#it’s just like. it’s. without even thinking consciously about it

[blxxmingrose]

hans had walked this hallway every day for as long as he could remember, sometimes running after sunny, sometimes carrying her sleepy form to bed, sometimes all by himself and watching as the light cast his singular shadow on the floor. but walking with june now, with her body leaning in just slightly into him, even the unassuming hallway felt like something new, something shiny, something more solid. 

it felt like a bridge he was crossing, and on the other side was a new life waiting to be built together with this person behind him, holding his hand in silence. and when they entered the room that used to be just hans’ but was now theirs, it was like everything inside it had been waiting for him to walk inside feeling this light. 

even though june had slept here the previous night, it felt different today. more settled. the first night felt like a promise. tonight felt like commitment. something they had agreed on together was being honored. and as hans settled on his side of the bed—because he has a side now—june’s body immediately seeking his warmth, his hand finding its way underneath hans’ shirt without asking for permission, just knowing he had it, there were no more words to be said, just their bodies learning how to fall into place with each other. 

hans pulled him closer, closing his eyes to that kiss under his jaw, sighing in contentment. “i know you won’t, and you can’t, not if i hold you this tight,” he replied in equal teasing, the ends of june’s hair soft and wispy against his lips, his hand pressed firmly against the small of june’s back, their legs tangled together. he didn’t think he was the possessive type, and he wasn’t trying to be, but holding june so close felt as easy as breathing. felt as necessary as breathing. “you’re wonderful, you.”

sleepiness was coming for him too, in the way a big day ends in a quiet evening. some days have to be ended, but today’s ending came so naturally that hans didn’t want to fight the edges of drowsiness threatening to take over. his own eyes remained closed, his lips still smiling, the day wrapping up neatly in a perfect bow. “i still can’t believe i have you here. i have everything i need,” he murmured, the words half-consciously spoken but fully meant. 

all he was doing was feeling, and that in itself made hans feel so… different. he was always prone to thinking ahead, planning or worrying or planning about what he could worry about next, but lately, it’s been all about the sound of june’s laughter, the soft touch of his hand, the warmth that bloomed where he kissed hans’ skin, what they could do next to feel more. 

it was like peeling back a layer off each other every moment, learning what made each other laugh, how they looked when they were sleepy, hungry, happy. and hans was ready to do more to discover everything about june, even if it took him an entire lifetime to do it. he had time. they were not going anywhere.  

june didn’t move right away. his body registered the shift, the quiet invitation to leave the couch, to follow hans into the low-lit hallway and into the comfort of the shared bed, but his mind stayed suspended in the moment. he felt the fingers through his curls like a tether pulling him back to something safe, something solid, something that had become his without needing to ask.

he murmured something under his breath, not quite words, and shifted closer before he finally stirred, eyelids heavy as he blinked slowly up at hans. there was something in his expression that made it clear — he hadn’t truly been asleep. he’d just let himself exist there. but hans noticed. hans always noticed.

as he sat up, the space between them didn’t feel like loss. the warmth hadn’t vanished just because they stood. it followed them, trailing in the soft shuffle of socks on the floor, in the way june leaned just slightly into hans as they walked. he glanced once toward the hallway where sunny’s door was cracked just enough to let in the light. he didn’t need to peek in to know she was still awake in her own way too.

he followed hans into their room, and the moment the door shut behind them, june took a breath so deep it felt like he hadn’t done it in days. his coat was long gone, his hands warm, but he still tugged his sweater over his head with a sigh, letting it pool to the floor before climbing into bed. he didn’t say much. he didn’t need to.

because it was in the small things now — the way he waited for hans to settle in before curling into his side. the way his hand found its place beneath hans’ shirt, palm flat against the center of his chest like he could anchor himself there. the way he let silence say everything he didn’t have the energy to.

he wasn’t asleep yet, but his eyes stayed closed, face half-buried against hans’ shoulder. “your heart’s still beating so fast,” he mumbled, voice thick with sleep but not without a little fond teasing. “you know i’m not gonna vanish when you close your eyes, right?”

june shifted a little, pressing a slow kiss just under hans’ jaw before letting his head rest there again. he could feel hans’ breath move through him like they were already dreaming together.

and maybe that was what this was. a dream, wrapped in soft words and even softer touches. but it wasn’t fragile. it was being built, slowly and carefully, with hands that had spent too long fixing everything else and were now learning how to simply hold.

june let his eyes flutter open for just a second more, catching the way the room looked with both of them in it. not empty. not temporary. he didn’t say anything more. he didn’t have to.

[yanderecrazysie]

Imma bite, may I please ask for a scenario for a yandere soulmate au with yandere Oikawa with the word of 'sub and bottom' written on his arm please

I was laughing so hard at this…

Title: Insulting

Pairings: Yandere! Oikawa Tooru  x F! Reader

WARNINGS: yandere themes

AU: Soulmate AU where your soulmate’s first words to you are written somewhere on your body.

Description: Oikawa always knew his soulmate would be someone… special, but he didn’t expect just how much.

You could tell he was a “Prince Charming” type of guy from first sight. He had a smile of perfectly straight, perfectly white teeth, windswept hair, and a gaggle of girls following him around.

The second semester of the last year of high school was not the ideal time to transfer schools. Everyone was already in cliques and had their friends picked out. You were all alone.

And the prince of the school seemed to sniff that out like a shark with blood in the water. He made a beeline for you, opening his mouth to talk, no doubt about to say something flirty.

The words blurted out of your mouth without you even thinking about it.

“Sub and bottom.”

His mouth dropped. 

The girls seethed with anger, sending you dirty looks. His friends were laughing. And the princely idiot?

He smiled.

“No one’s talked to me like that,” he said, watching your expression fall.

You tugged on your sleeve self-consciously, feeling ill. You’d recognize those words anywhere. This was your soulmate?

The moment your eyes met his, you felt an unmistakable tug in your chest. That awful, sickening little jolt of fate.

Of course it had to be this guy. Of course your soulmate was an idiot pretty boy.

He tilted his head. His gaze was as intense as a cat looking at a mouse. “You felt that too, didn’t you?”

His fangirls and friends looked confused by his words and you realized he must have kept his soulmate mark hidden from them. Right now, the only people in the world who knew you were soulmates were you and him.

You didn’t answer, but your silence was confirmation enough for him. “Well, well,” he grinned, “Looks like this semester just got more interesting.”

You turned on your heels and stormed away. You’d just pretend it never happened. You’d ignore him.

No way was this random guy going to make your school life miserable.

The hallway seemed to stretch on forever. You refused to look back even though you could feel him watching you. Your classroom was only two doors away. Just a few more steps and you’d be rid of-

“(Y/n)!”

How did he know your name? You kept walking, a chill running down your spine.

“You don’t have to act so shy,” he called out, clearly having the time of his life. Everyone turned to watch you. “We’re only soulmates!”

Gasps rang up and down the hallway. You walked faster, eyes staring at the tile floor. You could hear his steps behind you and your heart began to pound.

“You’re not being very soulmate-like, you know!”

You could sense the teasing in his voice, but there was something darker underneath that. It was as though he knew you couldn’t run from him forever. You could, however, fling the classroom door open and hurry inside, picking a random seat and willing your heart to stop.

You sat stiffly, your nails digging into the wood of your desk. All you could hear was whispering, like the buzzing of bees, as everyone in the class stared back at you. The room began to spin, a sea of muted colors and echoing voices.

The bell rang and the teacher walked inside, a red binder under one arm. The whispering mercifully stopped. But the longer you sat there, the harder it was to breathe. You tried to lose yourself in the teacher’s words, anything to distract yourself from the ringing in your ears and the phantom feeling of him.

The door to the classroom opened and a familiar voice said, “Sorry that I’m late.” 

You froze in place, begging whatever higher power there was out there to make him leave. The teacher didn’t bat an eye, just made a mark on her attendance sheet and said, “Take a seat, Oikawa.”

Oikawa strolled in like he owned the place. A grin played across his lips as his eyes landed on you. He moved past empty seats, heading directly for the one next to you. He pulled out the chair beside you, scraping it loudly across the linoleum. 

He sat down slowly, then leaned in, propping an elbow on his desk. “I was hoping we’d have this class together,” he said softly so only you could hear.

You kept your eyes trained on the whiteboard at the front of the class.

“Guess it’s just fate, huh?” he continued.

You refused to respond. You didn’t even blink. You pretended the words written on the board were more important than the warmth of him sitting so close.

His knee brushed against yours under the desk. You shifted away quickly.

“Your mark,” he murmured, “It’s on your arm, isn’t it?”

Your breath caught in your lungs.

“I could feel it when we met eyes,” he said, voice still too low for anyone else to hear, “You’ve got it too, right? That ache?”

You didn’t respond, but you did let your mind wander. You didn’t feel any sort of ache at all. Was that a good thing or bad?

He leaned in so closely that you could feel the heat of his minty fresh breath.

“Don’t worry,” he whispered, “I won’t show you my mark until you’re ready.”

[necarion]

I had a hilarious worldbuilding thought (which is obviously non-canon, but):

In the basement of the Tower is a ter'angreal that makes zippers. You feed in a piece of fabric and pull tab design and you get out a perfectly color-matched zipper.

So the Aes Sedai make zippers a part of their official fashion. They still wear their gorgeous tailored dresses, but they have obvious zips in the front (which they consciously color-coordinate to showcase) and pockets with zips, and bags with zips, and so-on.

One reason Elayne is so excited to become a novice is that she's allowed to actually use a zipper, which are strictly for Tower initiates (Morgaise got to keep the one in her novice dress for political reasons, but she gets only one and it's been resewn into various garments over the years). She's gotten to help zip her mom up, but she got caught and spanked by Elaida for trying to put on the zippered dress when she thought nobody was looking.

When going incognito, the Aes Sedai forgo them, because folks in-the-know are aware of its significance. But on the flip side, in Salidar, people actually scrimped a bit to make sure Egwene had enough zipper-dresses to look properly Amyrlin.

This would showcase that this show is actually post-apocalyptic and not just pre-modern in sensibility. However, I can understand why they wouldn't do that, even if they had the idea for it. It's a sort of concept that would take time to get audience buy-in, and would be constantly jarring to people who didn't pay attention. This says nothing about whether they used their other time wisely, but I think "time spent justifying zippers" would just be hard to execute without feeling lampshady.

I'm on the fence as to whether warder cloaks can zip up the front like a sleeping bag. On the one hand, Warders aren't initiates. On the other, it would be fucking hilarious for a grumpy Lan to go to sleep with a loud 'zzzzip' noise.

Shohreh Aghdashloo as Elaida do avriny a'roihan Sedai Behind the Scenes for Wheel of Time Season 3

My queen since Expanse and now

[melrosing]

ok so over the years I have had a LOT of asks about whether I really believe that Jaime's story is a redemption arc and I don't humour them as much as I used to bc apart from having made most of the pertinent points many times over, I do think it's just self-evident in the text, and indeed in GRRM's own statements in interview.

plus, it is an extensive and detailed arc - it's like being asked over and over again to explain why I think Arya's arc is about identity. there are any number of answers you can give, but just how long is an exhaustive answer, who has the time, and isn't it obvious anyway???

and the thing is that when ppl come to u asking you to contradict an 'anti-redemption' take, what they're generally asking u to argue with is like. a carefully curated twt thread of quotes that, sure, compiled like that can look like an argument.... but honestly, you can make any argument you like in that way. and such 'arguments' are exhausting to disagree with because you'd have to carefully re-contextualise each and every quote, which ofc, have been deliberately de-contextualised, and frame your argument around each. and I think that just brings me to the plainer point that these people are not writing real analysis of the text. they're running through a book with a highlighter pen, which is really only the prep for an actual analysis.

you cannot make a point about a character's arc by isolating lines to say 'quotes that show X being Y, therefore foreshadowing Z', or, for example, 'quotes that show Jaime thinking about Cersei, therefore foreshadowing that he will romantically return to her' or whatever. this doesn't work because what this style of 'analysis' completely fails to do is account for the structure of the story they're reckoning with.

I think a lot of ppl like to pretend with ASOIAF that structure does not work the same way here as it does in another narrative, because GRRM likes twists. and I disagree. for example, something people like to say about ASOIAF is that you can never consider your faves truly safe, but I think that's been vastly overstated. we know Arya isn't dying before she returns North, because fundamentally we know how stories work. we know Arya's story points back to Winterfell - that her story is about the long journey home. we know she's not dying in Braavos because: we just do. there's a reason that if you poll people on who is surviving this story, Arya will rank pretty highly, along with Sansa and Bran. people sense the structure behind the Stark kids' stories - they somehow know, without being told, that the story is not building to their deaths.

because all of us have grown up with stories, we have an innate sense of their rhythm, and how they're supposed to go. they can surprise us, but if we've learnt anything from Game of Thrones, I hope it's that the twist cannot come from nowhere. ASOIAF succeeds because GRRM pays close attention to these rhythms. even as he's making it up on the fly, he is clear about what beats go where. they may last longer than in a different story - in another book, Arya would probably be home by now - but we still understand what each beat plays in a broader arc.

and an arc is SUPPOSED to broadcast itself. sometimes it's subtle, other times it's not, but generally it is not something that you can only recognise has taken place at its very end point. even though Arya has not yet fully reclaimed her name, we know she will. likewise for Sansa. even though Bran has not come into his powers, we know he will. we DO actually understand that.

so when people say that Jaime is not redeemed yet and his prevarications in the Riverlands means he never will be, they're either 1) consciously or subconsciously denying the arc they can sense GRRM is writing, or 2) they're just not that media literate. it's there, it's obvious, it's broadcast clear as day. Jaime starts bad. we get to know him. he proves himself capable of better. he decides to pursue better. he is constrained in his pursuit of betterment. he breaks free of that constraint to pursue betterment properly. and yes, this probably is a tragedy where Jaime's best efforts will still cost him dearly, and there's a strong chance he does die! but your baby trebuchet quote collection is not accounting for the clear narrative beats of a redemption arc, which the baby trebuchet actually feeds into if u were paying attention! this arc has not been painstakingly set up for a rug pull. Arya is not being set up to go 'fuck it actually I'm no one and I'm staying in Braavos'. that is not satisfying. that is not what stories are for. that is not what GRRM is doing.

so when GRRM tells you that this is a story about redemption: believe him! he knows what he is writing! the struggles of some twt user who hates Jaime should not be concerning you! and as we've said 100 times: it IS up to you whether you forgive Jaime, same as it's up to you if you forgive Sandor, or Theon, or Zuko your spiritual king! that choice is yours! but your feelings do not change what trajectory this story is taking! so yes MY GOD it is a redemption arc now let me die

[r0ttencandies]

♥︎ Escapee ♥︎

A Ticci Toby x (female) reader fanfic.

Cw: hospital room, outdoor sex, gentle sex(rough sex too) , stolen virginity, biting, fingering, size difference, oral (fem receiving), accidental creampie, saliva and just freaky shit.

Summary : Toby ends up being found severely injured after a mission by a bystander, leading to him ending up in a hospital and is trying to escape . ( you two are in the same room divided by a curtain

Minors dni below the cut.

‿̩͙⊱༒︎༻♱༺༒︎⊰‿̩͙

Toby had been out for god knows how long, when he slowly did come to consciousness, he quickly sprung up once he took in the surroundings, his neck twitches aggressively as a nervous tic came on. “Fuh-Fuck.. N-No, -shit- No!” He choked out, the glistening hospital room making his body shutter and his stomach churn with uneasy, then his eyes met the curtain. Toby in an act of desperation and hope, shot out of the bed he now sat in, pulling his I.V in the process. His hand reached for said curtain without a trace of hesitation and swiftly pulled it open, his eyes widened when he saw you. A young woman, laid asleep in a hospital gown, covered in cuts and scraps, the thin blue cloth barely covering your fragile skin, he shook his head, pushing back any lustful or strange thoughts. He needed your help and he was gonna get it, he had to get out of here before the police caught him.

He frantically reached for your arm, shaking you aggressively to wake you. A few minutes pass of his shaking you, his force getting stronger with each push, gripping your skin tightly, definitely bruising your skin. You groggily open your eyes, making direct contact with his gaze, your brain hazy from the exhaustion, eyelids barely apart. Before you can could even think of a coherent sentence, let alone a thought, he breaks the panicked silence. “I-I need your help.. please” He called out weakly. You shift up, body wobbling slightly from your exhaustion, eyes widening from the full sight of him. Toby looked horrible to say the least.. he’s covered in deep cuts, sickeningly thick, chunky, dried blood coating his clothes and pale skin and that deep gash on his cheek that exposed his teeth, his broken teeth. Your stomach sunk at the sight and your heart definitely ached for him. He looked so fucking pitiful. You began to rub the sleep away your eyes, trying to process everything that’s happening. You wanted to know everything about him.. what happened? What he needed help with.. honestly with the state he was in, whatever it was you wanted to help. You clear your throat, his dark brown orbs peering at you, awaiting your response, the anxiety clearly painted within them. Finally breaking the awkward silence with a gentle..“w-what do you need help with?” Your voice still soft from your sleep. You see the man perk up, his head jolting quickly with a tic, startling you a bit, nonetheless he still looked like a helpless boy to you.

“I need -tsk- to escape.” He spoke softly, voice cracking and barely audible. His words struck you, hitting you like whiplash, your curiosity and confusion spiking almost instantly. Toby’s expression made you weak, made you feel inclined to respond with quickness. “Why..?” You asked, your tone hissing with hesitation, part of you.. with his condition makes feel evil, mean for even asking, but your concern for his health overpowered that. Toby stiffened, his shoulders tense, gaze pulled down to his feet, making your guilt set in, his silence almost drowning you. Suddenly it’s broken, taking you aback as he spoke. “L-Look.. I can explain later but.. I need -tsk- you to trust me.” He’s now clinging onto the end of his torn shirt, knuckles turning white from the pressure.. it looked painful. It hurt you, made all of your thoughts and worries disappear, all you wanted to do was help this stranger. “H-How do you want me to help?” The concern for him, making its way through your voice and with that, his grip upon his shirt loosened and those anxious eyes met yours again. Toby spoke as quickly he could, ticking for a moment. “I need you to run with me.. and -and- watch my back to make sure no one catches us.” He said in a harsh whisper. Your muscles tensed, heart raced, running away with a stranger seemed terrifying, but oddly enough it made adrenaline pump through your veins, it was exciting. It was something so new to you, something so different from your isolating, mundane life. 

With this you nod back up at him, your mind was made, you wanted to help, wanted to know more about him.. he was such an interesting stranger. The tired state you were in now disappeared as you quickly sprung out of the thin hospital mattress. Your exposed feet touching the chilled tile, making you shutter as you stood, your bare feet would be something you’d worry about much later. “Let’s do it.” You said with a soft smile, reassuring him to the best of your ability. Soon after this your following Toby as he carefully inched the metal door open, making it creak softly. He nudged through the space, quietly tiptoeing through the hallway and you slowly joined in. Once you enter the hallway, your breath is taken away by the emptiness and that beautiful orange sunset that casted from the windows that laid next to each door, dust particles flowing along the light. Your peace abruptly cut short by thunderous shoes stomping , eyes now darting toward Toby who was sprinting, hearing more steady steps behind you two makes you spring into action, now racing to catch up to Toby, your feet clacking against the solid floor, legs tingling from the sheer force you applied to each movement you made, you heart felt as if it could explode at any moment and your blood ran warm with excitement and fear. 

After what felt like hours of running through this place, hour of hearing workers and nurses yelling in the distance, footsteps .. so many foot steps. You finally reached the outside world, the sky now set and the ground was barely lit by the pale blue moon, both you Toby still speeding away from the building and fuck your feet were paying the price, the ache from them making you wince with each step you took, making you regret not thinking about shoes.. fuck it was agony but you powered through until you too reached the forest, the trees swallowing you into the night. With a complete stranger. Toby slowed and so did you, both of you letting out sharp, piercing breaths, the heat radiating from it forming a thick layer of fog around him and you. Your legs are shaking, hell your whole body was from all the energy your form produced, all that adrenaline you had, crashing down the second you relaxed and that horrible agony becomes more intense, uncomfortable, dreadful. You cry out from the sheer amount that you made yourself withstand for this man, just for an adrenaline kick? There more to this.. you can’t quite pinpoint what else it was. You didn’t care.. this was too much and you collapsed, your legs throbbing once they gave out.

Toby stiffened, hearing a thump against the earth, his head immediately turning to its direction. He sees you crying out in pain, usually he’d enjoy this, but he couldn’t help but feel guilty, feel the need to help you. The man quickly sprints to you, crouching down to your level, his orbs locking into your swollen, tear filled ones. It made his heart drop, sunk so deep into his stomach, it made him feel sickened.

“Y-You okay, hun?” He asked gently, not even meaning to let that pet name out. He knew the answer just from your whimpers and cries, your voice unable to escape your lungs all you do is point towards your feet in your pathetic state. With this his gaze goes towards them and his eyes widened, the sight tugging at his tight heart strings. “Shit..” He inhaled sharply through his teeth, trying to figure out how he could make your pain go away, without hurting you more, he didn’t want to do that, you helped him, he couldn’t. He brought his fingers to one of the cuts that laid along the sensitive skin along your foot, that were covered in dirt.. this was definitely going to get infected. You jolt to his warm, rough fingertips, making a shiver run down your spine. Without a moment of hesitation, Toby attached his teeth against his already ripped sweatshirt, tearing off a thick layer of fabric from it, the sound of its force echoed through the trees and before you knew it he was wrapping your injuries with it, doing the same for the other foot, making sure the pressure and tightness of the cloth was comfortable enough for the pain to be contained. Your tears slowed down from not just the action, but the relief it brought your pounding agony. “T-Thank you.. uh.. what’s your name?” You choked out, a small chuckle escaping your lips as you asked his name.. finally you could get to know him.

“T-Toby.. call me, Toby.” He muttered, his dark eyes etched with concern, expression soft and sweet, brushing away a stray hair from your tear coated cheeks. His touch.. it was so warm.. it made your heart flutter. “T-Toby.. got it..I” you managed to stutter out, before he abruptly cut you off, his voice shaping into a hissing appreciation, as he quickly hugged you, wrapping his arms tightly around your waist, making you freeze, breath now trapped in your throat from its suddenness and how flustered it made you.. it was comforting though. “T-Thank -tsk- you, miss.” his tics cutting into his words, causing him to curse under his breath in embarrassment and you couldn’t help but chuckle. returning the embrace after your shock wore off, your hearts thumping in sync. It wasn’t just you that felt.. something.. it was him too. You two held one another for some time, both mumbling ‘thank you’s and ‘you’re welcome’s. The heat radiating off of Toby was suffocating, but you wanted more.. you needed more. Something you were sure of was that he could sense that, because after that thought crossed your mind he was pulling away and grabbing your chin, so light, so sweet. It made your cheeks go warm and flush, your eyes beaming up at his with an underlying desire, Toby’s matching yours. After just staring at each other, reading every line painted within each others irises, Toby breaks the tension, still holding your jaw, his thump tracing your bottom lip, so softly that it made it quiver. “C-Can.. I kiss you?” He asked, hesitantly, his voice shaking from all the wants that lay thick between you two. You nodded silently and with that he’s closing that distance. His cracked lips so soft upon yours, it made you melt, it made you whine and made those needy little eyes of yours flutter shut.

Toby slowly presses against you, both of you now seeping into the dirt ground. easing deeper into the kiss, making your lips part, granting him permission to explore you and when his warm tongue enters, you just couldn’t help but whine. This was he’s breaking point, he needed to feel more of you. His rough hands roam your body, the thin fabric of the hospital gown leaving little to the imagination, the warmth radiating off of you, the squish of your curves, it made him groan into the kiss, your back arching from the sensation. it shot all the blood flow from his chest straight to his cock, making it throb desperately through his jeans, making him pull away from the kiss, the mixture of saliva holding both of your lips together with a thin string. Your both left panting, gasping for air, the cold breeze hitting your lungs instantly. “T-Toby..” you cooed out, the tightness in your throat making it almost impossible to speak. The way you called his name made a wave of lust to crash down upon him, his body shivered from the pressure of it. His lips now pressed against your neck, making you whimper, hands instinctively gripping tightly against his sweatshirt. You could feel your entrance get slick with arousal as he laid opened mouth kisses along your skin, savoring the sweet flavor of your sweat. “I cuh-could just eat you up..” he mumbled against your collarbone, his words making you moan, your thighs rubbing together for any type of friction to relive that now, pulsating pussy of yours. He chuckled at your attempts, finding it adorable, now pulling away from your neck to look back at your pitiful, needy face, covered in blush. fuck, it was beautiful to see you like this.

His hands began to slowly shift closer to your most sensitive spot, triggering your muscles to tense and a gasp to escape deep within your chest. “D-Does your p-pussy need attention, love?” He asked softly, his voice deeper with is own growing need for attention. his hand rested along your inner thigh, his thumb circling gently along your sensitive skin, making your thighs twitch, you bit down on your lip trying to hold back any noise, your throat tightening. “I-I..please” you begged, your voice shaking from the lack of oxygen intake. His face contorted into a devilish grin, humming in approval to your pleas. Toby’s touch grazed lower until his index finger is gently caresses your dampened panties, making you gasp, your already swollen bud twitching. “Y-you’re this wet just from some kisses h-huh? wha- what a dirty girl~” his voice, horse and teasing. Your nails now digging into his back, breaking the skin, though he couldn’t feel the pain, he felt that pressure and it was only fuel for him. Toby’s thumb now press gently upon your needy, covered clit, making your sweet sounds escape your lips, your body flung up from the pleasure, arms now embracing his back trying to stabilize yourself, you were so sensitive and he knew it. He let out satisfied hum with each gentle moan you let out, his pace increases with each one you left slip. You could feel your vessel heat as he edged you closer to your build up release, your whimper becoming more needy and your hold grew tighter with each trace he made.

“A-Are you gonna cum for me already, baby?” He knew you were close and he was loving every second, every minute of making you melt to his touch. You whimpered when that heat shifted down the second he said those words, your muscles tensing and your vision went black the second that high hit you, your release soaked your panties completely, your juices seeping through, trickling down to your ass. Your legs shook as he dragged you through your orgasm, the intensity of it all almost overstimulating, your chest heaving with silence moans and whines, drool puddling in the corner of your lip.“Mmm, such a g-good girl..” he hummed, slowly releasing his hand from you, giving you a moment to recover. He lays tender kisses against your cheeks and forehead, waiting for your breathing to slow. “T-Toby..” was all you could muster out, left completely whipped. The second your body stopped twitching and your chest stopped heaving, he was sliding of your drenched pantie, exposing your glistening folds to the exposed air making you shiver the moment it brushes against your clit. “I-I don’t think can handle more.” You coughed out, your hands gripping the grass that laid under you. This was so dirty.. so gross.. but so hot. He leaned back, taking a look at your glistening folds and twitching entrance. Toby’s dick twitched at the sight, just ready to pop out, making him groan, the sound rumbling in his chest. “I t-think you can, you’re pulsating, pra-practically begging for me.” His voice strained from his arousal. You couldn’t even process his words as he spreads you open, his tongue slipping against your opening, gathering all of your delicious fluids, swallowing it whole without hesitation and your left a moaning ball of mush in his hand, so pathetic and needy for him. “Y-You taste so good..” he praised softly, now inserting his finger gently inside of you, making you yelp from the sudden size adjustment for your virgin hole, walls clinching around his long finger so perfectly, so tightly. “Y-You’re so tight

sweetheart, I’m g-gonna stretch you out.” Toby hummed, gently pumping his digit into you until your fluids coated his finger, now beginning to thrust another in. Despite how gentle he was it still took you aback, making you gasp, your eyes widening to the stretch, your walls actively trying to reject his digits. Toby quickly flicks his tongue along your clit, easing you into the way he opened you with just his fingers, making your gasp turn into those sickeningly sweet moans once again, the sound was like music to his ears, hearing your pleasure, let alone the pleasure he was giving you was hypnotizing. His fingers curl up, hitting your sweet spot, your knees buckling from the unknown feeling that was now coursing through out you, your moans turnings into shaking mess just like you were, then it hit you. “T-Toby, I~” you whimper his name like it was made just your dirty lips, your hips thrusting, body convulsing, your hands now tearing out the dead grass, your vision blurred, tears streaming down your waterline.. this one damn near took you and and he was still dragging it out.

Toby released you from his grasp, leaving you stretched open from his fingers as you heave, left a complete mess of drool, your own release seeping out of your shaky form. “I-I need to feel you baby.. I c-can’t hold back anymore.” His voice was thick with his own pent up energy, deep and horse. You couldn’t even form a coherent thought, just left a trembling mess. Your ears perk up when you hear him unbuckling his belt, your clit twitching to the very sound, you didn’t even think you had more in you, but your body said otherwise. Suddenly he’s freeing himself, his cock so long and thick, all you could do is stare blankly at it, biting down on lip, trying to fathom how that was going to fit in you, before you could even ask him, his grinding his thick warmth against you, leaving you completely dumbfounded and cock hungry instantly, your whimpers so broken. “Mm.. you already feel s-so g-good and I’m not even in yet.” He whispered softly, leaning down towards your ear, his breath so arm and heavy like he had just buried you in. You could feel his pre-cum drip against your clit, making you shutter, you tightly grip onto his hair, unable to contain how much pleasure he was really giving you. That’s when you feel it, that stretch once again, this time it’s painful, almost ripping. You inhale sharply, your eyes water as he slowly pushes his way through, less than half way and it was already too much, it knocked the wind out of you completely. “F-Fuck.” Toby growled, your walls already trying to milk him, pulsating so tightly around his length. He stilled, giving you time to adjust to the thickness, you felt so full already, it so painful, yet so addictive already. After a few minutes pass, he’s pumping more of his inches into you, making you cry out, your throat itching from the dryness.

“I-It hurts..” you said weakly, Eyes barely open. “I-I know, it’ll stop soon, just relax, p-pretty girl” he spoke softly, reaching his hand out to caress your face and with that he’s pushing another inch in, feeling your virgin layer bend, almost snapping. You whine, droplets now sliding down your cheek, eyelashes clumped together from the build up. “T-This parts gon-gonna hurt the most, and then it’ll stop soon, I promise.” His voice was so sickening kind, you couldn’t help but believe him. His thumb gently rubbed circles against your clit to calm you and then he’s breaking your hymen, making you scream. Your pretty face contorting in discomfort and pleasure, it was honestly a beautiful sight to him and you were now his. Toby thrust himself in completely, so gently with your poor pussy, the tip of his cock kissing your cervix, leaving you completely filled to the brim with his length. You’re crying softly, because of the large adjustment, genuinely convinced it won’t feel better.. but just like he said it did the second he increased his speed against your sensitive bud, making you moan softly and relax. The second Toby feels your body relax, he starts pumping softly, the pain still lingers making you bite down on his shoulder, the mix of sensation sending a wave through both of you. “Y-You feel so good, taking me so well..” his words make you bite down harder breaking the skin, the taste of iron flooding your mouth, he doesn’t mind it though, he can’t even feel it but it’s definitely encouragement for him. That one action sent you through a whole spiral of pleasure as his pace increased, making you jolt away from his shoulder, your mouth agape for a moment as you let out a dragged moan, so responsive, so sweet. He groans, feeling your walls twitch against him the second he hits your sweet spot, your head shoots back the second he does, your noises becoming more desperate the closer you get to release.

Something snaps in him when he witnesses this, he quickly grabs your throat, applying just enough pressure to make you whine, your pussy coating him in more of your heavenly juices, his eyes roll back from the sensation. It breaks him, makes him pound into you relentlessly, his hips grinding against yours, the sound of your skin slapping against one another’s echoing through the air, he didn’t care who heard, you were his now and that’s he wanted. Silvia is pouring out of your mouth out of your mouth at this point, your moans turning into weak whines and gasp, brain completely fried from the pressure. Heat.. tingling heat coursed its way into pussy, you came undone, your walls milking him completely dry, fulfilling his own release, yelping as he filled you with his seed, so warm.. so filled. Toby collapsed onto you, your body left twitching messes, panting, drooling puddles of pleasure. After you both come down, he pulls out, the emptiness making you whine, his cum seeping out of you so beautifully. “S-Such a good girl~” his voice, still shaken from his intense orgasm, laying a gentle kiss on your forehead.

(GOD THIS IS LONG.. I honestly think this could have been better but.. I’ll make a part two at some point 👀 thank you for reading <3 )

[spr1ngbunnypvrin]

WARNING: This post may be edited and some opinions/perspectives may be changed because this thing has been sitting in my draft for a long time, and now my ass finally decided to post it. This is just a silly post about William x reader and something more than that.

William might have abandoned that perfect businessman persona, but it doesn't mean he's completely erased it from his mind. It lingers—like a ghost, a fragment of something that was never real to begin with, yet somehow feels more real than the hollow existence he now leads.

Sometimes William—whether consciously or unconsciously—misses the person he used to be, or at least the image of who he once was.

Or worse, the image of who he pretended to be.

Because that version of himself—the brilliant, ambitious businessman, the man who could captivate an entire room with his presence—was a carefully curated illusion.

A mask. One he wore so well that sometimes even he believed in it. And now? Now it’s nothing more than a distant memory. A ghost lingering at the edges of his mind.

And sometimes, when he's lost in thought—when exhaustion pulls him under in the quiet hours of the night, when his mind drifts without his permission—he sees that version of himself again.

A vague reflection.

A shadow of his former self, still standing tall in the back of his mind.

That charming, theatrical, brilliant man. The one who could command a room with a well-placed smile, who spoke in carefully measured words, whose presence alone was magnetic.

And the worst part? That version of him laughs.

Standing in the shadows. Smiling. Mocking.

"Look at you now." "What a disappointment." "You used to be something, to have ambition, didn’t you? Used to build something... an empire. Used to inspire fear, respected and admiration all the same. But now? Just some bitter, washed-up man playing pretend in the filth."

William doesn’t reply. He doesn’t try to fight it. Because the voice in his head isn’t wrong.

Maybe sometimes—just for a fleeting second—he misses that man. Misses the power. Misses the control. Misses the thrill of being at the top, of playing a game where everyone else was just a pawn on his board.

That version of himself, that mask he once wore so well. Maybe there’s an ache, an echo of what it felt like to be on top before everything came crumbling down. But he doesn’t let himself dwell.

But then he reminds himself—it was never real.

Because he knows, deep down, that man never really existed in the first place.

That version of him, it never truly existed. It was just another lie, another role he played. And now, stripped of everything, he no longer has the energy to pretend.

So he tells himself it doesn’t matter.

And yet, in the quiet, when no one is around to see—he still hears the laughter of a man he no longer is.

HEARR ME OUT AGAIN... I think he still has that annoying smirk like his old self but looks more tired, as quoted in the novel The Silver Eyes "...the man in the picture was sallow and thin, his expression unpleasant, as if he had forgotten how to smile. He looked like a poor facsimile of himself. Or maybe, Clay thought, he looked like he had dropped his disguise."

That smirk—the one that used to be so sharp, so effortless, so full of controlled confidence— it's still there. But it’s different now.

Once, it was a carefully crafted tool, a practiced expression meant to intimidate, charm, or unsettle. It was never just a smirk—it was a weapon.

Now?

Now, it's tired. It lingers for a second too long, like muscle memory rather than intent. It doesn’t quite reach his eyes anymore, doesn’t carry the same weight it once did.

It’s the ghost of what it used to be.

And those silver eyes of his? Once, they were piercing—calculating, watching everything, always five steps ahead. Now, they look... hollow.

Not empty, but worn. Like the shine has dulled, like the years have finally caught up to him, like the man he once was is still standing there but draped in something much heavier.

And maybe—just maybe—Clay was right.

Maybe this is the real him.

Or maybe this is just what’s left.

The worst part isn’t just that it was a mask—it’s that it was a mask he desperately wanted to make real. (is the core of what makes William so gut-wrenching as a character. Because he’s not just someone who fooled others—he tried to fool himself. And failed.)

At some point, William truly wanted to become that man. The ambitious businessman. The genius innovator. The one who built something lasting, something greater than himself. He had a vision, a goal, and he pushed everything—everyone—aside in his relentless pursuit of it.

But the downfall? That was inevitable.

All the power, all the control, all the success—it was all built on a crumbling foundation. A house of cards, stacked too high, too fragile to last. And when it finally came crashing down, so did he.

Now, as Dave Miller, he’s free.

No expectations. No burdens. No empire to maintain, no legacy to uphold. He’s just a washed-up man in a dead-end job, a ghost living under a borrowed name.

And yet—this freedom is its own prison.

Because “Dave Miller” isn’t real either. He’s just another escape. Another way to avoid facing the wreckage of what he’s done, what he’s lost, what he’s become.

It’s pathetic. He knows it’s pathetic. He’s no longer powerful, no longer feared, no longer the man he once aspired to be.

And worst of all?

Deep down, some part of him knows he’s still running.

And oh, he absolutely does slip into that old persona sometimes.

It's rare, but there are moments when the old William Afton—the smooth, theatrical, charming bastard—peeks through Dave Miller’s tired, deadpan exterior. He doesn’t do it intentionally; it just happens. Maybe it’s instinct, maybe it’s habit, maybe it’s something deeper—something that never really left him.

If you hit him with a question that’s too personal—something about his past, something that makes him uncomfortable—his first instinct is to cover it up. And what better way to do that than slipping back into that perfectly rehearsed mask of old William Afton?

"Oh, darling, you wound me. Here I thought we were just two souls passing through this dreadful existence together, and now you’re prying into my tragic backstory?”

It’s all flourish, exaggerated theatrics meant to make you roll your eyes and move on. But the way he delivers it? It’s too smooth, too natural. That’s not Dave Miller talking. That’s someone else entirely.

And if you don’t let it slide? If you press him on it?

The act drops immediately. His expression hardens, his voice flattens, and suddenly, it’s Dave again.

"Tch. Forget it."

Dave always has a sharp tongue, but when he’s in a particularly good (or mischievous) mood, he gets theatrical. He leans into it, slipping into that old, showman-like charisma without even realizing it.

"Oh, come now, love, surely you don’t expect me to do actual work today? Have a heart—what would the world do without my undeniable charm to brighten this miserable place?”

Or if he’s winning an argument with you? Oh, he gets cocky.

"You see, my dear, this is why I’m the brains of our little operation. But don’t worry—I’ll allow you to bask in my brilliance from time to time.”

There’s a twinkle in his eye, something smug yet genuinely amused, as if, for a moment, he forgets himself. And when he realizes what he’s doing? He shuts it down immediately. A scoff, a roll of his eyes, a grumbled, “Yeah, whatever.” But for a second? He was someone else.

It’s one of those late shifts. The kind where everything is quiet, the two of you stuck in some mundane task—maybe fixing something, maybe just sitting around waiting for the night to end.

And then, somehow, you make him laugh.

Not a scoff, not a sarcastic chuckle—a real laugh.

And just for a moment—just for a second—he leans back, throws his hands up, and becomes that man again.

"Ah, see? That’s why I keep you around. Well, that and I do so enjoy our little chats—your company is just so... riveting.”

The ease, the smoothness, the dramatic tilt of his voice—it all slips back into place so effortlessly. Too effortlessly.

And then he catches himself. His expression stiffens, his smirk fades, and just like that, Dave Miller is back.

"Forget I said anything."

Old William Afton was a man who could control a room, who could make people listen, who could intimidate without ever raising his voice. And when Dave gets truly, truly angry? That version of him resurfaces in full force.

Gone is the sluggish, indifferent demeanor. Suddenly, his words are sharp. Cold. Precise. His voice carries weight—real weight, like he’s used to being listened to.

"You really don’t want to test me right now."

The way he carries himself changes, too. He doesn’t slump, doesn’t drag his feet—he stands taller, shoulders squared, like he’s reclaiming some part of himself he thought was long gone.

And then, once the anger fades, he hates it. Because it reminds him of who he used to be—who he tried so hard to bury.

And if you notice? If you point out that something about him felt different in that moment?

He just mutters, “Drop it.”

Maybe moment when he lets his guard down (and doesn’t realize it until it’s too late)..There are nights when the weight of everything—the past, the present, the suffocating monotony of what his life has become—settles too heavily on his shoulders.

And those are the nights when, without thinking, he slips back into old habits.

Maybe it’s the way he talks to you—smoother, more confident. Maybe it’s the way he gestures—more expressive, more like the man he once pretended to be. Maybe it’s the way his voice softens—less snide, less bitter, almost... wistful.

And then, suddenly, he realizes.

Realizes he’s talking too much. Being too open. Sounding too much like him.

And just like that—the walls go back up.

"Never mind. Forget it."

And that’s the thing about Dave Miller.

No matter how much he tries to kill the ghost of who he was, sometimes, that ghost refuses to stay buried.

It's funny and ironic, he doesn’t need to "try" to be William Afton. He just is. After all

No matter how much he slouches, how much he tries to act detached, how much he plays up the tired, cynical employee act—that theatrical flair, that controlled charisma, that sharp intelligence—it never really leaves him. It’s in the way he smirks like he’s always one step ahead. The way he speaks—dry, sardonic, but always with a deliberate choice of words. The way his eyes hold something knowing, something calculating, even when he looks bored out of his mind.

He’s not "pretending" to be Dave Miller. He’s hiding as Dave Miller.

And the funniest part? Even when he stops trying so hard to be someone else, he’s still very much William Afton underneath.

As I mentioned earlier in the section above, the voices, the memories, the thoughts in his head that he has to go through, avoid, or confront...

But what if that voice didn’t just mock him about his downfall?

What if, one day, as he's lost in thought—staring blankly at his reflection, slumped at his usual spot—the voice sneers at something else entirely?

"You care too much." "Pathetic. Absolutely pathetic." "Tell me, William—what exactly do you think you’re doing? You were never meant to care. They should have been nothing more than a means to an end. A pawn. A tool. And yet, here you are, fretting over them like some softhearted fool. It's almost... adorable. Almost."

He doesn’t answer. Because he doesn’t need to.

Because, deep down, he knows.

Knows that you were never supposed to mean anything. That you were supposed to be just another disposable person in his life, someone he could manipulate if needed, someone he should’ve discarded the moment you got too close.

And yet—you’re still here.

And worse? He lets you be.

Why?

Is it just convenience? No, it can't be that simple. Something keeps him from pushing you away. Something in the way you challenge him, in the way you aren't afraid to push back, in the way you aren’t fooled by the mask—but still stay anyway.

And isn’t that the most dangerous thing of all?

Because if there’s one rule William Afton has always lived by, one truth that even his ghosts can’t deny—

Attachment is a weakness.

And yet, somehow, you’ve become an exception.

Perhaps, one day, one day... One day he will have to choose between two paths: Staying with you, letting go of the past, everything he has tried to build, and becoming a "new" person who is no longer "William Afton"...The second is to return to the "old path": the bitterness, suffering, jealousy, and lingering hatred trapped in a loop, continuing the path he aspires to become the "thing" he desires.

This is the kind of choice that William Afto—no, Dave Miller—would never want to confront. But eventually, he will. And when he does?

He will hesitate.

For the first time in a long, long time, he will hesitate. Because the two paths before him are not just choices—they are condemnations. No matter which one he picks, he loses something.

The First Path: Staying With You, Letting Go of William Afton

To stay with you would mean to let go.

Not just of his past, but of everything he has built. The schemes, the power, the carefully constructed empire of control and manipulation. It would mean giving up William Afton entirely—becoming something else. Someone else. No longer the man he has always been, but a man who is simply… lost.

And that terrifies him.

Because if he strips away the ambition, the vengeance, the carefully cultivated identity… what is left?

Would you still want him if he was just a man and not a monster? Would he even know how to be a person, rather than a shadow of what once was? Could he live with the weight of everything he’s done if he stopped running from it?

Could he forgive himself?

Would you forgive him?

…And worse: Would he even deserve it?

The Second Path: Returning to His Old Ways

To go back means safety. Not peace, but familiarity.

He knows how to be William Afton. He knows how to be cruel, cunning, relentless. It’s easier to keep chasing ghosts, to sink into that obsession, to let himself drown in the bitterness of what he lost and what he still craves. Hate and agony is a fire that keeps him warm, after all.

But if he walks that road again, he knows he’ll lose you.

And that thought stings more than it should.

Because you are the one thing in this world that has genuinely, truly seen him—and somehow, despite everything, despite knowing who he is (or at least, the pieces he’s let you see)… you are still here.

And if he lets you go, if he throws you away like he’s thrown everything else away, if he kills that last ember of something real—

Then maybe even he won’t be able to recognize himself anymore.

So What Would He Do?

William Afton is a man of patterns. Cycles. Loops.

But Dave Miller? Dave Miller is tired.

There’s a part of him—a very small part, buried deep beneath all the cynicism, the exhaustion, the self-destruction—that wants to believe he could stay. That he could carve out something different for himself, that maybe, just maybe, there’s still a way out.

But does he believe in that enough?

Or will he take the easier road?

The choice is his.

And for the first time in a long time—

He doesn’t know what he’ll do.

The idea of him building that empire, that persona, that legacy... just to prove to himself he mattered—and it still not being enough? That’s brutal. He could’ve been brilliant, could’ve had something real, but he was always reaching with blood-stained hands, convinced that the world owed him greatness because of his pain and not in spite of it.

And then comes Dave Miller. A name that carries no weight. No expectations, no past. Just a man—tired, bitter, empty.

But even that isn't salvation, right? It’s a purgatory. He’s not free. He’s just hiding. He can't be William Afton again—not without everything crumbling again—but he can't be Dave either, because Dave is nothing. Just a hollow echo of a man trying to forget he's drowning.

And maybe that's what hits the hardest: That even in his quietest moments, when you see him with his smirk softened by exhaustion, with his eyes dulled—not sharp, but ash—you realize:

He never really stopped believing he should've been more.

That the world robbed him. That Henry robbed him. That you, maybe, are all that’s left—and part of him resents you for seeing what he’s become.

But another part?

The part that smirks in the dark and listens when you show concern, even if you pretend not to like him?

That part’s starving for connection.

For absolution.

For someone to say: “I see you, and you’re still here.”

It’s not redemption. Not quite. But it’s real.

And god, that scares him more than anything.

Art credit: @ explosivepearl on Twt/Tumblr/Ins (I don't know, but I like William des in that artist's art style. The devil in me says it's canon, and yes, I believe it!)

No shit, I write a long essay like this is just because of a fanart that keeps lingering in my mind and gives me a thought, I like "digging up" the characteristics of this character, the Novel William Afton ver will always be my favorite ESPECIALLY TSE ONE idc what yall say, its fucking peak asf 💖💖💖 and damn it's really interesting when I can explore and interpret him as if I'm using a microscope, looking into what his brain is like....

William/Dave has something more than that, though his presence is scarce, what he leaves behind, his monologues, thoughts, and actions, are enough to significantly impact the story later on.

[kraymerman]

Watched the The Gaslight District pilot a few days ago, and now I'm wondering. How does the immortality work? Not so much lore-wise, but, like, mechanically.

It isn't just a simple matter of "if you die, you come back as if you never did". Ken praises Mel for still having "all of her original limbs", which shows that, not only can you affix new limbs onto your body and control them, but also implies that lost limbs don't regenerate upon being returned to life.

But at the same time we do see some regeneration happen, when the bullets that killed Ken, Mud, and Breadhead get spit out of their wounds after the black hand brings them back (now that isn't how actual healing would work, but I'm willing to handwave that as the animators wanting to have a cool shot, which is always the best reason to do anything in fiction). EDIT: Watched it again, it wasn't the bullets healing out, it was Ken flexing them out just to be intimidating.

So maybe that means you can regenerate, just nothing that you can't otherwise naturally heal? A nonlethal bullet wound will eventually heal over, but you can't regrow a lost limb. Or maybe it's just a simple matter of size; bullet wound small, lost limb too big?

I ask this because, unless some form of mass regeneration exists, the people of the Gaslight District functionally cannot be immortal. At least not in any way that matters. What happens if someone destroys your brain? Presumably a person's consciousness exists within their brain, so if that gets destroyed, where does their consciousness go? Or does the brain regenerate? If so, why it and not a limb? Maybe because the brain is more important, being the organ that contains the actual person? If so, does the whole brain regrow, or just the one part of it that contains your consciousness? Is that how consciousness works in this universe? What are the rules here? EDIT: Joshua comes back and is just fine without his brain!!! WHERE IS THE CONSCIOUSNESS KEPT IN THE BODY?!?!?!

This all comes back to how the Smiling Dead deal with Jack and other folks who betray them, the ol' cement shoes. Given the rules we've seen the show display, it seems like chaining them up, putting their feet in wet cement, waiting for it to set, then dragging them to the ocean and tossing them in is way less efficient and more costly than just destroying their brain. Or if the brain regenerates , why not just have Breadhead crack open their skull, rip their brain out, then toss it into the ocean? Just seems way easier and even more effective at making sure they stay silent. Sure, you'll have the body to worry about, but this is the Gaslight District, I seriously doubt people are going to care about a dead body lying around. If anything scalpers and scavengers would probably love it!

So I'unno. Food for thought, I guess. Ultimately, I don't think this is something that needs to be explained, since it not being explained doesn't completely break the show, but it is just a bit immersion warbling for me personally.

[keferon]

Did you think I was done? Ahahahaha no, I have more.

Because chapter 70 of MOMU gave me the very dynamic between them that I missed so much, I just blacked out and started drawing uncontrollably lmao

Also. ALSO. I noticed a while ago that Prowl has the habit of..like…constantly frowning. So. I did a bit of research and made this graph.

In 70 chapters, Prowl frowns rougly 104 times. And the intensity of this gesture is very clearly correlated with the development of his relationship with Jazz, as you can see ahahahahah It might be wrong tho don’t take me seriously I’m not good with graphs

[orcelito]

It feels. So so so good to feel confident in my playing again.

I spent a good hour and a half yesterday working at my new bridge again (so a total of 2.5 hours of sanding) and I think I'm satisfied with it now. The sound is definitely a lot better in general, which is Wonderful!! And I put on one of my new practice mutes today, so I didn't feel quite so self conscious playing with my bow. Bc my playing both sounds better than before and wasn't as loud (due to the mute), so! Not as self conscious!!

The bow was an important thing for practicing today. Prior practices at home, I was just practicing the fingerings and plucking, but when I got to rehearsal I'd still get tripped up by the bowings. So I needed to practice the bowings for this audition video.

Playing here today... I mean I still wasn't perfect, but that's what the practice is for. But my finger agility feels like it's really coming back, nowhere Near as stiff as it was when I started out this semester, AND my bow control was actually pretty damn good!!! So even with the parts I was tripping up on, overall my sound quality was Good, and that's. Such a relief, honestly. I got so out of practice that it kinda felt *wrong* to play, bc the experience just didn't match what I'd known in the past. Too clumsy, too stiff. But after just a few weeks of consistent practice, im starting to feel like my old self again. Starting to feel like I Do have the right to call myself a violinist.

And it's a very, very good feeling.

[scalproie]

Domesticated Post-Tekken 2 Era Kazuya is my favorite to think about because this would be so good for him and everyone else but he would have an absolutely miserable time during it

[wookgerine]

Love that they take Bella with the gym with them all the time

[tetradic-echinoidea]

Allow me to expand upon this a little bit to share my thoughts:

In this party, there are thousands and thousands of people, most of them you don't know. There's also thousands of people who have brought cakes, and every single one of them will feel dejected if no one tries their cake, or if they don't get enough positive commentary from amongst the chaos of the sea of strangers wandering around, seeing what kind of cake is being offered or even themselves carrying their own cakes.

This, inherently, is not the best situation to base your worth as a baker on, or to let determine whether or not you want to keep baking cake in the future.

(Disclaimer: I'm a professional artist who has been posting art on various forums and platforms for 18 years.)

This issue is very multifaceted - there's the current social media digital infrastructure not fascilitating art or writing well. There's the lightning fast 21st century current of constant 'content' going past people every day at all hours. There's people shouting into 'the void' and wondering, why no one is answering amongst the deafening noise of all that.

It's unfortunate, especially when you see others (most of the time people who have spent years and years cultivating their craft and an audience) get the kind of engagement you want, and you're just not getting it yourself. As much as artists aren't content machines, followers and social media users aren't constant engagement machines either. Sometimes a piece, no matter how deep the meaning behind it just doesn't manage to convey it's message to the audience it's reaching. Not all art speaks to all people. To get your audience to engage with you, the art needs to engage them first. And to achieve this consistently, you need to know what kind of audience you are presenting your work to.

Bare with me for a second here: there's this concept in dog training (that I've started to use in my mental health recovery as well, highly recommend) that in order to consistently succeed you need to set the dog up for success first by putting it in situations you know it can succeed in - that is to say, if you put it in a situation that's too difficult for the dog, it will fail. You should avoid that. How does this relate to art or the topic above you might ask? Well, especially beginner artists putting their work out on social media and expecting a certain amount or type of engagement are already setting themselves up for a failure. Like I said above it's a huge gamble, where you are fighting against all other content online for attention - it is not a fight you are likely to win.

In order to set yourself up for success, you need to ask yourself what you are actually looking for when you share your work. Think about where it is realistic to get what you want, whether that be in a smaller community or platform, or a friendgroup, or with other loved ones. Find those niche communities that like that thing exactly the same way you like it, engage with them, and they will engage with you. If you have trouble getting comments in a group setting, ask people individually. Reach out to artists and ask if they would like to give a quick comment about your art - some, like me, are happy to offer commentary and feedback!

Building an audience takes a lot, a LOT of time and patience, and willingness to withstand those times where something that spoke to you just doesn't speak to others, or it's not reaching the people it would speak to. Instead of sitting still and waiting for engagement to come to you, set yourself up for success and go to the engagement. Ask people if they'd like to try your cake, or what they thought of it. Engage with other bakers and share thoughts and tips about it.

You arrived to the party, now go offer people some cake.

“Your art isn’t valued by the number of notes you get” okay but. If you spent 6 hours baking a cake for a party, but no one at the party eats your cake, it’s still disappointing.

[reignpage]

How the JJK men react to you being in a coma

Satoru is devastated

It’s a deadly silence that envelopes you as he carries you to safety, face stone cold and grip tight. Even as you’re being patched up, laid down on a hospital bed, he doesn’t say a word. Just stares and watches every bruise fade, every wound heal, and for the heaviness in your limbs to wash away. But your eyes don’t open. No one says the obvious. 

Lying on the bed with you, he cradles your head to his chest and whispers, “This is the closest to losing you I ever want to get.”

You’re practically locked away after that. He takes over your teaching duties, and he works overtime to ensure the area is as safe as can be whilst you recover, intent on making sure that when you wake up, all you have to do is make it up to him with hugs and kisses. Every curse that runs into him faces a slow and brutal death as he takes out every ounce of his pain on them. None of it is enough. No number of curses slain will bring you to consciousness. For every hour you slumber, Satoru loses sleep.

"I always knew you like to nap but this is just excessive, sweets. Leave some beauty for the rest of us, yeah?"

No one has ever seen him more serious.

"Please?"

Suguru is motivated

You weren’t supposed to get hurt. You weren’t supposed to be there at all. Finding you, lying in a puddle of your own blood send shivers of wrath coursing through his veins. It was them. Those filthy monkeys. Seeing you barely able to open your eyes is a kind of pain only non-sorcerers could cause.

As you sleep life away, he busies himself with plans, double checking everything is airtight and all will proceed as expected. He can’t let you get hurt again. He won’t let them hurt you again. “Hi, pretty girl. I’ve been gone, haven’t I? I’m sorry.”

You're taken care of by Nana and Mimi and every single shaky smile they hide from him steels his resolve even further.

"Yes, I think that colour suits her well. She always did love when you painted her nails. Why don't you do mine too? We can all match."

Manoeuvring you onto his chest, he pretends you’re merely napping. He decides, there and then, he’ll do whatever it takes to ensure that the world you wake up to is one that’s safe for you, for your family, for your future.

Even if that world is devoid of him. 

Choso is panicked

He’s fussing, hands flying as he warns them to be careful of you. Every lack of sound of pain, of agony, and anguish from you makes him pull on his hair harder. You’ve always been the stronger one out of the two of you, so to see you limp, weak and silenced, sends his newfound heart racing. Even when it’s just the two of you, he runs around the house, fluffing up your pillow, getting you a glass of water, placing a warm towel on your forehead. 

“I don’t know what to do. You’re supposed to be the one who tells me what to do.”

Putting more hours sparring, he pushes his body to the limit, dedicated to getting stronger and better. He wants to protect you. To make sure you’re never in this position again. And though he’s always wanted to experience every part of being a human, grief is something he can do without. 

"I'll be fine, Yuji. Hit me harder. I can take it. No, I have to. Y/n needs me. I'm no good to her like this."

Toji is terrified

This can’t be happening again. He can’t lose someone else again. Someone so special to him, who taught him how to love again, to live and to know it’s okay to want more. "You promised you'd never put me in this position. You fucking promised."

You’re safer without him. You have people to take care of you. He'll only get in the way.

Leaving is the hardest thing he’s ever done. Every step feels like needles are pricking his feet, stabbing him in the heart somehow. He barely makes it a mile before his thoughts drift to you and stay there.

He thinks about you, weak and recovering. What if you wake up and no one’s there? Not a single family member or friend. He thinks about how you’ll croak his name, force your body up and search the house for him, limping. He imagines your legs will give up on you and you’ll fall, hurting yourself more.

The thought steals his breath and knocks him back. Rushing home, he drops his getaway bag and creeps into bed, holding you gently against him. 

“I’m here. I’m here, ma. I’m not going anywhere. And neither are you.”

Kento is ruined

His wife. His beautiful wife, losing the light in your eyes as he holds you. Gone is your smile, your warm touch and is instead replaced with shivering and shallow breaths. The noise that comes out of him is guttural and broken. "Oh, d-darling. Look at this mess. Let's get you cleaned up, alright?"

You’re alive but sleeping. And he doesn’t know when you’ll wake. It feels as if you’re floating in that space between the world of the living and the dead, and he wants to follow. 

He never leaves your side. He freshens the flower by your bedside table, keeps a tight schedule of visitors. None of them can touch you, they can’t speak too loudly and they can’t complain by your ear about their personal lives — he only wants you to be surrounded by positive energy. 

“You’ll wake up soon, won’t you, sweetheart? Yes. Yes, you will because you always take care of me. You’ll tell me off for not shaving, for not eating and for pushing everyone away, wouldn’t you?"

Maintaining your routine, he washes your face, puts on face masks, and reads aloud by your side, hoping that a particularly dramatic prose will provoke a reaction from you.

"I need my wife. I need you. What am I supposed to do without you? Won’t you open your eyes for me? For your Kento?”

Sukuna is confused

He’s in disbelief as he's ushered into the room where you rest. Everyone is in a state of disarray and for what, he has no idea. You’re merely sleeping. He pokes your cheek. “Wake up, woman. Tell these pathetic fools to stop their useless quivering.”

When you don’t, he frowns. Brows furrowing, he tilts his head and examines your body. You’re breathing and he can hear your heart beating, and yet you don’t respond to his commands.

How insolent.

Waving the peasants away, he shakes your shoulder. “Your king has given an order. Follow it immediately or face punishment”

Even once he has it explained to him, he can’t wrap his head around the concept of you sleeping indefinitely, though he’s once gone through it himself. You’re different. Better. You’re supposed to be filled with endless optimism and energy. You’re supposed to be bothering him about smiling, pulling him to the garden to look at a flower he’s seen before.

"Humans really are f-fragile creatures. Ridiculous."

Tutting, he rolls his eyes and grumbles about how you’re not even making space for him on the bed. There, lying with you, he can do nothing but slumber and wait for your soul to reignite, sparking his once more.

[hyper-fixates]

Time After Time

Logan Howlett/Wolverine x AFAB!reader (no pronouns/gendered language).

Explicit content (18+)

Word count: 15.2k never let me near him again

Tags/warnings: age-gap due to logan’s mutation (reader’s age not specified), mutant!reader, unprotected sex, teasing, friends to lovers, explicit language, dry humping, storm cameos, fluff, domesticity, the claws come out when he’s close (👁️👁️), detailed descriptions & scenes of nightmares/trauma/PTSD/panic attacks, one (1) ass smack, alcohol consumption, vomiting, biting/marking, angst, soft!logan, creampie, groping/touching, use of “baby” once, aftercare, yearning (kindly let me know if anything was missed!).

Summary: 4 times you end up in Logan’s bed, and the 1 time he does something about it.

Notes: this falls somewhere in between “which could mean nothing” and “we can fix each other” 🫡 (written with a mix of X1 & X2 logan!)

Your heart, despite always being alive and beating, sometimes wakes up before you.

You can feel it before your eyes even have a chance to open. It jolts your sleep-ridden body and collapses your lungs without giving your brain a chance to fight against it. Muscles and limbs feel lifeless and detached from your body, shaking from the sleep that your heart knows wasn’t completely dreamless.

You kick the blankets off of yourself and sit up in a panic, trying to regain some control of your sudden erratic breaths while bringing a lethargic hand to your heaving chest in hopes to ground yourself. It never works.

Maybe your ribs are shrinking and squeezing your lungs, making you delirious from the lack of oxygen, but you know that’s not the case. Your heart feels like it’s being squeezed and broken into a million tiny pieces.

No part of your body feels real, yet you keep your hand on your chest as firmly as you can, trying to focus on controlling the pounding of your heart that’s working so hard with each beat that it hurts. 

“Fuck. Fuck,” you choke out, feeling the tears finally breach and roll down your cheeks as your nervous system catches up to what’s happening.

 Panic. It’s all panic.

You can’t do anything but sit there and let the tears hit the freshly-washed fitted sheet on your bed. So you let it happen. Nothing can stop it.

Trauma is such a fickle thing. One moment you’re fine, and then the next, your heart is screaming at you and forcing your body to process something at 4 a.m. on a random Friday when all you wanted was some goddamn sleep.

There is no choice. Your mind doesn’t give you one.

The tremors subside slowly after a few minutes, giving you the feeling back to your arms and legs, albeit minimal.

You slide to sit at the edge of your bed, resting an elbow on your thigh and setting your chin into your palm with a defeated, yet shaky, huff. 

You look to your window and see that the sun hasn’t even started to rise yet. You’ll be up for the rest of the foreseeable morning, but there’s not much to do so early besides wander aimlessly and think…then think some more. 

You’re confident the professor isn’t even awake at this hour, which says enough about your state. You would typically go visit Storm for some comfort, but she’s been gone fuck-knows-where with Hank and Scott until Sunday at the latest. Thanks, Charles.

A questionable, and probably manic, decision comes to mind. One that’s only two doors down, one over from Storm.

Your impulsive feet make up your mind for you. The cold hardwood floor shocking you further into consciousness as if your heart didn’t do a good enough job.

You tiptoe a couple steps down the hall, forcing yourself to turn and face the large wooden door when you reach it. You just stand there staring at it, unknocking, analyzing the wood grains, suddenly very interested in what type of wood it is and what stain was used to—

“Uh. Are you okay?”

You refocus your eyes onto the man now standing in front of you in the doorway, adorning a barely-zipped school hoodie and black sweats.

“Huh?” You blink a few times, disoriented.

Logan quirks a brow, looking you up and down cautiously. “Are you okay?” He asks again, offering a look of concern—or maybe confusion—that you haven’t seen often. A look that’s never needed to be directed towards you.

You come back to yourself. “But—I…didn’t knock,” you respond, looking equally as confused as him as you point to the door. 

He leans against the edge of the door, face softening. “I could smell you before you passed Storm’s room,” he clarifies, a hint of reluctance in his tone. Oh. 

You feel like a child who has just gained awareness, all too conscious of your situation.

“You’re…awake?” Is all you manage despite probably needing to say much more than that to explain just why exactly you’re standing outside Logan’s room at 4 a.m.

“So are you,” he counters with a curious look. “So let me ask again. Are you okay?” He locks his eyes on yours, probably in hopes to understand why the fuck you’re outside his room at 4 a.m.

“I’m not sure how to answer that,” you say, and it’s the truth. 

You should probably be embarrassed. You show up at Logan’s door unannounced, dressed in a flimsy shirt and matching sweats—thanks, Charles—that can’t fully hide the remaining quivers throughout your body.

Logan pulls his lips together at your admission. You can almost see the wheels turning in his head trying to figure you out.

“Can’t sleep?” He questions, but he knows he’s right.

“Yeah.” You don’t know why you’re making it Logan’s problem, though. Sure, he happens to be awake, but maybe this is all too personal to push on the guy who’s seemingly all pride and no solicitude most of the time.

It’s not that he’s not a good, nice guy, but you don’t know how you would define your relationship, or lack of.

You know each other well enough from existing in the same space over the past couple months, being part of the same “team”, but it’s nothing to call a close friendship like you and Storm. He’s a bit of a rare species in the mansion, not really lingering around.

He cocks his head in a half shrug, the soft points in his hair broken by sleep shake gently with the movement.

“I don’t think I can help you,” he says wearily. “I’m no better. Clearly.” He gestures between you, drawing attention to the fact that you’re both awake. The helpless cannot help the helpless.

“Oh—no, I’m not looking for help. I think I’m beyond that at this point,” you laugh but stop yourself short when Logan doesn’t follow. Tough crowd.

“I, uh, don’t actually know what I’m looking for,” you offer.

You knit your brows together in thought, still wondering why the fuck you’re here. Comfort? Entertainment? Some other unknown third thing?

“I’m not really used to Storm being gone for so long,” you admit. “I just feel…all over the place, I guess.”

Logan considers your vulnerability for a beat, eyes flicking to yours. “I can hear you sometimes,” he says, a knowing—almost sympathetic—look on his face. “We have the same problem.”

You go cold, any expression you had on your face sliding away. You wish the floor could swallow you right now. You know things have been getting worse recently, but you didn’t think anyone could hear that fact. Maybe it shouldn’t come as a surprise from someone who could smell you from down the hallway.

He steps back, pulling his door open further. An invitation.

You don’t move right away. Could this be a false awakening? You’re not sure what you expected when you came to his door, but you also didn’t expect him to open it without you knocking, so you have to suspend disbelief for now. You figured he’d offer a few words of advice and dismiss you, or maybe even tell you to fuck off, but he opened his door wider for you. But you didn’t exactly think any of it through in the first place anyway.

You force your feet to carry you into Logan’s room. It’s not much different from yours; scarce belongings, minimal decor, a small work desk, brown curtains that are drawn back, and a bed. 

“Were you, uh…sleeping before I came?” You sit on the unmade bed, nothing noticeably different from it compared to yours.

He shuts the door quietly, moving to the small desk across the room and filing some scattered papers together neatly.

“Trying to,” he says, keeping his gaze on the desk.

Fucking duh. “Sorry if I disturbed you,” you wince to yourself. 

You see him briefly shake his head at your unnecessary apology. “I had to get up anyway.” His voice is still gravelly from sleep.

It feels like you’re invading his space. But he invited you in. How many others have had the opportunity to be in here? Probably too many. There’s nothing to make this special.

“I’m fucking exhausted,” you sigh, flopping back on his bed defeated. Simply overwhelmed with the uncontrollable repercussions of your mutation.

“Try to sleep. If you want,” he offers, moving to the edge of the bed. “It’s easier said than done, but I have to meet with Charles in an hour.” It’s gruff, but he’s sincere.  

Maybe the professor is awake after all.

You roll your head to the side to look at him. Was he really offering for you to stay in his bed?

“Oh, wow…uh, sure.” It comes off as more of a question, but he quirks his brows in acknowledgment, turning back to the desk and collecting a handful of other miscellaneous papers.

“I have to head downstairs and take care of some things. Stay as long as you need,” he says, zipping his sweater the rest of the way up. Thank God in heaven.

A shy “thanks” is all you manage as you situate yourself on the bed.

Is this fucking weird? You could name a handful of others in the mansion right this second that would kill without hesitation to be where you are. They’d probably kill you specifically to get it. It’s not much of a secret that Logan is the subject of almost all students’ desires. He knows it, too. 

“See you later,” he adds, his lips forming the slightest hint of a caring smile as he sees himself out. You throw one back before the door clicks shut.

Should you be offended that he didn’t stay? That he left so quickly? No, no, he can’t. He couldn’t. Charles is expecting him. The timing is just horrid. But now you’re just…alone…in Logan’s room, expected to sleep because of a random act of kindness in his heart.

Lying in his bed instead of yours is an odd sensation. The sheets and mattress are exactly the same, the pillows are just as fluffy, yet it feels unalike. 

You flop your head on his pillow, tugging the blankets up to your chin. Your fingers graze something by your hip as you settle in, making you push the blanket back down. Leaning over, you see three puncture marks in the mattress, fraying the bedsheet material into feather-soft strands around the deep holes.

Your eyes widen, remembering his words before he invited you in: “We have the same problem.”

Part of your heart fractures for the second time today. Your eyes cross over to the other side of you, seeing a matching set of holes just below the pillow. It’s suddenly easy to understand why no one besides him has been seen coming and going from this room in a while. One day, things just seemed to change. 

Maybe his act of kindness was an act of mercy. Trauma will always find you, and it will make sure you feel it until you either destroy it or it destroys you.

Even the Wolverine isn’t an exception. 

━━━━ ● ━━━━

The gold liquid is gone from the glass as quickly as it was poured.

Your throat clenches and protests the swallow as you try to suppress the urge to gag. You gently set the shot glass back on the counter, watching Storm chase with a piece of lime that does nothing to help the puckered face she makes from the tequila. 

“No more, no more. I can’t.” Your arms anchor you to the counter to stop yourself from swaying too much.

Storm nods, still fighting off the sourness with furrowed brows and a scrunched nose. You giggle at her when she quickly screws the cap back on the bottle, sliding it out of reach.

“You’re a bad influence,” she scolds as she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

“No—I’m under the influence,” you counter, a playful smile on your lips. “There’s a difference. You still have your own free will.”

Storm rolls her eyes so hard you only see the whites of them. “We have training tomorrow,” she slurs. “Charles will not be happy if we show up half-conscious.” She rounds the counter to you, grabbing your shoulders for stability, and you do the same.

“He’ll be lucky if we show up at all,” you mumble. 

The dim kitchen lighting embraces the two of you, the rest of the mansion blanketed in darkness with everyone fast asleep—like you both should be.

You close your eyes with a roll of your neck, more giggles falling through your lips as you clumsily grab onto Storm and rock and sway together for a moment, the alcohol quickly catching up to your motor skills. It feels like you’re spinning through time and space, and you’d be lying if you said it didn’t feel fucking euphoric. At this rate, neither of you will be able to make it back to your rooms.

“Am I interrupting something?”

You lose a bit of your balance as you try to find the resonant voice, eyes shooting open. Storm unintentionally startles and stumbles away from you, white hair also jumping from the excitement.

You grab onto the counter again, sucking in a deep breath. “Fuck, don’t do that,” you growl through your teeth, a hand on your chest as you try to calm yourself.

“Don’t do what? Come to the shared kitchen to grab a drink?” Logan huffs a laugh, an amused smile creeps to his lips as he takes in your drunk and shaken state from the entryway.

“Doesn’t anyone sleep in this place?” He mumbles to himself.

“And with that, I’m done for the night,” Storm chuckles, fixing her hair. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Her eyes lock intensely on yours, index finger firmly poking the middle of your chest to make her point for you to show up to training very clear.

“See you, Logan,” she dismisses, stumbling as she passes him.

Logan shakes his head, still smiling. He steps to the fridge, opening the double doors and plucking a bottle of soda from the bottom shelf. No alcohol is readily available in the communal fridge because, after all, you’re all in a school full of kids, so Storm had to get creative; Scott will be missing a rather large bottle from the now not-so-secret stash in his room.

As the alcohol continues to settle in you, you feel more and more lightheaded as it brings you to a new level of euphoria again. You only know this because watching Logan pop the cap of his drink with mindless ease feels a little more exciting than it would be if you were sober. But you’re not sober, and that’s the problem.

“Not gonna follow Storm?” He asks, taking a generous sip from the bottle as he casually places his free hand on the counter to lean on across from you.

A tight smile forms, mostly to yourself. “I don’t think I can make it down the hall,” you laugh in embarrassment. Maybe that last shot was one too many, and it’s not even fully done working its magic yet.

Logan raises a brow. “Want some help?” There’s no judgement in his tone like you expect. Then again, you don’t know what the fuck to expect from him.

Your already half-closed eyes, blurry and unfocused, meet his hazel ones in interest. Another favour?

It’s been two weeks since he let you sleep off the nightmares in his bed. Two weeks since you learned he’s burdened with them, too. You traced the holes in the mattress over and over before you eventually fell asleep, wondering what—or who—could have hurt him so badly. He plays it off cool; you wouldn’t suspect anything from talking to him. The same could probably be said about you.

“I didn’t know wolverine’s were chivalrous,” you tease.

The yellow hue of the lights dance over the quaffed points in his hair, making them appear sharper than usual. You would never admit it, especially to him, but you adore them. They give him an absurd amount of character that you’d expect a guy like him to not care about. 

You’re not exactly complaining about the fitting grey tank-top he has on either.

“Not overly,” he plays along, taking another mouthful of the fizzy drink. “I like to think I’m special,” he says quieter.

“Maybe you are,” you say as you try and straighten yourself to see if you can stand unassisted.

The world tilts as you stand to your full height, eyes rolling into your head from the wave of dizziness. “Wow, okay,” you say to yourself, squeezing your eyes shut to stop the spinning. How many shots did you have again?

A warm hand presses between your shoulders. “Woah, nice and easy. Nice and easy.” Logan appears by your side to steady you, other hand grabbing your elbow to pull you straight. You wobble in his grip, letting him guide your useless, alcohol-ridden body.

His hand on your back rubs a few small, comforting circles as you work to regain your bearings. He watches your expressions intently, looking for the right moment to get you moving back to your room safe and sound.

Your arm crosses over your body out of instinct to grab the hand he has on your elbow for extra support.

“Are you okay?” He asks. He seems to ask you that a lot.

You lean into him, your shoulder to his chest, and you can feel the blackout creeping up on you like humidity from a thunderstorm—it’s usually too late to do anything once you notice it. 

“I drank a lot,” you laugh deeply, rolling your head onto his shoulder to look up at him.

He looks so much more delicate under the ambient lights—his usual defined features have shifted and melted him into someone that doesn’t look like they should be a feared animal out in the world.

Logan all but cradles you, that same look of concern crossing his features from the night you went to his door. The only difference is that you’ve had a generous amount of tequila—and are currently being kept alert by the hot touch of his hands. That’s new.

“Can you walk?” He holds your squinty eye contact, probably searching for any signs of a coherent thought behind the blissful expression on your face. “Or will I have to carry you?” He muses, a hint of a smile crosses his lips as his hand moves up to gently rub over your shoulders. 

Drunk you likes the sound of anything relating to Logan keeping his hands on you right now. You wonder what sober you would think.

“I’m not gonna tell you no, but it feels like I’m floating in a bubble that won’t stop spinning,” you hum as you let the sensation consume your senses. “I might fly away.” You dip your head back off of his shoulder in amusement as you laugh again. 

“Yeah, you’re fucked up,” he mumbles lovingly. Just like anyone else who’s concerned for your well-being would. 

“Hey, kitty cat—I’m perfectly buzzed,” you emphasize the teasing nickname, narrowing your eyes at him sternly as you bring your gaze back to his in defence.

“‘Kitty cat’? Really?” He snorts. “I think you’re past your bedtime by three drinks,” he remarks back with equal levity.

“Then take me to bed if you’re so concerned,” you sigh dramatically, going limp in his arms to make your point. 

Truthfully, you’re probably past your bedtime by five shots. But he doesn’t need to know that. You just know that you can’t control your limbs like you were able to ten minutes ago.

“Maybe I will.” You don’t see it, but he does his quick little eye roll that you’ve seen pointed towards Scott too many times. 

He slides the hand on your elbow down to the backs of your knees, pulling you up off the floor and into his chest as you fall into the arm that was rubbing your back. 

Oh, so it’s gonna be like that. 

An excited—or maybe shocked—noise escapes your mouth as he adjusts you in his arms. You extend your right arm up and over his shoulder to hug his neck and keep yourself stable.

The trip to your room isn’t one that should take long, but each sway from Logan’s steps goes straight to your stomach in waves of queasiness. It feels like forever before you feel him bend awkwardly to turn your doorknob.

You’re fighting to keep yourself conscious the entire time, not wanting to regret missing the feeling of being in his arms.

The room is only lit by the silver moonlight creeping through the window. It’s hard to distinguish anything through your bleary eyes besides Logan’s look of determination to get you in your bed.

He leans down, shuffling you out of his arms and onto the mattress as swiftly as possible. The care of it all pokes at your heart. 

He silently goes around each corner of the bed adjusting the blankets. It may be dark, but the moonlight highlights the peaks of his shoulders as he moves. Your eyes might be involuntarily half-shut, but that doesn’t stop you from staring.

You’re now probably no better than every other mutant in this school.

“Logan,” you start before you can fully process the foolish thing you’re about to say next.

He rounds the bed back to the side you’re huddled on, looking down on you. “Yeah?” The subtle jingle of his dog tag pierces the quiet that’s lingering in the room.

You part your lips to speak but the words die in your throat. They’re replaced by a flood of saliva that has you sitting up at a speed that shouldn’t be possible for someone as intoxicated as you. You cover your mouth with your hand, feeling your stomach churning and finally rejecting the tequila. 

You suddenly feel very awake.

“Hey, hey.” Logan squats down in front of you with his already permanently-furrowed brows pinched closer together than you’ve ever seen before, a hand coming to your shoulder in concern. “What—”

“Bathroom,” you mumble through your palm, eyes rolling shut at the nausea. 

He doesn’t say another word. He pulls you to your feet by your arms, walking behind you fiercely with his hands gripping your shoulders to guide you to the small bathroom across the room.  

You push the door open, falling to your knees in the darkness over the toilet as the mistakes from the night expel themselves from your body through rounds of coughing and gagging. He lingers in the doorway, keeping an eye on you but still giving you privacy.

“Fuck,” you cough, resting your warm forehead on your hand as you slump against the toilet. That definitely sobered you up fast.

Exhaustion hits you like a truck. “Logan…” you croak from your crumpled position on the tile floor. 

He steps in, bending down again to reach your height. You can barely make out the shadow of him in the fading moonlight.

“Just…help me back to bed,” you groan, reaching for his arm as you use the toilet seat to push yourself the rest of the way up. You stumble against him as you try to make it back through the doorway.

He guides you to the bed the same way he did to the bathroom—steering you from behind.

“I’m gonna get you some water,” he says as you settle back into bed, head hitting the pillow with a quiet thud. “Even though you did this to yourself.”

“Fuck off,” you groan.

You close your eyes, hearing his footsteps fade back toward the bathroom. You hear the tap run for a couple seconds before he’s next to you again, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Drink. All of it,” he says firmly, holding the cup out to you.

You sit back up slowly, no doubt lethargic, an unimpressed look on your face that earns you a raised brow that tells you there’s no room to object.

You finish the cup in four mouthfuls, handing it back to him. “Thanks.”

You fall back onto the pillow, no longer feeling like you’re travelling through space and time.

The clothes you’re in are close enough to pyjamas. There’s no sense in undressing in front of Logan, especially with what you were about to say to him before you were rudely interrupted by the consequences of your own actions.

He returns the cup to the bathroom and you pull the blanket over your waist as you hopefully settle in for the rest of the night. You owe him big time for this. The thought of just how exactly you’ll manage that fills you with anxiety.

You turn on your side, fingers sliding over the mattress with the movement. They graze familiar strands of feather-soft fabric by the pillow.

This is Logan’s room. Are you just that drunk that you couldn’t tell the difference when he brought you in? Or are your rooms just that similar to each other?

You dip a finger in one of the three holes, hearing the bathroom door click shut as Logan makes his way back. 

“Why am I in your bed?” You see him rustling through some drawers of clothing by the small desk, but he stops when you finish your question.

“You can’t take care of yourself tonight,” he says. “You’re too drunk.” He pulls the grey tank-top off, stuffing it in one of the drawers and shutting it.

You sit up at that, head still foggy and tipsy, watching him move to the foot of the bed across from you. You try to focus your eyes on anything but his bare chest and the dark hair that adorns it and trails down past the waistband of his sweats. His hair is somehow even more wild from mindlessly pulling the tank-top over his head.

“Ah. I was gonna ask you to stay anyway,” you reveal, almost whispering the bold confession.

You were planning to ask before the tequila decided to make another appearance, but maybe doing it this way isn’t so bad either. He did all the heavy-lifting.

A modest, tight-lipped smile graces his lips. “I think you still have some tequila to sleep off.”

Whether or not you still have some shots in your system, what you feel and want right now is real. It’s not influenced by anything besides some mild andronitis created by the fact that you share a common struggle.

“Is it…safe? To share a bed?” The most coherent thought you’ve had all night makes him stiffen from your sudden nervous tone. Your body could easily replace the mattress and become a new home for the deep punctures. 

Your eyelids have been fighting against being pulled shut by alcohol-induced drowsiness, yet your eyes are wider than they’ve been all night in this moment.

You’re sat right in the middle of the bed and Logan comes around to the right, sitting on the edge of the mattress to come down to your level.

“You’re just gonna have to trust me.” His eyes are imploring and apologetic all at once. He understands the prospect of even having you here in the first place.

You nod, sliding over to the left to give him more room. 

Logan wouldn’t put you in harms way, you reason with yourself. He wouldn’t risk potentially killing someone, especially a fellow mutant, if he wasn’t absolutely sure of his mental state. But you also don’t really know his demons.

You roll onto your right side, tugging the blanket up to your chin in comfort. “Why haven’t you been given a new mattress?” You ask as he turns to face you in the same position, his half of the blanket resting at his hip.

The bed dips significantly on his side, almost encouraging you to roll over against him.

“Forgot to ask,” he says quietly, running his right hand through his hair to push the shorter strands off his forehead.

From his tone you can decipher that he actually means “can’t be bothered.” It’s a devastating thing to imagine just how many he goes through, anyway. He probably doesn’t see the point in replacing something that will inevitably have the same fate as the others.

There has to be less than an arms length between you two. It’s a surreal situation to be in considering what you thought you knew about him. A recluse. Standoffish. Maybe it’s all a fluke and the alcohol is severely fucking with your perception of what’s actually happening.

“Thanks for everything,�� you whisper as if someone else will overhear.

“Get some sleep,” he insists, rolling onto his back. You do the same.

You stare at the blank ceiling for a while, noticing the exact moment Logan falls asleep; his breathing grows slow and his body runs even hotter than before. 

You think about how he could wake at any moment, claws accidentally sliding right through your stomach from a nightmare or two. You imagine all the others that have been in your position—if they felt scared, if they even knew. 

He asked you to trust him, and that should be enough. 

There is a body full of secrets and hurt sleeping undisturbed next to you with the ability to withstand and regenerate from any physical injury, yet there’s something that hasn’t allowed the same to be done for his mind. 

━━━━

The bright amber sun hits your closed eyes through the window, making you roll your head away onto the other side of the cool pillow.

You want more sleep. Your head feels like a bag of bricks and your body feels like it got beat with them.

You stretch a leg out, gently grazing something solid with your foot. Your eyes shoot open, the night coming back to you as you drift into consciousness. Logan. 

You shoot up, bouncing a little from the momentum.

Logan startles next to you, clearly interrupted from a deep sleep. “What the fuck…” he groans, rubbing a hand over his face, not seeming interested in making a move to sit up with you.

“What time is it?” Your eyes bounce around the room looking for a clock.

He grunts, reaching for a watch on the nightstand. “Seven-forty.”

You needed to be in the Danger Room for 7 o’clock.

“Fuck!” You rip the blanket off, almost tripping as you run to the bathroom.

Logan also wants to roll back over and go back to sleep, but he knows he won’t be able to. He doesn’t work like that. So he just lays there, listening to you swear and make a mess of his bathroom as the clattering of fuck-knows-what fills the room. 

The surprise of how well he slept makes him feel uneasy. Although it definitely wasn’t eight hours, it was uninterrupted. He doesn’t want to credit that to you, though. He wants to believe that he’s getting better overall, and maybe he is, so he can’t offer you any flattery in his mind.

Another distant “fuck” escapes the bathroom, pulling him out of his thoughts. You exit a few minutes later, as refreshed and presentable as you could get yourself, and the sight of Logan still in bed makes something in you ache for another moment of feeling him care and tend to you. Maybe that’s your hangover talking.

“Thanks again. I’ll see you around,” you say hurriedly, offering an apologetic smile as you turn the doorknob to leave.

“Good luck with Charles.” It’s a genuine advisory. Fuck. You’ll be so incredibly lucky if he doesn’t give you more than a stern lecture in front of everyone.

You take a deep breath in and slip out of Logan’s room. There’s not a single cut, mark, or scratch on you, just like he promised.

━━━━ ● ━━━━

“I was told it’ll take a day to fix,” Storm explains with a shrug. “You’ll have to find somewhere or someone to room with until tomorrow. Jean already offered to have me stay with her.” A contrite look passes over her face.

You stand outside your rooms, staring in at the remnants of the mess caused by two terrakinetic kids fucking around in the courtyard when they weren’t supposed to be. They somehow managed to throw, or launch, sizeable tree branches right through each of your windows. Of course it wasn’t on purpose, but the Danger Room exists for a reason—to avoid mishaps like this. 

Shards of glass and fragments of wood splatter your floors. The branches are hanging half-way out both of your windows, caught on the window sills and bobbing in the evening summer wind. The kids are extremely fortunate that neither of you were in your rooms when it happened.

“It’s fine. It’s just one night,” you sigh, rubbing your eyes in frustration. You don’t love how quickly your mind picks out who to go to. It’s already nearing 11 p.m., so you have to work fast. 

Storm squeezes your shoulder in comfort. “The living room is always free,” she suggests with a remorseful smile.

But you don’t want the living room. Stiff couches mixed with students clamouring and passing by at the crack of dawn isn’t exactly a recipe for a good nights rest. As if you usually get one, anyway.

“Not a fucking chance,” you laugh. “I’ll be fine,” you say again, dismissing her worries. You wish her goodnight when she steps by you to head towards Jean’s room at the very end of the hall.

You glare at the mess in your room, not daring to step in. The amount of shattered glass everywhere makes the floor look like a body of water from the reflections of the pale moonlight bouncing and refracting off of the jagged shards.

“Fuck,” you spit through your teeth, solely to yourself.

Not even a full week after Logan saw you at your worst, you’re going to go back and ask for the left side of his bed. Shameless.

You don’t have much of a choice; you’re not comfortable having it be anyone else. It’s only because Logan saw you at your worst that you feel he’s the most logical choice. Already having shared a bed with him this week may also have some weight in your decision.  

You take the few self-assured steps to his room, once again standing in front of his door. This time you feel more confident in approaching the Wolverine in his den.

You knock three times, the piercing sound echoing through the hall.

“You start to miss me or what?” A bare chest enters your view. You note the dog tag hanging from his neck again before you find his unyielding gaze full of ambiguity, wondering why you’re here. Again.

You blink at him slowly in hilarity. “Ha, funny. Can I stay with you tonight?” You ask flatly, not thrilled with the situation, but not completely displeased with being here now. “My window—”

“I know what happened,” he interrupts. “Figured you’d go for the couch in the living room.” He looks at you more pointedly with teasing suspicion. 

“I think you know no one would ever willingly choose to sleep out there,” you reason, running a hand over your face in both shame and defeat.

He makes a face that tells you “touché” and you smirk in satisfaction. “If you don’t mind giving up half of your bed again, I would really appreciate it. I promise I’m not trying to make this a habit,” you sigh. Spending the night in Logan’s bed three times in the past month has to be a record for anyone recently. 

“I don’t think it would be a bad habit,” he argues. Oh. “C’mon.” He gives a jerk of his head to allow you in, his tufts of his hair bristling with the quick movement.

“Thanks,” you squeak. He wants you here? 

He shuts the door behind you, following you to the bed that’s clearly already had him in it. The blanket rests in waves on the mattress that remind you of just how human Logan is despite his reputation and image.

“Do you have an early morning?” You ask, slipping under the blanket.

“No. Charles was feeling nice for once,” he raises his tone sarcastically to rag on Charles’ judgement, which has clearly been a much needed one before now.

“Not an early bird?” You roll onto your right side like last time, facing him as he settles on his back with a deep breath. The bed sinks in again where he lays, your body wanting to give in to the laws of gravity and fall into him.

“Fuck no,” he laughs lightly, eyes crinkling around the corners. It’s self-deprecating, but it’s still a genuine laugh. The condescension from it lingers in the air, all directed at himself in a way that tells you he’s thinking about how inconceivably fucked up he is.

The last time he had a decent sleep was when you were drunk in his bed a few days ago.

“People like us don’t usually get the pleasure of a full eight hours,” he notes, sliding his gaze to yours for a fraction of a second.

He props an arm behind his head, the other resting on his chest and idly twisting the dog tag between his fingers. You watch the thin piece of steel slide and flip easily, the chain tinkling with every movement.

People like us.

“You mean mutants,” you state. You see his jaw tense in what little light there is from the half-moon tonight.

You see his brows pull together. “Yeah.” He has a point.

You think about the mutants you know, how they all have some horrific story about their gifts or family, or both. How they either were shamed by society or experimented on like rats. 

The scenarios are endless. If you can think of it, some mutant has probably lived it.

Your heart sinks to the bottom of your stomach. You and Logan are not isolated or special cases, but you’ve already shared a moment of vulnerability with him when you came to his door all those weeks ago seeking solace for the same thing he fights with: the inescapable ability of remembering.

You pull the blanket tighter against you. “I don’t think you’ll hurt me.” 

He turns his head to you, confusion written on his face. “What?” He stops toying with the dog tag.

“Your claws. I trust you.” You didn’t feel like you were in immediate danger that first night, but you want to reassure him anyway. Or maybe you’re reassuring yourself. 

He hasn’t had to say a single word for you to know his nightmares trigger something instinctive and combative that’s been hardwired into his DNA. In this case, it’s his claws needing to find a home in his mattresses, where another body could potentially lay one night. Like yours is right now.

You noticed the lack of holes in this mattress when you first got to the bed. Maybe you mentioning them last time was enough for him to finally request a new one.

Logan knows he shouldn’t make promises he doesn’t know he’ll be able to keep, but he wants to keep you here tonight, so he improvises. He abandons the dog tag between his fingers completely, turning onto his side and reaching to find your hand under the blanket. You meet him halfway, sliding your fingers between his as your palms lay flat on the bed.

A smile tugs at your lips for a moment. He watches your interlinked fingers, observing the size difference, wondering if he really just did that—and why. 

You assume it’s his way of saying “thank you” for your trust when you probably shouldn’t be putting that much into him.

“Does it hurt?” You whisper, pulling your fingers out from his just enough to caress the divets between his knuckles that conceal the claws.

He knows what you’re asking. “Every time.” He softly pushes his fingers back into yours, squeezing a little. 

There’s a deadly stillness in the room despite his window being cracked. You both know you’re one in the same in a way, and that’s a connection that Logan hasn’t let himself experience. Not everyone likes looking in a mirror.

To be truly seen by someone, wholly, without judgement or fear, is what he deserves. 

“What are you?” He asks, rubbing his index finger back and forth along the top of your hand. “Telekinetic? Psychic?” His curious voice grows quiet, hazel eyes fascinated with you and your lack of a physical mutation, at least nothing that he can see.

It never occurred to you that he didn’t know your mutation, or that you’ve never told him. It was never needed, but it seems unfair that you know about his when he wasn’t the one who told you.

“Ha, close.” Your eyes twinkle as you notice how intently he’s listening. “Psychometric,” you correct, watching his forehead crease.

“Sounds like math,” he quips, readjusting his head on the pillow. He’s close enough that you can feel the heat he’s putting off.

You laugh quietly. “No, it’s extrasensory perception. It lets me see the history of any object or person I touch, but only if I accept the energy,” you explain.

You watch his eyes narrow and you know what he’s thinking, so you quickly interject as he begins to pull his hand out from yours. “I need to touch a pulse point to be able to see anything,” you reassure, feeling his fingers slide back against yours. “The heart remembers everything,” you clarify.

The catch? The person’s memories and past stay with you after you see them. It’s become hard to distinguish what memories are yours or someone else’s. They all become intertwined. Good or bad, violent or gentle. You see it all, and then it’s part of you. Forever.

“I haven’t looked. I promise.” 

“Good. You don’t need to see that shit,” he huffs, eyes wandering over your face. He isn’t sure what he’s looking for, but he’s a little startled for the first time in a while.

“I’m sure I’ve seen it all,” you state. It’s probably not far off from the truth. Your gift came when you were all too young, and plenty of time has passed since then for you to rack up this amount of damage from near-strangers and their lives.

“No, you haven’t.” A sure expression passes over him, shaking his head as best as he can against the pillow. 

“Then I’ll count myself lucky,” you say softly. You have no idea what Logan has experienced, but his demeanor makes you want to stay curious. Not everything needs to be known, and you’re definitely not entitled to it.

A faint smile appears on his lips, then it’s gone just as quick. “Get some sleep,” he rasps. He turns onto his back and his hand abandons yours. 

It’s a complete repeat of last time.

Something twinges in your heart, and you don’t like it. What exactly had you expected from Logan? He’s just doing you a courtesy by letting you stay here for the night. Nothing more. And that’s what you should expect: nothing.

The hum of crickets outside eventually lulls you into a dead sleep. It’s heavy and deep, not a single muscle twitching in your body. Logan breathes steadily next to you, a hand on his chest as the occasional snore fills the air.

From above you two might look like you’re transient, only here in this moment for a short time. And, realistically, you are. 

━━━━

Logan was no where to be seen by the time you woke up, and you made quick work to get out of his room. It always feel wrong to be in someone’s space when they aren’t there.

Just like Storm said, the windows in your rooms were fixed the next day. It looks as though nothing even happened.

“Thank fuck,” you mumble to yourself as you step back into your room.

If you ever have to spend another night in Logan’s bed, you might as well wear a shirt that says “yes, we’re fucking!”, even if it isn’t true. You could deny it all you want, but it won’t stop what students would say. Nothing gets past them, even if it’s behind a closed door.

━━━━ ● ━━━━

“Are you fucking Logan?”

You almost swallow your tongue. “Sorry?” Your brows shoot up in surprise, eyes round in disbelief.

“Are you guys sleeping together?” Storm casually asks as she flicks through the T.V. channels, glancing over to you from her spot on the couch.

You’re sat comfortably in an arm chair, suddenly no longer caring what channel she decides on. “Why would you think that?” Technically you were sleeping together, but not like that. It may never happen again, no matter how badly you want it to.

“Things travel fast around here,” she deflects with a cheeky smile. “And, you know, Logan is…Logan.” She shrugs.

You don’t even know what to say to that. Is there a right or wrong answer?

“It wasn’t like that,” you grumble. “He was doing me a favour. As a friend.” It hasn’t even been a full day since he let you stay with him while pieces of your window laid on your floor, and people are already convinced you’re fucking. 

You haven’t even managed a chaste kiss, despite how much as you want to, never mind his dick being balls deep in you.

“Right.” She emphasizes the word, not convinced. Or just pushing your buttons because she can. 

You roll your eyes. “If anything was happening, you’d be the first to know,” you point out. 

She looks back over to you. “I know,” she says with another, more sincere, smile. “You two would be cute, though.” 

You give her some side-eye, not quite sure if you disagree entirely with that statement. Whatever happens, happens. Logan is not something you can control or influence. He does what—and who—he wants, when he wants. 

━━━━

A bolt of lightening strikes you. You gasp, then release a choked cry, eyes flying open as you claw at your chest in terror.

Your throat tightens and you break out in a cold sweat as you sit up. The soft blanket around you feels constricting. Sporadic and short breaths make you heave as your body registers the horrors in your subconscious. 

There was never any lighting. That’s just what the pain feels like.

The muscles in your shoulders and neck tense from your panicked state as your heart struggles to keep a normal rhythm. You yank the blanket off, feeling weak from fear and the onset of tremors. Your whole body gives up on itself as you sob through broken exhales. Your legs have gone cold, lungs shrinking inch by inch with every passing minute. 

You crawl to the edge of your bed, wanting to just get out and leave—the blanket. The bed. The room. Most of all, you want to escape your own mind.

You sink onto the floor when a foot touches the ground, and you realize walking isn’t in the cards right now. You’re shaking too badly to be able to physically move. All your strength is gone, robbed by your memories.

Balmy tears paint your face in determination, making sure no part of you is left untouched by this spell.

You screw your eyes shut, tears still slipping out with ease anyway. Leaning your back against the bed-frame, you curl into yourself and wrap your arms around your knees on the chilled hardwood.

You try to focus on your breathing to at least slow your heart down to a pace that doesn’t hurt.

Wounded cries rip their way out of you, interrupting the breaths you try to steady. A hand touches your arm and you yelp like an injured dog, flailing at the contact as your arms swing out from around your knees in shock.

“Hey, hey, it’s me. It’s me.” Strong hands quickly wrap around each of your wrists to stop your arms from thrashing.

You try to focus your eyes, blurred and stinging from tears, on the person kneeling closely in front of you.

“L-Logan…” you whisper, balling your fists to try and expel the shakes.

He looks like someone who shouldn’t be able to be concerned about another person, yet the look on his face scares you. Brows pinched together in worry, eyes frantic, lips parted from heavy breaths. All because of you.

“It’s just me,” he hushes your cries. His thumbs stroke the undersides of your wrists tenderly, no doubt feeling your racing pulse. 

You feel disoriented. “Wh…how…” 

“I heard you,” he explains, watching you process everything. He drops your wrists when some recognition passes over your face.

“What do you need?” He follows your gaze as it wanders around the room, trying to keep you from spiralling further.

You look at him for a moment. He’s got his white tank-top on, the black sweats, and an intense need to help you written all over him. Fresh tears burn your cheeks as you come back into reality.

“I want it to fucking stop,” you weep, head falling into your hands in shame.

You don’t want him to see you like this, even though it’s a commonality between you two. It’s too intimate. You’d take him seeing you blackout drunk everyday of the year over this.

Then you do remember that it has stopped. Each time in Logan’s bed. There was silence. Peace. For the whole night. For both of you.

“Tell me what you need,” he says firmly, angling his head down to keep your eyes on him, desperately wanting an answer.

“You.” You suck in an agonizing breath to try and collect yourself.

He doesn’t flinch like you expect him to. If anything, his eyes become more pensive, clearly considering something. Then he shakes his head in wariness.

“C’mon. Let’s get you out of here,” he breathes, voice barely above a whisper. The only sound echoing in the room is your wobbly breathes, your body jerking with each one as you enter the aftermath and begin to go slack.

An arm slides behind your back, his hand grabbing ahold of your side while he pulls your legs over his other arm, picking you up off the floor.

He cradles you against him just like he did when you were drunk, carrying you out of your room.

He left your door open when he came in, and you hope no students heard or saw anything. He tilts to grab the doorknob, shutting it without a sound.

You wipe and rub at your eyes as Logan takes a few steps down the hall, quickly getting to where he needs to go when you feel him lean for his doorknob.

You’re sure a few rogue, leftover tears fall onto his shirt before he manages to sit on his bed lightly, you still curled tightly in his arms. 

His hand pushes on your back for you to sit upright on his lap. “Face me,” he encourages, holding onto your sides as you twist around, bending your legs to slide over his thighs and straddle him loosely. 

You look down at him, he looks up at you, feeling the quivers in your body dissipate as you melt further into his lap. A fondness crosses over both of your tired faces. He rests his arms over your thighs, warm hands linking behind your back as you do the same around his neck. 

It’s nothing provocative or seductive. All you can feel is the care and concern rolling off of him in suffocating waves. He wants you to feel safe, and if that means overrunning your senses with his presence, then that’s what he’ll do.

“Got anything to say?” He murmurs, the fallen strands of hair around the edges of his forehead bristle with each move of his head. The rest of his hair fails to fully resemble the cat-like ears he had earlier in the day. 

What does he want to hear? 

You let your head hang a little, your nose almost brushing his. “I have nothing to say,” you assert, fidgeting with the chain of his dog tag at the nape of his neck. 

You don’t necessarily feel embarrassed about him seeing you in such a helpless state, but you don’t want to simply unload your shit on him. So, in turn, you have nothing to say.

“Bullshit.” He almost rolls his eyes. There’s no real threat of him forcing you to say anything behind it. He won’t pry, but he doesn’t believe you.

An offended look overcomes your face, and you almost pull away. You don’t want to feel the humiliation of elaborating on just why exactly you said you needed him in this moment out of everything else. 

“I just…” You roll your lips together in thought, measuring the words you could say but won’t. “Want to sleep. Here,” you sigh. “I don’t wanna go back.” You deflate in his arms, voice wobbly. 

It’s already who-knows what time, and you need to pacify your wired nervous system; Logan simply holding you has already helped with that more than you want to admit.

His mouth quirks up briefly at that. “What happened to not wanting to make that a habit?” His eyes soften as his arms retract from around your sides, letting you slip easily onto his bed from his lap in a moment of calm, or relief.

Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity.

“Special circumstances,” you reason, already pulling the blanket over you while he keeps his place at the edge of the bed, observing you with amusement.

“Seems like you get into those a lot,” he notes, pushing himself off the mattress.

He steps around to the other side—his designated spot—and slips the tank-top off, letting it drop to the floor. You’re not trying to be a freak, but you watch the whole thing.

The flex of his arms and shoulders are out of your mind as fast as they entered as you watch him hook his thumbs in the waistband of his sweats and pull them downright in front of you, not even turning around or to the side to try and conceal himself.

Your eyes widen, then you reel in your thoughts before they get lost at sea. No one who is sane fucking sleeps in sweatpants. Duh.

But didn’t he the last two times? It’s hard for you to remember, but you’d certainly recall if you were face-to-face with the outline of his di—

“It’s rude to stare, y’know.” Logan pulls his lips together, interrupting your thoughts. You try to not eyeball the bulge too hard, but it basically looked at you first. 

The snug briefs do little to hide anything. They hide nothing, actually.

You almost scoff, but the playfulness in his tone tells you he couldn’t give a shit. He probably likes it anyway. From what you know, he definitely does.

“Oh, yeah, like you’ve ever cared about modesty,” you throw back, averting your gaze to the ceiling anyway.

It’s not that he runs around the mansion naked, but he definitely isn’t shy about what he looks like or against showing some skin. You’ve seen and heard enough over the past few months.

You hear a stifled chuckle as he joins you under the blanket without a retort. He knows you’re right. He’s just glad you’re a little lively and alert.

“Will you be okay for the rest of the night?” He brings both hands behind his head on the pillow, propping himself up a little.

“I should be fine,” you say confidently. “The challenge will be getting back to sleep.” You laugh in exasperation. 

It’s always hard to calm down and get back to a place of tranquility after everything has settled with your mind. You’re pumped full of adrenaline and there’s not much that can curb something that persistent flowing through your body.

You haven’t found anything to help with it. Yet. 

“There’s not many people that’ll understand what you go through,” he starts, voice rough with fatigue. “But I do.”

You look to him, sliding an arm under your pillow as you turn on your side. “How do you…help it.” You’re not sure if you phrased that right. It feels crude to reduce something so complex to the likes of a common cold that has an array of over-the-counter solutions. 

“You don’t. It just has to run its course.” He looks to you, wanting to see your reaction. 

It wasn’t meant to be hurtful or insensitive, but he’s not going to lie to you and say that things can only get better and that the worst is over. Especially for mutants, that’s not always true.

Although you don’t know what Logan lives with every day and sleeps with every night, you do know that his capacity for empathy is still intact. Here you are in his bed after all, seeing and indulging in a side of him that many never will. 

You sigh lightly. “We’re quite the pair.” 

A comfortable half-smirk slips over his lips. “I think we’re just fucked up insomniacs,” he suggests with a breathy exhale that’s close enough to a laugh.

You wish you could slide a thumb over the pulse in his wrist and see what’s haunting him, just to understand what happened to the Wolverine, but you’ve learned that doing so usually isn’t worth the price you’ll pay after. If what’s in his head is horrific enough to cause him to go through a couple mattresses a month, then it won’t do you any good either.

“I sleep pretty good with you,” you offer, seeing how he raises a brow in doubt almost instantly.

He sleeps well with you, too. It kind of rattled him when he noticed a pattern of uninterrupted nights and you being by his side. Not a single mattress ruined on those nights.

“Try not to knee me in the stomach tonight,” he deflects with ease. He takes his hands out from behind his head, sliding his left arm under the pillow as he turns over onto his side and closes his eyes. Facing you.

You mentally smack yourself. Multiple times. You didn’t think you drifted that much when you slept. 

“No promises,” you mutter. You catch a small shake of his head before you let yourself join him in unconsciousness as you mirror each others lonely bodies.

━━━━

Your eyes ache—to open, to move, to touch. Enough crying will do that to you.Your eyelids are heavy, but there’s something else weighing down on you. 

A tired groan crawls from your throat as you try to place yourself for a moment. The morning sun is just beginning to shine too brightly for your liking, and you squish your face deeper into the pillow.

You’re still tipsy with sleep, lying flat on your stomach, but there’s something dense and hot resting over your back. 

You prop yourself up on your forearms, giving yourself a minute to wake up. You twist your hips around to sit yourself up, feeling the thing on your back slide down to your waist. 

The blanket pools around your hips, and you feel a hand reflexively squeeze over the meat of your hip in disapproval of your moving. Something in you clenches at the sensation of something invading the area with ease. A spot reserved for intimacy.

Your head quirks to your right, seeing Logan on his stomach with his right arm thrown over your midsection. 

You blink in surprise, staring at his sleeping body. His hair is sticking up every which way, his head half-off the pillow, his side of the blanket not even covering the curve of his ass anymore. It’s endearing to see the Wolverine in such a normal, human state.

But if someone were to walk in, it would look like you two spent the whole night fucking. A lot. That wakes you up a little more.

You peek over at the nightstand behind him and see the time blinking on his watch. It’s already 8 a.m. 

You rest a hand over his shoulder to gently guide his arm off of you, but you stop yourself. Instead, you lightly trace your fingers down his shoulders and upper back a couple times, occasionally scratching softly over the ridges of muscle.

A shiver quickly rolls through his upper body, but your touch doesn’t fully wake him. He knows it’s just you.

It’s the least you can do for him as a thanks for recovering your broken body from the floor of your room and bringing you here when he didn’t necessarily have to.

It almost feels like instinct to offer comforting gestures to him. There’s something inside you that just pulls to him. You want to be the one that can give him comfort and help him put himself back together. 

You want to be the only one.

━━━━ ● ━━━━

There’s a shadow that’s been following you around the mansion. 

As soon as you stepped out of Logan’s room that morning a few days ago, it started. 

This shadow likes to be nosy about what you’re doing. This shadow likes to be in your space. This shadow wants to be in your space. And he is.

No one has seen Logan out around the mansion this much, including you, and that’s how you noticed he’s basically been attached to your hip ever since he decided your back was a comfortable armrest. 

He’s always just there, like a stray cat begging for food or affection. There to entertain you, banter with you, indulge you, in any way he can, including now as you trail back inside the mansion well behind Storm from an evening walkabout in the garden.

“No smoking in the courtyard,” you sing as you pass him carelessly, not even offering a glance to him in interest. 

You like playing this game. Whatever it is. Constantly poking and prodding at each other to see what you can do to get the other to break in some way, no matter how slight. 

Your heart flutters and flips every time; maybe from the thrill of it all, maybe from the arousal you get from the tension. You hope he feels everything, too.

He turns his head to watch you cross into the entryway. “Blow me,” he throws back playfully through a thick puff of smoke, leaning against the brick wall with a cigar pinched between two fingers.

You suppress a chuckle, keeping your unwavering pace. “Yeah, you wish!” You yell over your shoulder. You know he hears you. He wouldn’t let himself miss it.

Logan smirks and shakes his head in amusement, always impressed with your quick rebuttals that occasionally tent his jeans. He takes one last drag out of spite before following your footsteps inside. 

You have become, by definition, friends…in a way. Even if you sorely cross the line into other territory more often than not. Sexual innuendos and friendly flirting can only go on for so long before the underlying intentions and meaning reflects real desires. 

It’s evolved into more than just borrowing his bed a couple times or helping each other out. It’s surpassed the fear of whatever habit you were afraid of forming from doing so. It’s become a dependency to get that adrenaline high from simply riling each other up.

You have an assumption that if you were to end up in Logan’s bed again, somehow, there will be a point of no return that you’ll be faced with. There aren’t many more excuses that can be used for explaining to yourselves why you’re together in bed before you have to recognize the truth.

That platonic line is being stretched too thin, and you’re not sure how much farther it can go.

━━━━ ● ━━━━

“How’ve you been sleeping?”

“Fine. You?”

“Could be better.” Logan hides his smirk, but you can hear it in his voice.

You narrow your eyes skeptically as he fishes around in the fruit bowl sitting in the middle of the kitchen island.

“How so?” You ask. Your legs swing leisurely as you sit upon the chilled countertop on his left, idly waiting for Storm to show up and go with you to training.

A smug, tight-lipped grin flashes across his face, a green apple rolling around in his palms before he puts it back. “You could be there,” he provokes, his eyes bright.

It’s your turn to raise a brow at him, but you can’t stop your smile. “Oh?”

He turns to you, tenderly grabbing the tops of your thighs and parting them slightly to stand between your legs.

This isn’t the first time he’s done this, and he knows it rouses you in all the right ways. But, neither of you will do anything about it. Not even a brief kiss.

“Come on,” he goads, planting his hands down next to your hips, bringing himself in closer as he bears his weight on his arms. “You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.” He sways his head side to side to emphasize his point.

Fuck. That’s good. 

That may be exactly what you did for him, but it’s now a figure of speech for something else entirely. It’s almost impossible to argue against either way, as if you want to. This is what you’ve been patiently waiting for. 

You put your hands over his as you lean back a little to put some distance between you. “How sweet,” you hum.

His eyes flick from yours to your lips one too many times before you continue. “You start to miss me?” You tease as you lean forward again, echoing what he said to you the night your window got smashed in.

“Smart-ass,” he mutters as you laugh quietly. The tips of your noses barely graze each other as he steps in closer again. You’re almost at the same height like this. 

“Save me the left side,” you advise, bringing your hands to his shoulders as you fondle his white t-shirt between your fingers. You’re so close, and he’s already so warm against you just like this.

“Always do.”

━━━━

You want to rip your heart out of your chest from how hard it’s pounding against your ribs. It’s almost throwing you forward with each heavy beat.

Three resounding knocks fill the hallway as you shuffle on your feet, waiting for Logan to open the door.

It feels like you’re doing something bad. Something parents would warn their kids against. Something greatly envied.

Everything inside you feels on fire. Your thoughts, desires, anxiety, all jumbling together into one distorted state of mind and body.

“Ah, welcome back.” His sarcastic tone makes your face go hot. A satisfied smirk crosses his lips as he runs a hand through his shaggy, unstyled hair. 

You shake your head, pursing your lips. “Knock it off.” You gently shove at his bare chest. Misbehaviour already. But are you really surprised?

Logan grabs your wrist, delicately guiding you into his room. “You enjoy it,” he says lowly, quickly shutting the door as soon as you’re in. 

“Maybe,” you hum in response, pulling away from his grasp and seeking out your side of the bed. Logan follows closely behind, giving your ass a light smack in encouragement before he cuts away to his side while you jolt in shock, a stunned look on your face as you whip your head around to him across the bed.

“Oh, really?” You scoff. He’s biting back a smile, not moving until he knows what you’ll do next. He’s never gone that far before.

“I’m sorry, that was rude—how can I make it up to you?” He almost chokes on a laugh, pulling his dog tag back and forth along the chain while he considers you.

This Logan is very different from the one you were met with the first night he let you in his space. This one is attentive and exuberant, yet he hasn’t given you much up until this point right now. You’ve gotten way too comfortable with him without even doing anything to you. 

In this moment, he isn’t the brooding, animalistic Wolverine many see him as. He’s just Logan—for you. 

You watch him carefully, easing yourself onto the bed. “Get in the fucking bed,” you slap his side of the mattress with a thump of your palm. “And do what you promised earlier,” you stare pointedly at him.

He owes you that “you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours” favour he decided to pull out to get you here. 

“Mm, alright, alright,” he surrenders, a look of amusement still on his face as he kneels onto the bed. “I thought of a pretty good idea for it,” he says softly, crawling to sit next to you on top of the blanket as the bed-frame creaks with the added weight.

Your shoulders almost brush against each other. You shift, turning your body fully toward him. “Oh? Wh—woah!”

You squeal when his strong hands latch onto your sides, lifting you just enough to pull you over his legs to plant you on his lap. He leans back against the headboard, pulling on your thighs so you straddle him tightly. 

He looks devilish when you catch his gaze again, and you know what’s coming. What’s been coming. Your hands find their places on his shoulders, warm and taut, as his hands hold your hips. 

The bond between you will culminate tonight. It will be wrapped in a blanket and trapped between two alike souls that lie heart-to-heart in the dead of night. It will be perpetual.

The heat of him between your legs makes you restless. It’s just you, him, and the darkness in the quiet room you’ve become too familiar with.

“Logan…” you trail off bashfully when you feel something firm through his sweats poke against your cunt. It clearly doesn’t take much to excite him.

“Hm?” He takes you in for a split second, hands running from your hips up to your chest leisurely with a sharp inhale, not yet completely bothered by the fact that you have a shirt on. 

You suck in a shaky breath when your hips accidentally shift over his bulge from his hands pushing and pulling over you.

“What’s the idea?” Your voice wavers.

You know what it is. He knows that. You just want to hear him say it and fill the silence.

“Something I’ve wanted for a while,” he murmurs, eyes hyper-focused on you. 

Your fingers dance their way to the sides of his neck, brushing along the supple skin while you feel muscles and tendons flex with every slight movement. You subtly press the pad of your index finger against the pulse point right under his jaw, just to ground yourself and truly feel that Logan is there in front of you. 

His pulse is steady but hard, much like yours, and the prickle of energy festering against the finger almost makes it go numb from not accepting it into your body. 

“Show me, then.” You smile sweetly, leaning in closer while you tilt his head up with the hand under his jaw, your finger slipping from his pulse and caressing over the dense, coarse hair along his cheek.

Your noses bump while your lips part in anticipation. His eyes flutter as he falls into you and frantically claims your mouth in an unbreakable kiss.

The first kiss. Nothing could tear him from you in this moment.

Your hands cradle his cheeks, keeping him from pulling off too far. His hands scratch and paw at your back, trying to find a way to somehow get you closer against him.

It’s all a little messy, your lips mostly just mashing together without any rhyme or reason, but neither of you care. You only care about how electrifying it feels to finally have Logan and feel how perfectly connected you are together after all these nights. You go together like a key and its lock.

“Logan,” you pant when his mouth releases yours for a fraction of a breath. The seconds between kisses dwindle the more you take from each other.

Your thighs tense as he pulls half an inch away just to reconnect more crazed as his lips lock over your bottom one aimlessly. Something deep inside you trembles and aches.

He grunts, accidentally sucking the tip of your tongue briefly before slotting his lips back over yours in an apology. “Hold on,” he mumbles in a rush against your parted lips. He knows what you’re asking—or trying to ask. He snakes an arm up along your spine and wraps the other around your waist.

Then the world is tilting.

He drops you on your back on the bed from his lap, hovering over you as he distracts you with harsh but pleasing kisses and wet bites along your neck, settling his hips heavily between your thighs. You squirm and feel how bolts of arousal are making your cunt pulse involuntarily. 

Logan groans. “Fuck—I can smell it. I smell you.” He slowly grinds his hips into yours almost reflexively. He squeezes his eyes shut, and you tip your chin up to press a chaste kiss to his slick lips. 

“Taste…if you want to,” you propose, lightly scratching up and down his shoulders and arms, only enough to leave faint red lines for a couple seconds.

Logan’s eyes almost roll into the back of his head before he gives it a small shake, a conflicted look overtaking his face. “Of course I fucking want to, but—fuck—next time. I promise.” He swallows whatever you were going to say with a deep kiss that has you nearly shaking when he sucks on your bottom lip. 

“Let’s just take things easy,” he says roughly, bearing his weight on his left arm while he tries to get your sleep shorts and underwear off.

A promise of a next time makes your brain go fuzzy like static.

“I’ll hold you to it, then,” you resolve, lifting your hips as much as you can for him to lean back and pull away to wrestle your clothes the rest of the way down your legs, discarding them just as quickly.

“I hope you will,” he breathes through a small laugh as he shuffles on his knees. He doesn’t want to completely overwhelm you and scare you off, he just wants to enjoy you in a simple way that won’t entirely ruin you for tomorrow.

He doesn’t know what you can or cannot handle, but he’s going to find out.

The fresh air in the room brushes cooly against your wet cunt. It’s a nice contrast to how fiery your whole body feels, but Logan feels even warmer than you somehow. Maybe wolverine’s just run hot.

His sweats have ridden down his hips from his desperate grinding against you, and the dangerous cut of his v-line grows more and more narrow as the waistband teases the reveal of what’s underneath.

You watch him—palming his dick once as your knees sway side-to-side in waiting. His thumbs hook under the stretchy fabric, working what remains of his clothes down his sturdy thighs.

“It’s rude to stare.” He pops a brow, a smug, arrogant grin quirking his lips.

You push yourself to sit up, considerably shorter than him in this position as he stands on his knees, and walk two fingers up his toned stomach to his chest, avoiding the hard cock between you. 

He looks at you with curiosity until your hand grabs his dog tag in a fist, pulling it towards you. “Then stop showing me your dick,” you say as he leans in to your pulling a little to not have the chain break away.

You knew the night Logan dropped his pants in front of you and let you eye-up his bulge would come back to haunt you. But it’s alluring. Big. Curves a little to the left, barely noticeable. A respectable amount of hair decorates the space between his bellybutton and the base of his cock.

He gives in to the tension on the chain, falling back to the mattress with you and trapping you between his arms as his cock rests heavy on your clit.

“How about I find somewhere to put it?” His smile pushes a whole new wave of arousal from you.

“It would be a damn shame if you didn’t,” you say against his mouth, giving your hips a roll just to tease him before hugging his waist tightly with your knees.

“Good.” He gives you a strong kiss with a small grunt, running his hands over your sides under your shirt. The movement pushes it up, up, up, until you have no choice but to stretch your arms out above you and let him slide it off between more thoughtless kisses, leaving you entirely bare.

He lets you breathe for a moment, dipping his head to bite and suck marks along your collarbones messily. You squeeze around his hips harder, trying to get him to give you something other than his scratchy cheeks rubbing against your skin and the chilled steel of the dog tag dragging over your chest.

The tip of his cock falls and catches over your clit when he moves lower, licking and sucking over your chest like a starved animal finding food for the first time in a week. You gasp from the mixed sensations.

“C’mon, kitty cat, you can do all this while inside m-me,” you say breathily, fingers digging into his shoulders to stop yourself from trembling too much. 

Logan bites over a nipple before pulling himself back up to look at you. “Is that a promise?” He says lowly, that stupid smirk gracing his face again.

“Try it and find out,” you demand, enjoying the sting of the deeper bites blooming on your torso.

He purses his lips, shifting his weight back onto his knees to grab ahold of his cock to angle and guide it in.

“Hm, guess no lube is needed,” he muses when he gets a look at your cunt, sparing you a glance through his lashes.

You roll your eyes shut when your whole body lights up red-hot. “Jesus fucking Christ, Logan,” you slap a hand over your eyes as you grimace. You don’t want to be that aware of your naked self right now.

He suppresses whatever expression was about to cross his face when his cock notches itself between your soaked folds, teasing your hole with the blunt tip. His brows pinch together and you forget the embarrassment from his crude remark.

But he leaves his cock like that, on the precipice of sliding the rest of the way in with a snap of his hips. Instead, he carefully uncurls his upper body to crawl his way back up to you while holding his hips deathly still.

“Alright, stay with me,” he whispers against your neck when you moan, pressing a tender kiss to your rabid pulse in reassurance. 

“O-okay,” you sigh, running a hand through his hair and tugging at the roots while the other squeezes around his arm as best as it can. You’re not even really sure what he’s saying.  

He kisses up your cheek and over to your lips again. You try to keep up with his quick mouth, licking and sucking whatever part you can get ahold of, but you’ve become lost in the feeling of him all over you. 

He’s in your mouth, on your chest, against your stomach, nudging your cunt. Everywhere.

He slips his tongue over yours, securing your lips together at the same time he pushes his cock in halfway. Now you understand what he was saying. 

The lightheadedness from being filled, even just a bit, almost makes you lose yourself. The stretch makes your stomach drop, your legs shake, and your mouth fall open with a whine. 

“A-ah—fuck. Fuck, Logan,” you whimper, fisting his hair with both hands to stop yourself from falling apart.

He groans, either at the grip you have on his hair or how good your cunt feels already, and runs a hand up your left thigh in comfort as you squeeze around his hips tighter to draw him in. 

“Just a bit more,” he soothes, trying to resist the urge to slide into you in one fell swoop. It would be so easy to just let his hips fall into yours and fill your cunt.

Another heated kiss, another few inches. He works his cock into you the rest of the way with ease. You guess the lube thing wasn’t really a joke. His hungry, needy kisses may have also helped with that.

You choke on your gasps, not wanting to get too loud, and Logan does the same. He tries to muffle both of your moans with his mouth, attempting to form complete kisses, but it just turns into you panting against each other as he finally bottoms out, hitting his end. 

Your legs relax around his waist as he deftly rocks his hips in small thrusts to get you familiar with his size, his small grunts filling the air each time you swallow him whole.

You let out a deep breath, dropping your hands back to his tense shoulders. He lines your jaw with soft kisses, fisting the blanket in his hands beside your head.

“Fuck. Already feels too good,” he moans, pressing into you harder and unintentionally rubbing himself over your tender clit.

You smile, squirming while he works down your neck again. “Best of luck,” you huff, amused at the fact that he might not last as long as he wants to.

He brings his face back to yours, a completely blissful expression controlling his features, but there’s still some mischief in his hazel eyes. “Oh? Yeah?”

You hold each other’s gaze, both equally dazed and overwhelmed, and he draws his hips back and pushes into your wet cunt with a complete, strong thrust. The sound of his pelvis hitting against the backs of your thighs makes him laugh in pleasure and satisfaction when you instantly roll your eyes and head back.

Your cunt quivers, gripping him tight, and then it’s Logan’s turn to lose composure. He drops his head to your chest, managing a few deep breaths as he slowly pulls out halfway just to push right back into you, over and over. 

It’s a pace that isn’t quite pure, mindless fucking, but it’s also not somewhere near earnest love-making. It’s something that feels specifically curated for you. Something that feels measured and sincere. 

The strength of his thighs hitting against yours pushes you up the mattress a few inches, and you don’t know whether to gasp or moan. He reaches somewhere deep inside you, and you know he can feel that, too.

A helpless groan slips through Logan’s lips. “Where have you fucking been, huh?” He muses through shaky breaths, the determined plunge of his cock hitting something that makes your muscles tense throughout your body. 

Your fingers tangle in the hair at the base of his neck, keeping him close. “Two doors down,” you giggle, understanding that’s not quite what he was asking.

“Fucking smart-ass,” he grumbles, silencing any further rebuttals with a wet kiss. You don’t think you could manage much more of a conversation even if you wanted to.

The silence is quickly filled with obscene sounds that only seem to leave you wetter and Logan throbbing. You can hear your bodies connecting through your gasping for air and his choked moans, and you can feel the mess you’re making all over him. It’s smeared along the inside of your thighs from how deep he’s been hitting. The squelching only seems to make him fuck into you harder.

Something inside you starts to grow tight and wind up in your core, making you repeatedly clench around him while his cock strokes all the right spots inside you as he makes sure he’s fucking himself in to the base. He doesn’t deprive you of anything. 

He drops his head to your neck, wedging his face in to latch onto the spot right where your neck starts to slope into your shoulder. The dense muscle there gives him something to basically chew on, sinking his teeth in as deep as he can without drawing blood.

“H-hah, Logan,” you whine, tilting your head into the side of his and squirming from the pleasant sting.

You feel his arm move beside you, then you hear the sound of tearing fabric as he gives a particularly brutal snap of his hips, followed by a deep groan against your skin.

You can barely form any thoughts, but you can guess what just happened. If he pulled his hand back, three long, slim holes would probably be where his knuckles are right now.

“Fu-uck, Logan, you just got t-this mattress,” you laugh a little, your words choppy from how hard he’s driving into you now.

He draws back from your neck, seeing your half-lidded eyes trying to focus on him. “Can’t always control it,” he reasons, giving you two short, fleeting kisses as you hear his claws retract from the innocent mattress. 

You see the double-edged sword. You can guess that that’s the same explanation he would probably use for the nightmares. It can go either way, and now you’ve seen both sides.

“It’s okay,” you say in a hushed tone. You cradle his face, and he rests his forehead against yours. “Keep going…keep going,” you coax, face scrunching from your nearing orgasm.

You can feel it in your toes, your stomach, your shoulders—you’re tightening up everywhere, and he can undoubtedly feel it in your cunt as you pulse around him. It grips him just right for a couple seconds before relaxing completely and leaving him to chase for more.

“Keep squeezing me like that and you’ll get whatever you want,” he offers, fighting to maintain his steady pace for both your sakes.

You almost whine, knowing whatever your body does is beyond your control at this point.

“Just—inside.” You can’t even string together a full sentence anymore, but the urgency and stress on the last word makes Logan’s ears perk up.

He presses a soft kiss to your clammy forehead in acknowledgment, the muscles in his arms straining and flexing as he grabs ahold of his own orgasm after a particularly inviting flutter of your walls.

You’re both walking the line, teetering on the edge of utter euphoria, and you know nothing will be the same after. You don’t want it to be. You hope it isn’t.

He reaches an arm back, sliding his hand up your thigh again and slotting it behind the bend in your knee. He pushes forward—only slightly—bringing your leg closer to your stomach to stretch you open for him.

His cock brushes over something new. Something that makes you bite your tongue. The angle lets him fit perfectly against you, not hindered by the flesh of your thigh stopping his hips.

You want to cry from how good it all feels. You want to be suspended in this feeling forever. You want Logan to—

“Focus, baby. Focus on me,” he coos, bringing you back to reality. He holds the side of your head with his other hand affectionately. “Come on…come on, I know you’re almost there,” he encourages with a quick kiss that goes straight to your stomach.

The burn in your thigh from the stretch can’t overpower the sparks of your orgasm, and Logan just fanned the flames with a few little words.

You come with a broken sob, convulsing around his cock while he fucks you through it, submitting to his own orgasm only seconds after with deep, shaky breaths as he empties himself inside your cunt.

He doesn’t pull out or pull away. He relaxes on top of you, sweaty and sticky with cum, and he places the barest whisper of a kiss on your chin, your parted lips, your nose, and then your forehead. 

Your ears ring from your orgasm, eyes still slightly out of focus. Your body trembles from your muscles finally releasing the tension they’ve been caught up in. 

You desperately suck in air, trying to calm your pounding heart, and you just lie there and let Logan walk your body through a cool-down. Soft kisses. Soft touches. Soft looks. Between sweat, cum, and whatever else.

He rocks a little on his knees, weak from his release, and carefully pulls out of you with a huff as he caresses your stomach and thighs appreciatively to wind you down. You get a good look at him. Not a scratch. His hair tells a story, though—one where he’s completely possessed by bliss. 

You probably look like you survived an animal attack.

“Are we even?” Logan says through a kiss against your stomach.

A mindless laugh crawls from your throat, caught up in the feeling of his hands rubbing circles over your hips. “I think I still owe you,” you argue, resting your hands over his as they travel smoothly up your side.

You’ll find a way to make everything up to him. Including the sex. The scale is now tipping to his side too much. All the nights spent in his bed, what he’s done for you, what you’ve done for each other, may just be immeasurable, but that won’t stop you from finding a way to get him back for it all. 

“We’ll figure it out,” he mumbles, snaking back up your body and pressing himself against you. Face-to-face. Chest-to-chest. 

You mindfully run your hands over the sides of his head, trying to tame his hair and style it back to how it was earlier in the night. It doesn’t work. He enjoys it anyway.

“Do I have the pleasure of staying here tonight?” You ask rhetorically, enjoying the warmth of him on top of you against the brisk air creeping in from the cracked window.

Logan blinks. “You can stay every night.” 

A loving smile springs over your face. This may be the beginning of the end to your troubles and worries.  

You—maybe foolishly—trust him. You trust that he won’t accidentally bury his claws in your side during the night, but you’ve had impressive luck with that up until this point. The only thing you can do now is continue to push that luck.

Healing isn’t linear, and you can’t expect someone to fix you, but everyone finds their thing at some point. 

You slither your hand down to his neck, index finger grazing over his pulse again. You feel the energy biting against you.

Your lips graze over his, tempting him to give you a slow, deep kiss. “Can I have the left side?” Rhetorical, again.

Logan chuckles against your mouth. “Always.”

[pukicho]

What's the weirdest dream/nightmare you've had?

Pukicho story time???

This happened in 2004, I lived in Ireland. I had one very particular dream that I still often think about to this day:

It started in an unusual flat, somewhere up high. It was modern for the time, it felt decidedly Y2K. Every piece of furniture, the walls, the lamps, they were all bright pink. It was so trendy that it almost felt like a parody of itself, but I was a kid, and my mind wasn't clever enough for the act of parody. I would've simply forgotten this flat ever existed if the latter-half of the dream didn't leave such a permanent mark on my memory - now I can recall every last detail.

I asked a stranger to use the restroom. The toilet was downstairs, so I opened up the door to a utility stairwell and began heading down, alone.

I could look through the center of the staircase column, it was pitch-black and there was no visible bottom. I remember going down the staircase for hours, literal hours - A dark, oppressive hum from pipes and vents blinded my ears and shook the inside of my stomach with its volume. I remember thinking how long the dream felt in this moment, I recall getting consciously impatient, but I kept going. My eyes couldn't adjust to the nearly invisible-darkness surrounding me so I put my hand against the walls and handrail for guidance and shuffled downward like a blind man without his walking-stick.

Finally, only a moment before the tension would have juddered me awake, I found the door to the bathroom. I opened it up; to my relief there was light. The room was rectangular, on one end was a boxed-shaped shower with fogged glass, on the other end, a toilet. The floor and wall were decorated by the same beige tile - it all looked hastily plastered. I sat down to do my business. At this moment, the ballooning anxiety I had felt outside had dissipated almost entirely. I sat in silence - I remember acknowledging the sheer contrast in volume between the AC-hum in the bathroom to the oppressive roar from the stairwell.

It was good to be sitting there. I remember feeling as though the dream had slowly turned into a nightmare - but consciously, everything felt right again. Nothing happened for a long time. It grew so boring and tame that my mind stopped focusing on the dream entirely, and I began fading into memoryless sleep. And then the lights went out.

At this point, sitting in a darkness even blacker than the one I had just emerged from, not even a hum could be heard. The only noise I could hear, and just barely, was my own brain-matter hitting against the sides of my ears, bellowing a deep subharmonic hum from within my own skull. Suddenly, every semblance of safety was ripped from my chest, and I sat there, feeling in greater danger than I ever had before. I felt a pressure so omniscient that it choked me -- but nothing came, nothing happened. I waited for minutes - minutes where each second could be counted down in scrutinizing specificity, but nothing happened.

Suddenly, and with no presumption, I felt coarse electricity pumping through my chest. I wrangled with myself in my own bed, feeling what felt like infinite pain pass through me. I could feel myself yelling from within the dream through the vibration of my lungs. A cacophonous buzzing bled into my ears as thousands of people screamed from within my skull. The cries of a falling choir ran-through their screams, like angels falling from heaven.

At the very same moment, a body appeared in the shower. It glowed yellow, so bright and irradiated I could hardly look directly at it. It caressed itself, clawing into its body like it was reeling from immeasurable pain. It moved unnaturally, squirming and spasming as if fast-forwarded. The glass blurred its details, but it did nothing to mask its energy. It was as if it held the sun inside of its own stomach. I felt as though an intruder entered my own mind and I had no power to stop it. Just being near it was enough to kill me, and I was already dying.

The wall of sound lasted not even one full-second - and then - a piercing zap shot me up from my bed, and that was it. I can't remember anything past that point, but I assume I went back to bed shortly thereafter, forgetting what had just happened, if only for that one night. I must have had a vapid dream, worthless and memoryless, unknowing that I had just lived a dream so dreadful that it'd stick to my psyche like tar for the rest of my life.

No other dream has ever felt that way since. It was as if a second-soul decided to visit me, a soul stronger and more omnipotent than mine. Surely a dream is just a dream, regardless of the feeling it gives you, but now I go to bed every night, wishing I'll be the only soul residing within its story.

End!!

[prokopetz]

I apologise if you've already answered this, but I tried searching your blog and I'm unsure if you haven't or if it's another example of Tumblr's amazing search system.

I was talking with a friend recently about how much of a culture clash the Monk Class is compared to the rest of Dungeons & Dragons and was wondering if there is a coherent reason for their original inclusion. I'm aware that they're largely influenced by Shaolin monks as depicted in Hong Kong cinema in the 70's/80's as compared to the Sword and Sorcery stuff most of the rest of D&D takes influence from.

Basically, my question ultimately boils down to, "Is the Monk Class there purely because of an original player wanting to rule of cool their way into playing something wildly out of genre, or is there a stronger link between Sword and Sorcery and Hong Kong cinema that could have organically resulted in the Monk Class joining the rest of the classes?"

A lot of the link between the two was simply a matter of time and place. The kung fu craze hit North America at just about exactly the same time as the sword and sorcery revival that gave us films like Clash of the Titans and Beastmaster and The Sword and the Sorcerer and Dragonslayer and Krull – not to mention the Arnold Schwarzenegger Conan adaptation, which revived popular interest in first-wave sword and sorcery literature – so there was a lot of it going around. Analysis of early Dungeons & Dragons as a product of its media influences often overlooks that it was largely drawing on what was trendy in American popular media in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Even the tonally incongruous Lord of the Rings references weren't a deep cut; while the books were originally published in the 1950s, they'd experienced a strong resurgence in the 1970s, putting them firmly in the popular consciousness at the time that D&D was being developed. All this being the case, it's not surprising that early D&D was also substantially influenced by Hong Kong action cinema.

That said, the reason the monk character class in particular (i.e., as opposed to kung fu media influences more generally) is there is allegedly because one specific guy in one of the game's early playtest groups really, really wanted to play as Remo Williams from Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir's The Destroyer; several of the class's signature abilities are direct references to powers Williams exhibits in the course of the novels. Remarks from folks who worked at TSR at the time have pointed the finger at Brian Blume as the Remo Williams fan in question, though accounts are conflicted whether Blume was actually an uncredited contributor to Dave Arneson's Blackmoor (1975), in which the class makes its first proper appearance, or whether Blume's interest merely prompted its inclusion.

This is the case for the character archetypes in a lot tabletop RPGs of that era; instead of trying to work out what classes "ought" be be present, authors would simply start with the types of characters their playtesters actually wanted to play, often based on specific popular media characters, then work backwards to derive an IC rationale for why those were the setting's standard adventuring professions. Other examples from D&D in particular most obviously include the Ranger (based on Tolkien's Aragon, naturally), but also the Paladin (principally inspired by Holger Carlsen from Poul Anderson's 1961 isekai novel Three Hearts and Three Lions, also the source of D&D's goofy regenerating trolls), the Assassin, back when it was still a separate character class (probably mainly based on the Assassin Caste from John Norman's Gor), and even the Wizard to a large extent (less Gandalf than you'd think: a large portion of D&D's iconic wizard spell list is lifted directly from the 1963 Vincent Price film The Raven).

(I often think that modern indie RPGs could benefit from reviving this approach. Like, fuck textual consistency – just pick half a dozen of your favourite popular media characters without regard for the compatibility of the source material and work backwards to explain why these six random assholes are your game's playable archetypes!)