz’s loft.

Now he pulls himself into her and she sinks down in the water, so he can wind his short arms around her neck. And Perry feels all those years of idiotic professionalism like a permanent injury in his chest.

But he gets to hold her now, dig his clawed fingers in the clinging wet folds of her shirt and push his bill to the back of her neck, inhale her body heat. Which lessens the sting.

She clutches him back.

“You wouldn’t like the stuff I think about,” she whispers, “the stuff that woke me up tonight, that weighs on me. Stuff I know I shouldn’t say to you.”

Perry pulls back, to give her a sidelong look. It’s strange to hear. There’s no rotten part inside of Heinz that Perry hasn’t learned to love by now.

She elaborates. “I hate how long it took me to get here with you, to figure out my priorities. It took until you existed.

“But you’ve been stuck with me from the beginning. I’m your permanent assignment. In every life you get, you have to make the best of me,” she says. “And that’s when I’m not an irredeemable monster who makes you my slave.”

Perry takes a firm grip of her shoulder and rears back a bit, so he can turn his bewildered face on her.

She waves a defensive palm in front of him. “I know, I know, Perry. Let me get this out.

“I just think,” she says.

“If you wanted a do-over, I could give you one. At the end of all of this, when we’re finally puttering out — I mean we’re getting old, Perry. I could rewind you. You could go back to where you started, live a whole different life. Ditch OWCA. Go out and meet any number of people, around the world, do whatever you wanna do with yourself. Make a life on your own terms. Get to know who you could be without me.”

Heinz was right about Perry not liking this. He’s not sure exactly where his shock turns into anger, but the net effect is hurt, at what she’s saying.

He gives her his wildest are you kidding me look.

“You know I didn’t actually think you’d say yes,” Heinz says. “It was more a question of how hard you’d hit me in the face for saying any of this.

“But I think you deserve the option, if it turned out you did regret a decade of your life, or two. Because that’s all you got. All you got out of life was me and the dumb choices I made.”

She’s hunched into the curved pool wall, tugging at her elbows under the surface. She won’t quite meet Perry’s eyes.

“I could build you a machine and you could use it to go back without me knowing — so it wouldn’t hurt my feelings, it’s not like I’d remember,” she says, and there’s a wretched emptiness as she voices this thought, like it’s rehearsed.

“You could hold onto all of this, or I could wipe it, give you a clean slate. I just wish you could have, like. . . one choice in your life that’s not built around me.”

Perry stares at her. It seems she’s at the end of her speech. Her pool-lit image is ghostly, flickering like a hologram. Her eyes face down.

He racks a hand up his face with a sigh, the sound gurgling in his bill — not to dismiss her pouring out her stupid heart. But what else can he do, faced with such an unpersuasive offer?

She looks at him then, so he signs one thing. You’re too old to hate yourself this much.

“Oh Perry,” she rebukes, as he swims around her to the poolside. “That’s really not the point. You get that it’s unfair, right? Your life versus mine. I got to have all this time, and you — got me, and that’s,” she falters, as Perry hoists himself out of the water.

“I — I don’t think you’re unhappy, that’s not what I’m saying,” she quickly adds. She grabs Perry’s wrist, to make him look at her.

“I don’t know how to deal with you — living less,” she says, staring into him with benthic eyes. “And me being the most you ever got.”

Perry grabs the outside of her hand with his other paw, and tugs. Heinz acquiesces, allows herself to be lifted, and clambers the rest of the way out of the pool.

She’s like a bedraggled cat, long silver hair strands dripping on the pavement. Perry retrieves a fresh towel from the wicker caddy, pads back over and swathes it around her narrow shoulders.

“I should just accept that it’s romantic,” she mumbles, while Perry rubs the towel into her hair. “Like a destiny thing. But it’s a lot of pressure, the universe setting you up with me.

“Are you happy with that, Perry,” she asks. “I bet you are. I bet you feel all cheesy and warm about it.”

Heinz and Perry have been rewatching the same old telenovelas for years. Perry just rolls his eyes, to say you know I do.

Heinz nods. “That’s a problem, Perry the Platypus. So my offer stands. If you ever want to fix it.”

Perry presses his face to her cheek, in lieu of the slap she deserves. When he drags his soft bill across her face she tips it into a kiss, automatically, the deep-grooved pattern of their motions betraying whatever self-injuring case she was trying to make, about the awful tragedy of Perry loving her.

It’s not a choice, he signs, pulling back from the kiss. Taking you out of my life. It wouldn’t be my life anymore. So no.

Perry holds a paw to his chest. The fur’s mostly grey there — a way he really matches Heinz now, no trick of the light required.

If you weren’t in here . . . I don’t know who I’d be. Just a very good pet and a very good soldier. That doesn’t interest me, he signs, and he’s thinking, with less tact: fuck that guy.

Heinz is quiet, staring. She’s slumped so soft in the summer haze, a vulnerable thing in front of him. A whole city behind her. One she gave up ruling, because she liked Perry more.

I’m built around you. No fixing it, at this point. Sorry.

Perry shrugs, and draws his hands into snatching claws: I’m selfish, too.

[sunflowersandsapphires]

Lifeline

pairing: Matt Murdock x fem!reader 

summary: When Matt starts to shut down, your stubbornness saves him.

warnings: swearing, angst, panic attack description, pining buffoons, pre-relationship, Matt's mental illness and fear of abandonment

a/n: This is a short birthday fic for the wonderful @abucketofweird who wanted a fic similar to Renegade with Best Friends to Lovers. I hope you enjoy, my dear! 🥳🥰❤️

I know it's short and pre-relationship but there is plenty of angsty Matt! (Also, yes she calls him a million nicknames, but they're not ~explicitly~ together in this). Please let me know if y'all are tired of seeing me write crying!angsty!Matt because I know I write that a lot.

w/c: ~4k

Matt could still remember the day that the Devil had first emerged. It was before his accident, after witnessing a group of teens bully his elementary school classmate on her way home from school. Years of seeing his dad throw hits and his own unwavering moral compass had forged a new being within his own; his rage overtaking his consciousness, forming shaky fists and a flower across his face. 

At the time, he hadn’t known how to fight properly and had gotten his ass kicked. A few decades had passed and, though his ability had grown, his rage had stayed the same. 

Fury was a useful tool, most of the time. Allowing him to push through discomfort and injury until he’d taken down whatever evildoer he’d gone after that day. It was his wrath that kept him going, but it was also his biggest inhibition. 

The desire to beat powerful criminals bloody was overpowering. His gut boiled with anger anytime he heard someone crying for help, knowing that, more than likely, the only thing sparing them from that cruel fate was him—a blind Catholic with a chip on his shoulder and lacking self preservation skills. 

It was his rage that caused tunnel vision. Which in turn caused sleep deprivation, which led to more injuries. The cycle didn’t end there though, at least not recently. His tendency to prioritize his alter ego over his own health wasn’t something that could be solved by a simple nap these days. Not when he had people worrying about him, and when his efforts to meditate or find another outlet for his emotions remained futile. 

More injuries meant it was more difficult to hide them. A bullet wound in his stomach, a sprained ankle, these were more noticeable to his coworkers, to you. While you were eternally patient and understanding about his double life, his business partners were not. He tried his best to ignore Karen’s gasps and Foggy’s pointed stares every time he limped into the office or winced while pouring his coffee. Despite his efforts, it always aggravated him, fueling his rage and thus perpetuating the cycle further. 

This week, Foggy had snapped. Yelling at Matt for putting himself in danger, for jeopardizing their recent case—they’d had to postpone a meeting with the prosecution given the state of Matt’s face—and their firm. In return, Matt had lashed out. Screaming about the greater good and Foggy not trusting him. It quickly became an all out brawl, both men hurling insults at the other despite Karen warning them that they were going too far. But her intervention came too late. 

“You claim to be so worried about people leaving but I don’t see how that’s fucking possible when you try so hard to scare us off, Murdock. Guess what!? It’s working!” Foggy snapped, throwing his hands in the air with a huff. 

Logically, Matt knew Foggy didn’t mean that—at least not in the way Matt heard it—but his throat felt swollen anyway. His heart pounded, the argument sitting on his tongue dissolving as his mouth grew increasingly dry. Loosening his tie, Matt stalked to his office to gather his things. 

“You know what, I think I’ll work at home for a few days.” He spoke stiffly, throwing the strap of his bag over his shoulder. 

“Matt,” Karen took a step towards him but he refuses to acknowledge her placating tone. 

“I’ll see you in court next week. I’ll drop off my opening argument tomorrow night.” Without waiting for their responses, he retreated to his apartment. 

With every step along the damp Manhattan sidewalk, his irritation grew. His brain was flickering back and forth between despair and indignation, his hands itching to hit something. Tonight would be productive, that much was clear. 

Though he usually waited until the late hours of the evening to go out as Daredevil, his argument with Foggy had ignited an impatient buzzing beneath his skin—his muscles clenching and anger bubbling until he caved to the Devil. It was risky, dashing from roof to roof in his suit at dusk, but his patience had worn out hours ago. 

The night felt endless, yet it was over far too soon. He raced through the streets, taking down thug after thug, until a serrated blade caught him off guard. With a jagged rip across his thigh, he made for his apartment—planning to crudely stitch the wound before finishing what he’d started. 

As he approached his loft, his ears locked on to a familiar heartbeat, its pattering mulling about his place as he grew closer. Foggy had sent in reinforcements, he supposed, though he wasn’t thrilled about it. 

Opening the rooftop door, Matt stomped down the stairs, hurling pieces of his suit across the space as he ripped them from his overheated body. Pretending not to care about the spike in your heartbeat, courtesy of his pounding steps, he tore the mask from his face, setting it beside the sink before filling a glass with water. 

Fidgeting with your sleeve, you approached him slowly, saying nothing as he downed a glass of lukewarm water before jutting his chin at you. 

“Say what you’re going to say, then leave.” His voice was harsh and deep, the Devil still fully in control. 

You inhaled slowly, not scared of his current state, but clearly unhappy all the same. “What makes you think I have something to say?” 

Matt bit back a scoff. “Foggy sent you, which means you’re on his side and are here to tell me off.” 

“On his side…Christ, Murdock.” You were a few paces in front of him, just behind the counter, your clothes rustling as you crossed your arms in frustration. 

“Why else would you be here?” Matt stormed around you and into his bathroom, unbuckling the bottom half to sew himself up. If anyone else had been here, he might have been more worried about modesty, but you’d seen him in more compromising positions than this over the years. 

Gritting your teeth as you trudged after him, your arms remained folded against your chest. “Because I care about you, asshole. Karen told me what Foggy said. I was worried.” 

Your heart thumped steadily with your honest admission, eliciting a pang of guilt deep in Matt’s subconscious. He remained silent, rubbing a damp cloth over his wound to clean it up before he attempted suturing it. At his lack of response, you scoffed, “Don’t know why I was so worried. You’re clearly taking it very well.” 

Spinning to face you, his lips curled. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” 

“It means exactly what you think it means, Matt.” You snapped back at him, regretting it when his jaw twitched in response. Sighing, your voice softened. “You are so strong, and I know that Foggy and Karen give you a hard time but they’re not entirely wrong. It’s ok to ask for help.” 

“I don’t need their help.” Matt muttered, leaning against the cold porcelain sink in the bathroom. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.” 

“No one is saying that you’re not.” You tried to reason, but he refused to listen. 

“I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what Foggy was saying, actually. How would you even know? It’s not like you were there.” He bit out, resentment prickling through his words. 

Ouch. He was right. You weren’t there. Because you’d taken a new job across the city. And he clearly was still not ok with that fact. 

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there.” You spoke gravely, brushing away a smudge of dirt on his cheek with your thumb. He tensed under your touch, but didn’t flinch away. “But you know that I don’t agree with what Fog said, right? Regardless of whether he meant it, it was wrong for him to imply—“

Shoving your hand from his face, his lips formed a scowl once again. “What? That it’s my fault? That people leave because I make them? Maybe he’s right.” 

“Matt, that’s not true. You know—“

“Don’t tell me what I know!” He roared pressing into your personal space, eyes blazing with fury. 

Breathing evenly, you shifted your weight away from him. Not flinching out of fear, just a natural reaction to his behavior, yet the movement still stung. Retreating from you, he picked up the cloth and refocused on the gash across his thigh. 

“Go home,” He spoke your name coldly. This wasn’t a question, it was an order. 

“Matt—“ You started but he glared at you. 

“Go.”

You nodded, pacing back into the living room to grab your purse from the couch. “Call me if you need anything, Matty. I’ll be around.” You spoke softly, your soft footsteps fading as you left his loft. 

Biting back an irritated snarl, Matt tread into the kitchen to grab a bottle of whiskey. Taking a full swig, he pushed his guilt and pain aside and picked up a needle. 

Burying your face in the collar of your jacket, you scrunched your nose as a particularly fierce gust of wind smacked you. Soldiering forward, you sped down the street towards the dimly lit building you were aiming for. 

It might be a mistake to return to Matt’s loft, but you couldn’t leave him there alone when he was so distraught. At least, not in good conscience. 

You respected his request for space, absolutely—taking time to return to your own apartment and retrieve his worn Columbia sweater, which you’d stolen a few weeks ago and simply not given back. It was soft and oversized, for you at least, making it ridiculously comfortable. But it was clear Matt needed that comfort more than you did right now. 

After tucking the garment in your bag carefully, you headed back out into the blustery evening to pick up a large order of food from Matt’s favorite Italian place. 

If he still didn’t want you there upon your return, so be it. But the man wouldn’t go cold or hungry on your watch, dammit. 

It wasn’t that you didn’t trust him to take care of himself, you just recognized that self-preservation wasn’t a priority for him when he was…like this. Brooding. Angry. 

In the decade and a half you’d known him, you had started to piece together Matt’s various moods and this was a common one. His heightened senses igniting something inside him that pulled him into fights all around the city. You couldn’t imagine the pain he felt hearing innocent civilians in trouble constantly. But eventually, he’d stop restraining himself. Sleep less. Eat less. Go to work, go out as Daredevil, and do it all again the next day—even when he was a jumble of exhaustion and bruises. 

In these moments, he was no longer your beloved Matthew Murdock. He was a candle, with a burning wick and a torch at his base. The wax slowly melting away, until his sanity was nothing but a distant memory. 

This was something you’d seen a handful of times when working with him and Foggy, even back when you three were just interns at Landman and Zack. It was the thing about Matt that you and Foggy argued about most these days. 

See, Foggy believed the solution to these episodes was to remove Daredevil from the equation altogether. You couldn’t necessarily blame the blond for thinking that, given how Matt’s vigilante antics impacted his work and his ability to be a good friend. 

Despite understanding Foggy’s concerns, your faith in Matt didn’t hinge on his nighttime activities. These periods of great stress were a sign that Matt needed support. Not an indication that he was no longer able to lead a double life. 

While the average person might snap or cry when they were overwhelmed, Matt would force himself to take more on. You assumed this was a symptom of the manipulation he’d endured during his youth. 

Matt hadn’t disclosed much about his childhood mentor, but you knew that he’d been encouraged to work through periods of distress, simply bottling up his feelings in order to ensure productivity. Given that he’d never had those beliefs challenged until well into adulthood, it was second nature for him to add more to his plate until he couldn’t anymore—whether that was because someone forced him to rest, or he was literally comatose. 

He’d confessed to you once—on another night like tonight when he was so tired of fighting everyone that he caved to your questioning—that rest wasn’t something that came easily to him. It was almost an enemy, in his mind, preventing him from helping as many people as he could. Resting meant he was a failure, and failing meant people would leave. 

This conversation lived in the back of your mind every time the dark haired man frustrated you. Every sleepless night spent pulling your hair out while you waited for him to text you that he was alive, every morning spent patching him up in the conference room because the walk to work had pulled his stitches out. Each and every time Matt’s other identity impacted your life, you reminded yourself that, in his mind, he didn’t have a choice. 

This time was no different. 

Though it probably didn’t help that Foggy had insinuated that he was thinking of leaving Matt. Not when Matt’s subconscious was desperately trying to pretend his life was balanced to keep everyone happy. Which is why you allowed yourself to be more stubborn than usual this dreadful evening, worming your way back into Matt’s home so he knew that he wasn’t in danger of being alone. 

Removing one ungloved hand from the safety of your fleece lined pocket, you yanked open the door to the restaurant, smiling softly at the hostess as her eyes met yours. 

“I have an order for pick up?” Giving her your name, you curled both hands back into your pockets, shifting your weight from foot to foot as you waited, somewhat impatiently, for your food. 

After what felt like an hour, the hostess handed you two bags stacked with containers, grimacing apologetically. “Sorry about the wait!”

“Not a problem!” You shrugged, grabbing the bags. “Thank you!!”

Dashing around the crowd forming behind you, your feet carried you the few remaining blocks to Matt’s building. Treading up the stairs slowly, you panted, taking a moment to breathe before making it to his door. 

Here goes nothing. 

You bypassed waiting for Matt to open the door, instead choosing to knock gingerly and use your spare key to unlock the door. 

“Matty?” You called softly, receiving no answer. 

Inhaling deeply, hoping you weren’t about to irreparably damage your relationship with Matt, you stepped over the threshold and into his space. Shuffling around the corner at the end of the hallway, you peeked into the loft, scanning it for any indication of your overworked friend—but there was no sign of him. No obvious one, at least. 

As you blocked out the muffled sounds of the city that had managed to penetrate the walls of the loft, your ears picked up a hushed sound from somewhere in the kitchen. A rapid whooshing—like panting, or choking. 

Rushing around the counter, your eyes widened in shock as you found Matt curled against the dark wooden cabinets. He was seated, but hunched over his knees, his hands tightly wrapped around his shins to keep his body in the position as he rocked back and forth. There was a jaggedly stitched line along his thigh, surrounded by mottled skin and goosebumps. Given his lack of clothing—he was only wearing his boxers—and the frigid temperature in the room, the poor man was shaking violently. A combination of his harsh breathing and his low body temperature, you assumed. 

As your presence became more noticeable, Matt tilted his head up, chin wobbling, eyes frantic and shining. Calling your name shakily, his weak plea almost made your own eyes well up. 

Crouching before him, you set the bags in your grasp aside, opening your palms to him. “It’s me, sweetheart. I’m right here. What happened?”

“D-don’t know. Can’t breathe.” Matt choked around the words, leaning towards you as you scrambled closer. 

“Can I touch—“ You asked, hesitant to take any major steps without explicit permission. 

“Yes. Please,” He sobbed, collapsing against your chest as your arms opened. 

“It’s ok. You’re ok, sweet boy.” You rubbed a hand over his back in a circular motion, using your free hand to guide one of his palms to your chest. “Feel my breathing?” 

Matt nodded against your chest, nails digging into your shoulder blade as he tried to get his breathing under control. 

“That’s my guy. Doing so good for me, handsome.” You praised softly, tracing your hand up his back and into his hair in the way you knew he loved. “That’s it, nice even breaths.” 

Unwinding your body from its squatted position, you sat on the cold floor, spreading your legs to allow Matt to fall into your lap. Perched across your thighs, Matt’s slowly stopped heaving. He was still covered in goosebumps and bruises, but his probable panic attack had been avoided for now. 

“There we go. Good job, honey. Feel a bit better?” You scratched diligently at Matt’s scalp, his skull knocking against your fingers with a nod. 

“Yes. Thank you.” He murmured, hot breath hitting your collar bone, a contrast to his icy skin. 

“Ok, sweets. Are you cold?” 

Another nod, making your lips twitch with a tiny smile. “Yah, stupid question. Here, put this on.” 

Pulling your bag over to you, you yanked out the sweater and handed it to him, mourning the loss of contact as he sat up to slip it on. After his chest was covered, his brow furrowed, a hand coming up to trace the text on the front of the hoodie. “My sweatshirt?” 

Cupping his stubbled cheek, you stroked a thumb over his jaw. “I brought it back. Thought you might need it tonight. C’mon honey, why don’t we go lay down, hm?” 

Allowing Matt to crawl off your lap, you drew him from the floor as you stood, laying your arm around his waist and holding him upright as he hobbled to his room. Tumbling onto the mattress, he haphazardly threw his sheets over his bare legs, curling into fetal position. His body was stiff, as if he was clenching every muscle to prevent writhing in pain. Sitting next to his waist, you fussed with the covers, drawing them more tightly around his rigid form. 

“There, that’s better. Just close your eyes and—“ you attempted to encourage the weary man to rest but his small voice interrupted. 

“You came back.” Matt spoke lowly, blinking back a new wave of tears. “You came back when I told you to leave.” 

“Do you need me to go? That’s fine, Matty, I’ll just—“ 

“No!” His hand shot out, wrapping around your wrist. “Please don’t.” 

“Ok, sweet boy. I’ll stay here. As long as you want me to.” 

Matt nodded once, tears trailing down his face again. “You came back.” No longer talking to you, it seemed that he was trying to make himself believe that he was no longer alone. 

Sliding down to face him, you ran a hand over his arm, letting him murmur silently to himself until he spoke to you again.

“I don’t think they’ll ever be happy.” 

“Who won’t be happy, handsome?” You asked quietly, propping yourself up on an elbow to study his face as he answered. 

“Foggy and Karen. Maybe you too, I’m not sure.” His voice cracked, tears pouring down his cheeks as he squeezed his eyes shut. 

“Hey, hey,” You shushed, drawing him back into your chest. “Oh, Matty—“

“What am I supposed to do?” His hazel eyes reopened, revealing a hopelessness you were shocked to see. “I hear people screaming for help and I…I can’t just lay here doing nothing. I don’t know how. And I try to explain but no one understands. I don’t know what to do,” When he uttered your name this time, it was a desperate request—to confirm that you understood, that you wouldn’t hold his actions against him. 

“Oh, Matt, honey, I’m so sorry.” You rested your chin atop his head as he sobbed into your collarbone. “Sweetheart, you are so good at what you do. You’re a fucking hero. No one is mad about you choosing to use every ability you have to help people, we just worry about you, sweets, that’s all. And, I can’t speak for the others, but you shouldn’t have to worry about making me happy, ok? As long as you’re alive—“

“He’s going to leave me.” Ah. That’s where his mind was getting stuck. The words were broken, Matt’s voice strained beyond recognition as he voiced his fear. “He’s going to leave me like you did.”

A lump of emotion clogged your throat, tears wavering against your waterline. “Matt, you know I didn’t leave because of you, right?”

He shrugged against you, body still trembling as he cried. 

“Matty, I adore you. I loved working with you and seeing you every day, sweets. I just couldn’t live on pies and hand-knit gloves in one of the most expensive cities in the country. I needed income, not an escape. I’m still here. I’m still yours.” 

Heaving out a shaky breath, Matt nodded. Caressing his cheek, you asked. “What did my heartbeat tell you?”

“Truth.” He whispered. The two of you sat in silence, your hand absentmindedly running through his mussed hair as his body stopped shaking. Just when you thought the fear of abandonment had been swayed for the night, he piped up one last time. 

“What am I supposed to do?”

“About Foggy?” You clarified, biting your lip when Matt nodded. With a sigh, you brought your fingers to his silky hair once again. “Matt, I am not psychic, I don’t know what the future will look like for the two of you, but I know that Foggy loves you. So does Karen, and so do I. And you don’t leave the people you love. You talk it out, you forgive them for their mistakes.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Matt whimpered. 

“I don’t think you have to worry about that. But I’ll be right here with you through it all, ok?” Pressing your lips to his forehead, you brushed a few strands of hair away from his face. “I don’t want to scare you, sweet boy, but I have to go into your kitchen for a moment. I brought some food with me that I’m going to put in your fridge for later. I’ll get you some water too. Anything else you need?” 

“Aspirin.” He murmured, blank eyes glossy with tears. 

“Of course, sweets. I’ll be right back.” With another brush of fingers over his scalp, you wriggled out from under him and hurried to the kitchen—shoving the food into his bare fridge while grabbing water and pills. 

He took the medicine you handed him diligently, his expression uncharacteristically blank. Draining the glass of water, he handed the empty cup to you without a word. You could see him slipping away into the recesses of his mind, trying to shove everything down once again, to handle it all himself. 

Sliding under the covers next to him, you wrapped him in a tight embrace as he buried his damp face in your neck. 

“Talk to me, sweets. What do you need?” 

“Just you.” Matt choked out, fisting your shirt in his hands as if worried you were imaginary. “Please.” 

“I’m right here. Always.” Kissing his crown, you ran a hand along his spine, humming softly as his breathing evened out. 

He wasn’t through the rough patch yet, but that was ok. You were going to be here regardless. And you’d tell him that every day until he believed you.