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letsbangts · 2 days ago

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answer your phone || jjk

⤷ summary: when the consequences of his actions come calling

⟡ sequel to mutt ⟡

⟶ pairing: jungkook x reader

⟶ word count: 12.8k+ (I couldn’t stop 😳)

18+ // mdni

⟶ genre: angst, smut, fluff, friends with benefits au

⟶ content: fuckboy!jk, tattooartist!jk, jk is on a downward spiral (it's what he deserves), oc is struggling as well, taehyung is the shoulder to lean on everyone deserves

⟶ warnings: explicit language, explicit sexual content: kissing/making out, groping, protected sex, nipple play, oral (m. & f. receiving), markings (hickeys & other bruising), a bit of dirty talk & praising, fingering, teasing, multiple orgasms…I think that’s it?

↬ a/n: HERE IT IS MUTT PT 2! firstly I want to say thank you for all the love & support i received on pt 1 it truly meant so much to me ♡ OKAY so you all wanted #justiceforoc and to see jk grovel so the tables have definitely turned on him ;). angel xoxo

↬ a/n2: p.s the flashbacks are indicated by the arrows (《,》)

˖⁺. ༶ NOW PLAYING ༶ .⁺˖ answer your phone leon thomas 01:43 ─✮───── 03:07 ⇆ ⊲ II ⊳ ↺ ᴠᴏʟᴜᴍᴇ : ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮

masterlist

Answer your phone I've got to talk to you

Jungkook is sitting on his couch with a girl's lips all over his neck and her hands all over his body, but his eyes are fixed on his cell phone lying on the coffee table. Instead of focusing on how her tongue is licking at his throat or how her hands grope him through his pants, he can only focus on you.

He stares at the phone that won't ring, at least not with you on the other end. It has been over a month since you stormed out of his place. At first, he left you alone and didn't try to reach out because he thought you needed to cool off. Jungkook has dealt with this hot and cold shit with others before; he knows they’ll be back eventually, whether he makes any effort or not. And it’s so much easier not to. But he has been calling you for weeks now with no success.

This past month, Jungkook has been with a handful of women, hoping to feel something, but he hasn't. Not even with the aid of an empty bottle or a joint— and he's certainly had plenty of both— nothing makes him feel as good as you do. Whether it's getting his dick sucked by any of the random women he’s taken into the bathroom of a club or bending one over in the backseat of his car in the parking lot of the tattoo studio, getting on top of someone else to distract him from you hasn’t helped as he thought it would.

Even though the girl with him right now is attractive, with a nice body and a skilful set of hands, he is trapped in his thoughts. He’s annoyed that her lips don't send tingles down his body like yours do, that her hands aren't as soft as your own and that she doesn't have her fingers running through his hair the way you do.

He misses you.

He pries the girl's hands off him and pushes her back as he lets out a deep sigh. She looks at him with a confused expression.

Jungkook licks his lips and, without looking at her, says, "I think we better stop; you should go."

The girl attempts a seductive smile as she moves to unbuckle his belt.

"Stop? We haven't even started anything. Come on, I'll make you feel good, big boy."

Jungkook rips her hands off of his belt, he rubs his hands over his face in frustration.

"Look, I'm just not feeling this, okay?" he says exasperated.

The girl's face drops and her whole demeanour changes.

"Are you fucking serious, Jungkook? Not feeling this? Can you not get it up or something? Is your dick really that pathetic?" she snarks, her eyes scanning him up and down.

He gives her a pointed look with his pierced eyebrow raised as he rolls his tongue against the inside of his cheek and chuckles bitterly. He shakes his head, sniffs, and sits up straighter.

"Okay, listen here, Emilia—"

"It's Emily!"

"Whatever the fuck your name is, I don't care. I tried to be nice about this, but if you want to provoke me, that's fine. You're right; I can't get it up because I can't even pretend for a goddamn moment that you turn me on, not even in the slightest, so get your ass out of my fucking house," he sneers through clenched teeth.

Right after Jungkook finished speaking, he felt a sting on his cheek. The response to his words was a sharp slap to his face and, once again, another upset girl storming out of his place, slamming the door behind her.

Jungkook shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath through his nose. A metallic taste begins to form in his mouth; he must have bitten the inside of his cheek on impact. He rises to his feet and walks to the bathroom. He leans over the sink, gripping the porcelain edge as he spits out blood. Jungkook stares at himself in the mirror and runs a hand over his reddened cheek, marked with a fresh cut from the girl's ring-clad hand.

He isn't bothered that the girl is upset because he doesn't care about her. Jungkook couldn't care less about whether he was an asshole to Emma; all he cares about is you and how he needs to talk to you.

Answer your phone Give me a minute, please Has your heart turned to stone? Have you no sympathy?

He has texted and called you an embarrassing number of times, waiting with every ring to see if you'd pick up so that he could hear your sweet voice. And he does, but only when he's met with your voicemail — "Hey, this is Y/N. Sorry, I missed your call. Please leave me a message, and I will get back to you as soon as possible. Thanks!"— which is a lie because you never do. Still, he leaves voice messages, hoping you will listen to them and call him back. He hopes that with every call, his persistence will make you curious enough to answer and talk to him—even if only for a minute.

Jungkook turns on the tap and washes his face; the cool water momentarily clears his head. However, once he raises his head and looks at his reflection again, his fringe drips with water, droplets falling onto his shirt. He is overwhelmed by the thought of you all over again.

He knows you can't be too mad at him because you haven't blocked him—not his number or on social media. This is how he knows you're not that hung up on what happened since he sees you posting, whether casually going out for coffee or all dressed up to go party with your friends; regardless, in all of them, you look stunningly beautiful.

This makes him miss you even more and makes him unsure if blocking him might have been better since Jungkook has seen some guys in your posts and noticed how they sometimes have an arm around you or how you lean in a little bit too close to them for his liking. He wonders if they are just friends; even if they are, he's sure they want to be more. Have they tried anything with you? Are you dressing up like that for one of those guys? Are you trying to move on with one of them? Is that the reason you're ignoring him?

The thought alone of you with someone else drives him crazy, but having to see you with some guy who probably doesn't even know you that well makes him furious. Jungkook knows you better than any one of those chumps could, yet they get to be around you while he is stuck looking at your angelic face beside some happy idiot through a screen like a loser.

Jungkook bets none of those guys know that you hum while getting ready, don't know that when you're in the car while it's raining you turn off the radio to listen to it fall, don't know that you can't sleep wearing pants or socks, don't know that you hate drinking room temperature water, don't know that you do this adorable little happy dance when you really like the food you're eating, and bets they don't know that the guy who put that tattoo on your hip has fucked you every way under the sun.

Shit. He misses you.

Misses how you would thread your fingers through his hair, scratching softly at his scalp while he had his head in your lap as you both watched TV, misses how you would listen to him complain about a client while you fiddled with his earring but with such attentive eyes that showed you were paying attention, misses how you would scrunch your nose and blush when he made a flirty comment, misses how you would somehow take the pressure of the day off him simply by hugging him.

Why won't you answer? Why won't you give him a proper chance to explain himself and apologize? Did all your feelings for him vanish; has your heart just turned to stone? Don't you see how hard he's trying? Don't you have any sympathy for him?

Upon realizing that his teeth are grinding together and his fists are clenched so tightly that his knuckles have turned white, he pulls himself together, relaxing all his muscles, and heads back to the living room with determination.

Jungkook grabs his phone off the coffee table before sitting on his couch. With his elbows resting on his knees, he goes to his call log filled with your name and presses it, lifting the phone to his ear as he listens to the ringing for the umpteenth time.

I know I fucked this up I know I let you down But I've suffered long enough And you're still not around

He bites his nails while tapping his foot anxiously; he concentrates on what seems like endless ringing. His eyes glance at the clock. You should be home from work by this time, he thinks. When your voice finally comes through—voicemail, of course. Jungkook didn't honestly expect anything else.

He leans back, tips his head back against the backrest, and shuts his eyes for a second, trying to keep up with the rapid pace of his thoughts, and when he hears the beep of the answering machine, all those thoughts spill out of his mouth.

I know I don't deserve it But please have some mercy 'Cause I just might die if you don't

Y/N POV

You hold your buzzing phone in your hand and watch as the screen dims once it's finished, only to light up a few seconds later with a notification about a voicemail.

You hit on the notification and bring your phone to your ear, you bite your lip when you hear the deep voice of the man you've been keeping at bay.

"Hey Y/N, I don't know if you even listen to my messages anymore or if you ever did, but I'm not going to give up. I'm sorry, I know I fucked up and I know I let you down, but—fuck, Y/N, I miss you so goddamn much. It feels like I've been suffering for so long like there is this knife that's buried in my chest and keeps twisting the more time you're not around. I know I don't deserve it, but please have some mercy and answer me. Fucking shout at me and curse me out. Answer me and don't say anything— stay silent if you want, but just answer me, please. I need to hear your voice, or see you, something—anything, because this is beginning to feel like a slow, painful death."

You sigh as you lower the phone from your ear, swallowing the lump in your throat. You've never heard his voice so shaky; you've never experienced Jungkook being anything but confident.

Jungkook has been persistent in reaching out, and you have told yourself you must be just as persistent in your resolve not to answer. This past month has been devoid of any trace of him, but just because he hurt you doesn't mean all your feelings for him have vanished. It's been hard on you; many times your thumb has hovered over the accept button when he called, but by the time you contemplate it, the call has already gone to voicemail.

Regarding that night, you have calmed down significantly since leaving his place feeling angry and upset. You have thought it over countless times, and although you still don't condone what he did, you genuinely believe he didn't act with ill intent. You just expected more from him; he always told you how it was different with you, that you meant more to him than anyone else. Only to then treat you like any other one of his insignificant flings. It made you question if you were so whipped for him that you failed to see he viewed you as a girl easy to fool. But you know Jungkook is more than just that one night; he may have disappointed you, but there have been many times he hasn't.

You have ignored every attempt he made to communicate with you; yet, you haven't blocked him on anything—it feels too final. Instead, you have been keeping yourself occupied. When you're not working, you've been going out with friends, reminding yourself of who you were before Jungkook. Of course, you didn't completely ignore your friends when he came into your life, but he did take up a big part of your free time.

They knew about him as well; while they may not have known all the dirty details of your relationship, they did know that you spent a lot of time with him and enjoyed doing so. And if you were happy, so were they. So when you replied in the group chat that you'd be joining them for a night out, they were shocked but didn't ask any questions. They were excited to have the gang together and didn't hesitate to ensure you had a good time.

Usually, you'd spend your weekends with Jungkook since you both were off then. You would be tangled in his sheets, a sweaty mess put in various positions inducing multiple orgasms. You had forgotten the thrill of being in the middle of a crowded dance floor, sweat rolling down your body from the heat of so many bodies so close together. Throwing back countless shots, you and your friends could barely dance in your heels and tight dresses without stumbling over.

You'd also forgotten how much male attention you receive when going out and mingling with new people. Although there are still many creeps around—for whom you had to get your guy friends to come to your rescue—sometimes there would be someone who seemed harmless enough to flirt with, but then you would remember a certain doe-eyed, dimpled-smiled man and would turn them down.

One time, when you had used your friend Taehyung as an escape from an otherwise seemingly good guy, pulling him behind you and wrapping his arms around your dancing figure for protection, he asked you why you didn't go for it. That was when you opened up and told him the full story about you and Jungkook. Taehyung has been a caring and understanding person for as long as you have known him, and he empathized with you when you explained your feelings and complicated situationship.

Since that night, he has been your confidant, your shoulder to lean on. He has witnessed firsthand how this month has not been easy for you, no matter how much you tried to forget about your fuck buddy/friend. After hearing about the detailed story of the last night you spent with Jungkook, he has been vocal about how you deserve someone who wants to be with only you and that you are more than enough. Yet, he never judges you and understands that you know a different side of Jungkook.

You know the Jungkook who moved all the mugs to the lowest shelf in his cupboard so that you could reach them, the Jungkook who sings loudly in the shower, the Jungkook who when he first falls asleep starts twitching with a cute, peaceful smile on his face.

You miss him.

You've passed the tattoo studio on your way home, stared at that flashing neon-red sign, and thought how all it would take to see him is for you to step through that door; if you just walked in and talked to him, maybe everything could turn around in your favour. You both could patch things up and be happy. You could be together.

You've looked through that window from afar, hoping to catch sight of the pierced, tattoo-covered man, reminiscing about when you were on the other side with him.

✧ ──── 《《 ──── ✧

The bell of his studio dings, signalling your entry. At the counter stands the pierced, tattoo-covered man you came for. He looks up from the book with his scheduled appointments, and when his eyes land on you, he flashes you that big, dimpled smile, the corners of his tired eyes crinkling in delight.

"Hey, baby. I wasn't expecting you. What are you doing here so late?"

He drops his pen onto the book and rounds the counter, meeting you halfway. His lips press against yours in a quick kiss as his hands settle on your waist while yours find their way around his neck, playing with the ends of his hair.

"I could ask you the same thing. When you texted that you were still here, I thought I would stop by to see you," you shrug.

Jungkook sighs and gives you a tight-lipped smile, lifting a hand to brush through his hair.

"My last client of the day cancelled on me, so I decided to stay back and work on some designs. I sent the others home, and I guess the time got away from me," he scratches the back of his neck.

"Mmm, handsome and hard-working, what a catch," you smile and tiptoe to give his cheek a peck.

"I don't want to disturb you, though. Should I go?" you continue, rubbing your hands up and down his chest.

Jungkook shakes his head as he removes your hands from his chest.

"No, stay. I could use your presence; it has been a stressful day."

He walks over to the studio's entrance, flips the open sign, locks the door, and pulls down the blinds, now closing for the day. Lastly, he switches off the main lights, leaving only the multiple neon lights on the walls in various designs and colours to keep you from darkness.

He takes one of your hands into his, interlocking your fingers, and leads you through the dimly lit room to behind the counter, and to the desk you've seen him work at many times. He rolls out his chair and sits at his desk, looks up at you, and pats his thigh, and you comply with his silent request. You sit, his muscular thighs between your legs. He puts one arm around you, holding your waist to keep you steady, while his other arm rests on your thigh, his chin resting on your shoulder.

Once in his lap, you look at the glance over the wooden surface covered with scattered papers, all filled with his artwork. Some designs are drawn with intricate detail, while others are simple sketches. But they are all equally impressive—sometimes you forget how talented Jungkook is.

"Oh my gosh, Kook! These are amazing!" you gasp, picking up one of the sheets and turning your head to look at him.

He takes the paper from your hands and places it back on the desk. You see the tips of his ears turning red.

"They're alright," he shrugs; you notice he seems sullen.

You turn in his hold, your body sideways on his lap, and you wrap your arms around his shoulders.

"What has got you so stressed out?" you ask, pushing back his fringe before moving your hand to fiddle with his earring.

Jungkook closes his eyes at the feel of your touch, exhaling a breath in relief. He leans forward, rests his forehead on your shoulder and hugs you tight.

"I just—that client, that was the fifth cancellation this month. I don't understand why; we had several consultations, and I listened to all his requests. I showed him so many different design options that I had sketched for him. I don't know maybe I—maybe I lost my touch or something."

"Hey, now that's not true; this stuff is unbelievable, Kook." you gesture at the multiple illustrations on his desk. "And you have been completely booked up with back-to-back appointments every day, I have never seen you so busy."

You tug on his hair and he whines, nuzzling his face into the crook of your neck and pulling you closer.

"Plus, do you think I would let a guy who's lost his touch anywhere near my skin with even a drop of ink?" you tease, your lips brushing his ear.

"That was months ago," he mumbles into your neck, and you feel the coolness of his lip rings against your skin.

“Yeah, and I would still let you be the one to do it."

Jungkook looks up at you as he argues, “Not like I’m going to let anyone touch you besides me.”

You boop his nose with your own, which makes him chuckle.

“I’m serious, Jungkook. You are passionate about your job, and it shows in your artwork. You are such a talented artist, people see your pieces online and come from all different places just to get inked by you. You. Because you are fucking Jeon Jungkook,” you poke at his chest.

“Okay, okay,” he smiles softly as he brings your hand to his lips, kissing it gently. “How do you always know what to say to calm me down?”

Your eyes sparkle at his question, and you smile gently as you hold his cheek, your thumb caressing the soft skin while pressing your forehead to his. “I know you. Everything I said is simply the truth.”

Jungkook’s mouth parts slightly in surprise, but his gaze softens. You weren’t sure due to the low lighting in the room, but his cheeks seemed to flush as well.

"Thank you, baby,” he says almost shyly, and you couldn’t believe this was the same man who flirts with you so shamelessly at every chance he gets, nor the same man who has had you screaming in pleasure several times a night.

There are many sides to Jungkook, and you adored all of them.

You wrap your arms around his torso, embracing him tightly, burying your face in his neck, and he hugs your waist just as firmly, kissing your forehead.

You both sit like that for a while, and your breathing becomes in sync as if your bodies had become one.

“I-I'm…I'm glad you came here,” he clears his throat as his arms tighten around your waist, basking in your warmth and comfort.

Jungkook has vented to you about work before, but this time, it feels different. You’ve never seen him like this.

"I'm here anytime you need to talk, Kook," you reassure.

“Well, that's good to know…” He said with a nervous smile. “But I meant…I'm glad you came here that day to get your tattoo, that you came into my life.”

Your body freezes momentarily at his words, but soon a fire ignites in your heart and spreads throughout you. You are filled with pride and relief that he feels comfortable and trusts you enough to share his personal feelings so openly.

"I'm glad I did too," you whisper, "I meant what I said though, I'm here if you ever need to talk."

“Okay,” he whispers, “Okay. But on one condition.”

"What?"

He tilts his head to look down at you, you look up at him through your lashes.

"You have to come and hold me like this when I do."

"Deal," you giggle.

"Seal it with a kiss," he leans down slightly.

You lift your head and meet his lips in an emotional kiss which soon turned more heated as your tongues mingled together.

You move down his body, kneeling between his thighs. Your hands grip his belt, and Jungkook pants lightly, his anticipation and need high. You unbuckle it and unbutton his jeans effortlessly, then quickly pull them down far enough for his bulge to be exposed. As expected, he is already hard for you. The effect you have on him is always intense. You glance up at the heavy-breathing man above you, eyes hooded and bottom lip caught between his teeth.

You shift your focus from his bulge to his t-shirt, gripping it by the hem and pulling it up. When he realizes what you want, he assists you; he sits up a little, grabbing the back of the collar and pulling it over his head with one hand, fully exposing his toned core. Just like that, his shirt is off, and he tosses it to the floor to be found later.

Your hands create goosebumps across his exposed skin as they brush against his lower abdomen when you grab the hem of his boxers and pull them down. His erection springs up and rests against his abdomen, impatient for your touch.

At the sight of his big, veiny dick, you unconsciously drag your tongue along your upper lip. You quickly remove his jeans and boxers, along with your shirt, leaving you in your bra, panties, and skirt.

Your hand wraps around his shaft, and your thumb swipes across his head, smoothing the precum over his length to make it feel better. You stroke him gently a couple of times before leaning down and placing a soft kiss against the tip of his cock. Jungkook hisses at the sensation, and he throws his head back.

You slowly begin to move your hand up and down his cock; you enjoy building him up gradually and prolonging his release. A knowing look flashes across his eyes when he discovers what you are doing. He chuckles, and then you swirl your tongue around his head, causing the smile to fall from his face immediately as his hand grips the sides of the chair.

“D-don’t tease,” he breathes heavily.

Your lips curve up into a barely noticeable smile at his reaction. You lick him from the base of his length to the top, swirling your tongue around his head once more before slowly pushing him between your lips and going down on him, your tongue pressing against his hardness as you take him in.

His abs clench at the contact, and a moan slips past his lips, “Fuck, yeah."

You glimpse up at him; his eyes are closed tightly, and sweat is forming on his golden skin, the exact way you like seeing him when you suck him off. The fact that you could affect him like that without even doing very much boosts you with confidence.

You start moving back up slowly, your hand wrapping around the base of his shaft and squeezing him gently, earning a whimper. You repeat your movements with eagerness.

You love giving him head, hearing his moans of pleasure, having him fall apart at your touch.

After a few rougher squeezes from your hand, you suck harder and take as much of him as you can into your mouth, using your hand to pump the rest of him that you can’t fit.

"Feel good?" you ask the obvious question.

He whines and raises his hand to your hair, pushing his fingers through the locks and out of your face. “That feels so good," he rasps.

You hum around his dick; you look up and find him already gazing down at you, his eyes dark with lust—an image you will carry with you to your grave.

You flutter your eyelashes at him and take him even deeper, fully engulfing his dick, his tip hitting the back of your throat each time you bob your head.

Jungkook gulps and his eyes roll back in his head. You feel his hands tangle in your hair, pulling slightly as his hips thrust up into your mouth on instinct.

You go back to slowly moving your hand up and down his length, and it lasts for a few seconds until his hands are over yours, stopping you. Before you can question him, he takes your head in a tight hold and forces you to move faster, his large hands enveloping your head. He gently pushes down against your head until his entire cock is in your mouth and holds you there, your nose touching his pelvis. Your eyes water, but you power through, breathing deeply through your nose.

The man appears to be in pure bliss. His thighs are shaking, and his eyes are blinking rapidly, trying hard to stay open. His mouth is agape as he releases breathy moans, his chest heaving up and down.

“Your mouth feels so good, baby, fuck,” he growls.

When he is satisfied, he pulls you up off of his cock and removes his hands. You pop back up and let go of his throbbing length, a string of saliva briefly connecting your mouth to his tip. You gasp for air with tears streaming down your face, and you wipe your mouth with the back of your hand.

“Always such a good girl for me, aren't you?” he says, lifting your chin and wiping your wet cheeks.

You nod with a sniff, your eyes still glassy.

Jungkook suddenly reaches forward to grab your hips and pulls you onto his lap. You quickly straddle him, your hands pressing against his chest as you grind softly against his dick. His lips crash into yours in a messy kiss; it lasts for a little while before he pulls away and looks straight at you, “You know I love having your mouth around me, baby, but I need to be inside you."

Then he’s capturing your lips once more, his arms encircling your legs around his waist as he does so. His hands rest under your thighs, effortlessly supporting your weight. You’re so immersed in how seamlessly his lips meld with yours that you don’t notice you both have shifted from the chair until you feel him place you on the desk.

Jungkook glides his hands up your thighs, only to have them wound around your waist, pulling you against him with force. He stands between your legs, with your pussy pressed directly against his member.

You grind your soaked panties against him, causing his lips to detach from yours, letting a groan escape from his lips as he tilts his head back, exposing his neck in the process. You trail small, wet kisses from the side of his face, along his jawline, and down his neck, before stopping at the junction between his neck and collarbone. You suck harshly on his skin, earning yourself a few moans from Jungkook, and you feel his chest vibrate.

Jungkook takes hold of your neck, his hand on your throat and kisses you intensely, attempting to express the longing he has felt for you since the moment you walked into the studio. His tongue swipes against your lower lip asking for entrance, and you don’t hesitate to let him in. As his tongue dances with yours, you feel his hands tug at your skirt before he pulls it down, pausing to allow you to lift off the desk enough for him to remove it along with your bra, tossing them to join the rest of the clothes on the floor.

The sight of your naked torso distracts him from doing anything else, his gaze lingers on your breasts before it shifts to your hip where your tattoo is. Jungkook’s hand instinctively glides over the skin adorned with black ink.

“It's still my favourite piece I've ever done,” Jungkook mutters before he plants kisses along your sternum and then finally on your breasts. Before his lips can explore further, you cup his face and bring it back to yours, and you both smile into the kiss. He gathers you in his arms and moves toward the tattoo chair behind him.

Jungkook carefully lowers you onto the reclined chair, and you watch as he stands at the edge of it, removing the black jeans that are already halfway down his legs. Jungkook doesn’t seem to mind that you’re watching every movement of his; you bite your lip and smirk, and it seems to turn him on even further, which urges him to discard his pants and join you quickly.

He crawls over you, supporting his weight with the arms on either side of your head. He gives you a quick kiss on the lips before he begins his exploration of your body, using his lips. Open-mouthed kisses are placed along your neck, across the curve of your breasts, and back up to your neck, where he decides to leave his mark by sucking on the skin at the base of your neck. The noises that escape your lips only motivate him to suck even more aggressively, creating even more red marks as he moves down your body.

“Kook, do something,” and as if he had been waiting for those words, Jungkook starts to move lower on your body until he’s hovering over your clothed pussy. You watch as his nose skims over the wet patch on your underwear. His hands smooth over your legs before they settle onto your hips, which he doesn’t leave unmarked as he sucks on the skin above your tattoo. Your hips rise, yet his stronghold stops you from squirming. “Kook, I need you.”

Upon hearing your desperate begging, Jungkook presses a finger to your covered heat, skillfully finding the bundle of nerves that have you writhing beneath his touch. He begins to rub between your legs, with the sole barrier to full contact being the delicate piece of cloth. He keeps teasing you through your panties, relishing the sounds you make as you squirm beneath him. Deciding that you’ve had enough of the torture, Jungkook hooks a finger under the waistband of your panties before pulling them down, revealing your glistening cunt. He locks eyes with you, and you observe from above as he slips a finger inside you, his stare unwavering. As he pumps his finger inside you, your head tilts back, and you let out a string of moans.

“You’re so tight, baby,” Jungkook comments before inserting another finger inside you, gentle kisses along the inside of your thighs as your hands weave into his hair. You’re surprised when you feel him sucking on your clit; the extra stimulation makes you tremble against his thrusting fingers.

“Mmm, and so wet. Your pussy tastes so good, so fucking sweet.”

“Oh my god, K-kook,” your back arches off the bed as he adds in a third finger while keeping his mouth on your sex. He smiles triumphantly upon hearing you repeat his name like a mantra, and he sets out to ensure you’re moaning it even more loudly. You bite your bottom lip, trying to suppress your desperate moans, but it's in vain when Jungkook curls his fingers within you, hitting a specific spot that causes you to clutch his hair tightly and cry out his name shamelessly.

Jungkook relentlessly drives into you, his fingers curled to target the spot that makes you moan his name, while his mouth remains attached to your clit, teeth lightly tugging and grazing the bud before his lips form a tight seal around it. You feel the pressure in your lower stomach intensify with every thrust of Jungkook's fingers and every flick of his tongue, all leading up to your orgasm.

Jungkook watches as the wave of ecstasy flows through your body, and he swears you’re the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen, with the way your face contorts in ecstasy. His fingers are still thrusting inside, helping you ride out your high, but the oversensitivity soon becomes too much, and you have to push him away.

As you catch your breath, you take a moment to notice what a handsome man Jungkook truly is. Complementing his defined biceps and strong thighs were his abs, impeccably shaped, and you observe as the stunning man above you licks the remnants of you from his fingers. The sight has you wrapping your legs around his waist, pulling him down so that his chest meets yours. Jungkook smirks at your action before he hungrily attacks your lips with his glistening ones, letting you taste yourself as you recover from your climax.

“Take this off,” you mumble against his lips, your foot at his lower back attempting to push his boxers down. He quickly complies with your request, shedding the dark grey boxers before leaning down to his jeans on the floor to retrieve his wallet from his back pocket and get a condom. He rips open the foil with his teeth, being careful not to tear the condom in the process, before rolling it down his length. He hovers over you again, keeping most of his weight off of you with the support of his arms.

Jungkook kisses at your navel before trailing upward towards your breasts. His mouth envelops one of your nipples, sucking on it, he takes his time sucking one breast while kneading the other one before he switches. Your hands hold onto his biceps, gliding over his skin as he prepares your body for another climax. When he’s satisfied with the marks he’s left on your two mounds, he places one more kiss against your lips before looking into your eyes.

“Are you ready, baby?”

“Mhm, Kook. Want you so bad.”

And so Jungkook takes his length and aligns himself at your entrance, the tip of his member almost pushing past your folds. He gives you one last peck on the corner of your mouth before his member sinks into your pussy, making you wince at the stretch of your walls. He pushes himself until he is buried deep within you, causing you to whimper when you feel his full length inside of you. Jungkook groans loudly as he feels himself being embraced by the warmth and tightness of your wet, velvety walls. He reaches for your hands and lifts them to rest on both sides of your head and interlocks your fingers with his. His forehead meets yours, and both of you share a longing gaze while relishing the moment. Once you've adjusted to his size, you move beneath him, and Jungkook takes it as a signal to begin his ravaging.

He pulls back all the way, leaving only his tip inside of you, before pushing himself balls-deep within you once again. You urge him on with your voice, calling for him to go faster and harder, and he complies by thrusting into you at an astonishing speed. With each thrust of his, Jungkook’s name escapes your lips in moans that fill the studio, along with his panting and the sound of skin slapping against skin.

You feel the warmth of his chest leave yours when he sits up, his hands gripping your waist, pressing his fingernails into your skin. The new position allows him to pull you to meet each of his thrusts, hitting at a new angle that makes you cry out his name. When he starts hitting that same spot that tipped you over the edge earlier, you grab his arms and pull him so that he’s on top of you again. His entire weight is on top of you, but you don’t care, not when his thrusts are paired with his lips on your neck.

You moan loudly, which is followed by your pussy convulsing around his cock, and Jungkook knows that you’re close. Your nails scratch against his broad back, leaving a stinging sensation that only adds to his pleasure. You're sure he’ll have red marks all over his back as if he’s been attacked, but it's a fair trade because he’s marked you plenty with his lips.

Jungkook feels you clenching around him even tighter than before, and he’s slamming his hips against yours, urging you to reach your climax. When Jungkook feels your nails dig deeper into his back, his hand reaches between your two sweaty bodies and draws circles on your clit, which sends you off into euphoria. Your second orgasm of the night hits you harder than the first, and your body would have trembled if it were not for Jungkook’s body in the way—the body that is still connected to yours and continues thrusting into you. Your swollen walls clench so tightly that Jungkook starts chasing his high. He groans loudly against your neck as he shallowly thrusts into you, helping the both of you ride out your orgasms.

Jungkook sighs in release, unaware of how long he’s been holding his breath. Jungkook detaches himself from you, and you gasp lightly, feeling somewhat empty as the warmth leaves with him. He rolls off of you, and the two of you lie close together, side by side, attempting to regain your breath after the intense exchange. You sense his gaze from the corner of your eye, and when you turn to face him, your eyes meet his round, dark brown ones.

"Come here."

Unsatisfied with just your shoulders touching, Jungkook turns onto his side, and you do the same before the both of you shift closer to each other. His hands rest naturally on your hips as if returning them to their rightful place. No words are exchanged between the two of you, but there is no need to because you find yourself lost in the softness of his brown eyes, and he can’t help but mirror the wide grin that’s plastered on your face. His hand moves to your tattoo, and you observe his expression as his fingers hover over the indelible design on your skin. His eyes hold a sparkle that evokes a certain emotion to wash over you.

“So, do you feel better?” you ask, breaking the silence of the afterglow, but he looks confused at your words, and you find the sight adorable. “You were stressed out...”

“Me? Stressed out? Huh, I don't know what you're talking about.”

You are the one who's confused this time, but not for long, because the realization hits you when you see his mischievous smirk. You punch his arm playfully, and he grins almost too widely, his eyes forming crescents. His hands, which were placing feathery touches on your tattoo, are now tickling your sides, and he’s elated at the sound of your joyful laughter before pulling you against his chest.

Jungkook looks around the studio, the neon lights casting shadows on his face, "I feel good; how could I not? This is a first for me though— fucking at work."

You look up at him with raised brows in surprise, Jungkook smiles down at you and continues.

"You know, I didn't think the next time I had you back in my chair would be like this."

"Oh my gosh," you blush and hide your face in his chest, a little embarrassed but mostly shy at his remark. He laughs, and you feel it rumble through his chest; his hand lifts to pet down the back of your head.

"You can't be shy with me after all that. Every time I'm working on a client now, all I will be thinking about is you beneath me in this chair."

"I can't imagine what the crew would think if they found out what we did," you mumble into his chest with a little laugh.

"They would think I'm a sterilizing expert because there will be no evidence of what happened here," he sits up and gently strokes your ass, and then gives it a pinch, eliciting a gasp from you, "You're in charge of the desk, you little minx; I'll do the chair," he winks at you.

You're left to blush again, swooning as you both get up to remove any trace of the two of you in the studio.

✧ ──── 》》 ──── ✧

You blink away the tears forming in your eyes. Your thumb hovers over his name, considering calling him back just as you hear a knock at your door.

Answer your phone I've got so much to say I'm at my all-time low And it's just too much to take

Jungkook can raise his hands and admits he didn't handle that night as well as he could have, but he is truly sorry. He realizes that even if his intention wasn't to hurt or offend you, what he did wasn't his best moment. As much as he tells you that you are special to him and that what you two have is different—which is true—his actions didn't match his words, and you deserve better than that. Jungkook may not be the perfect gentleman, far from it, but he is better than that, especially when it concerns you.

As the hands of the clock tick away and more time passes, he gets up and begins pacing.

If you listened to his message you would have called by now right?

Jungkook isn't used to this—needing someone. Sure, he has desired certain women, and he always got them, but once the lust faded, he never wanted them to stay; never needed them to stay.

He hasn't always been like this, and he knows where it all began: the fear of giving his all to someone and then losing them, of handing over his heart to another and having them desecrate it.

Jungkook refused to be like his father; he watched him give his mother everything and love her immensely, only for her to run off without regard for him or Jungkook.

He fears emotionally connecting with someone else will end as he has always seen: being left alone and heartbroken.

Because inevitably love is never simple, nor is it equal in the sacrifice of pouring oneself into another.

He can't imagine what could be worse than letting someone in and loving so wholly only to be left empty because you offered yourself up to someone undeserving.

Jungkook knows how good of a man his father is, and if he could get burned and scarred by love, Jungkook knows he doesn't stand a chance.

And who would willingly walk into a fire?

When people asked him why he didn't get into a serious relationship, he would say, “I like change. Life is too long to commit to one person and too short not to explore your options.”

But that was before he discovered you. Once you fit into his life so perfectly he knew he wouldn’t be able to live without you. He knew he had found that one constant in his life.

The constant being: Y/L/N Y/N.

What he shared with you has always been simple, and the effort you both put in has always been equal.

Jungkook never believed he would find that kind of connection, one that flows with ease. Now that he has found it, he desires to keep you in his life and wants you to remain a part of him.

He will walk through the flames if you're on the other side.

Jungkook has never been fond of lingering and preferred moving from one thing to the next, one woman to the next. He didn't enjoy being too close; he always kept people at a distance maybe not physically but emotionally. Tattooing has been the only steady thing in his life; he was committed to his craft.

But you broke down his walls, shattered the pattern—you got close. He found the courage to let his guard down. He knows there is nothing to be wary of, no looming feeling that he will be met with disappointment. Everything is easy with you.

His cowardice had him ruling out a love that hadn't happened yet. Maybe he is a fool, but he can't live with regret. He's ready to dive off the deep end. It's draining to always be on the defence, ready to push people away, and he's tired. He wants to settle down and commit to you.

Jungkook can be vulnerable around you; he knows you won't use his weaknesses against him like people have in his past. You don't even view them as things that make him weak just what makes him human, because no one can be perfect. However, he would argue that you seem to be pretty damn close.

He feels most comfortable with you; he trusts you and can be himself. There is no pretence with you; Jungkook likes who he is around you.

Jungkook loves you.

In your eyes, he is the guy who comforted you when he saw how nervous you were while getting your first tattoo. The one who keeps an extra hoodie in his car for you because you are never dressed for the weather. The one who finishes work and picks up takeout for the two of you to eat together. That's the Jungkook you see, the one you know better than anyone else—the one you have wrapped around your precious finger.

You've never asked him to be any different from who he is, despite his shortcomings in many aspects. You never judge him for the life he's leading and never pressure him to change his ways, no matter how flawed. Yet you still never expect the worst from him.

So now, all he fears is that he has accomplished the one thing he dreaded the most, and has destroyed the link holding the two of you together.

Should he go to your place?

Jungkook hasn't gone over because he didn't want to seem overbearing; he wanted to give you your space until you felt ready to talk to him on your terms. Also, if you weren't answering his calls, you most likely wouldn't answer your door either.

But he doesn't want you to think he won't fight for you. He won't lose you without a lack of trying. If Jungkook is anything, he is persistent. He has too much left to say to you and he isn't about to sit here and take this distance any longer. He's willing to do whatever it takes.

As he looks out of his window and stares at the hundreds of lights, he feels a new surge of determination; he is rising from this low point he has sunk into, fed up with wallowing in his self-pity.

He turns and strides to his door, yanking it open with vigour. He sprints down the stairs and rushes outside into the chilly night, heading straight for his car.

Jungkook pulls out of his spot and drives the familiar route to your house, accelerating down the road at the maximum speed permitted by law. In his state of urgency, it seems that all he encounters are red lights and stop signs.

His grip on the steering wheel tightens, and he has to hold himself back from stomping too hard on the gas pedal when the light turns green.

Answer your phone I've got to get to you God, I hope you're alone And someone new isn't next to you

Y/N POV

You gather yourself and halt your wandering thoughts to get up and check who is at your door. You are not expecting anyone, and you told your friends you won't be going out with them tonight. Your excuse was being too tired from work, but honestly, you just were too sad to pretend that you were okay.

Could it be him? He said he wouldn't give up, that he had to see me.

Do you want it to be him? You would be lying to yourself if you said no.

So it's a surprise when you open the door and see Taehyung standing there with his hands in his front pockets, teetering back and forth on his heels.

A part of you is disappointed, not because it's Taehyung but because it's not Jungkook.

"Tae? I said in the group chat that I'm not going out tonight. Didn't you see my message?"

He looks you up and down and barges in, walking past you.

"And didn't you see my message? I said you are going out tonight and I was coming over to pick you up. Why aren't you ready?"

To be fair you were so preoccupied on your phone, listening to Jungkook's message and reminiscing, that you didn't notice any other messages. But when you go to your chats, you see his words are true.

He plops down on your couch, stretching his arm out on the back and gives you an expectant look, his eyes wide and his brows raised.

"What?"

"What do you mean, what? Go get ready," he makes a shooing gesture with his hand and continues.

"The clubs aren't open all night—well, actually they are..." his brows furrow as he looks off into the distance for a brief moment, then catches himself. "But I don't have all night, so let's go!" He demands with a clap of his hands.

"I'm not going out tonight, Tae. I told everyone I'm staying home."

You lie down on the couch next to his seated figure, with your back resting against the armrest.

"Didn't we just go over this?" he points between the two of you. "You are going out; everyone is already at the club. They got a table, and I'm sure Jimin has already downed a shocking amount of shots, so we have to leave soon if we want to catch up."

Taehyung taps your knee twice and then shoves your legs off the couch, bringing you to a sitting position. You take a deep breath and throw your head back, crossing your arms while closing your eyes.

"I don't feel like going out. I want to stay home."

"And do what? Continue to sulk over pretty tattoo boy?"

You open your eyes and turn your head toward him, pouting, "I was not sulking."

He stares at you with a raised brow, filled with doubt.

Rolling your eyes and letting out a sigh, your arms drop to your sides, "I'm just not in the mood, I'll only bring down the vibe."

Taehyung turns his body to face you, a sympathetic expression on his face.

"You're only making this harder for yourself by just sitting around and thinking about him, Y/N. I understand that you like him a lot—I do—but a guy like that isn't worth wasting your life waiting for him."

You look down at your hands in your lap and chip at your nail polish.

"He's been leaving me messages. He tells me how sorry he is and that he misses me. He sounds like he's having a rough time, too. That doesn't erase what he did, I know, but it was just one mistake. He's a good man, Tae. I've always known he wasn't perfect, but everyone has faults, right?"

Taehyung holds your hand and squeezes it, leaning down to meet your gaze. His voice is careful when he speaks.

"People like him always know the right thing to say. If he were such a good guy, he wouldn't have used you the way he did. Yes, everyone has faults, but you can find someone whose faults don't hurt you. It may have been only one mistake, but if he truly cared about you as he claimed, he would have never treated you that way."

Tears form in your eyes and your voice cracks. "It's just—I know him; it sounds pathetic, but he has shown me a side of himself that I know he doesn't show everyone. The real him and that's the Jungkook who has my heart. That's the Jungkook I love. We've experienced so much together, it's difficult to just move on from him."

"If you don't try to move on from him, how can you expect to, babe?"

He's right; you haven't tried. Throughout this entire period of your ignoring him, you have consistently kept Jungkook in your thoughts. Every time you went out with friends, every time a guy tried to flirt with you, and every time you held your phone—Jungkook. When you woke up, when you were at work, and when you went to bed—Jungkook. Even when you heard a knock at your door, as Taehyung did earlier, you hoped it was Jungkook.

Jungkook. Jungkook. Jungkook.

Your mind and heart were devoted to Jungkook. Everything revolved around him.

Your tears overflow, and you finally break. Taehyung wraps his arms around you, and you cry into his shoulder. He holds you until you calm down, and your sobs turn into sniffles.

You lift your head and wipe your cheeks.

"I'm such a mess, I'm so sorry, Tae. You came out to have a good time, and here you are consoling me. I have probably fucked up your fun night out," you croak out. "I must seem so stupid, all hung up over a guy."

"You haven't ruined anything, and you certainly aren't stupid. I would never think that of you. I know how much of yourself you give to someone important to you. I wish you would give yourself to someone worthy, not someone who takes advantage of you. You are an amazing person, and if Jungkook hasn't realized how lucky he is to have you, then he's the stupid one, Y/N."

"Thank you, Tae. Not just for tonight, but for listening to me go on about Jungkook this past month like a sad, broken record. You stuck by me, have been so caring, and always validated my emotions. I swear I'm the one who's lucky and unworthy of you."

"Nonsense, you know you can depend on me anytime," he says, patting your head and smiling affectionately.

You smile back, glance down, and see his shirt is stained with your tears.

"I ruined your shirt," you sniffle, pinching at the fabric.

Taehyung looks down at it and shrugs, "Hey, I prefer your tears to stain my shirt rather than Jimin's vomit," he jokes to lighten the mood.

You laugh, and he points at your face, his expression bright.

"Aha! There she is! Happy Y/N, I thought I had lost her!" he exclaims.

He turns his head, looking around, arms stretched out as if speaking to a crowd, "Ladies and gentlemen, no need to fear; I have managed to make Y/N laugh."

Taehyung once again proves to be the best friend one could have; you can always count on him to cheer you up and gather the pieces of your broken heart without fail.

"Shut up, Tae. I have neighbours," you giggle, playfully pushing him.

He joins your giggles and returns your playful push, "Well then, go get dressed! If you don't I will run up and down the hallway screaming. I came here to take you out and have fun. Sitting at home alone can't be better than partying with your insanely funny, incredibly handsome best friend. And if that isn't enough, Seokin's dancing is a sure way to lift anyone's spirit."

"Okay, fine," you agree, getting up with a big smile. The image of Seokjin's dancing already boosts your mood.

Making your way to your bedroom, you yell out, "But if anyone comments on my swollen eyes, you'll be dealing with them!"

"I've got your back, babe. Don't worry!"

You can always count on Taehyung.

Tell me, tell me now am I too late Is there somebody new taking my place? Is there somebody's lips on you Where mine used to be, yeah?

Jungkook parks across the street from your building; he sits in his car, pondering whether it's too late to knock at your door. Are you already asleep? Should he have waited until tomorrow? If you answer and open it to find him standing there, will you shut it in his face?

He knows right now he's not your favourite person, but he doesn't believe you would be so cruel as to turn him away at your doorstep.

He rubs his hands down his face and lets out a deep sigh.

How could he let things end up like this?

He ruined something so special, so sacred. Building a relationship so pure and superior doesn't happen to everyone, and he managed to have it hanging by a thread.

Your relationship can't just end because of one mistake—a big mistake, yes, but he believes that what you two have is strong enough to overcome this. The two of you have made so many wonderful, meaningful memories.

Jungkook remembers how good things were before this—before he ruined everything.

✧ ──── 《《 ──── ✧

Jungkook never imagined he would witness such a breathtaking sight: you bare before him, glazed eyes and slightly parted lips, lovely sounds escaping as he traced wet kisses along the nape of your neck, down your throat, over the curves of your breasts, pausing to swirl his tongue over a sensitive bud, drawing out his name from your throat, the same one now decorated with shades of blue and purple.

“Please, Kook,” you beg, pleading with him for more, and he is more than willing to give it to you, knowing he can hardly deny you anything.

He smiles, kissing his way back up to your lips, positioning his body over yours and aligning his hips so he can slide into your warmth with a soft thrust, the wetness coating the inside of your thighs showing how aroused he has made you.

You clutch at his shoulders with a moan, nails digging in and creating crescent shapes with every thrust he makes. Jungkook fucks you slow and deep, hitting every nerve within you, making you unravel before him in no time at all. His lips move slowly against yours, tongues twirling together as your legs wrap tightly around his body, drawing him closer and deeper into you, his sighs of contentment pouring into your mouth.

Jungkook is sure this is what heaven feels like: his hands on you, hips rocking against your own as you devour the sounds escaping each other's lips. You encourage one another until he picks up pace, gazing down at your face, cheeks flushed and lips swollen.

The coil in your stomach tightens, twisting, and is ready to snap. Jungkook is also at his limit, eyes hooded but maintaining eye contact with yours, his forearms supporting his weight on either side of your body.

Overcome with pleasure, the feeling of his skin against your own, united with you in the most intimate way two people can be. The act is sinful but fully infused with the profound bond you both share. What you and Jungkook have cannot be expressed in words, and he does not think the two of you need to articulate what you both understand.

“Come on, baby, cum for me,” he husks, gently nibbling at your jaw.

One of his hands moves to where your bodies meet, flicking his thumb over your clit repeatedly. Then you come undone, the release so intense that his name echoes off every corner of the small bedroom. He continues throughout your orgasm, prolonging it until the sensation of your walls tightening around him brings him to his climax, spilling inside of you with a groan of your name, lips pressed harshly to yours, putting everything he feels into a single kiss.

He pulls away, carefully removes the condom and ties a knot at its end before disposing of it and falling onto the bed, shifting onto his side to look at you. The moonlight streams through the window, illuminating your skin in a radiant glow. Jungkook trails his fingertips along the surface of your arm, moving down until he reaches your hip, pulling you closer to him as you tuck your head into his chest.

Jungkook spots the numerous red crescents on your body already beginning to take on a darker colour — almost as deep as the black ink he used for your tattoo. Jungkook wishes for nothing more than the colour of the marks to be so deep that it will cover you forever.

He holds you close, his thumb brushing over the familiar tattoo on your hip— the everlasting mark that brought you two together. You found each other that day months ago when you walked into his studio and had him ink his design on you, and ever since then, you have been a part of his life. The ink serves as a reminder of the bond between you and Jungkook, etched onto your skin just as you are to him.

“You should let me give you another one."

“What do you think I should get?” you whisper against his chest.

"My name, here," he replies, his inked finger tracing just above the left side of your chest, right over your heart.

You smile as you push him so that he lies on his back; you move to lie on your stomach between his legs, your chin resting on his chest. His hands come to your back, caressing it up and down.

"Hmm, and you'll get my name here," you lightly run your pointer finger over his left pec.

Jungkook lifts a hand to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear, smiles tenderly, and nods while humming in agreement. His fingers linger, skimming your face as his gaze softens. His eyes are filled with adoration as he looks at you.

Jungkook can feel your heartbeat against his stomach; he wonders if you can feel his own under your touch. Both of your hearts are beating rapidly, which he assumes is due to the physical exertion you both just experienced and not from this impassioned moment you two are having.

He can physically feel how much affection there is between you two. He has never felt that before. It's moments like this that make Jungkook feel incredibly fortunate to have you in his life.

"Aren't tattoo artists usually against getting other people's names tattooed?" you tease with a smirk and a raised brow.

Jungkook shrugs with a smirk, his tongue playing with his lip rings, "I live by my own rules."

You roll your eyes, shaking your head, "Oh, what a rebel you are."

Jungkook's hands go to your sides and tickle you with a gentle pinch.

"Kook!" you laugh as you jolt further up his body.

"Kook!" he mocks in a high-pitched voice, imitating you before wrapping his arms around you and hugging you close.

You pout and make a soft 'hmph' sound so insanely cute that Jungkook can't resist the smile spreading across his face; he laughs and then kisses your pouty lips and all over your face. You giggle and lightly tug his necklace with your finger, bringing his mouth to yours for a long, sweet kiss. When you break apart, Jungkook gives one final peck above your left breast.

"I was serious, you know," he murmurs, voice low. He juts his chin lightly to where he last placed his lips.

"Haven't you marked me enough?" you stretch out your neck and gesture at the hickey-covered skin.

"I wanna mark you every way I can, baby," he smiles smugly.

One of your hands plays with the hair at the nape of his neck, and the other plays with the hoop in his ear. You avoid eye contact, keeping your eyes focused on the earring.

"Tattoos are forever, Kook," you say sheepishly.

"You're telling me," Jungkook chuckles, tilting his head toward his right arm covered in a sleeve of tattoos. He turns his head to kiss your wrist and then cups your face with both hands, making you look at him, "Hey, you planning on going somewhere and not telling me?"

You shake your head, his big hands still holding it.

"Hmm, I'm a bit worried now; I need to hear you say it," he squints his eyes, teasing.

"No, I'm not going anywhere," you grin.

Jungkook mirrors your grin and nods, "Good," he pulls your face closer and nudges his nose against yours, "Because I'm not either."

He squishes your cheeks together in his hands, making your lips pucker out.

"It's not easy to find someone this cute," he coos, shaking your head.

You pull your head from his grasp and lightly slap his chest. His hands slide down to your ass and give it a firm squeeze, long fingers digging into the smooth flesh.

"Even harder to find someone equally as sexy,” he whispers in your ear, his teeth grazing lightly. His voice is so deep you feel it vibrate through his body against yours.

"Huh, it can't be too hard, I found you," you quip, poking his cheek.

Jungkook gives your ass a spank, and you gasp as he flips you both over, with you now under his hovering body.

"Why don't I show you just how lucky we both are?" his tone dripping with seduction.

The tip of his nose trails down your neck as his lips ghost over your skin, down to the valley of your breasts. He stops to knead the soft mounds, surging forward to swirl his tongue over one of the hardened nubs before taking it into his mouth and sucking gently. He hums in satisfaction. He releases it, giving it a gentle bite, and switches to show the other the same attention.

Once pleased, he continues his trail past your stomach and stops at your pulsing heat. He nestles his head between your legs, his hands grip your thighs and spread you wide open, your already slick folds clench around nothing in anticipation.

Jungkook gives your clit a teasing lick before diving in without hesitation. You whimper when his mouth latches onto you, his wide tongue licking a slow, filthy stripe over your slit, your hands flying into his hair. He groans, his eyes rolling back as he tastes you, his tongue circling your clit and then flicking over it repeatedly before dragging down to press at your entrance. Your hand tightens in his hair as his tongue presses deep into your dripping hole.

“Fuck, Kook,” you whine, grinding harder as your thighs tighten around his head.

He exhales through his nose, eyes crinkling as he smiles into your pussy when you buck your hips against his face. The sequence of sucking, licking, and prodding with his lips and tongue has you both writhing in ecstasy. The wet, sloppy sounds of his lips and tongue working against you fill the room. The intimate night of passion continues until the moon gives way to the sun.

✧ ──── 》》 ──── ✧

Jungkook is pulled out of his memories when he sees the door of the main entrance to your building open. He watches you step out, and his heart nearly leaps out of his chest upon seeing you.

Your short, tight dress hugs your body in all the right places. Your tall, thin high heels complement your legs phenomenally. Your hair cascades down your figure, making you look like an angel. You look gorgeous.

The sight of you would bring any man to his knees. You must be dressed to go out for the night, so he must act now if he doesn't want his drive here to be for nothing. He moves to get out of his car, but just as his hand touches the handle, he sees a man walk out right behind you, and Jungkook freezes.

Jungkook looks closely at the man's face; he's good-looking. He's sure he recognizes him from your posts. He looks like one of the guys you've tagged in your pictures, the ones where he's had his arm around you. The happy idiot. What was it... Taemin? Taejin? Taewoo?

Whoever he is, he extends his arm for you to link with yours, and you do. You're about to step down the stairs when you stop and say something to the man. You have an anxious expression, but whatever you say to the man beside you only brings a fond smile to his face. He responds to you and leans down to kiss your cheek.

The cheek that Jungkook's lips have been on more times than he can count.

And you light up as if he made everything better. You walk down the stairs, arm in arm with the man whom Jungkook worries has taken his place.

Once you step off the last step, you stop once more, unlink your arm, and pull out your phone. The light from the screen shines on your face; you tap your fingers on it for a few seconds before putting it back in your purse. You relink your arms with who Jungkook thinks is the luckiest guy in the world and set off down the street, heading to your destination.

Jungkook feels the wind being knocked out of him. He hadn't even realized he had gotten out of his car. He stands far enough that you don't notice him, but close enough to see you perfectly. To see how you were on the phone he knows is full of his messages and calls—that you are still ignoring.

Tell me, tell me now, what can I do To make it up to you Won't you tell me, please? Tell me, please

All the hope and determination he had when he left his house seemed to have disintegrated. He feels small, much like your figure becomes as you walk further away from him on the arm of another.

Jungkook stares at your back until he loses sight of you as you round the corner. He stands there feeling like he has just been slapped in the face for the second time tonight, but this one stings much more.

What else can he do?

Jungkook doesn't know how to make it up to you, and at this point, he's unsure if he's fighting a losing battle. You seem to be doing just fine without him. It hurts to see you happy when he has been miserable without you.

He needs you to talk to him, to tell him what to do to win you back. What he has to do so he can hear your laugh, smell your scent, and touch your skin. He needs to have you back in his arms, on his lips—in his life.

He tilts his head back, eyes focused on the moon and how it mocks him, shining brightly while he is filled with darkness.

He stands there, disoriented; all he can do is let out a bitter laugh at the irony that he drove all the way here to watch you walk away from him—now and quite possibly forever.

With a sad smile, he is overwhelmed with questions, out of his mind. Why are you two ending? How can you? How can you two end?

All your memories together overflow out of his perforated heart, he puts his hand over his chest trying to block them and keep them inside, but they escape through his fingers.

Jungkook had you by his side and took you for granted; now he is watching you be cherished by another man while he stands by like a stranger in the night.

He doesn't want to be like this, he doesn't. He hates this, really hates this.

He doesn't believe it would hurt this much even if his heart stopped.

Answer your phone I've got to talk to you I'm out here in the cold Trying to get through to you, oh

Jungkook never envisioned that when he finally loved someone, he would be left alone and heartbroken— not because you decided to run off, not because you were undeserving, but because he pushed you away.

He took too long to walk through the flames and got burned. He dove off the deep end too late into a pool of emptiness and hit the bottom.

Jungkook stands in the street, the cold air biting at his cheeks, but he can't find the strength to return to his car and drive home. He came here on a mission to talk to you face to face. He hopes that if he stands here long enough, you might walk back around that corner and come straight to him. He hopes you will answer his plea and do something to fix him. Hold him in your arms and tell him that everything will be okay and that the two of you will work together to mend what has been broken.

But you don't, and Jungkook's heart may be beyond repair at this rate.

Jungkook's heart hurts so badly that it's strange that he's even alive.

He should have followed you, chased you blindly even if you were trying to run away from him. He should have yelled at the top of his lungs that there's a hole in his heart that can't be filled and he's dying of pain.

How can he forget you? He doesn't know how to do that.

Like the tattoo he inked on your hip, you are etched in him— an indelible impression on his heart.

You are the only person he wants, your hands to comfort him, your voice to soothe his heart.

He'll have to settle for listening to your voice through the phone, even if it's only your voicemail.

Jungkook digs into his pocket for his phone, unlocks it and with your name already on the screen, presses the call button and waits.

Answer your phone, answer your phone Answer your phone, answer your phone Answer your phone

But he doesn't have to wait for long.

He's immediately met with a voice, but not your sweet voice; instead it's an answering machine.

And now he has been slapped for the third time tonight, so hard that he stands there in the cold, gripping his phone so tightly that his knuckles might bleed. He releases a shaky breath as his eyes fill with tears, and spill over before he knows it.

Jungkook is hit with the reality that you still refuse to talk to him. You have now blocked his number on your phone and blocked him out of your life.

"We are unable to reach the person you are calling at this time. Please try calling back later."

↬ so how do we feel? hope he suffered enough for your liking. let me know what you think! muah! 💋

taglist: @bangtans-momma @celticcountrygal @annafarrr

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takes1 · 2 days ago

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PLEASE I NEED MATSUKAWA OR KUNUMI OR EVEN MADDOG PLEASE IM BEGGING 🧎‍♂️🧎‍♂️🙏

thankz ::3 -🩻

clingy!kentarou x reader (taming maddog)

heyyyy :) finally getting to this hope it's aight

warnings. heavy nsfw, minors DNI

details. fem!reader / riding maddog / 69 / obsessive!maddog / clingy!needy!maddog / possessive!maddog / loneliness theme / 'i can fix him' trope / libero!reader / johsai girls' team reader / maddog being canonically mean / implied virginity / experienced!reader / emotionally intelligent reader / emotionally stunted maddog / 3.6k words

links. my masterlist. more haikyuu. my ao3

"(Y/n), like, I know you've got a type and all..."

"Mhmm," You follow absentmindedly, tracking your latest obsession like a hawk.

Number 16 was different- not just attractive, but he had a threatening, intense, sharp presence about him. He was just about the only member of the guys' team who didn't subscribe to a cheerful, cooperative environment. His little outburst earlier caught your attention, and he was currently benched for pushing Oikawa.

He sure was aggressive. You bit your lip and watched him stretch from the bleachers.

"But I heard he's actually crazy."

The other girls on your team would never understand what possessed you to put yourself in danger, going after the most deviant of guys you could find. It was an endearing joke amongst the team, at this point, but they did worry for your safety.

"What's his name?" You looked to them for the first time, mind already made up.

Whispers of Kentarou, Kyoutani, Maddog, were shared as you settled back to watching him. Lots of horror stories of him getting in trouble, getting into fights, yelling at teachers, other students, getting suspended for a time all encouraged you. The nickname he earned made you significantly more fascinated.

You could fix him. It would at least be fun to try.

You couldn't help but ponder where his true fault lied, how it twisted into so much unwarranted aggression.

Was he not held as a baby? Did he have a bad home life? Had it manifested into some kind of sexual dysfunction? You wondered if he was this big of a presence in the bedroom. You smiled at the strong possibility that he wasn't.

Maybe that was a bit Freudian of you to assume, but your previous diagnoses hadn't steered you wrong yet. The guys you slept with were all weirdos- losers- psychos- and yet, they were all a step closer to normal after a little love.

They couldn't stop you from approaching, especially when nobody had the guts to go anywhere near him.

"Hi," You tapped his shoulder after a bout of hesitation.

He looked to the side, then behind, and realized you were referring to him.

His brow fell from its subtle version of surprise, making all his features look heavier, meaner-- you shuddered.

"Yo." Was all he said.

Though dismissive and already uncomfortable, it was enough to work with.

You smoothed out your uniform with a nervous sigh, "Um- I'm sorry if this is forward, but,"

"I think you're really cute. I'd like to go on a date, sometime."

Kentarou looked angry even when he was shocked. The dark around his eyes made it impossible to look soft, and it seemed he didn't have the capacity to smile yet.

The only way you could deduce that he was embarrassed was the way his hands balled into fists at his sides, how he looked around your face over, over, and over again for an ounce of insincerity.

It was adorable. You giggled at his long silence.

Laughing shut him down. His mouth curled in a sneer, positive you were laughing at him.

The gaggle of girls, filling the entrance to the gym, all clad in your uniform, wasn't great for optics. It looked like you were playing a prank on him.

"Are you kiddin' me?" He rolled his eyes before you could even try to explain, "Go fuck yourself."

It wasn't the first time something like this had happened. Though you loved your team, visible swarms of women never put the guys you went after at ease.

That rejection was still tame for what you had seen before from him.

He put his back to you and crossed his arms, watching the game, instead. Getting benched and made fun of couldn't have been a great feeling.

Determined now, you shook out your nerves and tapped his shoulder again.

"Tch-! I said fuck off!" He scowled down at you, but you knew it was misguided. So it didn't hurt as bad.

You purposefully didn't mirror his body language- you didn't want him to cut him off even more. You stood facing him at an angle, trying to catch his eye and take his attention again.

Voice quiet, sweeter, genuine, "I'm serious."

Even if this was a joke, you were the most persistent he had ever seen. Nobody usually got this far. If he told somebody to leave, they did. Especially after the second time, and a girl, at that.

"I mean- I get it if you're not into short girls, that's totally fine," You fixed your hair, glancing away from his overwhelmed, slow expression, "But, please, just... think about it. Here's my number."

For a moment, you were unsure if he would take the paper in your hand. He gave you zero indication that he believed your story, but after just enough time to make you doubt, he took it.

Kentarou held it tight, confused, as you joined your team to leave the gym. He watched them look over and preen you like birds to make sure you weren't hurt.

It could've been a real confession. The gravity of it didn't truly land until he was back home, looking up the girls' team Instagram to find your personal handle. You were following the page and even had a few features in their posts.

Doubts began to grow that it was your real number. He decided he didn't want to use it.

Instead, he lay on his bed, palming himself to the poses of your greatest receives- you were such a pretty girl, with a nice body, cute face--reminded of those things now, it only made him more skeptical at your choice to speak to him.

Luck was on his side once again, because your own profile was public. You even had a few beach posts. Lots of likes, lots of followers. You wouldn't notice if he liked a few of them, unless you were being honest about your interest.

You were all over his signals in a flash.

A follow, a bit of page-stalking that got you nowhere (because he had 0 online presence, other than a couple blank accounts), and a long string of messages that went deep into the night, all earned you a date.

Now that the game had officially begun, you needed to curate each move carefully. If you waited too long to take advantage of any clear signs of interest, he wouldn't find you worth the trouble. You needed some dick.

Kentarou was lonely, too.

It was as you suspected, monitoring him during that practice match. People who had a good support system didn't act that way he did.

He wasn't wistful, or desperate, and didn't invite friendship. Shit, he barely let you court him, and the only way you could convince him to meet you for coffee was if you sent a few pictures 'to prove it was just you.' And yet, after the one misunderstanding, he didn't deny you any opportunity to get close.

His experiences shaped him to be incredibly firm, mistrusting, and overly cautious, yes; It all fell short though, when it came to the very simple, universal longing for companionship.

The cafe wasn't too quiet, thankfully.

You were most worried about the possibility of him causing some sort of commotion and being asked to leave, but other patrons were lively enough to drown him out, if he did raise his voice.

To your surprise, that also wasn't much of an issue.

He ordered for the two of you, even -begrudgingly- accepting that you wanted a more intricate drink, too. He didn't let you do much for yourself. When he told you to go find a seat while he waited at the counter, you stayed with him so you could be close. He still didn't argue.

Though he wasn't polite, he wasn't a monster. He was just brimming with attitude, and that rubbed people the wrong way. When unprovoked, he was mean-looking, sure, but docile.

A predatory gaze watched the skirt of your casual dress flutter up- just a little, not quite enough- as you sat down next to him with your elaborate drink in hand. He set his cup down and you felt his leg flex as you closed the distance to snuggle up to him.

"You're taking this joke pretty far."

Insecurity filled the quiet between his words, and it took a sensitive ear to detect under all the venom. Was he testing you? Probably. Was he still trying to protect himself? Absolutely.

"Mm," You considered how to respond while sipping on your coffee, staring forward, not really minding his intensity, "I don't have the kind of time to go on fake dates, you know."

It was an argument less emotional in nature, but due to its legitimacy, it left him stumped enough to drop the subject.

In its wake remained discomfort. Mostly at your thigh, busy rubbing against him as you pretended to be more invested in the ambience of the cafe, or the flavor of the drink in your hands.

"What're you doing it for?" He pressed, different, but still carried with a grumbly, shitty attitude he always spoke in.

That took some getting used to, but once you understood he just talked that way, you were able to take his words at face value and waste less time miscommunicating.

A warm hand, palming the squish of your bare thigh encouraged your desire to be honest.

You waited for him to stop scanning the cafe, for the right moment to tell him.

His eyes dipped first to your pretty thighs, all soft and warm and new in his hand. Then he was taken by the all the sweetness in the way you looked at him.

"I wanna sleep with you."

You expected him to not believe you, like the first time, but his surprise was now pretty conventional.

His mouth hung open, just a little, and you noticed a tongue piercing. How did you miss it before? Did he not wear it at school? Your thighs tightened and he met it with a firm squeeze as he took a sobering drink of his coffee.

It was obvious he wanted to know why. But he was looking for something better to say, instead.

"The fuck are we doing here?"

That was a good question. Such a good question, in fact, that after a bit of conversation about where to go to fuck, you landed on going back to your place.

He made himself comfortable on your bed as you shut the door and locked it, just in case. Your room didn't have a whole lot of conversation starters, so he took a while to really examine it.

He wasn't witty, or spontaneous, or chatty.

There was no value in sitting around, acting like you wanted to delve into a discussion about each other's families, or grades, or volleyball.

His brow softened as you dropped the straps of your dress down.

There was a small attempt to look you in the eye, which you appreciated in a very limited context, but once you kept going, he might as well have been wearing a collar.

A half-sigh, half-laugh pushed out of his open mouth, brow furrowed again, as he tried to speak a few times while you posed for him, drunk on such a cute, endearing reaction.

There were a lot of things for him to think about. You could almost smell the smoke of grinding gears when you stood in front him and rubbed your hands against his shoulders.

He kept getting his fill, eyes unable to stay in one place too long, practically trying to back up so he could keep looking at all of you.

You giggled, "Kentarou?"

His breath stopped. You couldn't feel it, tingling across your skin, anymore.

You took some fingers to his curly hair, playing with it, "Aren't you gonna touch me?"

"I-," He didn't know what to do with himself for a moment, "Where?"

Your charmed, bitten back smile made his ears bright, bright red. Instead of telling him, you settled onto his lap and felt for his hands, gently guiding them towards your hips.

It was slow, natural, and gentle how you decided to kiss him.

You could feel how heated he was, with one hand on the back of his neck, the other cooling off the side of his face. One second to part for some breath, which he needed, badly- you waited for him to say something.

But he was forcing his mouth back onto yours quicker than you thought he would- his fingers dug into your flesh, and he brought you down onto his hard-on with a sudden loss of reservation.

It didn't take long to start catching that little tongue piercing against your lip- you groaned against his mouth, "Fuck, I really like that."

He was a fast, eager, and very rough learner. Kentarou was also laughably easy to please, because it was obvious he had no preferences built up yet. Everything you did left him stunned and hungry.

You reveled in your private victory and helped him undress. He wasn't shy about his own body, but you made it clear that he had a nice figure by taking the time to kiss along his muscular arm, then shoulder, and up to his neck.

His quickness to mirror you, kissing the same places on your body, was cute. He never once smiled, but he showed his investment in other ways.

When you offered to 69, he immediately fell onto his back from his upright position, rubbing his warm face.

A weak, "Yes," from under his palms was all you got, but it was so sweet from a guy like him. He sounded broken in, in a way.

You pressed a deserving kiss to his jaw and turned around.

His cock looked just as angry as he was, normally. Twitchy, leaking a bit of precum on his toned tummy, tinged dark with the all the time it had been waiting.

"You're- so fuckin' wet," He sounded stunned to say that aloud, understand what it actually meant, and that he was obsessed with it.

You smiled and pressed a kiss to the base of his cock as you settled into a good position.

How long had it been since you got laid? Apparently too long, because you were dripping with anticipation at the salty taste of his tip sliding past your teeth.

That was the downside of having such a specific type. Not many options.

He was still figuring out how to use his own mouth when you took the breath out of him- a strangled gasp at the sound, the sensation of your lips and tongue sucking off the slickness there. You held him by the base, briefly.

"You should let me know if you like it," You teased, just before bobbing your head back down.

"Mm-mmnh-! Fuck! Do I-ahh, have to?"

With that whiny tone?

You slowly came back up, careful to leave no spit behind. He was flexing in your jaw, his stomach twitching against your chest. Poor thing wouldn't last very long, he was so sensitive.

"Uhh, yes," You grinned, tongue darting out to lick him all the way down his shaft.

"Fuuuck- whatever- augh, just keep doin' that," His groan broke into a murmur of sorts, against your pussy.

From there, he was starting to find what worked with you. It was curious, and not great, but you didn't need it to be; something about the clingy way he held you, the shift in his attitude, was making you feel like you could take him already.

It made your nails dig, deep into his thighs, your already sparse breath grow a bit shorter.

Though his desperate tone and slow, gentle tongue made some parts of you tighten, it helped your throat relax and take more of him.

He started to come apart long before you wanted to be done.

Breathy, incomplete "Stopstop-sta-aah," every twenty seconds flattered you, letting you take more frequent breaks to ride his face and break in that little metal ball.

You thought about his nickname during one of these breaks. It was one of those instances where it seemed fitting, but for more than just surface-level aggression.

Nothing about him scared you. Not after you showed him that you had no ill-intention. He was like a dog. He wasn't vicious because it was in his nature; he just had a thorn in his paw.

He 'bit' people because they didn't give him a chance.

All of these chances you were giving him proved that he was worth all the effort to get close. It wasn't even much work, in hindsight.

You showed him the mechanics of the condom you brought for the occasion, and managed to talk him through some important sex-centered courtesies.

"So, y'know, you'll want to yield to whatever she's ready for--,"

Kentarou kept you from sitting on his cock, for just a second-- his eyes grew narrow, darting around your face.

"You mean: 'you.'" He corrected.

He looked like he was about to bite through your face.

"Right!" You smiled, growing a bit warm at your inconsiderate slip in language, "Yeah, of course."

Your apologetic kisses, smattered all along his sensitive face and neck, calmed him. His grip softened, slowly, as he became convinced that this was sacred again.

As you started to take him, he forgot all about it.

"Aughh- my go-d," He couldn't stop watching where you came together with a knotted brow, at how slick, and tight, and hot you were.

Your confidence read in the form of slow, rolling motions of your hips, the cloudy look in your eyes as you were finally getting filled up again after such a dry spell of no dick. You put your hands over his, already on your hips, and encouraged him to squeeze harder.

"Mmn-ah-h," You placed your hands on his chest, to keep yourself upright.

It hurt, how much he reciprocated that squeeze, but you quickly learned to like the sting.

Like most everything else, he replicated what you showed him. He started fucking you back, his hips able to take you faster, harder--

The pretty little pout on your lips was enough to make him screw his eyes shut, just to try to settle down.

He was getting so worked up at your tight little cunt that he was forced to let you keep your slower pace, contribute a little less, for fear he'd finish too soon.

His breath was like a stutter- so shallow and huffy that you rubbed your hand across his cheek, to check if he was okay. As you did this, the look in his eyes burned into the back of your skull.

You had seen that somewhere before. Not in someone you knew personally.

"Mm-mnh-!"

You were careful not to look away from it, and you only closed your eyes when it was too intense, too good to see straight.

The way he gripped you was like a lifeline, clawing, leaving rough and raised lines across you-- It wasn't intended to hurt, but more or less to make sure he left you with some lasting impression. He didn't understand that he didn't need to do it.

He couldn't take the concern on your face. Not as you fucked him so close, not with that perfect body taking his cock so well. Nobody ever looked at him with so much warmth.

"Ah! Just- just like that," You gasped, shaky all of a sudden.

"Fuck-," He sighed, suddenly having to remember what exactly he was doing.

He grimaced, face twisted in the pain of trying not to cum, head thrown back so he didn't have to look at you.

But your hand left his chest to grasp him by the jaw- it wasn't hard, but it was enough to move him. You begged him to look at you. You wanted him to watch you, and it looked like he was just short of a confessing something sinful.

Worship.

That's what you saw. In those narrowed eyes were praise, an exaltation of the love you had spared for him.

It filled you with a dizzying, raw confidence- you took in a breath through your nose, getting railed so hard, so close that your eyes started watering.

"Fuck- I'm-Ah--!" You couldn't quite finish your sentence before you crashed over, your body seized up, firm, grabbing and gripping him like you needed, wanted him so bad.

It left him a groveling, panting mess underneath you. He was watching in awe just like you told him to, only allowed to cum after you were done.

He fucked it all out of you, thanks to the timing. Your slow wave-riding kept you pleasant and buzzed as he fucked you hard for his own orgasm.

You even egged him on, breathless, a little smirk only interrupted by a pleasurable wince a couple of times.

"You wanna cum for me?"

"Yeah? Yeah?"

After finishing so loud and performative, nothing could have prepared you for how cuddly and silent he got.

You shouldn't have given into the desire to hug him, because he wouldn't let you move to pull him out.

"Mm-mm," Was pressed in a sloppy kiss against your neck.

Those muscular arms were shaking a little, just barely, around your waist.

"I'm- not going anywhere," You laughed, returning a few light kisses against his temple, "But we need to clean up."

He made it difficult, almost impossible, to separate and throw the condom away. You opted to just tie in a knot and throw it closer to the trash can so you didn't have to get up.

The way he watched you was careful, intense, looking for any opening to get closer to you again.

You finally sighed, smiling, "Okay."

Kentarou pulled you back down to lay next to him at the soonest opportunity. He kept an arm heavy over your chest, his leg kicked between yours, his eyes never leaving the side of your face.

His intensity was what you signed up for, but now, warm under his persistent and acute attention, you realized: maybe you hadn't thought this through the whole way.

☆VIP☆

@integers @paradoxicalwritings @yuchacco

my masterlist. more haikyuu

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ju-nebugg · 2 days ago

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moments from trb that make me lose my mind (pt. 2)

- “once your balls drop, that beard’ll come in great. like a fucking rug. you eat soup, it’ll filter out the potatoes. terrier style. do you have hair on your legs? i’ve never noticed.” ronan lynch i love you so much

- ronan panicking and letting the mask slip when gansey was staring down that wasp

- ronan being jealous that gansey was leaving henrietta with adam and saying “do you not want me to come” and gansey responding with “i would take all of you anywhere with me”

- “the sky as blue as death above him” like WHAT

- “i didn’t realize that ‘midget’ was the adam parrish type” ronan your yearning is showing

- gansey’s smile being “complicated” when he notices adam and blue holding hands

- “…blue’s dress had gotten hitched up and gansey could see a long, slender triangle of her thigh. adam’s hand was braced a few inches away on the seat, knuckles pale with his hatred of flying. there was nothing particularly intimate about the way they sat, but something about the scene made gansey feel strange, like he’d heard an unpleasant statement and later forgotten everything about the words but the way they had made him feel.” (long quote i know but holy fucking shit)

- obligatory “i’m always straight.” “oh, man, that’s the biggest lie you’ve ever told.”

- gansey doing his little indie film main character scream to god in a field

- gansey pointing at people. so much pointing. what a dork. i love him so much

- also his vocabulary. what a NERD <333333

- ronan pissing all over the state of virginia

- gansey calling blue “the table everyone wants at starbucks”

- “i just fed chainsaw but she’ll need it again.” “this,” gansey replied, “is precisely why i didn’t want to have a baby with you.”

- adam’s immediate thought when holding blue’s hand is to worry about crushing her fingers :(

- ronan forgetting to be “cool or surly” when translating cabeswater’s latin, and apologizing over and over again good lord and gansey only responding with “it’s okay, you’re doing really well”

- the whole “coincidence because it wasn’t” trend

- gansey being SO NERVOUS to ask blue to hang out at the church, and then sounding “fourteen shades brighter” when she accepts

- gansey’s arms being super fucking ripped from rowing and blue Noticing

- “aquamarine is a wonderful color, and i won’t be made to feel bad for wearing it”

- “gansey’s voice, when he replied, was a little rough. ‘well, if you killed adam, i’d be quite upset.’”

- “on the inside, he sort of wished he looked more like the camaro. which was to say, more like adam.”

- gansey planning out his “cunning thing to say to blue when he saw her next”

- ronan walking in on adam and blue flirting and immediately shoving chainsaw in their faces. hm.

- “no matter how hard he tried, he kept becoming a gansey”

- “out of the blue?” “i’d prefer if you didn’t use that expression.”

- BUTTERNUT

- blue being reluctantly attracted to gansey’s glasses

- ronan trying so hard to give adam an excuse not to go home, and then going absolutely apeshit when adam gets hurt

- neeve’s voice sounding like a “computerized voicemail menu” (can you tell i’m in love with maggie’s descriptors)

- “gansey was just a guy with a lot of stuff and a hole inside him that chewed away more of his heart every year.” oh god

- ronan carrying all of adam’s possessions into monmouth on his back

- gansey saying things like “excelsior” and “yee haw” for no one but himself

- gansey being miserable and blue liking him better that way

- ‘“crushed and broken,” gansey said. “just the way women like ‘em.”’ correct!

- “cabeswater was just as literal as ronan was” HMMMMMMMMM CURIOUS

- ronan writing “remembered” on the red mustang and walking away without a word shut UPPPPPP

- ganseys first question after adam sacrifices himself being “was i so awful?”

- “they didn’t even have the authority to choose an alcoholic beverage. they couldn’t be deciding who deserved to live or die.”

(pt. 1)

as soon as i can stumble my way to a bookstore, dream thieves will be annotated to hell and back. expect more yelling very soon <3

#ughghghghhhhh everyone read this series right this second #trc #the raven cycle #the raven boys

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auroras-void · 10 hours ago

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*I'm* one of those feminine women who's attracted to this sorta blue collar work.

Have recently been seriously considering making a 180 from CS to working to become a General Contractor. I'm good at desk work, sometimes very good, but the thing is, long term any variation of it just makes me miserable in a way that working with my hands just doesn't. I fucking love working all day on my family's project house.

But the main thing that's stopping me from stepping on up from there and turning it into a career is sexism.

Like CS has it's own problems with it, and there's some crazy shit there, but it's at least getting better. But like, with construction, I haven't even needed to so much as dip my toes in to experience it. 80% men sucks ass, but it's a hell of a lot better than 95%.

My family has a couple of contractors they work with, most of them are friends, but I still see it right away. Like, I'm by no means an expert, I only really know what my dad taught me and what I've taught myself. But I've had them immediately assume I have no experience and try to teach me like I've never held a saw in my life before despite knowing who I am, or I had an electrician ask about the existing wiring and he instantly assumed that my brother knows more than me*.

And those are just these small little things but they piss me off so fucking much, and I can tell how indicative they are of so much more. It's like people see a woman and their eyes just glaze over me. Which on the one hand is very gender affirming but in the other makes my blood fucking boil.

So like if it's that bad just from the briefest of encounters. Being fully immersed in that kinda culture regularly, experiencing the *real* shit out there there, that just sounds like fucking hell.

Particularly given that I'm trans. I would sooner die than tone down my feminity for someone else. And I can pass stealth, even on a worksite, but I *know* there's still gonna be fuckers out there who will just see me as a man who needs to be bullied into conformity, or who think that working in construction somehow invalidates my transition. And, just I swear to god I'ma fucking murder someone if I have to work in that environment.

So... like ... ig... rotting at a desk it is then.

Like, I think I might still take some classes for my own sake and chip away at it. But I don't think I'm going to be looking at any apprenticeships or anything.. I'm.. not ready for that yet...

---

** (I literally got into this shit and got good at it *after* I transitioned ffs, I didn't enjoy it until I realized I could do it for it's own sake, until I didn't feel pressured into liking it to "toughen up" or "act more manly". I am a woman above all else, and no one has the power to overrule me on that.)

*(he's fucking clueless here, he's a poli sci dude who shows up maybe once a month in a fuckin dress shirt, he's your guy for election coverage and statistics, not construction. Meanwhile, I'm literally wearing my toolbelt and a roofing helmet with knee pads and my work outfit. I was literally the person who *did* the little bit of functional wiring repairs in that house).

There was a time when women did these jobs.

Some of them really liked the work and were keen to continue doing it. But society basically told them to collectively "get back in the kitchen" when the men returned home from war.

The tradition of conditioning women, from birth, to have a distaste for these jobs continued. Young girls are discouraged from even taking an interest in the toys representing these occupations. God forbid they put Barbie in the firetruck.

The truth is, most men do not want women doing these jobs. They complain about how dangerous this work is and use that as a metaphorical bludgeon in debates about equality. But when women actually try to be firefighters and combat infantry, they are told they *can't* do these jobs. They are inferior. Those who are hired have to work twice as hard to get half the respect. They are inundated with sexism and misogyny. And many end up quitting, not because they aren't qualified or they don't like the work, but because their male coworkers make the jobs intolerable.

And instead of fighting to make these occupations safer and valued properly, these men just complain that feminists don't know how hard it is and how they don't understand what it's like to risk their lives for no money or benefits. And then rich assholes like Elon stoke these flames because he doesn't want these men to realize this is a class struggle rather than a culture war. And that feminists and "woke activists" would actually be wonderful allies in helping them get better conditions.

Lastly, there are feminists talking about this. There are plenty of non-men interested in these jobs. But I doubt Elon keeps up with very much feminist discourse other than what he invents in his imagination.

Beyond that, feminists can't seem to prioritize stuff like this in the mainstream because they are too busy trying to regain control of their uteruses.

Did I miss anything?

Oh yeah, fuck Elon and fuck "End Wokeness".

#rb #personal

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amorre1989 · 1 day ago

Text

strange visit and a date night

pairing: Spencer Reid; reader; Derek Morgan

word count: 3,8k

story?: After Spencer runs to the grocery store to buy some things to have a date night with you, but, to surprise of both of you, agent Derek Morgan suddenly shows up at his door.

"alright so, eggs, flour, garlic, wine and tomato sauce, is that it?" he asks checking on the list you just gave him.

"perfect" you answer smiling.

"alright, I'll be back in a second" he says, kissing you softly while holding the back of your head gently. You smiled and let him get out of his own apartment. While waiting for him, you decided to do a little cleaning, you had already become a master in "Spencer Reid's ethics for deep cleaning a house", so cleaning the way he likes was easy as pi (as he would say).

While you were trying to get rid of a stain of sauce from a plate you heard a knock, honestly you just walked to the door you didn't even think about the knock not being Spence, so you opened it. There, standing in front of you, was a dark skin man, very tall and ripped, and bald.

You smiled and he looked surprised.

"uhm, I'm sorry, I think I got mixed with the numbers..." he said, checking again the number of the door. "mhm..weird"

"are you looking for Spencer Reid?" you asked, then you saw his face changing from confusion to super confusion.

"I am, yes"

"this is his apartment, he went grocery shopping"

"are you?...staying with him? or are you maybe being tutored or something?" "tutored?" you thought.

"no, I'm his... something" you said, you haven't discussed it yet...so it would be better to just leave it there.

He burst out laughing and held himself in the doorframe, you smiled, thinking it was funny.

"sorry, are you his friend?" you asked

"I'm Morgan, yes, I work with him" he said exchanging hands with you.

"oh!" now it all made sense "yes! of course, he always talks about you, come in please, if you wanna wait for him"

"I do! yes, thank you baby".

You closed the door and waited together for Spence while sipping coffee and chatting, being interrogated too "how'd you too meet?, how long have you been seeing each other?, do you live together?, why hasn't he said anything before?". So many questions you didn't know how far you could answer.

Then, you hear the sound of the keys opening the door.

"inflation is crazy, and old women should learn to calm down, that woman thought I wanted her stupid cat sand and we don't even-" he stood still, observing the image, you, his now 6 month old not girlfriend, and his womanizer attractive coworker, sitting on his couch together while apparently have been drinking the coffee he bought for you.

"hey pretty boy" says Morgan smiling "you didn't tell me you have a girlfriend"

"I uhm...what are you doing here?"

"I wanted to ask you if you- don't avoid my question!" he says standing up, are they gonna fight?, no, he'll finish Spence.

"it's private" he says leaving the bags and looking at you, you just smile, agreeing, it is private...well not so much because everyone knows but it's not like it's official.

"would you like to stay for dinner?" you ask.

"no!" shouts Spence from the kitchen, you and Morgan look at each other and chuckle.

"no, we had a date night planned" he says coming back to you both.

"alright, alright, I'll leave you too alone then...I came because I wanted to ask you where you buy your clothes, I need to wear something like your shirts to an event" he says.

"I'll send you the info later...just leave" he says pushing him out of the house, you laugh.

"goodbye princess" he says and you wave at him.

Spencer closes the door behind him standing with Morgan at the hallway.

"that's a pretty one you have there" says Morgan smiling

"she is, yeah, she's beautiful" Spencer says blushing

"why didn't you tell me?" Morgan asks

"it's just...I wanted to check this was real and not insignificant before saying anything"

"are you gonna ask her to be your girlfriend?" he smiles, he thinks Spence is such a girlfriend dude.

"I will...yeah, but I need to confirm she wants me to be her boyfriend first" he says

"I bet she'll say yes...so, date night huh?". Spence nods "what will your dessert be?" he asks laughing, Spence blushes but smiles and pushes him towards the elevator.

He waves goodbye to Morgan from outside the elevator and then comes back to you (as usual).

When he opens the door you're the first thing to his sight, taking out the groceries.

"so inflation is crazy?" you ask getting closer.

"yeah, and old ladies" he says pouting. "this was horrible, I never imagined Morgan would come to our house".

You smile at the sound of "our" house.

"let's start cooking for our super fun date night" you say and kiss him.

After Morgan leaves, you too start to cook. Tonight's menu is pasta! which you both love, now you're teaching him how to play with the seasonings and discover new flavors, you've made that since you got into Spencer's life, teach him how to experience, not only in cooking, in sports, your culture, places, and a lot of things Spencer always brought up when talking to the team unconsciously.

Now he's chopping garlic next to you, while you open the tomato bottle and pour it in the pot.

"you know? garlic is a great cleaner for the liver, in women it can help with vaginal infections, bloating from menstruation, it can even help the blood flow and It can help reduce bad cholesterol and triglycerides, and increase good cholesterol" he says while putting the garlic into the pot, you smile and kiss his cheek.

"good for me then, how about for you?"

"Garlic may help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease, strengthen the immune system, as it contains antiviral, antibacterial and antioxidant properties, It can help fight skin infections, such as athlete's foot and ringworm, as well as intestinal infections" he says smiling at you.

"sounds good, we should eat lots of garlic then" you say and kiss his cheek. He smiles and blushes and starts to chop some carrots and meat. You open the cabinet and give him another board for the meat, then you open the drawer and give him another knife.

"different knives and boards baby" you say while taking the pasta from another cabinet.

"right" he says, not in a bad mood though, in a way that shows he understands and listens to you.

When the pasta finishes cooking you mix it with the sauce together, then you both set the table and he runs to the living room.

You take a peek but you aren't able to see anything besides the door, then he puts a red candle on the center of the table and lights it on, you smile and he smiles.

"how prepared" you say teasingly.

He smiles and kisses you, so sweet and comfortable, his lips are where yours should be stored always.

You have dinner discussing a book you read together and how pretty both of you look tonight.

"your friend Morgan's cool" you say.

"yeah, he's funny" he says. You wipe a stain of sauce from his lips and he smiles, almost spitting the pasta from his mouth as you laugh, then he laughs along.

"you make me nervous..." he mumbles looking down at his plate.

"why?" you ask giggling.

"you just do" he says smiling, he leans and kisses you.

After dinner comes dessert, which was shared ice cream while laying on the couch watching a movie, you interrogate him with questions like "what would you do if..., or what do you prefer?..." which makes him laugh but think.

That's your night, those are your nights, as usual, filled with love and laughs, while he strokes the skin he's able to reach. Once he told you he was a germophobe, now you can't believe it because how can Spence, the man that's all day with his hands on you, when you cook, when you get dressed, when you're brushing your teeth at the same time, when you're sleeping, even unconsciously, be a germophobe?.

Soft strokes on your bare leg, his index finger stroking your thighs, then your calves that he pulled on his thighs, then kisses, kisses on your legs which he says he loves so much. Suddenly he's above you, soft kisses from the ice cream and the warmness from his skin covered in a shirt.

You can hear the credits of the now finished movie, but that's not something that's gonna be the principal of your attention, you focus on his lips on yours, on your neck, then on the feeling of his fingers brushing against your skin while unbuttoning your shirt to after feeling him kissing and licking your chest, you focus on thinking about how he's leaving marks on you that say "Spencer was here". Morgan was right, you were gonna be the dessert afterwards.

#spencer reid #gublernation #criminal minds #spencer reid x reader #matthew gray gubler

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xhazzz · 18 hours ago

Text

Jake “Hangman” Seresin x Reader

Bagman

warnings: none.

summary: the cute blonde pilot trying to get your number. and you’re Maverick’s daughter, btw.

a/n: hi to anyone who’s reading this, its my first post so i hope you like it. This might be the first part to a small serie about how you and hangman fall in love. Anyway, enjoy. ENGLISH IS NOT MY FIST LENGUAGE, so feel free to correct me if there’s anything wrong :)

READER’S POV:

Being back home felt strange, like traveling back in time. I remembered how, when I was a kid, my dad and Uncle Goose would sit Bradley and me on the piano and play and sing for hours. Now, here I was, standing behind the bar helping Penny on a busy night.

The Hard Deck was packed—classic for a Friday night. The jukebox music blended with the chatter of the crowd. The place had been full of naval aviators for over an hour, most of them still in uniform, using it as a strategy to attract women. I recognized a few faces—besides Bradley’s—since I had snooped through my dad’s files on the pilots he’d be training.

“What do I have to do to get the pretty girl behind the bar to give me another round?” one of the pilots asked, leaning his elbow on the bar and placing his empty beer bottles in front of me.

“Maybe you just need to ask nicely,” I said with a smile, grabbing the bottles to swap them for fresh ones. His uniform tag read “Seresin”. He was one of my dad’s squadron members. I wouldn’t deny it—he was very attractive: blond, green eyes, and every bit the charming prince. “Here you go, handsome.”

“Thanks, sweetheart,” he said, taking the beers but staying put, leaning against the bar more comfortably. “And if I wanted your number, would I just have to ask nicely for that, too?”

“Is that the line you use on all the girls?” I teased, crossing my arms over my chest.

“You think I’m one of those guys?” he said, pretending to be offended as he took a sip of his beer, never breaking eye contact. “Ouch.”

“I know pilots. You all pretend to be charming and different from the rest,” I replied with a sigh, wiping the bar with a rag. “You think you’re irresistible and that every girl falls for you—even with a stupid mustache, like Rooster’s.”

He glanced over, laughing, and spotted Rooster playing pool with the other pilots.

“The problem is, you’ve only met Chicken. I’m way better than him,” he said, making me pause and lean on the bar in front of him. Bradley had already told me about him.

“You must be Bagman,” I said, laughing.

“Hangman, sweetheart,” he corrected instantly, winking. Okay, he was very attractive. “How do you know my callsign?”

“Oh, trust me, I know way more than you think,” I said, winking back before turning to serve some other guys who had come up to the bar for refills.

It took me about five minutes to serve everyone, and the whole time, I could feel his eyes on me as he sipped his beer, patiently waiting for me to finish.

“So, since you know who I am, maybe you could reconsider giving me your number,” he said, leaning closer from the other side of the bar.

“I don’t know. I don’t think you’re ready for it.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw my dad walk in and head straight for the bar to take a seat.

“Hey, darlin’. You know my usual,” my dad said with a smile.

I started preparing his whiskey the way he liked it, aware that Hangman was still waiting at the bar.

“I think I’m more than ready. It’s not every day I meet a gorgeous girl like you,” Hangman said. “All I’m asking for is your number—or at least let me buy you a drink.”

I laughed, shaking my head. Poor guy had no idea what he was in for. I garnished my dad’s glass with a slice of lemon and set it in front of him.

“Thanks, sweetheart.”

“No problem, Dad,” I replied, turning to face the blond pilot with my arms crossed. He took a sip of his beer and nearly choked.

“Dad?” he asked, glancing between me and my father.

“Is there a problem, Lieutenant?” my dad asked, taking a sip of his drink.

“No, sir.”, he replied, pressing his lips together.

“Then you’d better keep your fake charm away from my daughter,” my dad added.

I burst out laughing and leaned over to swap out the pilot’s beer.

“I told you, you weren’t ready for my number,” I said with a smirk before walking away to serve someone else. After saying goodnight to my dad, Hangman finally moved over to the pool table where Rooster and the others were.

“Poor guy, Dad. You scared him,” I said, approaching my father.

“I don’t care. No one’s good enough for my little girl,” he said, rubbing my arm affectionately. “Besides, if he’s really interested, he’ll have to work for it.”

The rest of the night passed quietly, picking up glasses and serving drinks until Penny told me I could clock out. Every now and then, I caught the blond pilot glancing my way, and I couldn’t deny I felt a little disappointed when he backed off after realizing my dad would be his coach. Maybe he was a jerk, like Bradley said.

After saying goodbye to Penny and my dad, I grabbed my denim jacket and stepped out of the Hard Deck. My ears welcomed the silence after the noise inside. As I walked toward the street, I heard someone coming out behind me.

“Hey, wait,” Hangman called out. “Have you reconsidered giving me your number?”

“You never quit, do you?” I laughed, crossing my arms.

“Not when it comes to the prettiest girl in the bar,” he said, mimicking my stance and stepping closer.

“You don’t even know my name—and I don’t really know yours, either, Bagman.”

“Hangman. And it’s Jake,” he said, closing the distance between us and extending his hand.

“Nice to meet you, Jake,” I said, shaking his hand. Mine was noticeably smaller than his, but they fit perfectly.

“Now that we’re properly introduced…” he started, still holding my hand.

“If you figure out my name, maybe I’ll give you my number,” I teased, pulling my hand away. “Goodnight, Jake.”

I took a few steps away and glanced back at him. He stood there, shaking his head and laughing softly, hands on his hips.

“Hope you’re free tomorrow night, sweetheart,” he called out loud enough for me to hear as I walked away.

“We’ll see, Bagman,” I replied.

__________________________________________________________

JAKE’S POV:

“Give me 200 more, Hangman,” Maverick shouted with a grin on his face, standing in front of me. This man was enjoying himself.

“What’s up with you, man?” Fanboy asked after finishing his push-ups. “Is it because of that girl last night? The one who didn’t give you her number?”

“She’s not just any girl, dude,” I replied between sets. “She’s Mav’s daughter.”

“No way,” my friend said, laughing. “Maverick’s daughter is what’s got you so distracted today?”

“Shut your mouth,” I muttered, noticing Rooster laughing at me from a distance.

By the end of the day’s training, we were all in the locker room, peeling off our flight suits. While everyone else was chatting about who should buy drinks tonight, I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Not just because I didn’t get her number—though, to be honest, that didn’t happen to me often—but because she was truly stunning. I knew that the more I saw her behind the Hard Deck bar, the more she’d catch my attention.

“So, Hangman… last night you met Daddy’s little girl,” Rooster teased as he pulled on a clean T-shirt, followed by one of his ridiculous Hawaiian shirts. “Must be the first girl who didn’t fall at your feet.”

“Don’t start, Chicken,” I shot back, slamming my locker shut and leaning against it, arms crossed. “I’m sure that happens to you all the time.”

“You wish,” he said. “At least I can call her whenever I want.”

Rooster closed his locker and started walking out of the room.

“Don’t you dare, Bradshaw. I saw her first,” I said, following after him.

“God, how old are you? Eight? What is this, ‘I saw her first’?”

“Shut up, will you?” I sighed. “I can’t deny I’ve been thinking about her all day, and I don’t even know her name. But you, my friend, are going to help me.”

I threw an arm around his shoulders playfully, and he shrugged me off, pushing me away.

“So now we’re friends?” he scoffed, crossing his arms. “Y/N would never go for you anyway.”

“Y/N,” I repeated, biting the inside of my cheek with a grin. “Even her name is cute.”

“She’s not going to be one of your one-night stands, got it, Bagman?” Rooster said, walking toward the exit again.

“Come on, Bradshaw, I just want to take her out to dinner,” I said, trailing after him.

“Why don’t you ask Mav for her number? I’m sure he’d be thrilled to give it to you.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Chicken. I’ll buy you a drink too if that’s what you want.”

Bradley let out a laugh, raising an eyebrow.

“You’ll buy all my drinks this week, and I’ll give you her number,” he said, challenging me.

“You’re insane. I’m not paying for all your drinking this week.”

“Then I’ll call her and ask her out myself,” he said, pulling out the keys to his old Bronco and heading toward it.

Was it worth paying this idiot for Y/N’s number? Even knowing she might turn me down again—and that her dad would punish me in every damn training session? Screw it. I’d take the risk.

“Deal,” I said, catching up to him at his truck.

“What?” Rooster asked, incredulous.

“I’ll cover your tab this week, as long as you give me her number and stay out of my way, Chicken.”

The idiot just laughed, pulling out his phone and typing on it. Seconds later, I got a notification—he’d sent me her contact info.

“Pleasure doing business with you, Bagman,” he said, climbing into his truck. “And just so you know, I wasn’t planning on asking her out. She’s like a sister to me, you idiot.”

“You’re an asshole, Bradshaw,” I shouted as he drove off.

______________________________________________________

READER’S POV:

I had just gotten out of the shower when my phone started ringing. “Unknown number.”

“Hello?” I answered, putting it on speaker while wrapping myself in a towel.

“Hi, Y/N,” said a voice on the other end. It was the blonde pilot from the Hard Deck.

“How did you get my number, Bagman?”

“It’s Jake to you, sweetheart,” he said. Even though I couldn’t see him, I knew he had that stupid grin on his face. “So, are you finally going to let me take you to dinner?”

“Don’t you ever get tired?” I asked, sitting on the edge of my bed.

“Not when it comes to the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”

I laughed and stayed quiet for a few seconds.

“Pick me up in 30 minutes. I’ll send you the address,” I said, smiling.

“At your service, ma’am..” he replied, and I hung up.

It was just dinner with Hangman. What could possibly go wrong?

#jake seresin x reader #hangman x y/n #jake hangman seresin #jake hangman seresin x you #glenn powell #top gun maverick #fanfiction #top gun fanfiction #oneshot #jake seresin #hangman x reader #top gun hangman

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aropride · 16 hours ago

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fascinated and distressed by chase's disordered relationship with sexuality + his emotions abt his own trauma & abuse

thru the beginning of the show he doesn't even realize he's hot despite being objectively attractive. when he finds out he's hot he then realizes people pretend to be interested in him as a person in order to have sex with him and gets super upset about it

he starts having a bunch of meaningless sex as a coping mechanism when cameron leaves him. and also a lot of other times. whenever something bad happens, basically, he starts going out with a bunch of women, just to feel something, presumably

^to the extent where hes known within the hospital as a slut. and has had sex with an insane amount of nurses. as well as presumably women who are not at his place of work.

he says doing this made him hate himself so he stopped. it's the b-plot for an episode and then he's back having meaningless sex again by the end of the episode

even his coworkers know this about him. and have called it out, masters even says she thinks he doesn't respect women bc, in her words, he's with a different one every few days or maybe he finds comfort in meaningless relationships

goes back to having meaningless sex within weeks of getting stabbed. which is really bad for wound healing reasons too. genuinely it seems like such compulsive behavior for him considering he keeps doing it even when its objectively not only a bad idea but actively dangerous

house even directly says he's "a serial slut" because he's "terrified of intimacy." incredibly accurate assessment

his relationship with his sexuality reads so heavily as someone who thinks they're not good for anything else

see also: dr. fawn response

general passive willingness to go along with anything- when cameron says they should have sex in s3 he's surprised and then he just kinda goes along with it. not bc he didn't want to bc he obviously did, but he's just generally very much someone who does whatever other people want him to do. i feel like he and cameron both tend to seek validation thru sex in an unhealthy way that i'm still gnawing on like a dog with a bone i have to go rewatch s3 to really articulate it though

he has a sort of desperation for praise and approval especially from anyone he views as an authority figure. he does whatever authority figures tell him out of this idea that it'll bring him approval and therefore safety

like no matter what house does or says to him he doesn't argue or retaliate or anything. even when house punches him he collapses on the ground in pain and then just keeps talking about the patient like nothing happened.

the scene in 3.10 after house punches him where he's in the ddx room and house walks in and throws the file at him and chase is startled and tries to pretend he's not. and he looks up with this huge fuck ass bruise on his jaw swallows heavily and pretends not to be upset. and house asks if he got that looked at as if he wasn't the one to give it to him and chase just swallows and says he's fine. dr fawn response :(

#text #i still have a few episodes left Worried im gonna post this and immediately soemthing else will Happen that is relevant here #avian i stole the phrase 'dr fawn response' from u its really good its been bouncing around my head for several days #chase #robert chase #house md #Implication here being i think he was sexually abused at some point. idk if the Writers intended that #but i'm looking at him with my eyes and thinking about him in my brain and it's very clear to me #house spoilers #analysis

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randomfoggytiger · 2 days ago

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The Field Where I Died: The Tragic Flaws of Glen Morgan and James Wong

My thoughts on The Field Where I Died are divided into neat little categories for this episode: frustration for what we were given, acceptance of its existence, anger at Glen Morgan and James Wong's behind-the-scenes revelations, acknowledgment of their feelings, determination that the end product's truth was different than what was originally conceptualized, and genuine understanding of others' love for its creativity and vision.

But those thoughts are inseparable from a broader perspective of Morgan and Wong's work on Season 4.

I'm going to be pulling a lot of information from an interview here; but to save time (and sanity), I'll emphasize the quotes in italics instead of continually citing my source.

"I CAN DO BETTER" VISIONARIES

(Credit to: @sleepyscully.)

It's no secret that Morgan and Wong always wrote-- shall we say-- angsty episodes that drove a wedge in Mulder and Scully's relationship. Sometimes that was executed brilliantly-- Squeeze, Beyond the Sea, Home, Never Again-- and sometimes that was executed... badly. Their bent is the nature of conflict, and its potential resolution; or ideals and tarnished realities; or things we thought we knew and understood but never really did. And those are powerful tools... if, like all tools, they're wielded effectively.

They're the difference between the ridiculous conceit of Musings of a CSM-- an episode that set everyone against each other (we'll get to that)-- and Beyond the Sea-- and episode that wowed Carter (convincing him to keep Gillian on the show), fans, and critics alike.

I've already tackled how The Field Where I Died could work here (how Scully broke the cycle) and here (Scully, snakes, and reincarnation.) I have no qualms with the idea that Mulder and Scully themselves aren't romantic soulmates in every lifetime: that was never the magic of their relationship, to me. And I do love the concept that Melissa serves as a contrast for Mulder: as Morgan says,

One reason why I wrote Melissa that way was my notion that if you’re Mulder and you found your soulmate, the love of all your loves, within the body of this unappealing person, what would you do? I don’t know if we totally explored that. I don’t know if Duchovny would agree with me – he knows more about Mulder – but I think Melissa is the type of women that Mulder would be attracted to. Someone like Bambi in ‘The War of the Coprophages’ is good for a joke, but I don’t really see Mulder going after her. There’s something sad about Melissa. There was a secret within her that was important for him to get at. That mirrors his life, and his own search for his sister. He is a character whose whole drive is to help everybody, but he’s so unsuccessful at that, and with helping himself. All he wants is to find one person that he can rescue – but he’s not too good at it.

No matter how despairing Mulder is, Morgan said, he would not be tempted, like Melissa, to end his life. “I looked at Melissa as if she decided reincarnation might be true, and that if she had chosen this life, at that point she realized, ‘This is a bad idea. This is a miserable life and I’m not getting much out of it. I’m just going back to heaven and I’ll wait for you.’ She wanted out. But Mulder, as much as he’d love to go to the other side to see what’s there, is a life-affirming character. He’s going to keep on looking. He’s not going to quit. Mulder has questions for this life.”

That rings true to me.

What I do have qualms with is that Mulder and Scully's incredible, undeniable, written-into-canon-at-this-point connection (that was established in the Pilot, purposefully, by Chris Carter himself, post here) is boiled down to a destined, warped tri-connection that is part of and secondary to his (chemistry-less) connection with a woman that doomed him in every lifetime. A woman who is an unreliable narrator, and who could easily be swaying Mulder into believing her story because of her own form of mental instability and fragility. It could be a beautiful love story, and it's undeniably beautifully shot (and mostly beautifully written), but it's not Mulder's-- it's Morgan's:

For Morgan, an episode about reincarnation and eternal soulmates was not just a good story for Mulder, but a personal expression of the thoughts and emotions he had experienced during the past year, when his relationship with Cloke grew from friendship into romance (they are now engaged), “I had gone through a failed marriage in which I had really believed,” Morgan revealed. “I had always wanted to believe there is somebody out there for you, and I had been in a situation where that didn’t come true. And I thought, ‘It’s a lie. That person you think is out there for you is a lie.’ But then I met Kristen and I was rejuvenated by that. I really thought. that you can be reborn in this life, not just life after death. I regained faith that there is one person for you, one person who, by being in your life, can motivate you to change the crappy things you were doing before. In this case, it was Kristen. I knew she did a lot of characters and voices, so I wanted to incorporate that.. I wanted to write something for her that challenged her. Also, I wanted to write something for David Duchovny that challenged him.”

("Challenged", indeed.)

And that... that rubs me the wrong way.

NOT EVERYTHING IS ABOUT YOU

I'm not here for Glen's romance, I'm sorry. I'm here to be persuaded that Mulder might have a soulmate, that Scully might be a soulmate, that all three could be bound in this doomed pattern for lifetimes; and if that cycle was broken with Melissa Ephesian's death. (More importantly: does Mulder and/or Scully believe it's broken?) What we were given instead was a memoir to love in general that shoehorned itself into the show without regard for canon.

I'm not angry with TFWID as much as I am other episodes (most of Existence and canon onward, for example) because Mulder and Scully's characterization never strays-- Field may have been carelessly wedged in, but it was skillful with its emotional exploration. Further, the events and facts presented so summarily contradict each other that there's no real "threat" propped up by its existence. And, while I can't excuse the cringe-inducing acting from Morgan's wife, I can explain why DD's turned out so "badly" (read: jarringly):

Bowman’s director’s cut ran so long that Morgan and Wong were forced to trim twenty minutes out of the episode.... Morgan felt that the emotional impact of Mulder’s hypnosis session might have been marred by the cutting, since it interfered with the flow of Duchovny’s acting throughout the entire scene. “I called David and I said, ‘I’m cutting it this way.’ I could hear that he was upset. I know what actors go through to prepare, and then to have to sit in a chair for a couple of hours in front of a bunch of grips and gaffers and people that they hang out with everyday, and cry – it’s just like taking off your clothes. And then to find it’s been cut out. I had to come home and tell Kristen, ‘Look, this part is coming out.’ She was upset and David was upset. Jim was off prepping ‘Musings of Cigarette Smoking Man’ or doing something and I was just very alone.’

(For context, the hypnosis scene was originally twelve minutes long.)

While I might be tempted to sympathize with Morgan, he didn't extend that sympathy equally to his wife or Duchovny, instead turning this combined loss into a one-sided self-pity party.

MULDER THE SACRIFICE, SCULLY THE SAVIOR

I also have a theory that Carter was writing Scully as a savior and Mulder as a sacrificial lamb for the mainline series (until he made William a magic baby and ruined eight years of build-up), post here.

There's a reason that The X-Files is told through Scully's perspective; and that Mulder is often compared to Ahab chasing the White Whale, to a man on a fated quest, to a boy who lost his sister and can't live freely until he has that closure. There's a reason that Scully is Mulder's "one-in-five billion", his salvation ("But you saved me!"), his constant, his touchstone-- and his "human credential", as David Duchovny put it. There's a reason that Carter banked an entire series off of a chemistry and bond he wrote into the graveyard scene, and maintains that that is when Mulder and Scully fell in love (though to what degree is up for fanon interpretation.) There's a reason that the CSM was wrong to picture Mulder as a Christ-like figure, and Scully was right to walk into Mulder's subconscious and rescue him with the truth ("Get up and fight.") There's a reason that Mulder's rescue in Deep Throat underscores his and Scully's partnership from then on out: he in danger-- be it from Jersey Devils, moth men, fated love triangles, Houston bombs, brain surgery, alien abduction-- and she his rescuer (discussed a little here.)

Why is this important? Because The Field Where I Died's concept is not without canonical merit: Mulder running headlong into danger, Scully holding him back long enough to prevent the cycle from repeating. And it ties into the mytharc's ad nauseam question of Fate v. Freewill (posts here and here.) TFWID could even work if you factor in the theory of Scully's immortality (post here.)

But the reality is, Morgan and Wong were not going for canonical adherence.

THE WONDER OF THE SUPERNATURAL, THE FAILURE OF THE HUMAN CONNECTION

Episodic timeline goofs and gaffes aside, the problems in The Field Where I Died lie deeper than which woman Mulder loves and which one he perpetually makes friendship bracelets with. The greatest problem arrives, settles, and stains with the introduction of soulmates: the recontextualization of the infamous MSR dynamic.

Morgan was focusing again on Mulder and Scully as humans; but he fumbled, amplifying then explaining away their "unspoken" as a supernatural connection rather than the meeting of uncannily similar minds:

Apart from personal considerations, Morgan and Wong wanted to reorient the show’s attitude towards the paranormal, which they felt in the third session had been expressed far too often as something evil or wrong. “The paranormal isn’t about death or evil,” Morgan said. “It’s about wonder.” In line with this approach, he and Wong wanted to avoid writing a conventional villain; instead, the principal conflicts take place between Mulder and Scully or are internal, with both Mulder and Melissa haunted by their pasts, in this life, and perhaps previous lives.

Morgan and Wong wanted to zero in on two humans, and all their complications as such, brushing up against the unfathomable, neutral force beyond their comprehension... but then ruined that message, that build-up, by justifying the personal, human aspect-- their connection-- by making it inhuman, unnatural, and supernatural, too. All the while, of course, telling us (and believing themselves) that fans were upset because they introduced another romance for Mulder.

(As a side note: why do I excuse-- for lack of a better word-- David Duchovny's similar sentiments towards TFWID and its reception? Firstly, he, and others, genuinely loves it; and I'm happy for him. To David, it seems, love is more powerful when it is guaranteed for a lifetime and beyond-- the insecurity of someone falling out of love, platonically or romantically, is more powerful than a finite and fickle love that can be lost or tarnished. That being his interpretation-- and Morgan's intention-- I can see why he'd love TFWID. It's a powerful sentiment. More importantly, the man doesn't hold it against fans-- he thinks they misinterpreted its intent-- like Morgan thought they did-- understands why it would disgruntle, but maintains that he loves it, regardless. I can respect that position, even if we disagree; because the heart likes what it likes. I, for one, have my own likes that others might hate.)

LAZILY WRITTEN

The greatest mistake of all-- one Morgan humbly recognizes-- is the faults in the writing. Well... more accurately, that he and Wong failed to keep a complete vision that would (most definitely, guys) translate better to audiences. His ideas, I concede, were intriguing; but like all mediums, the final product is what audiences are left to judge and believe in. For TFWID, it was mixed up before the scenes were filmed, and hacked apart after the footage was wrapped-- so much so, that Morgan kept realizing the magnitude of his mistakes after the fact:

Under hypnosis, Mulder describes a scene of death and destruction from the Warsaw ghetto; in this past life, he is a Jewish woman, Scully is his father, Samantha is his son, and the Cigarette Smoking Man is a Gestapo officer.

Next he [Mulder] becomes Sullivan Biddle, already dead in battle, Scully is his sergeant, and Melissa is there, as Sarah. He has no information on the bunkers, all he sees is death. Morgan wrote these scenes to express the overwhelming sense of loss that Mulder has felt his entire life. The scene was shot in extreme close-up, inspired, Morgan said, by his love of Ingmar Bergman’s films. “To spend three quarters of an act, six or seven minutes, in close-up, on television, is wonderful,” he said. “On TV, we’re always cutting back and forth. We’re always blowing stuff up. Jim and I participate in that. Act Four of ‘Home’ couldn’t be more different than act three of ‘The Field Where I Died.’ I’m proud of that. ”

(And you might have blown it, Glen.)

Morgan’s enthusiasm for the scene was not matched by a good number of the show’s fans, who felt the scene was overwrought, both in the writing, and in Duchovny’s performance. “I think both Kristen and David did a great job,” Morgan said. “David just can’t win. If he walks around going, ‘Scully, I’m going here. Oh. Extreme possibilities,’ everyone says, ‘...that guy just mumbles his way through.’ If he emotes, people don’t want to see that. People can say his acting was bad. I don’t think that it was, but some felt it was obviously ‘acting.’ It’s in a close-up, it’s a long monologue, so it points to acting.

(An unnecessarily long scene that, unfortunately, had to be chopped; and was chopped so badly that, consequently, it lost its nuance and made Duchovny look like a fool by proxy.)

Bowman’s director’s cut ran so long that Morgan and Wong were forced to trim twenty minutes out of the episode, including eliminating one of Melissa’s personalities, a crude loudmouth named Jobee, as well information that supported Scully’s viewpoint, and large sections from Melissa’s and Mulder’s hypnosis sessions

“If we’d focused on Scully’s viewpoint more, we could have thrown up the idea that maybe Mulder’s wrong, maybe this is just wishful thinking,” Morgan added. “I know this sounds really bad, but to me the hypnosis scene is more important than a teaser. I was desperate to cut out time, and in favoring emotional content over plot content, I might have blown it.”

[Morgan]: "... I read a post online asking why Scully was always a man in the past, and I hadn’t thought about that. I wish I had altered that; it was a mistake.”

And it wasn't just TFWID that was littered with inconsistencies in service to Morgan and Wong's vision.

TFWID, "MUSINGS", AND THE BLAME GAME

When Morgan and Wong returned from their other writing projects, they had to decide whether to leave the studio-- angry at its interference-- or take a deal and partly work for The X-Files and Millennium. Obviously they chose the latter, and rejoined after a hiatus of one or two years. In that time, the X-Files had become a hit. But M and W had changes, and plans to execute those changes, in mind: they both thought that the show had strayed from its original vision-- again, the "wonder" of the paranormal and supernatural-- and would be set to (better) rights with their input and direction.

Not all of their work was flawed-- Home and Never Again were tightly written-- and not all of their ideas were self-involved. For example: when joining the show, they and the other writers were told this season's purpose was to drive a wedge between Mulder and Scully, and framed Never Again around that idea:

“My understanding at the beginning of the year was that we were going to drive to a point where Mulder and Scully didn’t trust each other,” Morgan said. His own scenario for plotting out the season was somewhat different from what Carter and the other writers came up with this year, but the fundamental issue was the same: trust. “I would have slowly split Mulder and Scully up over the course of the season, then in the last episode have Scully put Mulder away for his own good, which he would perceive as the ultimate betrayal,” Morgan said. “And then the next season, they would have had an entire year’s healing to go through.”

That's not an entirely unreasonable direction to take, either.

The other writers had other plans. For good or ill, it was Chris's show; and Chris wanted to steer it in a certain direction. Those who joined and added their thoughts cohesively helped construct the mainline arcs that bloomed into Season 4's cancer revelation and Season 5's lack of faith, as well as building up Fight the Future concurrently. M and W, however, felt bruised when their visions were either tweaked or countermanded; and left the experience disgruntled. For good or ill, Chris Carter, Glen Morgan, and James Wong all had good and bad ideas; but only one of them had created the show-- something which the latter two couldn't, at times, accept.

Case and point: I detour to Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man because that episode-- from its conception to its creation to its execution-- explains clearly what led Morgan and Wong astray.

Home was successful, The Field Where I Died much less so. For both episodes, Chris Carter seemed content to let Morgan and Wong do whatever they wanted. However, a shift occurred when fans fell out of sync with M and W's vision (TFWID); and that shift manifested when Glen and James immediately wanted to jump into a CSM backstory, the mytharc domain of CC. Both writers felt the big bad of The X-Files had become gutless; and they wanted to inject some terror into him by killing off Frohike in the end. Per their original vision, the narrative element was excluded and CSM would reclaim his villainy via a Forrest Gump monologue then follow through by gunning down an innocent man. Chris Carter, meanwhile, did not want Frohike killed and did not think that CSM would care to waste time murdering a relative nobody to his life and work. William B. Davis, CSM's actor, was also insistent this version of CSM was not his character; and was so dissatisfied with it that he called up CC himself. Carter tried to appease all sides with a compromise: letting M and W write what they wanted (within limits) and reassuring himself and WBD that this episode wasn't canon:

Davis promptly called Carter to ask if this was the real history of the Cigarette Smoking Man (Carter told him no).

...“The Cigarette Smoking Man’s flashbacks were my idea, because I indeed wanted the episode to be a memoir,” Morgan said. But the idea that Frohike could be the real narrator was a Carter-imposed addition to the script, to make it seem as if the events of the episode were not real. Carter even changed the name of the script, from “Memoirs of a Cigarette Smoking Man” to “Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man.”

[Wong]: ...“The line where Deep Throat says, ‘Maybe I’m not the liar’ was another change imposed on the script so you could make the leap that perhaps this is all. a dream, or the ramblings of Frohike.”

If that weren't potentially explosive enough, Morgan and Wong went behind Chris's back, consulting others on set to create their vision, anyway. When CC turned down Glen's dogged request, twice, to film an alternate ending, Wong took matters into his own, unauthorized hands:

Morgan and Wong felt so strongly about this issue, that they decided to try an end run around Ten Thirteen. They figured that if they filmed the scene their way, and cut it into the episode, it would be so powerful that Carter would have to agree with them. Morgan called Wong up in Vancouver and told him to take a few crew members while everyone else was at lunch, and get some shots of blood spattering on the sign to the Lone Gunman offices. Wong decided against the stealth approach; instead, he filmed William B. Davis pulling back on the trigger, and Tom Braidwood, as Frohike, getting a bullet in the head. Morgan nearly panicked when he heard what his partner had done; he was certain word of it would reach Ten Thirteen down in Los Angeles. His fears were justified.

Carter, meanwhile, allegedly proved how cleverly his fingers always remained on the pulse of the show:

Wong recalled: “I was in the editing room, and I said to the editor, why don’t we print up the B negative? We’ll cut it in and show Chris. [The “B” negative was the negative with the footage of the Cigarette Smoking Man pulling the trigger and Frohike getting shot.] And the editor told me, ‘You can’t do that.’ I said, ‘What do you mean, we can’t do that? Just print the B negative.’ He said, ‘Well, it’s been taken out of the lab. It can’t be found.” In a move worthy of a scene from an X-Files episode, someone had deliberately removed the negative without telling Morgan and Wong, and they had no idea where it was.

(And how do we know this was CC's doing? Because every single actor, writer, and director interviewed always marveled at his inhuman ability to be aware of every single, teeny tiny detail on set.)

Apparently, the incident blew over wordlessly, so much so that Chris asked Glen and James to help flesh out Millennium and called them up, years later, to craft the Revival with him (and sat nearby while Morgan teasingly alluded to the above incident, just a few years ago.)

To tie it all back to The Field Where I Died: the work they created-- while beautifully written-- was sloppily fitted into the show they were hired to write for:

And then there were the timeline inconsistencies, which Morgan and Wong didn’t even know about until the episode aired and Morgan logged on and was bombarded with dozens of internet posts complaining that the events of “Musings” couldn’t be for real, because they contradicted the teaser to “Apocrypha.” In the “Apocrypha” teaser, which is set in 1953, a young Cigarette Smoking Man (already smoking), a young Bill Mulder, and a third man, all in civilian dress, question a horribly burned submarine crewman who had encountered an alien in a flashback shown in the previous episode, “Piper Maru.” Morgan’s version proposed an entirely different history, with the young Cigarette Smoking Man and Bill Mulder, both Army officers, first meeting in 1961 at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The Cigarette Smoking Man doesn’t even smoke, until he takes his first nervous puff late in the first act. Although Morgan and Wong had seen “Apocrypha,” they didn’t remember the events of the teaser. “Okay, we’re sloppy,” Morgan admitted.

To top off the battle of egos, Glen and James laid a portion of the blame at the nameless feet of some faceless "other" rather than taking it upon themselves... or having the guts to point the finger at one person in particular:

“But somebody should have told us. They all read the script. It was the same thing that happened to us on ‘Little Green Men when we showed Samantha’s abduction.'” Added Wong: “If somebody had said, ‘Hey, you know, in the third season, this was said and this doesn’t make sense anymore.’ And we would have changed it. But nobody told us that And the internet people go, ‘This doesn’t make sense,’ and now we look like idiots. We have part of the blame obviously; we didn’t know. We didn’t catch it.”

(It's easy to feel for them and their position... until you realize that there is no evidence-- that I have found-- of them asking if there was a show bible or other resource to consult. Meaning, again, that M and W have to take some blame for this grievance, as well.)

And last but not least, they-- particularly Glen Morgan-- martyred their pain instead of fully accepting and owning their own part in this ever-evolving disaster:

But their disappointment over the changes they were forced to make “Musings of Cigarette Smoking Man” caused them to withhold the ghost story and look for something else. “I had done a lot of research and I had always wanted to write a feature about Lincoln’s ghost,” Morgan said, “But I felt they didn’t want my heart and soul anymore, so I wouldn’t give this one to them."

CONCESSIONS

While these two scalawags contributed their fair share to frustrating and complicated behind-the-scenes shenanigans, their instincts weren't completely wrong, nor all their conduct unrighteous.

They were right on the money with Home--

“Thematically, Sheriff Taylor was doing the same thing that the brothers were doing. They didn’t want things to change,” Morgan said. Scully conducts an examination on the baby, and when the DNA tests come back, she is shocked to find results impossible to believe; they indicate the child had three fathers.

“It was much more controversial than we thought it would be,” Wong said. “Some fans were repulsed beyond analyzing the show; they were just kind of sickened by it. They were pretty turned off. Some people loved it. There was a lot of really, really negative reaction.”

“I have really been stung by that whole reaction,” Morgan admitted. “To me, the show must have become so big while we were away. I think a lot of people hadn’t been exposed to what we did when we were first on the show. They were going, '...what are they doing?’ and we go, ‘But, this is what we always did!’ We had “Squeeze,” or episodes like Chris’ ‘Irresistible,’ these shocking, horrible shows. Act four of ‘Tooms’ I think is on a level with ‘Home,’ so we were going, ‘What is all the ruckus about?’ We figured a lot of people don’t know that earlier stuff, or certain tones that we were going after then.”

-- and Never Again--

“He’s been caught off guard by not knowing something about her,” Morgan said. “A date with someone in Philadelphia, someone he’s never heard of, someone she’s never told him about. He’s unnerved by his lack of certainty about her, with her being wrong about Ed.” The episode ends with Scully telling Mulder firmly, “It’s my life,” and Mulder saying, “But it’s…” and suddenly stopping. Why didn’t he finish his sentence? “It was our way of saying to the other writers, ‘Here’s where Mulder and Scully are, and now the ball is in your court,'” explained Morgan. “That’s what I always felt was our role. In the first couple of years when we were on the show, we might hand it off and then have to pick up the ball ourselves a couple of episodes later, but knowing we were about to leave and would have no input whatsoever, we just said, ‘Well, here’s this thing, how about this? Now it’s yours.’ I feel that Mulder had come to respect that there’s more to this than just him, that Scully is now a part of his life and he’s a part of hers. I think that she learned the danger of exploring the rebellious side, and that it has to be accompanied by responsibility. What she did almost got her killed. So I think that she probably has it a little in check, and yet she’s always carrying the memory of it on her back. It isn’t anything for her to let go of. But next time she’ll be smarter about it, and she won’t let it get so far away from her.”

--and were misunderstood both times.

They were also wrongfully done by here or there--

Morgan had the unhappy task of telling an understandably upset Anderson that the scene she specifically requested had been cut.

Morgan and Wong were frustrated once more when the network decided to move “Never Again” out of its post-Super Bowl slot, and substitute “Leonard Betts,” the episode that was originally scheduled to air after “Never Again.” “Leonard Betts” ended with the wrenching realization by Scully that she might have contracted the cancer that afflicted the other female abduction victims she met in second season’s “Nisei.” This revelation impacted the rationale behind Scully’s behavior in “Never Again” in ways never intended by Morgan and Wong. “I felt horrible,” Morgan stated. “Those are not her motives for her actions in this episode. The motives in ‘Never Again’ are completely altered by posing that she has a disease or a death sentence...."

-- but did wrong themselves, despite unprecedented creative freedom (see the previous section.)

The trouble, it seems, is an inability to differentiate the criticisms they receive. The pearl-clutching, deaf-and-dumb moralizers over Home are not the same crowd scratching (nay, banging) their heads over the blatant and illogical inconsistencies in The Field Where I Died and Musings of a Cigarette Smoking Man. (In fact, the last episode mentioned aged nicely, if the IMDb numbers haven't lied.) And that trouble compounds when they can't understand why a behemoth ship, constantly taking on mounting expectations and schedules, might halt for pit stops but won't change course for inconsistent passengers.

Lastly, while I can sympathize with the emotions both Glen Morgan and James Wong felt for having their work constantly tampered with, that sympathy dwindles when contemplating a few factors:

They were working for someone else's show, not their own.

They were given unlimited creative freedom upon their return, and were only reigned in after their projects continued to falter.

They were butting heads against two factors that the show runner himself wanted to keep ambiguous or under hat: CSM's backstory and Mulder and Scully's lives outside of work.

Having one's spirit crushed by back-to-back disappointments can't solely fall on the shoulders of the network or show runners when the first two ventures weren't touched, tampered, or changed (except for a run time you knew you had going in); and they can't fall solely on fans when the end results provided were lackluster in quality.

And an important last note: I do not feel that Glen Morgan or James Wong acted maliciously-- carelessly, mostly; overly self-involved here or there, most probably. Their focus remained on fleshing out the characters, exploring the ramifications of their actions, and digging up and handing over imperative context for canon-- attempting to iron out Mulder and Scully's split-up, William's adoption, and Charlie's estrangement in the Revival, for example. But they're not saints; and they still have an edge against criticism and interference that clings to and eats away at the quality of their work. In short, we are only glimpsing one aspect of Morgan's and Wong's lives during an intensely frustrating moment in their lives-- but it was important enough to The Field Where I Died's lore that I felt it was crucial to share.

CONCLUSION

For me, I'm glad Morgan and Wong messed up so badly that Gestapo CSM was still alive when canon CSM was born. To me, I think Morgan was way too eager (kindly, I shall reframe from saying 'self-involved') and way too disinclined to ask for necessary criticism for his projects. To me, I'm certain Morgan and Wong cared more about their concepts than the canon they were writing for-- making Mulder and Scully platonic (but could become romantic?) soulmates without providing essential explanation or further clarity. To me, I think focusing only on what Mulder gets out of this arrangement-- instead of exploring how this would affect Scully, as well-- was a cheap maneuver to vehicle in Morgan and his wife's love story (the same impulse that drove Morgan to write Melissa Scully as a romantic option for Mulder, that inspired the death of Frohike, and that butchered Maggie Scully's deathbed in Home Again: the impulse of wanting things his way.) For me, I'm glad this episode was too long, was chopped up very badly, and was ultimately exposed as a vanity project by fans' negative reactions. And, to me, I believe that negative reaction was largely brushed aside-- ignorantly, though not maliciously-- by Morgan because "fans just wanted Mulder and Scully together."

And, lastly: to me, Glen Morgan and James Wong-- while wrong to some extent-- at least take (partial) fault for their vision going awry. We're all human, we all make mistakes; we all learn and grow.

The rest I leave to you to draw your own conclusions.

Thanks for reading~

Enjoy!

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foundtherightwords · 2 days ago

Text

Fallen Empires - Chapter 8

Pairing: Geta x OFC

Summary: Having done the unthinkable to secure his throne, Emperor Geta rules with ruthlessness and paranoia. Now, after escaping an assassination attempt, a badly injured Geta is saved by Daphne, a young widow, who takes him back to her remote village without knowing his true identity. As Daphne nurses the former emperor back to health, attraction blooms between them, and Geta discovers a soft side he didn't know he possessed. But can their love survive his thirst for revenge and his desire to reclaim power?

Chapter warnings: some mentions of violence and sexual content, Geta is still a jerk (he has a long way to go!)

Chapter word count: 3.8k

Prologue + Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3 - Chapter 4 - Chapter 5 - Chapter 6 - Chapter 7

https://archiveofourown.org/works/60533293/chapters/157633438

Chapter 8

Geta overslept. He didn't wake until the sun baked the hut into an oven and the heat jolted him out of bed.

The front room was empty. Daphne was nowhere to be seen. She certainly wasn't in the hut, and she wasn't in the garden. Not a breeze stirred outside. The goats were lying down in the shade of the laurel trees, too lethargic even to sneak some bites of the herbs spread out on a clean cloth nearby to dry in the sun. The only things still moving were the bees, busily moving amongst the flowers, oblivious to the heat. The donkey was gone from his usual spot. Had Daphne gone to the village then? But she had just made her rounds the other day... She was probably avoiding him out of shyness. And who wouldn't be shy after a night like that?

His breakfast was on the table as usual, and as he ate, he recalled the night with a smug sense of triumph. So he'd brought her to her knees after all. Or, rather, to her back. And he would have her on her knees before long, he decided, feeling an echo of the fire from the previous night stirring in his loins again.

It wasn't that Daphne was particularly good at bed-sport. He'd had some camp followers in Britannia and Germania that were much better, and as for the whores of the provinces on his travels, especially in Alexandria, well... they could do things that made one's eyes water just to think about. But it was the way she'd come to him, so timid and yet so bold. Oh, he'd had plenty of women who came to him willingly enough, but they had always been so confident in their skills as seductresses. There was something rather sweet in Daphne's gracelessness. It was as if she had been so eager to give herself to him that she didn't care how she did it. It flattered him.

If he was perfectly honest with himself, he would admit that he wouldn't have had the courage to approach her had she not come to him first. But she had. She was just a woman, after all. Under all that lean flesh and hard bones and dour expressions, she was just as soft and warm as any of them. All his fears and doubts about her, thinking of her as a goddess? Nonsense. It was simply the shock of seeing a naked woman again after so long. That and the beauty of the moonlit night had overthrown his senses, it was all.

By Jupiter, but it felt good to lie with a woman again after all these months. It felt good to know his injuries had not robbed him completely of his strength. True, she had left the room in a bit of a huff afterward, when he refused her kiss. But he had never allowed anyone to kiss him, nor had he ever kissed anyone, on the mouth or anywhere else on the body, for that matter. The mouth is noble and sacred, used for talking, commanding, and praying, and so it must be pure and immaculate. In Rome, he had often scoffed at the senators' habit of greeting each other with a kiss. Effete, conniving lot! He much preferred a soldier's straightforward way of greeting, by clasping each other's hand. You greet a person and get the measure of him at the same time.

Geta did some light exercises until it got too hot to move. Daphne didn't come back at lunchtime. He found some cheese and olives and ate them with the last of the bread. It was too hot in the bedroom with its tiny window, so he collapsed on the cot and cooled himself with a fan. The pillow smelled of soapwort, and when he caught himself nuzzling it, he frowned in irritation and flung it away. If the woman didn't see it fit to tell him where she'd gone, then he certainly wouldn't moon after her like some lovesick calf.

When she didn't come back at sunset, his irritation turned to concern. Had there been an emergency in the village? No, he would've heard the bell then. Had she had another run-in with her father?

Geta went out to the top of the path, peering into the twilight. Half of him wanted to look for her, while the other half hesitated, afraid of being seen in the village, afraid of being lost amongst the hills. But if she didn't come back by the next day, he decided, he would have to risk it.

Just as he thought this, a soft bray sounded amongst the rock, and a moment later, Daphne's familiar figure appeared on the path, clad in her usual dark stole, leading the donkey with one hand.

The sight of her sent a great relief through him, and he almost ran down the path to meet her, only he stopped himself in time. It would not do to let her know how much he'd thought of her, how much he'd longed for her. He turned on his heel and returned to the hut, hoping she had not seen him. And thus, when Daphne came in, he was sitting at the table idly examining her jars of herbs and potions, looking for all the world like he'd just had a relaxing day by himself.

"There you are," he said with what he hoped was a cool, uninterested air.

"Are you having trouble with your bowel movements?" Daphne asked.

"What?"

She nodded at the jar he was holding. "That's for softening stools."

Geta reddened and dropped the jar on the table. "I wasn't looking at the jar," he stammered. "I was appraising your penmanship. You still need a lot of practice."

But Daphne was no longer listening. After a quick, frowning glance at him, she unwound her stole and hung it up. He gulped. Underneath she was wearing only a short, sleeveless tunic, loosely belted about her waist. Give her a bow and quiver, and she could pass for the hunting Diana.

No. First Aurora, then Luna, and now Diana? He must stop thinking of her as a goddess. She was nothing. Just a peasant woman.

"You've been to the village?" he asked, for want of something to say.

"Yes. Sorry I'm so late, but I brought dinner."

She unpacked her basket, which contained bread, some grilled meat, and juicy figs, and they sat down to eat. The food was good—it was the first time Geta had had meat and fresh fruits since he came here—but the atmosphere was tense. Their night together stood between them like some enormous thing. It remained lurking for now, but any mention of it would make it spring to life, sucking up the light and air in the room, like a spirit that only came into being when its name was spoken. Neither of them spoke. A heavy silence hung over them.

Several times Geta caught Daphne glancing at him, not with that searching look she'd given him by the cistern, but with sadness and longing. When their eyes met, she quickly looked away again, her cheeks flushed with more than just the heat. He thought of her the night before, not looking at him, her body fluttering under his hands as she guided him to take her clothes off. He thought of her staying away for a whole day, only to come back with a feast—or as close to a feast as she could—for him, and he grinned to himself. She's feeling shy, that's all.

After dinner, Daphne cleared away the plates and brought in the herbs, now as dried as straw. She stood at the table and sorted through them, some to be grounded into decoctions and brews, others tied into bundles. Seated at the doorway of the bedroom, Geta watched her, feasting his eyes on her elegant arms, round shoulders, and shapely calves.

"Come to bed," he called to her. He had quite forgotten his resolve to appear cool and uninterested. He was sure now that Daphne wanted him and was only too shy to act upon it. That husband of hers had died a long time ago; Geta would've gladly bet that he had been an oafish farm boy, unable to give her the true pleasure of marital bliss. Well, Geta was not well versed in marital bliss either, but he knew pleasure, at least his own. He could show her...

"You go to bed," she said without turning around. "I'm busy."

She was the one that sounded cool and uninterested, and doubt crept into his mind. She had been a widow for eight years, and she lived alone, with no male relatives to protect her. Could it be that he had not been the first man since her husband to share her bed? He banished the idea. The way she'd moved the night before wasn't like a woman who had had a lot of experiences. And even if she'd had other lovers, none of them were here, were they? He was.

"I mean, come to bed with me," he said.

"I need to finish up here. And you need your rest."

It wasn't exactly a rejection. She lifted her arm to hang the herbs on the hooks dangling from the rafters. The short hem of the tunic rose, showing a glimpse of her thighs, and he thought he would go mad with want. He got up and walked across the room, slowly, for he was still prone to shortness of breath, until he came up behind her. "Come to bed," he said again.

She bent over the herbs, patently ignoring him. He reached out and ran the back of his fingers over her arm, his touch light as a feather. Her breath hitched, but she didn't move away. Emboldened, he moved closer, brushed away the tendrils of hair on the nape of her neck, and pressed his nose there. Her very skin seemed to be permeated with the fragrance of soapwort, along with the sweetness of honey and the warm smell of herbs and sunshine, and he breathed in deeply, letting her scent fill his nose until he became quite giddy with it.

Daphne stood still. From the heaving of her shoulders, he could feel her breath coming out in slow, shaky puffs. He moved even closer and wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her to him, so she could feel how much he wanted her. She leaned back, so his face fitted perfectly into the crook between her neck and her shoulder, and let out a sigh.

When he said "Come to bed" for the third time, she finally turned around to face him.

"Are you married?" she asked.

The question took him by surprise. "Would you not come to bed with me if I am?" he asked.

"Of course."

"That didn't stop you last night," he pointed out.

She blushed a little, looking for a moment so sweet and maidenly that it took all of Geta's willpower not to take her there and then. "That was different," she said.

"How?"

"I didn't know then. I didn't think to ask. I'm asking you now."

"You are aware that I could very well lie to you and you wouldn't know." As I'm already lying to you, he thought.

"Yes. But this gives you a chance to tell the truth. If you did lie, it would be both to me and to your wife. I wouldn't be your knowing accomplice."

Her reasoning was odd, but he couldn't deny that it made a certain amount of sense. And either way, he wouldn't have to lie to her.

"No," he said, relieved to be telling the plain truth for once. "I'm not married."

There had been plans and talks of marriage. But he hadn't paid attention to any of the terrified young girls offered up to him. Though he knew that having an heir would help to secure his throne, he'd been too busy sowing his wild oats, not wanting to be tied up to a wife just yet. And even if he'd had a wife and child, there was no guarantee that they would have been safe from his enemies, so why risk it?

Would Daphne be safe once he was found? He shivered and drew her close, trying to banish such thoughts from his head. She put her arms around him. He undid her belt and tugged at the tunic, pulling it over her head. She let him, giggling quietly as the garment got stuck at her elbows, forcing her to wriggle out of it. After tossing the tunic aside, he buried his nose in her neck again. How smooth her skin was, how soft and cool her body was, as it wrapped around him like the water of the stream that had brought him to her, washing away his dark thoughts. Would that she could wash away his crimes as well...

He tried to pick her up, only he was still too weak. His arms slid from her and his legs crumpled. His face burned up, ashamed at his frailty, but Daphne didn't seem to mind. Smiling, she helped him into the back room, where they collapsed onto the bed.

She drew him down to her, seeking his lips. By reflex, he twisted away from her.

"What's wrong?" she asked, full of concern.

"Nothing," he said, tossing his head to get rid of the gentle hand cradling his jaw. "Just don't do that."

She gazed at him, her green eyes appearing dark gray in the dim room, but he could still see the expression in them—there was curiosity there, and sympathy, and something very close to pity as well. It made him squirm. He, the terror of the barbarians, he who had led the army against the Caledonians, the Alemanni, and the Parthians, he who had plundered the entire city of Alexandria, was now squirming under the gaze of a woman, a near-illiterate peasant. He couldn't have that.

"Turn around," he told her.

Daphne frowned. "What?"

"Turn around. Lie on your belly."

Her eyes widened in understanding. "But I wish to look upon your face," she said.

"I don't. Turn around."

She raised an eyebrow at his gruff tone. "No," she said flatly. "I don't like that."

His embarrassment turned to anger. He seized her arm, gripping it tight, which meant as tight as he could, his hands still not as strong as they used to be. "You will turn around," he said through clenched teeth.

"I will not," she said, her voice hard. "I'm not some camp follower for you to order about. If you can't take no for an answer, then forget this." She pushed him away and got out of bed.

"Get back here!" he shouted.

"Or what?" She whirled around to face him, a cold glint of anger in her eyes. "This is my house! I only let you stay here out of the goodness of my heart. If you try to force me or harm me in any way, I can kill you. It would be much easier than saving you, believe me!" Having uttered that threat, she returned to the front room, leaving him unsettled, unsatisfied.

Damn her. Damn her to Tartarus. He jumped from the bed to chase after her, to press her against the rough mud-brick wall of the hut and show her what happened to those who dared to defy him, but his legs got tangled up in the sheets. By the time he went to the door, Daphne was blocking it on the other side by the bench.

"Open this door," he said.

"Go to Hades!" came Daphne's reply, as she dragged a trunk on the bench.

"Damn you, woman! Am I a child to be locked in my room whenever I misbehave?" His father had used that often, but only when Geta had been very small. Once he was grown enough to cease crying and screaming in the dark—though he never really ceased being afraid of it—his father had moved on to other, more effective forms of punishment.

"I will stop treating you like a child when you stop acting like one!"

Geta pushed at the door. It budged, though only very little, showing him a sliver of the front room. Daphne was standing there with her knife.

"Get back," she said. "Or I'll gut you like a fish." Her face was cold, and the knife glinted in her hand. He had no doubt she meant what she said.

With an enraged scream, Geta threw himself at the door at the same time that Daphne pushed the bench and the trunk back to their place. The door slammed into him with such a force that it knocked the breath clean out of him, and he went sprawling on the floor.

Panting, he picked himself up. His chest was tight again and cold sweat was breaking out on his forehead. He fell back down on the rough linen sheets, trying to catch his breath, raging at his own helplessness.

***

When he managed to fall asleep, he dreamed of his brother.

It started as the same dream of the fiery Phlegethon, the one that had been haunting him since Martialis's attack. The same faceless yet horrifyingly familiar figure rose from the flames of the river and walked toward him across the black sand, while he was pinned to the spot, unable to move, unable to look away. Then the light from the flames shone on the face, and features coalesced and took shape across the slab of skin. Features that Geta knew well. Those of his brother. Caracalla.

He was no longer the ghostly figure of Geta's fevered nightmares, but Caracalla as he had been in life, with his reddish blonde wig, powdered face, and smirking mouth to show off his gold tooth. There had been a time when Geta had looked like that, too, before he changed his image.

Geta had not dreamed of his brother for some time. Back in Rome, he'd dreamed of Caracalla almost nightly. He'd had to rely on poppy juice to ensure a dreamless sleep, though he hated how heavy and sluggish it made him the next day. While marching with his troops, he had purposefully pushed himself to the point of exhaustion, so that when he collapsed into bed, sweet Morpheus would take him in mere heartbeats, leaving no time for dreaming. Ever since he stayed with Daphne, those dreams had stopped, wiped out by the pain of his injuries and physical fatigue. Perhaps Daphne's questions earlier in the evening had brought the memories back, or perhaps his impotent anger had ignited the old rage. Whatever it was, Caracalla appeared in his dream now.

Suddenly Geta found himself able to move. He sprang at Caracalla. His hands were around Caracalla's throat, thumbs on windpipe, squeezing and crushing until Caracalla's eyes bulged and his face turned purple under all the powder and rouge. Caracalla swatted feebly with his arms, unable to push Geta off—

—then it was no longer Caracalla he was strangling, but their mother, and he wasn't strangling her. She was crying and screaming "Why?" over and over, cursing him, sending all the Furies after him, while snot and tears were running down her face. He knew then, that this was a dream, for she hadn't cried at all when he killed Caracalla. He hadn't allowed her to. No one is allowed to mourn a tyrant.

Yet knowing this was a dream did nothing to stop it. The dream continued. And in the dream, his mother slowly advanced upon him, her arms outstretched, and in them was—

—Caracalla again, his eyes blank, his blood-stained lips distorted in a horrible smile. He was dead, quite dead.

—no, he wasn't dead. Because he was whispering, while still smiling that horrible rictus smile, "How does it feel, brother? To be at the receiving end of a knife?" There was a sharp pain between his ribs, and Geta looked down to find the knife embedded in his torso, and it wasn't Caracalla's dead face looking at him, but the face of Martialis, his murderer, twisted in hatred.

He struck at Martialis. His arms got tangled in something, and he was unable to move. They must have captured him, his enemies, and were now torturing him. He struggled against those invisible bonds with a desperate cry.

"Shh," a voice said in his ears. The bonds tightened around him, but somehow they didn't cut into his skin. They were soft, warm, comforting. "Shh, it's all right," the voice continued, and it was soft and warm and comforting as well. "You're all right. I'm here."

Geta fought through the fog of the nightmare and emerged into the waking world. It was someone's arms around him, a woman's. It was a woman's voice speaking to him. Daphne. It was Daphne. She had gotten into bed with him and was now rocking him against her, trying to quiet him.

"You were having a bad dream," she said, wiping the sweat from his forehead with her hand. Her touch was so natural and so reassuring in that very naturalness, as if this was something she did all the time, and he just wanted to sink into that embrace, to forget everything, including himself. "It's all right now."

Her touch cleared the last of the fog from his mind, and he went cold with fear. Had he said something in his dream, something damning, something that gave her a hint of his true identity? No, her manner didn't indicate anything of the sort. Still, he couldn't risk it.

"Leave me," he said, his voice sounding rough and strange even to his own ears. Her arms around him stiffened, but she didn't move. "Go!" he said again, raising his voice.

Without another word, she left the bed and the room, closing the door behind her, leaving only a memory of her soft, cool hand like soothing water over his fevered brow.

Alone again in the dark room, Geta came to a decision. This would not do. It was one thing to rely on Daphne to heal his body; he could even accept relying on her for his sexual needs. But relying on her to soothe his soul, to put his heart into her hands as he'd almost done, was too dangerous. It distracted him. Why, he'd hardly thought about his plan for revenge at all that day, so preoccupied he'd been with her. Before, he'd had no choice but to stay, having been on death's door, but now that he was well—or almost well again—there was no reason to remain. It was time for him to leave.

Taglist: @sheneedsrocknroll92, @justnobodynothingmore, @barcelonaloverf1life, @myotakureprieve, @flawssy-227, @itsrainingbisexualfrogs, @deliciousfestsalad (if you want to be tagged or removed, let me know!)

#joseph quinn #joseph quinn fic #gladiator 2 #emperor geta #gladiator 2 fic #emperor geta fic #geta #emperor geta x ofc #geta x ofc

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