#let's never talk about how many wips I have
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thevikingwoman · 7 months ago
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15 Lines of Dialogue Rules: Share 15 or fewer lines of dialogue from an OC, ideally lines that capture the character/personality/vibe of the OC. Bonus points for just using the dialogue without other details about the scene, but you're free to include those as well!
Thank you for the tag @coldshrugs and @impossible-rat-babies!
tagging: @myreia @roguelioness @janzoo @consulaaris @scionshtola
@ubejamjar @gatheredfates @bearlytolerant @gefiltefished and everyone else who wants to!
(sorry for the many paragraphs attempting to working around tumblr's new limit)
These are all Meryta / ffxiv, from published fics and WIPs, you also get a peak at my awful wip naming (contrasted with my struggles with fic naming 😂). This was more picking lines I liked and it's good to see your OCs voice? Actually helpful!
“I should have foreseen the danger. The beastmen, the Primal... those are not simple problems.” She can hardly forget it, leaping through the sky. She does not want to think of it, but if the time comes, she will deal with it. She folds her hand in his and reaches to kiss him. “I doubt your father expected you to deal with a Primal, Emmanellain.” - Reprieve
 Here we go again, she thinks, do you really want to do this again? “You should invite him to dinner,” she says out loud instead. - Distance
“Sorry, that was unjust of me. I’m just very worried about my friend. I spend a long time worried about where she was and if she even was alive and now – now I worry more.” - Wrong
“Emmanellain. You're handsome enough on your own. Stop it.” - The Perils of Ishgard Publishing
“You’re injured,” she murmurs. - Under Familiar Stars
“I wouldn’t say no to a game,” she says, tilting her head towards the cardplayers, and winks. “Here I thought I could offer your something better, in ways of entertainment.” “And what may that be, Tansui?” - Passing Through
“I wish I could stay,” she says, when she’s done with the second portion, “but – and I should help with cleanup,” she continues as she puts her dish in the sink, and he waves her off. - Solace and Breakfast
“I wanted to write this letter, but – words are eluding me.” “A letter? For whom?” [Alisaie asks] “It’s not important.” - Letters and Longing
“Yes. No. I am not.” - wip (relationship talk)
“I want – Tansui.” He bucks his hips into her hand and sucks [er nipple]. His hand on her hip, holding her in a bruising grip. She sinks her nails into his shoulders. “I can’t wait. I need you.” - wip (relationship talk)
“Come,” she says and grabs both Yugiri’s and Lyse’s arms. “We should have time enough to taste some food, and we can ask the trader all the same. If he doesn’t know him, we can spilt up after.” - wip (the steppe)
“I know how babies are made, if that is what you ask, Alphinaud.” - wip (after roadtrip)
“I am. What are you going to do about it?” - wip (another Tansui tryst)
“It was – “ meant for me, but she can’t voice it. Not now, and perhaps never. “—heroic,” she settles on. “He saved us all.” - wip (emmy grief)
“Maybe I’m not telling.” Tansui chuckles. “Well, if you’re so stuck on pirates, perhaps a handsome pirate has rescued a beautiful princess.” “And what will the pirate ask for in return for such a dashing rescue?” - wip (tansui roleplay) good bye we're never talking about this wip again
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nereidprinc3ss · 3 months ago
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hourglass
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in which spencer disappears from fem!reader's life entirely for three months, right as it seems they were finally about to make things official. when he comes back they reunite, all the while knowing things can't be the same as they were.
18+ (smut, angst) warnings/tags: oh god so many. NOT canon compliant in the slightest, i make shit up, softdom!spence, nipple stuff prob, fingering, oral f receiving, piv sex, unprotected sex, pet names, tara mentioned, depression, mentions of trauma cause its the prison arc duh, passing mentions of alcohol, mentions of spencer losing weight, reader mistakenly thinks spencer tried to kill himself BUT ONLY FOR A SECOND, where is diana reid, nobody knows or cares, probably filming glee, optimistic ending a/n: haven't posted smut in forever but this wip required it and the angst was so angsty i just had to finish it. it was started in jan or feb and subsequently added to and changed months apart and then edited so the writing quality varies from section to section which i apologize for. originally based on good guy by julia jacklin... also the odyssey by homer? can't really explain that one you'll just have to see for yourself anyway byeeee ilysm!!! PLS tell me if you liked it! or if you hated it! but preferably if you liked it! MWAH! wc <12k
It’s been about three months since you last saw Spencer Reid.
About three months since you had an early Valentine’s Day celebration (even though you weren’t a couple) complete with champagne (even though he doesn’t usually drink) and slow dancing (even though you swore you’d be terrible and he spent the first ten minutes laughing at you as you stepped on his toes.)
About three months since you finally settled your head on his shoulder and let the warbling vinyl carry you somewhere distant as the two of you danced slow circles on the parquet floor for what felt like hours.
You’d have liked him to stay later that night. You’d have liked him to stay all night if you were being honest with yourself, but at 11:45 he gently pulled away and told you he had to go.
“Curfew?” you joked, the corner of your mouth lifting a little and you hoped you were hiding your disappointment well.
“Actually, I’m going down to Texas for a few days to speak with one of the leading doctors in experimental Alzheimer's and dementia treatment. I’m going to see if he can get my mom into a clinical trial. I leave early tomorrow morning.”
“Oh my god, that’s amazing, Spencer! What are you doing still here? You should be at home getting ready to go!”
A rosy blush stains his cheeks and he looks down at the ground, laughing that little self-deprecating laugh of his. It makes your heart dance to see him so happy, makes you want to wrap your arms around him and never let him go so that he knows how much you absolutely adore him—but you settle for an affectionate squeeze where your hands have come to rest on his biceps.
“I wanted to see you tonight because I won’t be here for Valentine’s Day... but I still really wanted to spend it with you,” he admits meekly.
If before your heart was dancing, it is now melting.
The dreaded ‘what are we’ talk has been lurking in the dark corners of every conversation you have with each other lately—at least, in your mind it has. What you have with Spencer is not easily defined, and near impossible to explain to your friends—you act like a couple, you go out on dates, he introduces you to his team like you’re his girlfriend without ever putting it into so many words—but this validation that your pseudo-relationship might be evolving is better than any flowers he could have gotten you (although the peonies he brought will look very nice on your bedside table.)
“Four whole days... what will I do without you?” you whisper, brushing a hand along his face, and your chest aches with the heavy truth of it—despite the fact that he often is gone for stretches about that length. They don’t ever start to feel shorter.
“Well, you can start by reading that copy of The Odyssey I annotated for you.”
“Depressing,” you admit. “And a little ominous, considering you’re about to embark on a hero’s journey.”
“I think you’ll like this one,” he smiles.
You chew on your bottom lip, looking up at him as you think.
“Give me something to look forward to,” you say, earnestly.
“I—well, honestly, I just really want to kiss you and I’ve wanted to for a long time now and, you know, if that’s something you’re maybe also interested in then we could, uh, figure out a time to—”
“You want to kiss me?”
“Wh—you couldn’t tell?” Spencer says, like he can’t believe it.
As if on reflex, you lunge up and capture his lips with your own. It obviously catches him by surprise, but when you lower from your tiptoes he follows you, pulling you in closer and holding your face in his hands.
It’s too natural, too right, to be exhilarating. There’s no rush of adrenaline—it's more like stepping into a hot bath or warming your freezing hands at a fire. Like pieces clicking into place. It’s a relief.
You breathe into it, letting more and more of yourself melt against him. He keeps coming back to you deeper and deeper like a rising tide, and you want more than anything to keep getting closer to him—but then he stops. He stays close enough for you to breathe his air, but dodges your kiss gently before supplanting it with a gentle one to the corner of your mouth.
“I really have to go,” he breathes, before moving away from your mouth to kiss your forehead and speak softly against your skin. “If I don’t leave now I’ll be here all night.”
Which is exactly what you want, and the implication does little to make you want him less. But you care about him too much to be so selfish.
At some point, his hands found their way into your hair, and you gently grab his wrists.
“Incentive for you to come home.”
Nearly three months since that night.
At first when he stopped answering texts, you’d assumed he just had too much going on down in Texas. Which you could understand—you knew how stressful this situation with his mother was.
Even when four days came and went without even an alert from him that he was back in town, you thought, okay, maybe he’s been called away on a case. It wouldn’t be the first time he’s disappeared because of his work. But even then, he’d at least text you enough information so that you would know he was alive. Now, radio silence.
So you tried not to be clingy. You tried to act like an adult, to focus on school and your life outside of Spencer, but when Tara Lewis cancelled your weekly meeting due to an “unforeseen work-related emergency”you called her immediately. Tara was something of a mentor, and it was she who had connected you and Spencer to begin with. You had met the other members of his team by that point, yes, but none who you knew as well as Tara.
When she had informed you that Spencer had been arrested in Mexico and was now facing prison time for murder, you laughed.
Laughed until you realized her end of the line was silent.
Realized it was not at all a joke.
In a catatonic state of tranquility, you asked her for more details. Beyond assuring you of his innocence, she couldn’t (or more likely, wouldn’t) provide them. Asked where he was now. Asked all the right things that made sense to ask.
Then you hung up and had a panic attack because Tara said something about 25 years and you saw Spencer evaporate from your future like an apparition.
Slowly, you felt him evaporating from your past, too. Those memories from the night he left, became visions of you swaying with a ghost. Holding nothing but light between your hands as you kissed the peony air of your apartment.
He doesn’t want to see you, she had said into the phone one night, her tinny voice cutting in and out. You’re not on his list of approved visitors.
“You asked him about me?” you had whispered, curled up on top of your made bed in the dark.
I tried. I’m sorry. I’ll call you when I know more.
All your days melded together like a muddied smear of paint. Suddenly you felt you had nothing to look forward to. No anchor, no goal. Yes, a PhD... and then what?
The only thing that punctuated one 24 hour period from the next was the time you spent crying because Spencer was in prison and he didn’t want to see you and by the looks of things you may never see him again. When you weren’t crying, you were thinking about how your life was a big cosmic joke. An unfortunate statistical anomaly that didn’t mean anything to anyone else, and that you couldn’t do anything about.
That copy of The Odyssey, which wasn’t even bound and instead was a thick stack of printer paper organized by a single black clip, became something of a manifesto for you—a tome that your poured over, reading and re-reading each note in the margins, each word beautiful and imbued with meaning because you knew Spencer had selected every single one specifically for you. You traced the letters reverently, because in a way this was the last thing he had said to you—about Lattimore’s faith to the original text, Merrill’s strict use of dactylic hexameter, the stylings of Wilson and Lombardo, and how he thought you would enjoy Hammond’s prose just as much as he did.
Day by day it was becoming more prophetic than fictional, and you allowed yourself to sink into madness. You would rather be a deluded zealot than be nothing at all.
He didn’t want to see you.
He might as well have been dead, for all that you were grieving him. And you started to hate him, because he wasn’t dead, but wouldn’t do you the kindness of proving it. Like a festering wound, scratched open day after day so as not to ever heal, you had to live knowing he was less than an hour away. So no, you weren’t exactly over it. You lived day by day, waiting for the occasional call from Tara to keep you updated on Spencer, but either she didn’t want to share much about how he was doing, or he had specifically barred her from doing so, because she was always sparse on the personal side of things. That thought actually lifted your spirits, because it meant he was at least acknowledging your existence in some tiny way.
But your routine was becoming more regular, and so you staid on top of your classes and your non-Reid related meetings with Tara once a week, and you learned to dip your toes into existential dread and the oily black pool of depression every night without ever fully submerging yourself. You learned hope, because it was pretty much all you had, and the BAU had confidence that they would get Spencer out one way or another so you did too.
So you didn’t really think about it when you missed a couple of calls from Tara some evening in May. You were preparing for finals and had way too much on your plate academically to think about anything else which was a welcome relief so you fully embraced it. I’ll call her back tomorrow, you think, as you clean up from dinner before going back to the living room where your textbooks and papers are completely covering every available surface. Maybe I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life after school, but I’ll be damned if I don’t even make it that far.
Hours later, well into the night, you’d all but forgotten about the calls. A knock at the door takes you a bit by surprise, and you frown as you stand again, tugging your Georgetown sweatshirt down over your shorts as you shuffle to the entrance of your apartment. You’re not expecting anyone, so you crack the door, peering around the edge of it.
And you couldn’t even consider trying to hide that shaky inhalation of dead air when you see Spencer standing on the other side.
Surely you’re hallucinating.
Surely this man in front of you who looks like he just got back from a day of work didn’t spend three months in prison pretending you didn’t exist.
He looks the same. Hair a bit longer, maybe—and gaunter even more than is normal for him. 
But it's him.
You can’t think about the apprehensive look on his face—you can’t think about the impossibility of him being here. You can’t think at all. Without your explicit permission, your body surges forward into his, and he’s real, and alive, and warm, and he is an anachronism in the hallway as he accepts everything you pour into the embrace, doesn’t flinch when you move your arms from around his waist to loop around his neck and back to his waist again with crushing force because you just can’t get him close enough.
“I’m sorry,” Spencer mutters into your hair, I’msorryI’msorryI’msorryI’msorry, he keeps saying, rubbing your back as you try to find a solid grip on the sleek material of his suit—try to gather all the pieces of him, already afraid he might fall apart and float away again.
“You—dis—disappeared,” you hiccup after an eternity, pulling away enough to look up at his pretty face. Tears blur your vision and darken the front of his jacket, bending the florescent lights so they form a kind of halo above his head.
Through the surreal haze you can see his throat bob.
“I know.”
He knows?
He knows?
You scoff.
“You have no fucking idea, Spencer. What the fuck is wrong with you? I—I'm—”
The hot anger is such a relief for a second, boiling the oceans of your despair into a wrathful, scorching fog, but as soon as you try to tell him how you feel, the barbed wire cuts into your throat again. You shove him away, skin burning where his hands had been.
“I’m sorry,” he croaks, hands hanging uselessly at his side. There’s that kicked puppy look about him—and it’s familiar, but now there’s more damage. You don’t know anything about his time in prison, you haven’t heard a damn thing, but beneath the glassy desperation in his eyes there is an unfathomable void that seems to be preventing him from being fully present—and you realize for the first time that he is different.
It chills you.
Before, you and Spencer shared everything. There wasn’t one part of his internal machinations that you didn’t understand, nothing you kept from each other. But as you study him now from a few feet away, you realize there might as well be a yawning chasm between the two of you.
He is so different.
Those eyes look deeper. No gears turning just behind the slashes of gold and brown anymore—only an endless dark corridor that goes places you will never go.
Gone is the perpetual boyish up-turn at the corner of his lips that always made him look slightly vacant in a way that you found incredibly amusing. Something you had been so fond of, even if you teased him.
He seems to have aged ten years—if not physically, then in demeanor. And now you feel like a little kid throwing a tantrum.
You cross your arms, suddenly unable to meet his eyes.
You’re embarrassed. And pissed. And relieved. Everything is worse and better. You want to fall back into his arms, but you have been jarred by the revelation that this might not be the same Spencer. It might not be the same relationship. You have no idea where you stand.
He says your name gently, with so much familiarity you’re briefly jerked into the past. It makes you wish you could look up to find him as he was three months ago. Wish this was just a bad dream. But that’s not fair to him.
“Sorry,” you mutter, studying the grey carpet fibers instead of looking at him.
“Don’t apologize,” Spencer says immediately, “you’re right. I don’t—” he clears his throat— “I’m being incredibly selfish. I shouldn’t have just shown up, I’ll just—I'll leave. I’m sorry.”
A silent moment passes.
You don’t look up as he turns and swiftly begins to move down the hall toward the stairway, leaving as quickly and silently as he had come, like a few bars of a song sighed in and away on a fleeting breeze.
Your bare feet are concretely planted, imagining him jogging down the steps and speed-walking away from your building—
And suddenly you’re sprinting after him, feeling like you might puke because Spencer was just here and you let him go again—and even though you’re still so mad and confused and hurt, the realization that he is leaving again makes the entire building spin and lurch.
“Wait!” You yell, almost wiping out as you run down the stairs and whip around corners in your slippery fucking socks. “Please, wait!”
The lobby is already empty as you spill out into it, and cold dread tightens around your neck like a fist as you shoulder your way through the double doors and right into Spencer.
“Please don’t leave again, you just—I'm sorry, I really need you to not go—” you blabber, lachrymose once more, gripping onto his forearms for dear life.
“I’m not going,” he breathes shakily. “I tried to leave because I think you were right and maybe I should and maybe it would be better for you but I can’t.”
“You can’t,” you agree, more sob than spoken word. He cups your jaw, then your cheeks, wiping tears and brushing away hair like he can’t figure out how to hold enough of you between his hands. The wild kaleidoscope of his eyes, bright and alive and real as he scans you desperately captures your attention enough to slow the tears to a trickle. He notices this and stares back, entranced.
A silent agreement is made, or maybe an inevitable fate is accepted—either way, something was set in motion three months ago and it matters to see it through. Spencer kisses you and you’re ready for it. You don’t need slow or tender. You need to feel how he feels. You need to know what he knows.
You sling your arms around his neck and he pulls you closer until you almost tip backward, chasing the bruising kiss even as you regain your footing. You want to drink him in and you do your best, breathing deeply as he kisses you deeper, backing you inside and toward the elevator.
“Is this okay?” he manages, only after blindly reaching for and mashing the up button on the wall panel.
Ideally it wouldn’t happen like this, but the world you live in obviously isn’t ideal and your personal situations as they coincide are far from ideal, so this is how it has to happen. But it’s hard to explain, and you’d rather not admit that this is so far from what you wanted for both of you and follow up with the fact that despite that you need him like you need water. So you don’t say a word as the metal doors slide open promptly. Instead you pull him in and let him press you to the chrome wall as he hits your floor button, and that very hand comes back to grab your ass like you didn’t think Spencer Reid capable of. It almost aches as his fingers dig into the flesh, but it’s a good ache because it means he’s real and he’s there.
You gasp as he hitches your leg up, arching into him. The shorts that you’re wearing leave very little to the imagination to begin with, but they become downright indecent like this.
Quickly the elevator stops and the doors hiss open. You don’t hesitate to pull Spencer by the hand down the hall. When you notice you left your door wide open, you don’t even care. Neither does he, apparently—once you’re inside he slams it shut, flipping the deadbolt while his eyes are glued to you like you’re already naked. Now Spencer is shameless in the way he drags his eyes over every curve, every place your clothes and hair are disheveled from his touch and eye-fucks you so obviously it makes your face warm. Three months ago Spencer would have at least been bashful about it when he met your eyes again, but this Spencer is far from apologetic as he pins you with his burning gaze once more. His hand stays stuck to the door like he’s holding himself back.
“Is this what you want?”
There’s an undercurrent of sorrow below the gravely arousal, like this isn’t what he wanted for the two of you either. But you’re both at the mercy of fate. This is all you have, and it might be all you can do for each other anymore. So you don’t need to say that, because he understands.
“Yeah. Yes, this is what I want.”
For just a second more he watches you from his place by the door, and there’s an unexpected softness to it. He looks at you the way he would have looked at you before. Like as long as he stays there he can entertain the idea of being that person again.
Need wins out quickly, though, and he surges forward. Immediately you’re caught in the riptide of him, helpless as he kisses you all the way to your bedroom.
He’s never been in here before. You find yourself glad it’s relatively clean—one of the pastimes you’d picked up in his absence was keeping everything tidy. It was something you could control.
A lamp glows at your bedside. You lean against the footboard of your bed, hands timidly behind your back and suddenly shy to have in him in your intimate space. Both of you set aside the heaving desperation long enough to catch your breaths, and for him to scan the room like he too is being forced to reconcile with the innate and unexpected intimacy of the moment. He cuts a harsh, dark gash in your sweetly decorated bedroom, radiating something wild and powerful and unsure of himself like a chained bull as he takes in the soft, pale bedding, the paintings and photos taped to the walls, the woven rug and the sheer drapery. His breathing slows as he studies it all—eyes eventually catching on something behind you. Looking is unnecessary. You’re sure he’s spotted the dried peonies in their ceramic vase. Or maybe the now worn stack of papers that is his Odyssey, marked up and soft around the edges from constant flipping-through.
Then Spencer looks at you, and that softness seeps in again. Along with something like... fear? Grief?
In some other universe your first time with Spencer is sweet and giggly and kind and he smiles at the decor in your room and looks around with wonder because it’s another way he gets to know you. It’s a different way to learn you from the inside.
You sense that he’s caught in between universes right now as well, painfully aware of what he would have given you that he can’t anymore.
He breathes your name like an apology, and foolishly you let a second go by in which you think he might offer you one. But he doesn’t. Not with his words, anyway. His eyes tell a different story.
“It’s fine,” you say unprompted on a whispered exhale, then a little louder as you push off the footboard, crossing the space until your hands are on his chest. You focus on his tie, not making eye contact as you rush to undo it. “It’s fine.”
He lets you do this for a few seconds before finally covering your trembling hands with his own. You still can’t meet his eyes.
“We don’t have to do—”
“No! No, please. I want to. I need—I need us to be okay.”
“Hey,” he murmurs, catching your chin and forcing you to look at him. “We are okay. Me and you are fine.”
It’s a pretty thought, but it’s not true. In fact, it’s a hideous and abject affront to the truth. Sure, maybe you’re fine in comparison to last week. Maybe anything feels fine compared to an eight by six cell. But it would be impossible for you and Spencer, for your relationship, whatever that relationship may be, to be fine. It’s especially impossible for him to make that claim, after all he did or rather didn’t do while he was gone. What you need is for him to stay anyway. What you need is to find a way to be with him, to exist with him, even when you are so clearly not fine.
“I just need you to stay,” you whisper, and he’s already nodding, wide-eyed like he’d do anything for you. You ignore all the bitter venom rising in your throat. You pretend this isn’t all happening after he cut you out of his life with a dirty switchblade. Instead you focus on his hands on yours, the familiar smell of him, which invites you to let go of each and every thought and worry. He must’ve showered before coming here, you realize. How long has he been out? What happened? 
“Okay. Okay, I can stay. What else can I do? How do I make it better?”
You sniffle and look back down.
“You can untie that for me.”
He hesitates, then nods some more, fingers working under yours to undo the tie around his neck.
“Okay.”
A moment goes by and after that final whispered word, the tension begins to build again. Spencer senses it in the way your fingertips linger on his chest and you step even closer, dragging them down to his belt. The metallic sound of it unbuckling, despite being your own doing, still manages to flip your stomach. How many times have you pictured this? When was the first time you realized you wanted it? You’re sure you haven’t stopped wanting it even once since then.
Spencer tosses the tie away and is shrugging off his jacket now, then before you see it coming he’s kissing you again, ducking down to do it. He feels taller this close up, and especially in your bedroom, where he just seems rather out of place. But you want him here. God, you want him here.
You break the kiss, forced to look down as you fumble with his belt.
“Sorry,” you gasp, embarrassed by your lack of dexterity. The light is barely sufficient to see what you’re doing, especially when he’s wearing black on black and your eyes are still bleary.
“You’re okay,” he assures you, and it’s so Spencer a fresh round of nerves electrifies the tips of your fingers. That thing is happening—the thing you’d hoped to avoid if you hadn’t lost momentum partway through, where you’re allowing your actual feelings for him to get in the way rather than getting swept up in the pathos of the moment and letting everything be easy and mindless. “Here, can I help you?”
But he doesn’t actually wait for an answer before he’s finishing off the belt for you, tugging it loose from his hips till it’s a leather coil in his hands. Your fingers brush the material and he lets you take it as if it were your prize. It’s heavier than you thought it’d be, and you just feel the weight of it in your hands for a moment, your dropped head brushing his chest.
You have a terrible feeling that if you do this now, it doesn’t mean everything will be alright. Because it can’t just go back to normal. Spencer has told you nothing of what must be an enormous trauma, and you haven’t spoken about it at all, but you sincerely doubt that after this he’s going to be ready to just jump into that committed relationship the two of you had been toying with for months before his absence. You’re almost... scared of him, now. Scared of where he’s been and what he’s endured—things you’re sure you couldn’t have taken. What that does to a person, you can’t imagine. He seems so solid and real in front of you now—but you know that’s not always enough. Maybe you’re just scared that somehow whatever he’s been through will have made him care for you less. That you were too far removed from the whole ordeal, and now you’ll never understand. If you could understand, maybe you could fix it for him. Maybe he’d stick around.
Still—even if you do end up pushing him further away in the long run—won't it have been worth it to have had him so completely, even just once?
You toss the belt to the ground, compressing all of these very complicated thoughts and feelings into a few seconds so short he can’t ask you any questions about them. Instead you find his top button, and just as you manage to undo it with relative ease he’s gently grabbing your wrists. You look up at him, immediately surrendering.
“If we’re going to do this I need you to relax a little bit.”
Gears grind in your chest. You feel need and anxiety comingling in every square inch of your body. It’s a sick buzz—a high on an empty stomach.
“I can’t,” you admit.
“Yeah, you can,” Spencer gently disagrees, slowly lowering your hands. When he’s sure you’re not going to try ripping his clothes off again, he releases, and his eyes lower to the zipper of your hoodie. His fingers follow, warm against the soft triangle of revealed skin at your chest as he grips the small piece of metal between barely shaking fingers. “You can.”
You match his eyeline, breathing shallowly and watching as he slowly drags the zipper down. You wonder if that sound has haunted his fantasies the way the sound of his belt has haunted yours. If he’s seen this hoodie on you and wondered what’s underneath, staring at you and daydreaming during movie night with you none the wiser.
Both of you have your eyes glued to the span of skin as the zipper parts. Spencer stalls with the zipper at your sternum, just below the band of your bra.
Right. No shirt.
You look up and find his eyes already on you, tinged with a curious kind of humor.
“I wasn’t expecting guests.”
The words come out shy. Spencer’s chuckle has its own nervous airy quality as he resumes tugging on your zipper, leaning down until your noses bump.
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”
Then he kisses you again, a little sweeter now. Sweet enough to give you butterflies and for them to flutter right out of your stomach and spill from your lips in a little whimper against his.
It comes as a surprise when he pushes the fabric from your shoulders without looking or asking. Not that you’d have said no—you're just underprepared for how assertive he is in this foreign context.
Left just in your flimsy shorts and your thin bra, you feel quite exposed—but Spencer’s hands are as demanding and hungry as his mouth. They skim up your sensitive sides and sweep lower, suggesting less proper placement over your ass and pulling at your bottoms until you gently put a stop to their wandering.
“Wait. We’re... we’re uneven.”
It’s a struggle to get any words out at all when he keeps chasing your lips, nipping at you like he physically can’t stand not kissing you, but they catch his attention and he laughs airily, pulling back to let his gaze pour over your less clothed form. It lingers and catches and lights you up everywhere it touches, drops of heat soaking into your skin and making you feel all fuzzy and needy.
“We are,” he acknowledges, tone low and colored with the faintest smile. “You’re a lot prettier without your clothes on than I am.”
“I don’t believe you.”
The challenge comes immediately and thoughtlessly. Spencer’s golden eyes flash up to yours. He’s breathing a little harder than usual.
“You want me to show you what I mean?”
If that means getting him naked, then yes, absolutely.
You nod, but rather than immediately stripping, he takes your hand and holds his own open next to it. A thick pink scar bisects some pretty significant palmistry lines, but you don’t mention that. Instead you swallow—your thoughts, your words, your nausea.
“That’s new.”
You wonder how you hadn’t noticed it earlier.
He nods.
“A lot is new.”
It sounds almost like he’s challenging you—there's a kind of tremulous force in his voice, despite the perpetual softness there, like he’s inviting you to say it’s ugly. And you realize he’s referring to more than just the glowing scar cutting an asteroid trail against the flesh of him palm. The scars he obtained in prison must form a constellation over his body.
“I don’t care. I wanna see you.”
Spencer swallows, cupping your face with the scarred hand once more. You can’t feel it against your cheek but you know it hasn’t gone away.
“I’m sure you think you do,” he permits, and that’s where the conversation ends for the moment—with his hand on your face and his lips back on yours. “For now why don’t you let me worry about you?”
Obediently, you breathe, “okay.”
This is, for whatever reason, amusing to him. The brief levity dies as quick as it comes like a snuffed-out brush fire as soon as he lets his hands fall back down to your hips.
“I want... I want to give you slow. But...”
But slow is for people who didn’t lose three months of their life. Slow is for people who don’t know what it’s like to be starving. Slow is not for the desperate.
You understand the feeling.
“I don’t need slow.”
You’ll let him use you up like quick-burning fuel if that’s what he needs. You’ll go as fast and as bright and as hot as he tells you.
“But you want slow,” he murmurs, a secret acknowledged into your own waiting mouth. You’d keep it there forever. You could be the object he hides his soul in. “I know you do. You deserve to get what you want.”
“I can go fast. I want whatever you can give me.”
Spencer’s shuddering exhale is like a drug, dizzying as you inhale it and your eyes flutter at the high, pressed head-to-head with him. For so long you’ve needed him so badly. It’s overwhelming to have him now, all over you. If only your walls could breathe him in the way you are, if this room could remember what it feels like to hold him the way you will, if any inanimate object could bear witness to how you’ll give yourself, any part of yourself, over to him, so willingly.
“I’m going to try.” Spencer’s voice is hoarse as he walks backward to the bed, taking you by the hips as he goes. “I want to do it right. I want to do this the way I... the way I imagined it, before...”
Now he’s sitting, and you’re standing between his legs as he finds the clasp of your bra and undoes it, his fingers a comforting pressure where they ghost down the slope of your back. Your heart is pounding at the confession, at the way his tongue darts over his bottom lip and his fingertips journey back up to your straps, looking up at you with haloed irises as if he’d find anything other than the most dangerous kind of smoldering devotion in your eyes—the kind cult-leaders seek and spend years nurturing, and he’d earned with a mere brush over your bare skin.
The fabric slides down your arms, and as it falls to the floor, you watch something like despair flash-flood his eyes. It is a deep, distinctly human grief. The ineffable kind where something is almost too beautiful; so perfect it offends the mortal senses because it should be permanent, but nothing is, and the clash of divine beauty with unstoppable time which oxidizes copper and covers marble with vine is almost as grotesque as metal rending delicate flesh. It is the grief that drove the first poet to write and the first parents to press their baby’s painted hands to the walls of a cave. It is the desire to do the impossible—to capture ephemeral perfection and make it eternal, and the knowledge that it is hopeless. You recognize it because you’ve felt it for him.
“I thought about you all the time,” he whispers, doesn’t bother calling you beautiful but you don’t mind because he’s telling you with his hands and his eyes and the waver of his voice. “When I was gone, I thought about you—”
You’re just as quiet, just as soft.
“Don’t, Spencer.”
He doesn’t get to tell you about when he was gone. Not now. Not after he acted like you didn’t exist.
“Okay.” He swallows the things he’d wanted to tell you like you choked on the things you needed to tell him for three months. “I’m sorry.”
But his hands—his hands are perfect over your waist and his lips are perfect where they kiss your ribs like they’re his homeland. You could forgive a thousand wrongs for each kiss he puts to your skin. Light from the full moon stretches over the room like a blessing from the cosmos, and you have every intention of making the most of that gift, how the silver gilds the planes of his face and highlights curls like they were carved, and invites you to search for something in each shadow.
Some of his kisses land over the sensitive skin of your breasts though you doubt he has much intention or that there is any sort of end-goal with the trail he blazes—in fact, you have to root your hand in his hair and pull gently back when he doesn’t seem to realize that he’s making you wait again. His eyes are glassy and cheeks slightly pinkened—you weren’t expecting this wave of fondness to knock you on your ass but here you are, falling all over again.
“You don’t have to go that slow.”
A slow smile splits the heart of his mouth at your bashful tone and he’s emboldened to bring his hands higher for a moment, thumbs brushing particularly delicate though not downright indecent spots. Nonetheless, your breath catches.
“Impatient girl,” he scolds, and though it’s lighthearted it still inspires heat to dance across your face. Oh, I think I’ve been plenty patient, you itch to say, but you bite it back because it’s only sad and true and unkind.
Still, he gives you the beginning of what you want, really only the tip of the enormous iceberg that is your desire for him, by slipping his thumbs into the waistband of your shorts and tugging them down. His hands slide up the fronts of your thighs, tracing the trim of your underwear, and you’d swear he’s not even breathing. The moment one of his hand loops behind your knee and pulls forward until it’s pressed to the mattress and you’re half-kneeling, half standing, desire begins to truly cloud your mind. Manhandling never seemed like Spencer’s style, but when paired with how softly he reveals your hip, pulling gently down on the fabric of your underwear just to admire you up close, you don’t mind it.
More kisses are littered over your stomach, and he takes you by surprise a second time with a quick maneuver landing you on your back and him on top of you.
“I wasn’t doing you justice with my imagination,” he murmurs against your mouth. “I couldn’t have known.”
“Couldn’t have known what?” you pant as he shamelessly digs his fingers into the plush of your ass. You almost hope it bruises.
“How pretty you would be,” he coos like he means it, and you dissolve, slipping through his fingers like sand in an hourglass. “You were holding out on me.”
It’s a tease, not at all serious, but you manage to hit him with a, “Was not, asshole,” and he chuckles, placating your little hurt with another sticky kiss, and you get another disorienting glimpse of some other timeline where you’re both a little less damaged. Where it’s a little easier.
But in this timeline, his touch becomes starving and ragged and urgent, and you accept the drag of his thumb up your thigh and between your legs, gasping when he runs his knuckles up the center of you. This touch is metal on screeching metal. It does not pretend to be anything more than what it is—brute, powerful, executed to elicit sensation. You get the sense that Spencer’s never touched anyone this honestly, and while you do envy the girls who got to have him gentler, you’ll take this as the compliment that it is. A kind of vulnerability that is nearing primal.
His lips, though—always his lips—are kind when they brush and land on your skin guided by some invisible map. A dip down your neck and chest and then a plunge, his tongue dragging over your hips, chasing the fabric of your underwear as he almost pulls it off and then reroutes, making room for himself between your legs and pushing lace aside to mark the hinge of your inner and upper-most thigh. Your chest heaves and you don’t dare move for fear he’ll stop leaving signs of himself on your body and you won’t be able to reassure yourself that it was real and he was here and it was not another dream.
Because something in you knows, if only consciously recognizing it for the first time now, that he will disappear again. That this may be your only chance.
The desire to make the ephemeral eternal. An impossibility.
He’s clearly losing himself to something, eyes shutting blissfully. You wonder when the last time he let his guard down even a  little was. You’re okay with being the thing he gets lost in, even if you’re not exactly okay with him—something you are becoming more acutely aware of as each touch makes a part of you want to cry. Maybe you still have some things in common. A strange pain that doesn’t quite feel like it belongs to you, for one thing.
You slam back into your body as his nose nudges against you through fabric, and his lips catch on cotton as he drags himself up, eventually settling a kiss against the little bow at the waist of your underwear. There he stays, eyes closed, mouth pressed to you.
“Is this okay?”
You swallow, buzzing. Is this really what he wants? After everything?
“You don’t have to...”
“But is it okay with you?”
Nothing more than an airy whisper, you reply, “Yes, if that’s what you want.”
Being emotional at this point seems wrong, but it’s difficult to ignore the fact that you have thought about this before and it’s finally happening but it’s not exactly as you’d imagined it. There is an indelible sadness to it, to the way he’s so hungry for you because he’s been deprived, to the desperation with which he touches you because he’s had everything taken from him.
For a moment, before he tugs your underwear down, he pauses, and you wonder if he’s freezing one moment in time, this moment, and grieving all the other ways it could’ve been, and accepting that this is the way it is going to be. You are.
These higher realms of thought abandon you as he finally pulls the last barrier down your legs and encourages you to spread them further. You don’t have time or energy to be embarrassed, not even by his staring, or the way his eyes dart up to yours and back down again, wide and shining, as if to say, have you seen yourself? Do you have any idea how beautiful you are?
All you feel is the lack of him on you, the pull to have him closer so strong it’s almost sickening because he could be gone at any second. Maybe he understands that because he doesn’t waste anymore time before he’s kissing the most sensitive part of you. The drag of his tongue has you loosing a shuddering cry.
His mouth wanders, making connections you wouldn’t have realized the value of until you feel them on your skin. Your hips buck as he traces you and you’re unable to stop yourself from tangling your hands in his hair. Speech fails you—hell, you can hardly breathe as you watch his with a furrowed brow and parted lips, only expelling air from your lungs in the form of little cries and gasps and failing to hold your hips down to the bed.
The tip of his tongue teases around your entrance and he catches your leg as your foot rises off the bed, slinging it over his shoulder and consuming you more fervently until you have no choice but to moan though you’ve never been one for theatrics. Nobody has done this for you like he’s doing it for you. Locks of hair fall in front of his face and you hold them back for him, shuddering as he shifts his weight and presses the tip of his finger to your cunt.
“Ah—please,” you manage, your first words since he started. Spencer groans against you and the sound is so wonderfully unexpected, so much better than in your dreams. You cant your hips up in further invitation, chirping as he takes it, pushing two fingers into you at once. Your eyes screw shut and you bite back a whine at the slight stretch, unconsciously writhing your hips either to get further away or take him deeper, you’re not sure.
Spencer pulls back, kissing your hips and thighs and pumping his fingers very slowly as you adjust.
“’M sorry,” you pant, “it’s been awhile, I...”
“Don’t apologize,” Spencer says like it’s simple, his own breath coming quicker. “How’re you feeling? Need me to stop?”
“No! No, it feels really good, I feel good.”
He holds your burning gaze, matching it with his own, and his hair is tousled and his cheeks are flushed as he continues to move his hand.
“Yeah?”
“...Yeah.”
This little show of obedience, of call and response, has him smiling before he occupies his mouth with something else once more. It’s a different smile than you’re used to from him, but you decide you don’t at all mind it.
Like that, with his tongue and fingers working tirelessly, your orgasm comes on quickly. The feeling is rare but not entirely foreign, and in that brief moment of utter disconnect between your brain and reality, of sheer white-hot pleasure, you don’t feel you’re missing out on anything at all. How could you be, when you are here and Spencer is here and for a moment all your neurons are lighting up and flashing neon? How could there be anything more to life than the searing feeling of him slowly withdrawing his fingers from you, than your hips between his hands like he’s cradling the world, and his lips, indiscriminate with where they kiss because every part of you is worthy of attention?
You’re reeling, and your legs are gelatinous as he so affectionately sucks the darkest mark yet onto your inner thigh like a parting gift, like he’s signing his trembling work. If you could clamp your legs shut around the almost painful aftershocks you would, but he’s climbing back up your body, so all you can do is wriggle against him and release delayed, stunted little moans. He stops to kiss your neck before he makes it to your mouth and drinks down all your sounds until you’re gentle and pliant for him like you haven’t been yet.
His voice is soft and sympathetic when he speaks. “Better?”
Wordlessly you nod, both comforted and unsettled by how well he knows you. What, exactly, has been made better, you’re not sure. Not trust. You don’t trust him anymore. Something cheaper, but temporarily effective. A sense of permanence, maybe, however fleeting it may be. You’ve completed something with him now, and he’s still here, still sweet.
He looks into your eyes, then, for a moment—and there is just enough light in the room for you to tell yourself that the shadows dancing there as he looks at you are love.
They morph as you watch into haunting, wild hunger. Pained even now.
He sits up abruptly and so do you, scooting back against your headboard and pulling your knees to your chest to protect your pounding heart as Spencer takes you in with darting eyes and quick breaths. His fingers find the collar of his shirt and he begins to unbutton.
“I need you to remember it’s all going to heal.”
He swallows, and you hardly have the wherewithal to study the way he unbuttons his shirt, a way he exists in the world that you had previously not been privy to. The words are too distracting.
“What?”
Sometimes he reminds you of a deer, with those big brown eyes that can’t help betraying anxiety. Moreso in those old pictures he’d shown you from his early days at the BAU—but it shines through occasionally even now. It’s reassuring to know that something inside of his has remained soft.
“Just...” his fingers don’t stop at their task, and you come to the disturbing realization that his knuckles are bruised. “Please don’t freak out, alright?”
Your mouth goes dry, eyes glued to the lengthening span of revealed skin.
And before he even has his shirt fully undone, something isn’t right.
He’s like a Pollack of bruises—starbursts and watercolor blots of discoloration blooming over his side and stomach.
You’re glad the light is off for two reasons: one, being that you don’t think you could handle the bruising in all its glory, and two, you hope the look of horror painted on your face is at least partially obscured from Spencer.
But you can’t. You simply don’t have the gas in the tank to freak out, as he’d said—at least not externally. Those bruises shouldn’t be there, but 96 days is a long time to be gone.
You drag your eyes back to his—nervous, deeply insecure and mistrustful. A deer. Just like those pictures of a 24 year old Spencer in an FBI jacket that was too big for him.
It’s enough to have you scooting on your knees across the mattress to him. Those big eyes stay glued to you as you draw near, falling as you carefully push open his shirt, cautious not to bump any tender spots as it falls to the bed. A flash of white gauze wrapped around his forearm that makes your stomach flip. How? You want to ask. Why?
He doesn’t seem to know what you’re going to do, and neither do you, until you’re grabbing his hands, bruised knuckles and all, and just... holding them for a minute.
“I lost weight,” he says quietly, as if that’s the most shocking thing about his current appearance, though it is noticeable.
“You’re still pretty.”
He smiles at this—a true Spencer Reid smile. Flattened lips, eyes tinged silver with sadness, voice quiet and anxious and wavering.
“I didn’t have a lot to spare.”
A moment goes by.
“I’m not going to ask you about them,” you promise, though you care so much and you want to know but you already understand that he won’t want to tell you.
Another moment. It doesn't surprise you to watch the shiny vulnerability in his eyes to freeze over completely. But he squeezes your hands once in thanks, and you know it’s still the same Spencer.
“Lie down.”
Oh. Right.
This.
You do as he says, taking a deep breath to try and exhale the concern twisting your stomach like a poison. Somehow your room feels so unfamiliar, so new with him in it. Even the whorls on your ceiling look different as you study them, trying to time the pattern of your breathing with the pattern of the paint and plaster and not let the sound of Spencer further undressing quicken your heartrate too much.
Soon he’s coaxing your legs apart again, reverently, and kneeling between them, studying every part of you—lingering not on the parts you’d expect. He traces the scar on your knee with his thumb, follows a line down your thigh to the freckle on your hip. The scrutiny is unnerving and warms you everywhere. Perhaps he senses the microscopic clench of your thighs as you imagine pushing them together, if he weren’t in the way.
“You alright?” He asks, still stroking your hip. Tender again. It’s so hard to keep up.
“I...”
Suddenly your heart beat is a deafening echo in your own ears. The tide of your breathing is too powerful, too in and out and whooshing, leaving you always too empty or too full but never comfortable.
Maybe he’s changed, and he’s harder to know now, but he is the same Spencer. He is the Spencer you’d fallen in love with. The hard part is knowing that now you may never get a chance to tell him that. You don’t know if he’d be able to hear it.
There are things you can’t have with him anymore. Not now, at least. Maybe not ever. But you can have this. It will be different, but you’d rather him be different and here than the same and only in your memory.
You swallow.
“I’m good.”
Tangling your hand in his hair once more, you pull him down into a kiss. It’s hesitant, at first—maybe he can taste your thoughts, where they’d been balancing just on the tip of your tongue. But the uncertainty fades and he kisses you deeper, harder, in a way that is hard to keep up with. You like the messy overwhelm of his lips, teeth, tongue. That’s the only way he knows how to want you.
When you go to wrap your leg around his waist he catches it, running his hands over the soft plush of your thigh. The hard line of him presses against you like memory foam and you gasp and he breathes it in deeply as your brain short-circuits, as you realize this is really going to happen, that you’re going to have him like you’ve never had him before and in ways you’ve only imagined and immediately felt ashamed for.
“Spencer,” you whisper. He ducks to leave open-mouthed kisses along your neck and your eyes flutter shut, craning your neck but not losing sight of your objective as you reach down blindly. When you find what you’re looking for he freezes, groans against your neck at the same time as you breathe the tiniest whimper. Just in your hand he feels impossible, hot and imposing and hard. Your heart palpitates.
Without thinking, you angle your hips up and encourage him closer, until the tip of him is smearing through your folds, and you both go utterly silent like the breath had been stolen right from your lungs. The moment crystallizes, time around you hardening like preserved amber to keep you frozen there forever.
And then he rolls his hips, catching the underside of his cock on the crux of you, and then he does it again, and you choke out a moan and so does he, and it’s beyond perfect—it's nirvana, more than you could ever have conceived of, with his weight pressing you into the mattress, arms caging you in, his heavy breaths hot against your neck and vice versa as you twine together like serpents on a rod, your foot floating in the air as you widen your legs to make more room for him.
And you’re not even fucking yet.
“Oh my god,” you whine, just for him, barely audible under the heavy cloak of night, the thickened air in your bedroom and the sound of panting and fabric shifting. It’s like your heart is trying to reach through your chest to his own where they’re pressed together—that is how hard it’s beating.
Spencer only breathes a long, low curse and shifts so he can grasp himself. Your fingers drift down the shaft of him as he slots himself at your entrance, notching half an inch in and you hold your breath, and you brace yourself—and then he’s kissing you again, but gentler this time. Reassuring. You soften, you can’t not, releasing all your air in a soft gust through your nose, and then he’s pushing in.
Your lips part at the stretch as it fuzzes your mind, but he stays right there, nose pressed to your nose, lips ghosting over your own. He’s not going anywhere, you think, and you’re glad for it, when it burns ever so slightly, and the tiniest whine escapes your open mouth.
“Shh,” he soothes immediately, low and soft, only fractionally louder than you had been. “You’re okay.”
Spencer. Your Spencer.
For a moment, you’re living in that alternate universe. The kinder one. The flash of pain you feel then has nothing to do with the way he’s opening you up.
This is the closest you have ever been, and in some strange way, the furthest apart.
Together, fingers brushing, you guide him until he settles at not quite your deepest point. You can feel that he’s not giving you everything yet, but you’re okay with that, as you adjust to the full feeling. Spencer again senses your desire to close your legs against the deep intrusion, and gives you the best he can by encouraging you to wrap your legs around him.
“Good girl,” he whispers tenderly, nudging at your jaw with his nose and dragging kisses along the ridge of it. Your stomach flips at the moniker and your brain turns to warm sludge as your eyes flutter shut. It makes you feel all light-headed and you flutter around him. Spencer chuckles into the junction of your neck and shoulder and the vibrations send a chill down your arching spine. “I thought you might like that one.”
“Mhm.”
“Mhm. How are you? You okay?”
“’M ready.”
“You’re ready?” His tone is dripping sarcasm and faux-disbelief as he pulls back the slightest bit only to push right back in deeper, this time. Your toes curl, one thigh sliding higher up his waist as you cling to him.
“Fuck,” you manage, a pitiful, high pitched curse tossed to the wind. He echoes the sentiment.
“Oh, my god,” he groans, continuing with that slow pace, “you feel so good, angel.”
You grapple at his back, searching for purchase as your brow knits. “Faster.”
This inspires another breathy chuckle, but he obliges, and you cry out softly. It’s almost unreal, your head buried against his neck, drunk on his scent and the drag of him like a shock felt in the far reaches of your body, again and again.
There’s nothing you can say that will accurately demonstrate what you’re feeling, so you elect not to speak, to remain silent and try to get a grip on this cacophony of sensation and emotion. But it’s too much to be alone with. You feel you have to get it out, to seek understanding. You can’t do it alone.
“Spencer.”
“Hm?”
“I don’t know...” the sentence trails off into a gentle keen. He moves to kiss you, speaking against your lips.
“You don’t know?”
Shyly you shake your head. Spencer sighs wistfully.
“Do you know how much I missed you?”
It’s like he can sense your need for comfort. For something grounding.
And while this topic was off-limits earlier—you're softer now. The stone walls that form your boundaries have been chipped away and lowered.
Spencer continues unprompted.
“I thought about you every day. Every night while I was falling asleep. You were always on my mind, angel girl.”
You whine. Whether it’s pleasure or distress is anyone’s guess—including your own.
“You were gone so long,” you whisper, eyes shut.
At this, Spencer slows again, and the tension that was building settles back to a simmer.
“I know. I wish I could—I wish I could change that. But I’m here, okay? I’m right here with you.”
Then he makes sure you feel every last inch, and it takes your breath away. If your thoughts were any more coherent, they’d be something along the lines of: but for how long? How long until you leave again?
“You’re here.”
You say it like a mantra, once out loud, and then again and again in your head, timed with every clash of your hips. With each repetition he becomes more real. Every little ache, every tingling, head-emptying brush against that most sensitive spot inside proves to you that he could not be any closer. This can’t be faked. It can’t be another dream to wake up in tears from.
“You’re here,” you gasp as it hits you, as it truly sinks in.
“I’m here,” he breathes.
There’s so much you want to say—three months of words you need him to hear, of things you need to talk to him about, things you need to yell at him for and things you can only say crying in his arms and things you can only say laughing or whispering or drunk or half-asleep—and in this moment you can’t manage any of it. Every word condenses into one drop of salt water, drifting away from your eye and down your cheek. Spencer doesn’t tell you to stop crying. He only kisses the tear away, and murmurs I’m here I’m here I’m here over and over again against your skin until he’s not even speaking it out loud anymore. But you feel it. With every brush of his lips, every breath, every movement, you feel it.
Soon he’s adjusting his angle, gradually picking up the pace but retaining that unforgiving depth, and your nails bite into the skin of his back as your jaw drops. Spencer hisses, pressing impossibly closer.
“I’m sorry!” you squeak.
“Do it again.”
“Wh—what?”
“Please,” he begs, low and hot against your jaw, just beneath your ear. “Do it again, honey.”
Honey.
You’d do anything for him if it meant he calls you that again.
When he shifts his weight to one arm and reaches down between your bodies to play with your aching clit in exactly the right way, you don’t really have a choice. You arch and moan wantonly enough to feel embarrassed as your nails scratch down his back. At the same time he’s making noises of his own, and you almost feel guilty for marking him up like this only you think he likes it. The most perfect and troubling tension is building in your core, so taut you almost fear the inevitable rebound when it snaps. But you’re driven to be exactly what Spencer needs right now, and to let him try and be what you need. Even if it scares you. Even if you’re not sure how.
Spencer groans, head tucked to the bend of your shoulder. “I’m not gonna last.”
Any response you might’ve been about to muster is annihilated by a sudden, deep bolt of pleasure.
“’M gonna cum,” you mewl like it’s a secret.
“Are you?” he asks, coming up breathless. If your eyes were open, you’re sure you’d see him above you.
“Mhm.”
“Look at me. Look at me.”
It is unmistakably a command—one you fight to follow.
You cry out as you meet the intensity of his gaze, those shadowy corridors suddenly ablaze and alive. They are not unending, like you’d thought. They are a door thrown open to let the light in, or maybe to let the fire out. They’re open in this moment for you.
No more words are spoken after that—you cum hard, gasping as you fall and spin. Spencer follows very shortly after, like he was holding it together just for you, and your eyes are still locked though everything is a bit bleary.
“Fuck,” you whine as he continues to fuck you for as long as he can, despite your writhing hips, but you’re entranced by him, unable to look away now that you’re hooked. Until he slows to a halt, glances down at your mouth, and you just have time to pray that he’ll kiss you before he does. You whimper against his lips—a plea for understanding. A plea for him to stay, even though this is over. He kisses back so soft and sweet it’s like he can read your mind. Echoes of I’m here I’m here I’m here still buzz across your skin. His eyelashes tickle your cheek. Your heart stops beating quite so quickly, melting and warm like the rest of your body.
Soon the kissing ceases and you’re just breathing together, trapped and faced with the knowledge that it must end just the same as you had waited for it to start.
Eventually the air between you becomes mostly carbon dioxide and you let your head fall to the side, dizzy and giggling breathlessly as you nearly avoid asphyxiation. Spencer laughs too, letting his head fall to your shoulder once more, and you finally let your eyes flutter closed. To do something as simple as laugh with him again is its own small euphoria. It’s unexpected, and a soft landing once all that tension breaks underneath your combined weight.
It can’t last forever, you know that well. But the slow fade of it makes the next parts a little easier.
Spencer presses a kiss to your neck. “Is your bathroom through that door?”
You hum a confirmation and are only slightly disheartened when he pulls out and rolls off of you. You’re further disturbed when you see there’s gauze around his thigh, matching what’s around his arm, and you wonder how you missed that. Spencer scoops up his clothing and disappears into the adjoining restroom, assuring you he’ll be right back and leaving you alone with your thoughts and the whorls on the ceiling which have seemingly shifted into entirely new constellations.
He leaves the door cracked which is oddly reassuring—the sliver of warm light and the sound of the sink running. Only a few moments pass before he’s returning clad in boxers once more to sit on the edge of the bed, pushing away the sheet you’d just pulled over your chest and pulling one of your legs over his lap. Your face warms as he brings a washcloth between your thighs. As soon as he glances up at you and catches your eye you’re looking back to the ceiling.
“I should’ve asked first,” he says quietly as he cleans up the mess he’d made of you.
You speak just as softly, like you’re both afraid of disturbing some peace, of waking some sleeping giant. “It’s okay. I would’ve told you if I didn’t want it.”
His reticence, his unreadable face, make you nervous.
When he’s done, he rises to toss the dirtied cloth in the laundry bin, and with his back to you (as scratched up as it might be) you feel braver.
“Are you gonna, like... hate me now?”
It was a mistake. That’s clear by the way he turns around, brow knit deeply and grimacing slightly like even the suggestion offends him.
“Am I going to hate you?”
Again you pull the sheet up, and again you look away, studying the pattern of moonlight stretching out over the floor and scooting to make room for him when he steps in it.
“Not hate, I just...” the bed dips beside you and you are indescribably glad he’s not immediately running out the door. “I’m not dumb. I know what this was.”
He pulls you into him and you settle against his chest. It feels good. “I never thought you were dumb.”
This is your first real conversation since he’s gotten back, you realize. And how quickly you’re falling into familiar patterns, familiar syntactical beats. You know when to speak. You know when to bite your tongue and keep him talking.
The silence goes on longer than you’re used to. Maybe he got good at not speaking while he was away.
Eventually your eyes wander, falling to the white strip over his thigh where it is parallel to yours on the bed, only over the sheets.
“What happened?”
You said you wouldn’t ask, but that was then, and you’re upset again. You almost want to hurt him. To piss him off. You don’t know.
But it doesn’t work.
“Do you really want to know?” There’s a note of something heavy in his voice, and you look up at him. It’s a privilege to have him this close—his beauty is a constant surprise that you’d become unaccustomed to over the months. You say nothing, and he takes that as the yes that it is. “I... I did it to myself.”
He may as well have reached down your throat and grabbed for fucking heart for all its clenching. Tears well almost immediately, though they’ve been waiting in the wings all night.
“What? Did you—were you trying to—”
His eyes widen.
“No! No, honey, no.” You wilt as he gathers you closer, a deeply confused frown still contorting your features, too heartbroken even to cling to him, or to appreciate the ease with which honey slips past his lips again. “No. I was—it's complicated. I didn’t—I wasn’t trying to hurt myself, but I had to—I had to do it before someone else did something worse.”
The bruises covering his abdomen.
You sniffle and pull back enough to look up at him tearfully. “Why would they want to hurt you?”
Mist fills his eyes even as he’s looking down at you, a layer of separation, as if he’s two places at once. Even as he goes to brush your hair behind your ear, to stroke your cheek.
“I’m... not... the same, as I was.” It’s not an answer to your question—but it’s the beginning of the answer to a question you’d been too afraid to put into words.
“Don’t say that,” you beg, because you know where this is going. He keeps smoothing your hair like it’ll make this easier.
“But it’s true,” Spencer says gently, the slightest waver betraying his own emotion.
“You’re just going to leave again.”
And you’re losing to the tears.
“I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere.”
“But you will,” you insist, like a child crying to a parent come to comfort them after a bad dream.
“Not right now. Right now I’m here.”
I’ll stay until you fall asleep again.
For now, maybe that has to be enough. 
You cry on his shoulder. He kisses your head and doesn’t tell you to stop. 
Eventually, you sniff and wipe your eyes. 
“We were so close. Before you… we were almost there.”
You’re sure of it. You’re sure that if he hadn’t gone when he did you would’ve been a real couple. You would’ve told him you loved him. 
“We’ll get there again,” he promises, rubbing your arm. “I just… I need a little bit of time. I think you do too. But we’re going to get there again.”
Maybe it will never be like it was. 
But as so often is the case—Spencer is right. Difference doesn’t mean it won’t ever be good again. 
You have to believe that, just as you had to believe you’d see him again. 
You look to The Odyssey on your bedside table. 
The sun has been obliterated from the sky, and an unlucky darkness invades the world. 
But the sun has a habit of rising, time and time again, after the longest nights, after the darkest storms. 
You feel the beginnings of its rise, see the golden tips of it lighting the room as he holds you. Even now. 
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osarina · 5 months ago
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ᡣ𐭩 WICKED LOVE WILL LEAVE ME BLIND
FEATURING: dazai osamu
SUMMARY: dangerous games are played between you and dazai during one of the most important events of the year for the japanese underworld. you're never this risky, not when your reputation is on the line, but fuck being near him just seems draw out all of the worst in you.
(wordcount: 4.5k; ņsfw; fem!reader; port mafia member!reader, jealous!dazai, possessive!dazai, public sex, spitting, unprotected sex, gagging dazai w/your panties, switch!dazai, switch!reader. lmk if anything is missing!)
AUTHOR'S NOTES: WOOWWWWWWW u all can thank tumblr user mioblobby for this one, she sent in an ask 3 days ago and this consumed me so badly that i dropped all of my wips to write this. anyway, enjoy dazai & pmreader being absolute FREAKS in public
His gaze hasn’t left you once all night. You can feel it dark and heavy from where he’s leaning against a wall on the opposite side of the room, black coat hanging around his shoulders and a cold, unapproachable expression on his face, looking every bit the wraith people claim him to be. 
Chuuya is off somewhere to your side, smooth talking two of Mishima’s daughters, surely planning to end the night in one of their beds to get those loose lips moving about the meeting that their father had with Cao Xueqin of the Red Chamber two weeks ago, something he’s been unnervingly tight lipped about when Mori pried. 
You’re entertaining two of the younger members of Mishima’s upper echelon, Abe Kimifusa and Ibuse Masuji—they can’t be much older than you, early twenties max, and they’re delighted by the attention you’re giving them. Ibuse is half hanging off your shoulders, arm wrapped around you, too many drinks in as he leans in close and laughs at some comment Abe makes about one of their fellow executives. You smile idly as you listen, resting against him as you take in their words, trying to pretend to be engaged with the conversation to not give away how you’re hyper-focused on a certain black-haired executive in the distance. 
Usually, he would join you and Chuuya in your attempts to gather some easy intel on the Sun and Steel—that’s what he’s done the past year and a half, at least, targeting some of the older members of Mishima’s upper echelon who would sell half of their organs and their soul for a night with the untouchable Demon Prodigy. The thought leaves a bitter taste in your mouth now, knowing what he told you, but you still can’t help but be a little surprised that he’s not even trying to put up a facade of charm and wit, rather spending his time skulking in the shadows watching you, especially when his usual targets are so blatantly staring at him, waiting for him to make a move.
You think it’s hypocritical the way you’re so pleased over the fact that he’s not entertaining anyone tonight, because the thought of him letting any of those men drape themselves all over him like Ibuse currently is with you leaves a very sour taste in your mouth.
You also think that’s why you’re letting Ibuse take it as far as he has—to see Dazai get wound up about it. You don’t typically let people get touchy with you unless you plan on taking them to bed, and you have absolutely no intention of fucking Ibuse Masuji. He’s pretty enough with dark hair and a nice smile, but too stupid for your taste—maybe that’s a good thing though, if he’s already so loose-lipped now with only a few drinks in him, you can’t imagine how much he’d let slip in a post-orgasm induced haze.
You start to reconsider your decision on Ibuse, looking up at him contemplatively as he makes a snide comment about Kamatsu Sakyo—an older executive of the Sun and Steel, one of the ones you know have spent a night, or more, with Dazai, so your smile is a bit more genuine when you hear the way Ibuse drags him for being incompetent and useless.
“The older generation has to go,” Ibuse hisses, shaking his head as his arm tightens around you, leaning back against the wall. “They’re running us into the fucking ground. That fucker Kamatsu wants us to take that deal from the Red Chamber-”
“Masuji,” Abe warns, giving you a careful look, not as drunk as his companion. You raise your eyebrows at the comment from Ibuse, looking at him questioningly.
Ibuse waves off Abe haphazardly. “The Port Mafia did it right,” he says bluntly, taking another sip of his drink. “Wiped out the whole old regime after the previous boss died. That’s what the Boss should’ve done when he took over from his father. All of these old fucks need to drop dead.”
“The meeting with Xueqin went that poorly?” you ask casually, sure to keep the interest out of your tone as you look up at Ibuse.
“Don’t even get me started,” Ibuse scoffs. “That fucker wants-”
You’re careful to keep the irritation off your face when you hear the telltale sound of Mishima preparing to give his annual ‘thank you, fruitful alliances ahead!’ speech that always bores you to tears. Next to you, Ibuse sighs and pulls his arm off of you, pushing off the wall.
“We’ve gotta go up there with him. I’ll find you later?” he asks you, eyes a bit too hopeful, voice eager as he waits for your response.
“Definitely,” you say—the things you do for information.
With most of the attendees of the ball distracted by Mishima’s speech, you slip away to make your way over to the far corner where Dazai is waiting. Still, he tracks you—from the moment you make your subtle escape from the crowd until you’re standing right in front of him in the shadows where he’s lingering, his gaze remains trained on you, intense in a way that lets you know that he’s unhappy, if the way his jaw is tight didn’t.
“You’ve been having fun tonight,” he drawls, voice low as he looks down at you, arms folded across his chest.
“Is that what it seemed like?” you say lightly, taking a step closer, casting one last glance behind you to ensure that all eyes are pinned on Mishima before hooking your fingers into his belt loops to tug him closer to you. “At least I’m doing my job properly then.”
“It’s your job to let Mishima’s whore of an executive drape himself all over you?” Dazai tilts his head to the side, one hand sliding behind you to close the small distance between the two of you, leaving your chest pressed to his.
No, you let that drag on just because you could tell how irate Dazai was becoming over it, but Dazai doesn’t have to know that. So instead, you play coy.
“I have appearances to keep up,” you say, tilting your head up with a simpering smile, enjoying the way his gaze immediately darts down to your lips, lingering there before he has to forcibly drag it back up to your eyes. “You know that.”
“Yeah?” Dazai hums, tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. His gaze drifts above you. “Maybe I should be making more of an effort with appearances then, Kamatsu has had his eye on me all night.”
Your eye doesn’t twitch at his words, but your grip on his belt loops tightens. “You don’t want to play that game with me, Dazai,” you warn, keeping your voice deceptively mild.
“And why is that?” Dazai drawls, looking too smug for your liking as he looks down at you as if realizing how much his threat bothered you.
“Because I’ll win,” you say easily, fingers slipping from his belt loops to slide your hands up and down his sides before settling them on his slim hips, relishing in the way his lashes flutter at your touch. “You know that. It’s unlike you to pick losing battles.”
“I won’t lose,” Dazai says with a scoff, and you walk him backward until the back of his knees hit a chair, guiding him back to sit down in it as Mishima finally starts a long-winded speech that’s going to last at least twenty or thirty minutes.
You give Dazai another teasing smile as you stand in front of where he’s sitting, lifting your hand to his chin, tilting his face up toward you. You lean down, lips brushing his as you murmur, “You already have.”
“Have I?” Dazai asks, amused. He unconsciously leans forward to capture his lips with yours but you shift just out of reach before he can, raising your eyebrows pointedly at the annoyed look he gives you.
You make quick work of undoing his tie, slipping it from his neck before wrapping it loosely around your wrist, hyper aware of the way his gaze is trained sharply on your face, studying your every move. You bring your other hand back up to his face, cupping his cheek gently, and your breath catches as he leans into your touch, eye lidded as he looks up atwith you. He tilts his head to the side to press his lips against your palm, keeping eye contact as he lifts his hand to cover yours, shifting it so he can graze his lips against the pulse point on your wrist.
“You have,” you agree, grateful that your voice isn’t as breathless as you feel from the combined intensity of his gaze and his lips on your skin.
“How so?” Dazai looks entirely too smug, probably can feel the way your pulse is racing under his touch, and you itch to wipe the smugness right off of his face.
“I’m meeting Ibuse after this speech,” you tell him, now entirely too smug yourself as Dazai expression drops and goes icy, fingers stiffening from where his hand is still pressed over yours. “Need to get him to spill about the meeting with the Red Chamber, he already started getting into it before. If I get him alone, we’ll know everything we need.”
“Go ahead,” Dazai sounds deceptively calm, you’d almost believe he didn’t care if the look in his eye didn’t betray him, cold and promising bloodshed. “I’ll kill him.”
“You’ll start a war,” you say absently, the tips of your fingers brushing through his dark hair.
“I don’t care,” Dazai replies, and you know that he’s serious—it should worry you, he could throw all of your work with the Sun and Steel out the window in a split second, but instead you only find yourself giddy, tongue pressing behind your teeth and a smile curving at your lips as you look down at him.
“Careful, Dazai,” you breathe out, “almost sounds like you care.”
He does care, you know that and he knows that, but he refuses to admit it out loud. Refuses to put a label on anything between the two of you. You think it’s his way of maintaining some semblance of control over things; he thinks that if he actually admits what’s going on between the two of you, it’ll be a loss of control over himself that he can’t afford. 
As if threatening to start a gang war with the Mafia’s most important ally because you’re planning to sleep with someone for vital information isn’t a loss of control in itself. 
You also think it might have to do with the broken gasps he’d let out over the phone during the assassination plot on you a few weeks ago, when he thought that he’d miscalculated and they called his bluff, that they were going to get to you and no one was going to be able to get there in time to protect you. 
“Everything I never want to lose is always lost the moment I obtain it.”
You wonder, maybe, if he thinks that not making things official with you is his way of protecting both you and himself. 
But it’s fucking frustrating. It’s frustrating dealing with his hot and cold—days where he’s so clearly enamored with you, spending hours laid up with you admiring you while you do work, looking at you with eyes that should only be reserved for long time lovers, and then there are days where he can hardly bring himself to look at you, avoiding you at every given chance, cold and aloof. It’s frustrating, and it’s exhausting, you just want to be with him.
His eye darkens, jaw clicking at your words, but he doesn’t respond other than that.
You’re not sure what exactly compels you to take another step forward, you watch as his gaze tracks down to the low cut of your dress, as he shifts in his seat, legs spread, clearly withholding the urge to adjust himself in his pants. A dangerous thought crosses your mind, one that you know you should toss away because of where you are, how many people are just on the other side of the room, but you find your body moving before you can stop yourself.
You watch him inhale, gaze tracking down to where your hand has slipped into the high slit of your dress, casting one last look over your shoulder to make sure the two of you are at an angle that no one would be able to easily see you before pulling down your thin black panties—the ones you know he loves and wore just to see the way the pupil of his visible eye becomes blown wide at the sight of them, breath hitching.
You shift closer to him, balling them into your fist, one hand sliding behind the back of his head, fingers entwined with his dark hair as you tilt his head back, eyes tracing the exhilaration on his face as he looks up at you, realizing what you’re going to do, where you’re going to do it.
“You’re crazy,” he breathes out. The words are reverent, he speaks them in the same way you imagine he would tell you he loves you, it makes your breath catch. “Here? What're you gonna do if one of them looks over and sees you stuffed with my cock, hm? How're you gonna explain why you're full of cum when you go meet that clown?”
“You talk too much,” you note, stepping forward. “Open up.”
Dazai’s lips part instinctively, but before you stuff his mouth with your panties, you lean over him, fingers hooking around his bottom lip as you force his mouth a little wider, watching as his breath hitches and his lashes flutter when you spit right into his open mouth, swallowing it immediately. 
Your lips curl up as you lift the hand holding your panties, taking in an unsteady breath as he lets you push your panties between his lips; he lets out a muffled groan around them, eyes sliding shut as if savoring the taste of them. You shift your dress around slightly so you can comfortably straddle his thighs. His hands immediately fly to your waist, but you click your tongue lightly, pushing them off and sliding his tie around his wrists once you’ve got them behind his back.
He tilts his head to the side, giving you a heavy, judgmental look. He doesn’t even have to speak to know what he’s thinking: “You really think this is going to stop me?”
You give him a sweet smile, leaning in to graze your lips against his jaw, feeling the shaky breath he lets out around your panties. “If you free yourself from them,” you murmur, lips brushing his ear as you speak, “I’ll stop.”
You don’t wait for his reaction, directing your attention down toward his slacks, loosening his belt and unbuttoning his pants. You ease his cock out of his briefs, weight heavy in your hand, tip flushed pink and leaky. You give it an experimental pump, using his own precum as lube, and watch as he tilts his head back, giving a full body shudder.
“You’re so easy to rile up,” you sigh softly, shifting forward so that his cock slides between your slick folds, you press your lips to the underside of his jaw to smother the moan you almost let out when his tip catches on your clit. “I love it.”
You know he’s trying to shoot you a withering look, but the effects of it are severely diminished with how his face is flushed pink and his eyes are unfocused. You give him another saccharine smile, and that’s the only warning he gets before you’re sinking down on his cock. 
You can feel every inch of him stretching you open, filling you up until the tip of his cock is nudging right up against your cervix. It takes all of your self control to bite back the loud gasp that nearly rips from your lips, not wanting to have to bury your face in the crook of his neck just yet, watching as he lets out a choked noise that’s loud even with your panties stuffed in his mouth, eyes rolling to the back of his head.
“Careful,” you warn, leaning in to drag your lips up his neck to the corner of his lips. You lift one of your hands to hold the back of his head again, gripping his hair as you force him to look at you again, fingers tugging hard at his hair. His gaze is unfocused, lips parting as he heaves around your panties, throat spasming—he looks fucking divine, and for a moment, you regret doing this here because you might have to kill someone if they see him when he’s looking like this. “You don’t want them to see you like this, yeah?”
You can hear the whine that builds in the back of his throat, trying to rock his hips up into yours. The sloppy sound of his cock driving into your cunt is too loud—Mishima is still speaking loudly, drowning out any noise that could possibly be coming from your secluded corner, but it’s so risky, you almost don’t know what’s gotten into you. If anyone happens to wander over this way…
“God, what do you do to me?” you gasp, leaning in so you can graze your teeth against his neck, threatening to bite down. 
You’re never this reckless—not when it’s your reputation on the line, you’ve spent years honing it into the weapon it’s become, and here you are risking it all just because Dazai Osamu decided to give you bedroom eyes during one of the most important events the Port Mafia attends. Fuck, he drives you insane.
His head lolls forward, forehead resting against the side of yours, lips brushing your ear. You can feel his heavy pants, each one catching over a moan muffled by your panties. You rock your hips back and forth quickly, each drag of his cock against your walls making you hot and lightheaded. Whether it’s just from the sheer pleasure of it all—the way the tip of his cock pressees right into that sensitive spot deep inside of you, the way he’s so quickly coming undone beneath you, body trembling and drool pooling at the corner of his lips around your panties—or if it’s because of the way anyone could wander over in this direction, catch you fucking Dazai so brazenly when there’s a crowd of one hundred and fifty, two hundred of the most important people in the Japanese underworld just on the far side of the room, you don’t know, but heat pools in your abdomen so quickly that it’s almost impossible to control. 
You can feel his breath ragged, his body tense, each roll of your hips against his has Dazai falling apart, and you can feel the telltale sign of his cock twitching inside of you, signaling that he’s about to finish. You tug his hair, pulling his head back from where it's fallen against you, and you lift your other hand quickly up to his lips, pushing them inside of his mouth to hook your fingers around your panties, pulling them out of his mouth.
Instantly, Dazai is pushing himself forward to press his lips against yours, freeing himself of his own tie so his hands can fly to your waist. You let out a low moan into his mouth as he pushes his tongue into yours, one hand sliding from your waist to your back, keeping your body flush to his as he grinds you down on his cock hard.
“Fuck,” Dazai groans into your mouth, voice choked. You can see the way he can hardly keep his gaze steady, the way he’s gripping your dress to try to keep himself grounded. “I-ah, shit-I’m close. I’m-”
You lean in to swallow his moan, kissing him hard as his eyes roll to the back of his head, hips stuttering as he spills his cum deep inside of you. Your breath catches at the feeling of his cum filling you up, warm, heavy, so much of it that you can feel it dribbling out from where his cock is still stuffed deep inside of you; it’s the last thing you need to push you over the edge, mind blank and jaw falling slack as your body shudders in his arms.
Black dots spot your vision, your nails dragging down his black coat, your whole body consumed with pleasure—it hits you so hard that you think maybe you might’ve passed out for a split second. The feeling of your release sends a shockwave through Dazai, you can feel the way his body spasms and jerks when your walls suddenly tighten around his sensitive cock.
“God,” Dazai breathes out against your lips, eyes glazed over as the two of you come down from your high, an expression so adoring on his face that you think for a moment, you might be imagining it. “You’re so…”
He doesn’t finish his sentence, leaves it to your imagination, and you want to press, but you don’t have the chance because you’re slapped hard with reality when you hear Mishima’s speech coming to an end, eyes widening. Your legs are shaky as you push off of him, hissing at the feeling of his softening cock slipping out of your cunt—you almost snort when you see how Dazai twitches and winces at the sudden movement, still sensitive.
“Clean yourself up,” you tell him sharply, straightening your dress and fixing your hair, trying to catch sight of yourself in the reflection of a nearby glass, watching from the corner of your eye as Dazai stuffs himself back in his pants, wiping your cum off of his expensive black slacks before sucking it right off of his fingers. He grabs his tie from where he’d let it fall to the ground, and then your panties, winking at you before he stuffs them in the pocket of his jacket. 
His gaze lifts to you as he rises to his feet, drifting lazily over your form, lingering on the way your skin glows with a soft sheen of sweat, the loose strands of hair that cling to your forehead—something you hope you can play off considering the air condition in the ballroom isn’t on. Then his gaze settles down on the lower half of your body, lips curling up into a slow smirk.
He takes a few steps closer to you, holding his tie out to you. “Re-tie it?” he hums, and you roll your eyes because you know he can do it himself and you know he has some sort of ulterior motive right now, but you take it from him regardless.
You quickly slide the tie around his neck, trying to tie it quickly before anyone catches sight of the two of you, but with you so focused on getting this done, you miss the way his hand sneaks forward until you feel it slip into the slit of your dress. 
“Dazai,” you warn, keeping your voice low, but your breath catches when you feel him gather up all of the cum that had dribbled out of your cunt, head falling against his shoulder as you try to force yourself not to react when he uses two fingers to stuff it right back inside of you.
You can feel the wicked grin against your ear as he leans down to tug your earlobe gently. “Good luck explaining this to Ibuse.”
Then he steps away, dark eye glittering dangerously as he looks down at you.
“I’ll find you later,” he says before turning to walk away.
You’re not sure if it’s a threat or a promise and you don’t have time to make a snide comment asking, because you hear Ibuse approaching you from behind, giddy and excited until he catches sight of Dazai’s infamous black coat retreating, swallowing thickly and eyes flickering nervously between the two of you—a common reaction to the executive’s presence, knowing how dangerous and unpredictable he can be.
You wonder if Dazai would make Ibuse half as nervous and uncomfortable if he’d known he just spent the last fifteen minutes with your panties stuffed in his mouth and his hands tied behind his back, whining and whimpering, muffling all of his sounds so people didn’t overhear the two of you. But you dismiss that thought—that’s knowledge for you to keep to yourself, you don’t like sharing.
“Let’s get out of here?” you hum, drawing him out of his thoughts before he can spiral.
He lights back up again, but you can tell he’s still nervous from Dazai’s brief appearance. “Yeah, c’mon.”
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Two hours later, you wander out of one of the back rooms in Mishima’s mansion, intent on getting back to headquarters. You don’t get more than two feet before you feel a hand wrap around your wrist, tugging you backward hard until your back meets a familiar chest.
Your heartbeat stills from the brief bout of erraticness when you felt someone grab you, relaxing back into Dazai, tilting your head back and to the side to look up at him as he holds your hips, keeping you flush to him.
“Did you fuck him?” Dazai asks, voice low and expression unreadable.
You have half a mind to say yes, just to see what Dazai plans to do if you did. He can’t kill Ibuse, not even he is reckless enough to start a war with the Sun and Steel right now, but you don’t think you want to risk it.
“Didn’t have to,” you say honestly. “He was babbling out everything I wanted to know before the doors even closed.”
Dazai searches your face for a moment as if trying to decide if you’re being truthful, when he does, one of his hands slips off your waist into his coat, and you hear the familiar sound of Dazai flipping the safety of his gun back on.
“Dazai,” you snap. “You can’t just-”
“I can do whatever I want,” Dazai interrupts you with the type of confidence that lets you know he had every intention of putting a bullet through Ibuse’s head if you fucked him, regardless of the consequences. The thought of that alone makes your blood run hot, pupils dilating as you look up at him; Dazai’s lips curve up slowly as if he knows just what’s going on in your head. He looks behind you curiously before focusing back down on you asking: “Is he passed out in there?”
“Mhm,” you agree, watching him curiously as you try to figure out what he might be thinking. “Drank too much.”
“Good,” Dazai murmurs, walking you right back into the room you’d come out of, a sharp smile on his face. He closes the door behind the two of you, gaze flickering over to where Ibuse is unconscious on the couch before he backs you up until your knees hit the corner of the bed, pushing you back onto it. “Let’s see if we can wake him up then.”
689 notes · View notes
viennakarma · 3 months ago
Text
Let me let you go
Carlos Sainz x Reader
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Summary: Carlos never expected to see you again, much less in the paddock after the catastrophic ending to your relationship six years before.
Word count: 1.5k
Tags: female!reader, ex!reader, reader moved on, slight angst, carlos is contemplating, toxic past relationship, no happy ending (for carlos), bittersweet, not beta read
Relationship: Carlos Sainz x Ex Reader
Note: This is a short story that had been sitting in my wips for far too long, (because i wanted to make it longer) but I think everything that had to happen, happened, so I'll post it anyway. Comments and feedback are welcomed.
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Carlos never thought he would see you again, not in a million years, much less in just six years. Your relationship had been troubled at best. And toxic at worst. He never expected to see you again, though he had spent many nights hoping.
You’re in the paddock, casually walking, dressed up to the nines, but fashion had been your favorite thing back in the day, he supposed it still was. Smiling softly as you walked past Ferrari, you didn’t even spare a glance to Carlos’ garage, where you never had been.
Carlos watched you walk away until he lost you in the crowd.
He wondered what you were doing there. You weren’t into motorsports before meeting Carlos, and you learned everything about it during the year you two spent together. He always wondered if you kept watching the sport even after your messy breakup.
“Are you ok?” Charles asked, suddenly, and Carlos nodded, trying to disguise the galloping of his heart.
“Yes, yes,” he walked inside, looking at the direction you had gone hoping to catch another glimpse of you.
You were still so pretty, and compared to the way you looked the last time he had seen you, puffy eyes from crying, raspy voice and so much hurt in your irises… You had always been a goddess but the years only did you good. You looked mature, strong, fierce.
Life though, had a funny way of getting back at him. The glimpse he had caught of you, walking past wasn’t the last he’d seen of you.
Later that press day, he was walking away with Charles when he spotted you again, this time, you were laughing, leaning against a car.
“Y/N!” Charles called, waving at you. Carlos frowned, he didn’t know Charles knew you. You two had dated when he was still in Renault, and it wasn’t a public relationship. So he wondered how Charles knew you.
Charles jogged up to you, hugging you softly. Carlos could’ve taken the easy route, he could’ve turned around and left discreetly. But he was selfish, wanted to see you, hear your voice, and know about your life.
When he finally stood before you and Charles, your eyes met his, and for a single second, recognition flashed in your face, that you quickly pretended never happened.
“Have you two met yet?” Charles scratched his head trying to remember if you did.
“No, nice to meet you, I’m Y/N,” you offered a hand, and Carlos, confused and hurt just played along and shook your hand.
“Carlos,” he muttered, staring at you. You recognised him, but you didn’t seem hurt, or angry or upset, it was just… nothing.
“How’s Kian? Is he here?” Charles asked you, and Carlos eyebrows shot up. Who was Kian? Was he your new boyfriend or something?
“He’s doing great! He’s just-” before you could even finish, there was a loud squeal and the three of you turned to the sound.
Carlos observed your face, you were smiling politely up until then, but hearing the squeal, your face lit up in a beaming smile.
“Mama!” A little boy who couldn’t be older than three came running, or stumbling toward you with open arms.
“Hi, Angel!” You crouched down to take the little boy in your arms.
The baby, your kid, was cute, Carlos noticed. He had chubby cheeks, tiny hands, curly hair and pretty brown eyes. Carlos watched you positively melt as you hugged the boy, nuzzling into his neck and the baby laughed out loud.
“Hi, Kian!” Charles talked to the boy, who smiled with only a few teeth in his mouth. Carlos didn’t know what to think, seeing you like that, looking so happy with your son.
Kian turned to, apparently, the one stranger in the conversation, Carlos. The boy eyed him curiously, and after a brief decision, he smiled muttering “hi!” and waving his tiny hand.
“Hi, Kian!” Carlos smiled back.
Carlos only looked away from the baby when Lewis came out of nowhere, running up to you and pecking your lips. It felt like a punch in Carlos’ face.
“Are you ok? Sorry it took us so long, we weren’t finding Mr. Tooth,” Lewis showed a beaten stuffed bunny, “hi, guys!” Lewis finally greeted the other two drivers.
Charles and Lewis did the talking while Carlos stood there awkwardly, trying not to stare at you too hard. You were with Lewis now, that made something burn in his chest. You looked happy, healthy and had a toddler. Carlos knew Lewis had a long term girlfriend, but had never met her before. You.
“You guys want to come to dinner? We closed a restaurant tonight!” Lewis offered, “some of the guys in the grid are coming too!”
That’s how Carlos ended up in a restaurant with a lot of people from the grid. You seemed close with a few of the drivers and their girlfriends. You were close with Valtteri and George, chatting happily with them while Lewis fed Kian.
Carlos barely ate, watching intently as you talked with friends and looked so happy and relaxed. Your eyes were shining as you looked at Lewis. You didn’t give a fuck about Carlos, you weren’t mean or bitter, it just looked like you didn’t care. The indifference was like a repeated puncture against his heart. He knew that look on your face, the pure adoration directed to Lewis.
Carlos had explicitly asked you to stop looking at him like that in public, back when you two were in a secret relationship. You had just nodded, the glow in your eyes quickly fading away. You had quietly wiped a single tear from your face that he pretended he didn’t see.
You got up to go to the bar, to get a round for you and your friends, and Carlos saw the opportunity. After placing your order, you waited by the bar, sitting on a stool. He sat by your side.
“Long time no see,” Carlos muttered, and you offered him a tight lipped smile.
“Yeah, a few years,” you nodded.
“How are you doing?” He asked, sounding curious.
“I’m really happy,” you looked to where Lewis was standing up, going to the bathroom with Kian probably to change a nappy or something.
“How did you and Lewis happen?” Carlos asked and you understood the curiosity, you had blocked him from your entire life after the breakup.
“After I moved, I ended up working in a company that is one of Mercedes’ sponsors. I eventually met him, and he asked me out on a date… And here we are, four years later,” you shrugged, looking at Carlos.
“Does Lewis know about me?” Carlos asked suddenly.
“Yes. He was very understanding,” you said. Carlos nodded, Lewis had never approached him about you, never asked any questions nor treated Carlos any differently.
Carlos remembered you begging him to become public, not because you wanted attention and to appear in blogs and magazines, but because you wanted to hold his hand in the street, and kiss him on the dance floor. Because you were tired of going to his races and having to sneak in and out his room. Because you didn’t want to hurt anymore every time Carlos walked right past you when he was in public.
But Carlos didn’t want to, no matter how many times you asked, no matter how many times you tried to understand why he was so opposed to being public.
He didn’t notice how bad he was hurting you until you asked if he was ashamed of you. It was the day you broke up with him, and it was his turn to beg you not to go. While you were crying and packing your bag, you asked if he was willing to go public then, and when he didn’t answer, you took your bag and left.
That had been around six years ago.
“Life is unexpected,” you started, your eyes so shiny and so kind that a lump formed in his throat, “things happen how they’re supposed to. We think the pain was the worst thing in life, until you heal and better things come.”
“Y/N, I-” Carlos inhaled sharply, resisting the urge to confess, the urge to let his mind wander to what-ifs.
“Your happiness will come in due time, just like mine did, I promise,” you gently whispered. Carlos wanted you to be mean and bitter, because your kindness was tearing his heart apart. “We weren’t meant to be, Carlos. You’ll realize when you find the one.”
You patted his shoulder, took the drinks and went back to the table.
His heart was sinking as he watched you and Lewis, Kian on your lap, and your love being so evident, so public. Because now you could love openly as you always wanted, and Carlos was the one who stopped you from being genuine. He wondered where you two would be now, if he had done what you wanted back in the day. If he had not been a coward.
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physalian · 8 months ago
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You don’t have to pay for that fancy worldbuilding program
As mentioned in this post about writing with executive dysfunction, if one of your reasons to keep procrastinating on starting your book is not being able to afford something like World Anvil or Campfire, I’m here to tell you those programs are a luxury, not a necessity: Enter Google Suite (not sponsored but gosh I wish).
MS Office offers more processing power and more fine-tuning, but Office is expensive and only autosaves to OneDrive, and I have a perfectly healthy grudge against OneDrive for failing to sync and losing 19k words of a WIP that I never got back.
Google’s sync has never failed me, and the Google apps (at least for iPhone) aren’t nearly as buggy and clunky as Microsoft’s. So today I’m outlining the system I used for my upcoming fantasy novel with all the helpful pictures and diagrams. Maybe this won’t work for you, maybe you have something else, and that’s okay! I refuse to pay for what I can get legally for free and sometimes Google’s simplicity is to its benefit.
The biggest downside is that you have to manually input and update your data, but as someone who loves organizing and made all these willingly and for fun, I don’t mind.
So. Let’s start with Google Sheets.
The Character Cheat Sheet:
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I organized it this way for several reasons:
I can easily see which characters belong to which factions and how many I have named and have to keep up with for each faction
All names are in alphabetical order so when I have to come up with a new name, I can look at my list and pick a letter or a string of sounds I haven’t used as often (and then ignore it and start 8 names with A).
The strikethrough feature lets me keep track of which characters I kill off (yes, I changed it, so this remains spoiler-free)
It’s an easy place to go instead of scrolling up and down an entire manuscript for names I’ve forgotten, with every named character, however minor their role, all in one spot
Also on this page are spare names I’ll see randomly in other media (commercials, movie end credits, etc) and can add easily from my phone before I forget
Also on this page are my summary, my elevator pitch, and important character beats I could otherwise easily mess up, it helps stay consistent
*I also have on here not pictured an age timeline for all my vampires so I keep track of who’s older than who and how well I’ve staggered their ages relative to important events, but it’s made in Photoshop and too much of a pain to censor and add here
On other tabs, I keep track of location names, deities, made-up vocabulary and definitions, and my chapter word count.
The Word Count Guide:
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*3/30 Edit to update this chart to its full glory. Column 3 is a cumulative count. Most of what I write breaks 100k and it's fun watching the word count rise until it boils over.
This is the most frustrating to update manually, especially if you don’t have separate docs for each chapter, but it really helps me stay consistent with chapter lengths and the formula for calculating the average and rising totals is super basic.
Not that all your chapters have to be uniform, but if you care about that, this little chart is a fantastic visualizer.
If you have multiple narrators, and this book does, you can also keep track of how many POVs each narrator has, and how spread out they are. I didn’t do that for this book since it’s not an ensemble team and matters less, but I did for my sci-fi WIP, pictured below.
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As I was writing that one, I had “scripted” the chapters before going back and writing out all the glorious narrative, and updated the symbols from “scripted” to “finished” accordingly.
I also have a pie chart that I had to make manually on a convoluted iPhone app to color coordinate specifically the way I wanted to easily tell who narrates the most out of the cast, and who needs more representation.
Google Docs
Can’t show you much here unfortunately but I’d like to take an aside to talk about my “scene bits” docs.
It’s what it says on the tin, an entire doc all labeled with different heading styles with blurbs for each scene I want to include at some point in the book so I can hop around easily. Whether they make it into the manuscript or not, all practice is good practice and I like to keep old ideas because they might be useful in unsuspecting ways later.
Separate from that, I keep most of my deleted scenes and scene chunks for, again, possible use later in a “deleted scenes” doc, all labeled accordingly.
When I designed my alien language for the sci-fi series, I created a Word doc dictionary and my own "translation" matrix, for easy look-up or word generation whenever I needed it (do y'all want a breakdown for creating foreign languages? It's so fun).
Normally, as with my sci-fi series, I have an entire doc filled with character sheets and important details, I just… didn’t do that for this book. But the point is—you can still make those for free on any word processing software, you don’t need fancy gadgets.
I hope this helps anyone struggling! It doesn’t have to be fancy. It doesn’t have to be expensive. Everything I made here, minus the aforementioned timeline and pie chart, was done with basic excel skills and the paint bucket tool. I imagine this can be applicable to games, comics, what have you, it knows no bounds!
Now you have one less excuse to sit down and start writing.
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starcrossedslytherin · 9 months ago
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Love Letters
Sebastian Sallow x Reader
WC: 1K
A/N: I don’t know how popular the Hogwarts legacy fandom is as of now because I’ve not been on tumblr, but I found this fic in my drafts(along with quite a few wips) and realized I never posted it so I thought I would feed the Sallow girlies a quick snack today.
Summary: Sebastian wants to write you a love letter to tell you about his feelings but it’s not going the way he hoped, even with Ominis’ help.
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Ominis knows he shouldn’t be as amused as he is right now, but he can’t help it. It’s not often he gets to experience Sebastian embarrass himself so willingly.
Try as he does to suppress his chuckle, it slips out and Sebastian sighs, letting the several half written love notes spill onto the table in front of him.
“It’s not funny.” Sebastian practically pouts, glad his friend can’t see the expression on his face.
“I disagree.” Ominis taunts him with a grin, leaning back in his seat.
“I’ve been trying to write Y/N a note all afternoon! I just don’t understand why they sound so…”
“Awful?” Ominis jumps in. “Horrendous? Painfully cliche?”
“Oi, shut it.” Sebastian mutters, gently nudging Ominis’ foot under the table. He very much regrets asking his best friend for help now he knows how embarrassed he’d be.
He sighs before picking up all his papers, trying to find the best parts of them all. “Why don’t you read them again? Out loud, so I can hear.” Sebastian doesn’t see why Ominis asks him to do so, but he reads through the notes, pulling faces every time he gets to a rather cheesy part of the note.
When he finishes, he looks to Ominis, hoping he can give him any sort of feedback to fix this mess.
Ominis stays quiet for a moment, thinking Merlin only knows what until he says, “You make me wish I was deaf as well.”
Sebastian’s hands slap against the table as he gives up, annoyed with his inability to string together simple words to tell you how he feels and annoyed with Ominis’ lack of help. “Forget this.” Sebastian grumbles, crumpling up as many of the letters as he can.
Ominis sighs and puts his hand across the table, covering some of the papers and getting Sebastian to stop. “Just talk to her. Tell her how you feel.”
Sebastian pulls a face at the recommendation. “Tell her how I feel?” He repeats, starting to pace in his spot. “You mean, just walk up to her and tell her how beautiful I think she is? Or how any time she smiles at me, you, Anne or anything really, I can’t help but stare? How she is most likely the smartest and kindest person I have ever met? How anytime she’s in the room, I am most certain my heart will beat out of my chest with how fast she makes it? How each time I see her leave the castle on her little adventures, I fight myself on whether to go with because I need to know that she makes it back safe to me? To us? You think I should just walk right up to Y/N and tell I am absolutely in love with her?”
There was silence between the two boys after Sebastian’s speech and the brunette boy, exhausted mentally, falls in his seat in a slump. Ominis just sat there, gripping his wand tight in his hand as his lips gently pull up to the left. “Well,” he whispers, getting Sebastian’s attention, who frowns upon seeing his smirk, “I don’t think you have to worry about it anymore.”
Sebastian’s brows furrow and he was about to ask Ominis what he meant before the sound of a book clattering to the ground behind him has him whipping his hand around and he opens his eyes wide. There you were, frozen in your place as you struggle to keep more books from falling off the shelves.
“Sorry.” You mumble, trying to determine if you really were hearing what you think you were hearing. “And uh, sorry, I didn’t mean to- I wasn’t trying to eavesdrop.
Sebastian nods at your reassurance. “How much did you hear?”
You wave your hand in the air. “Oh, well just, uh, just… everything.”
Well, that’s not what he wanted.
He turned to glare at Ominis, but the boy slipped out when you and Sebastian were focused on each other.
You glance down at the paper strewn across the table, ready to dismiss them before seeing your name on one of them. “What is that?”
Sebastian sighs, debating whether he could really show you his mess of notes. He nods, letting you fall into the seat next to him as you pick through the papers. You barely got through the first sentence of the very first letter before your eyes shoot to Sebastian’s.
“You.. you wrote me letters?” There was a deep blush on his face and he’d gone silent, but he nods. You stare at him, feeling your own cheeks heat up quite a bit before you turn back and read, picking a few sentences of each discarded letter. Your favorite ones were the ones Sebastian had scratched over with his quill, obviously being embarrassed of having written them, but you enjoyed them.
From the first moment we met, I knew there was something extraordinary about you.
I know what love is because I know you.
My darling, you are my rock, my confident, my ally, my friend, and so much more.
“Bash…” you mumble, blinking repeatedly to keep your tears from spilling out.
“I couldn’t find the right words.” He whispers, picking up a few of the letters and holding them. “I had Ominis try to help me, but I don’t think he was particularly helpful.” You chuckle, imagining Ominis trying to help Sebastian.
Your laugh fades out as you put your hands on top of Sebastian’s and your eyes meet. Your stomach flutters with nerves and adoration. “I think you know the right words.”
Sebastian smiles at you, the corners of his mouth tugging up just enough that his eyes crinkle and he nods. “Y/N,” he begins, looking to his letters for strength but he knows he doesn’t need it. “Y/N, I love you. I’m in love with you. I want to be with you and I want to go on adventures with you and I want to smile with you and I want, I just want you.” His hand cups your cheek, bringing you closer to him as your eyes flutter close and he whispers, one last time before your lips meet, “I love you.”
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xanwyn · 3 months ago
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animation for THE NEON VOIDD BABYYYY
this post is for @sugarpasteltmnt
‼️‼️MEGA YAPPING AHEAD PLEASE BEWARE‼️‼️
this might end up being really long and rambly and sappy but maybe not who knows.( it was) (and also featuring numerous spelling errors i am way too tired to fix and i am not re reading what i just wrote) SO. yknow how when chap idek..25(?) came out and i was all like “yeah so i made this animation for TNV and ill drop it when the fic ends” in your ask box? so. I FINISHED IT RAHHH. technically it has been finished since i sent that ask but ohhh my goodness did it need polishing. i haven’t animated in 4 years before that and omg it felt so good getting back into it but IDFK SOMETHING IS STILL NOT UP TO MY STANDARDS. i feel like i could have done so much more with it and i deffo wanted to but as soon as i told myself “oh yeah this is basically done” art block literally sucker punched me in the gut out of NOWHERE. I COULD NOT PICK UP MY I PAD. I COULD NOT DRAW. I WOULD STARE AT THE WIP ANIMATION AND BE UPSET BC I DDINT WANNA WORK ON IT AHH. that goes with saying. i kept having this thought in the back of my head “you need to finish it. you have a wip sitting. finish it. go do it. what are you doing are you STARTING ANOTHER PROJECT??? anddd yeah i got super distracted with other stuff and other projects and then i started spending my free time rewatching 2012 turtles and omg this summer has been a mess. i have all the free time in the world and i choose to be the least productive as possible with it even though i have a job that lets me literally sit on my phone and do whatever i want if no one is there. (i’ve brought my switch to work numerous times ☠️) what i was trying to get at is the fact that TNV has inspired a lot of the old me to come back and i lowk missed her. i really missed the point in all those words up there but im here now so whatever. BUT. TNV made me make a tumblr account, i got back in to animation AND digital art in general, got back into longfics that are ongoing, AND it also helped kickstart ideas for writing. i’ve got so many stories now!! you are such an inspirational person pastels i just- every time i read a new chapter of yours it made me wanna go get up and do something. i wanted to create something. because at the end of each chapter, i would think- “woah. a person out there just wrote this. they just sat down one day and committed. i wanna do that” so i did that. just huge thank you and shoutout to you pastel. like damn. idk no words from me here. just a bunch of platonic hugs and kisses and thankyouthankyouthsnkuou for this lovely heart wrenching but also sweet story. i love this fandom (tmnt) so SO much and i think it’s so awesome how interactive you are with your own personal NV fans. crazy how we’re all here because of a bunch of turtles. 
STUFF ABOUT THE ANIMATION:
okay i really like to talk and if you let me, i will run my mouth. this is the internet so im gonna do just that. so more words for you to read 😁. AHEM. so like i stated before in the genuinely scary mess of words up there, i haven’t touched animation in a while, like, 4 years a while. yes i’ve done digital art here and there along the years, i haven’t been doing it nearly as much as i need to to use some programs to their full potential. layers are still confusing, and don’t even get me started on multiply and all that jazz. shading never comes out right on digital for me, i gotta work that one out. so, for this animation, i decided to go with a very rough style. nothing needed to be perfect, i just wanted to live my little life of trying to experiment with a bunch of different things all at once in one short animatic. I wanted to do that little ball bounce thing all animation artists start with (i kinda included that with the key). i also wanted to have a go at lip sync (no hate it was my first time) and also timing the animation with the music. i wanted to see how smoothly i could move a figure in and out of and out of the screen as well, which honestly, i think that part might be my favorite. i think i did a good job, and thats what matters. the animation itself lost a bunch of quality on importing it- no clue how it happened but now the ending is grainy af. ignore that pls lol- but it was sitting in my flipaclip for god, i dont even know, 3 months now? i kept going back and forth on if i wanted to share it or not, so im throwing it to the wolves and i guess whatrver happrns happens and im good with that. yay. im actually rrwlly tired now sooo *leaves this absolute pile of words with a video attached at your feet and stumbles away quickly*
also i’ve genuinely never posted anything so i’m learning how to use tumblr too ☠️
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electricbathsalt · 6 months ago
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Things I want to talk about/touch upon/see people mention more but cannot compile individual coherent posts about:
1. The fact Pops’ daughter apparently had a “falling out” with Pops (over her marriage??) that caused her to completely abandon the yakuza and maybe also cut contact with Pops (the dude is suspicious guys)
2. The fact that in the Overhaul-LOV initial meeting, Chisaki had to have intentionally chosen not to kill Mr. Compress.
3. The idea that many of Chisaki’s thought processes at least partially stem from his time in AFO’s facility. And of course, Pops.
4. How much Chisaki seems to lack a proper reaction to any sort of pain (He was beat to a pulp by Mirio & Midoriya, exploded himself, & got his arms cut off and I’ve never heard him so much as yelp) while still complaining about how overhauling himself hurts?? Yet he doesn’t show it.
5. (Highway scene) How Chisaki only screamed once the realization he wouldn’t be able to ever wake up Pops sunk in (isn’t confirmed but. I’m convinced).
6. The fact that there’s absolutely no way Chisaki wasn’t negatively impacted by being raised in the Yakuza. It’s simply inherent.
7. The blatant disregard Pops had to have had for both Chisaki and Eri’s well-beings to have designated Chisaki as her caretaker.
8. The endless amounts of potential for Chisaki & Dabi/Touya dynamics post-war, platonic or otherwise. (Multiple fics with this premise in my WIPs, lol)
9. The fact Chisaki seems practically incapable of holding a grudge. Like, think about it; is there a character you can say Chisaki genuinely, wholeheartedly hates and wishes the worst upon. You know what—what IS his opinion on Shigaraki/the LOV these days??
10. Realizing that in the initial Overhaul-LOV meeting, Chisaki literally just tone-matched them. Look:
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Mr Compress says all that, and then Chisaki later explains:
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Which, once you break down what Mr Compress said/how he said it, and what Chisaki said/how he said it… blunt statement of facts. Mr Compress told Toga how faded out the Yakuza have become with no sugarcoating, and Chisaki took that and said. “Well. Yeah.” But then when Chisaki did the same thing (blunt but true & valid criticisms of the LOV/Shigaraki’s leading skills (bc let’s be real, he was an ass leader at the time in terms of actual planning and execution)), the LOV got pissed. He pointed out all the relevant flaws and mistakes in Shigaraki’s leadership and then said it’d be better if he was the leader because he actually has a plan, and they got pissed at the mere prospect of serving under somebody else. Do you realize how much the story would’ve been altered if the LOV didn’t decide to just start attacking Chisaki here?? 💀 Sorry I’m exceptionally passionate about this bc the fandom gaslit me for a while into believing Chisaki was the one starting shit here 😔 but then I read it (a long time after I'd watched it in the anime) and was like. "what. he didn't initiate literally any of this shit. and everything he's saying is true??"
There’s probably more I could add to this but it’s getting long enough lol.
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tkwrites · 6 months ago
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Summer Decisions - Quinn Hughes x ofc
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gif from gabelandeskog
Title: Summer Decisions - Quinn Hughes x ofc
Author: Tory / @tkwrites 
Relationship: Quinn Hughes x Sarah Roberts
Warnings: Highly emotional, angst. mild fighting, lots of anxiety, swearing, crying, fluff. If I missed anything, please let me know. 
Summary: An invitation to his family reunion over the fourth of July has Quinn and Sarah tumbling into a long conversation about their future in the off-season and beyond. Though the ensuing fight is resolved, the reality of their commitments vs. their love for each other is put to the test.
Word Count: 4,600
Comments: I’m back with some highly emotional goodness. This fic was halfway done for a long time until your overwhelming reactions to my WIP ask game really got me in gear to start writing again. I really like the way this turned out, and I hope you do, too. It's, like, 98% dialogue. So if that's not your thing, I won't be offended if you skip this one. But it is setting up all of our off-season fics.
If you enjoyed this, please let me know by commenting, reblogging, or sending in an ask. Your encouragement and comments truly inspire me to keep writing. 
I love Quinn and Sarah, and I’m constantly blown away that so many of you love them, too.
Summer Decisions
A Quinn & Sarah Snapshot
“My parents want to know if you want to come to our family reunion over the 4th of July. It’s in New Hampshire.”
“Oh,” she said, voice quiet. 
“Is that not okay?” 
“It’s just a big step,” she said, “meeting your whole family.” 
“I’m meeting your family in June, aren’t I?” he asked.
They’d discussed him coming to visit when she went home for a few weeks after school. Were it not for the Canucks making it into the playoffs, she would have bought a ticket for the Monday after her classes would be done. Instead, she pushed her visit back until mid-June, wanting to be in Vancouver to support him through the entirety of their run, however long it may be.
“Yeah, I guess that’s true.” 
It was a little strange to her how comfortably serious they were, but she couldn’t imagine life with Quinn any other way. It was that fated belonging she’d talked about so much when they first met. Even still, it was a little jarring to think about him meeting her family or meeting his before they even hit the six month mark. 
The phrase, ‘when you know, you know,’ never made sense until she met him. She knew, and even though it felt too fast and scary sometimes, she knew it would all turn out okay. 
“So we’ll fly out from Van, what? The night before?”
“I’ll have to fly out from Michigan.” 
“Michigan? Why?” 
“I thought I told you we train in Michigan in the summer.”
“You did, but I thought… I thought maybe that changed?” 
“Why?” 
“Because of us?” she gestured between them. 
“I mean, I’d love for you to come with me.” 
“I can’t do that, Quinn.”
“Why not?”
“I can’t just pack up and move to Michigan. I still have my research work, and if I’m not working or in school for more than 6 weeks in a quarter, it violates my education visa. Not only will I have to move back to the States, I won’t be able to finish my degree.” 
“Then I’ll fly you out every weekend.” 
Pricked, the old wound split open, and she couldn’t quite hide the annoyance in her voice, “so it’s up to me to fly to you?” 
Shit. He hadn’t taken her schedule into account again. “Sorry, no. Of course I’d come here, too.”
The annoyance still fresh in her mind she found herself asking, “why do I have to remind you my time matters for you to take it into account?”
Quinn winced. “I know your time matters. I’m sorry, it’s not fair for me to assume you could just pack up and move or fly out every weekend.”
“Then don’t bring it up again,” she said. 
Okay then. 
“I’m trying here, Sarah. This is all new to me, too.” He’d never felt close enough with June to figure out a summer situation. They saw each other once or twice when he was gone, and that was enough. Looking back, that should have been a huge sign about the trajectory of their relationship.
“And yet, I assume because I have a vagina, I was raised to take other people into account.” 
“That’s not fair,” he said. 
“No? Then why do you always jump into me coming to you? Into me changing my plans? Into me inconveniencing my life before you do?” 
Fuck. This wasn’t supposed to go this way. This was supposed to be a nice, light conversation about how he wanted her to meet everyone he loved. 
“Maybe we should just break up for the summer,” she said when he didn’t say anything.  
“What? No!” Quinn sucked his bottom lip into his mouth, hurt and disgruntled she would even suggest such a thing. 
“What would you suggest, then?”
Instead of answering her question, he asked one of his own. “Do you want to date someone else?” His voice was hesitant as he braced himself for the blow. 
“No. Of course not.” 
“Then why do you want to break up?” he asked through the relief easing his mind. “Why would you even say that?” 
“Because we won’t be together.”
“That doesn’t mean we should just call it off. Why do you always jump into ‘we should break up’ or ‘I should go’ when something hard comes up?” 
“I…” Sarah broke off, caught. “I don’t know.” 
“Maybe you should figure that out because I’m willing to put in the work here,” he said, gesturing between them. 
“That’s not fair.”
He raised his eyebrows instead of throwing her words back in her face. 
“I’m sorry, Quinn. I am trying, and I know you’re trying.” Tears pricked at her eyes, “I’ve just…” her mind whirred, trying to find the right explanation. In the end, as it always did with Quinn, the truth won out. “I’m scared I’m going to fuck it up and I don’t want to lose you.” 
Bridging the space between them with one big step, he pulled her against him. When they boiled down to the heart of the problem, they were both scared of the same thing. 
Tucking his nose into her hair, he breathed in the calming, smokey scent that was uniquely hers. “I don’t want to lose you, either,” he said. “We can still be together. Just separately.”
A laugh snorted from her nose, and she pulled back, “what?” 
“Long distance?”
It was Sarah's turn to suck on her lip. “I’ve never done that before.”
“I have. It's not easy. But I think we're both committed enough to make it work. Plus, we'll see each other pretty often.”
She had her thinking face on as a pregnant pause passed, so Quinn didn’t interrupt.
“What would that look like?” she asked, finally. 
“We’d talk on the phone and video chat a lot. I can come see you every weekend.”
“That doesn't make sense, Quinn. You go to Michigan to train and be with family. If you're flying back here every weekend, won't that mess with those things?”
“Probably, but —”
“Then it's out of the question. You need to do what you need to do.” 
He felt whiplashed. “I thought you wanted me to come here.” 
“Only in equal measure to me coming to you. I won’t let you give up your summer training for me.” 
It stuck him how much care and understanding were laid out in that statement. 
“Just like I know you wouldn’t want me to give up my research for you. It wouldn’t be fair.” 
Still wrapped in each others arms, Sarah rested her head on his shoulder as they thought. 
Tucking his face into her hair again, Quinn breathed deeply. As always, that smokey, vanilla scent was so calming to him. He couldn’t ever get it out of his mind. 
“This fucking sucks,” he said, voice muffled.
“I know,” she agreed. “I wish it could be different."
It couldn’t. They both had commitments that needed to be fulfilled, and they just didn’t match up.
“I wish I’d known. I would have made different plans.” 
“How would you have known?” she asked. “We only met four months ago.” 
“Has it only been that long?” he asked. The reality of the swiftness of their relationship hit him full force. “I feel like I’ve known you forever.” 
“I know. I do too.” 
“I don’t want to go the summer without you,” he said, caressing her cheek with the backs of his fingers. 
“I don’t either,” she agreed, “but it’s not like it’ll be five months where we just don’t see each other.” 
“Four,” he corrected. 
“What?” 
“Four months, I come back in September.” 
Well, that was a relief. 
“Okay, four months. I mean, we already have stuff planned. Let’s talk through what we do have,” she suggested, breaking away from him all together and pulling her planner from her bag. Flipping to the summer months, she lay it on top of her comparative physiology textbook and sat at the table. The urge to make a plan itched beneath her skin. 
He sat next to her, leaning in.
“So we have my family in June,” she said, pointing out the 10 days she had blocked out for her visit, “I sort of expected you’d come on the weekend?”  
“Yeah, that sounds good. And our reunion over the forth,” he said, flipping the page. “Then, we’re going to Hawaii at the end of July. You can come. I’ll get you a ticket.” 
“Hold on, have you talked to your family about this?” 
“No, but it’ll be fine.” 
She shook her head. 
He couldn’t believe she was turning down the option to spend two more weeks together. 
“That’s your family vacation, Quinn. I’d love to come, but I don’t want to go inserting myself —”
“You’re not inserting yourself, I’m inviting you.” 
“And I’m telling you I won’t come unless all your family is okay with it. Including Jack.” 
Even though Quinn had assured her Jack was a good guy and very devoted to his family and would come around once they met, he was still aloof anytime she happened to be around when he and Quinn were talking. Even Ellen had said as much, but Sarah still felt hesitant. Until she saw it from Jack himself, she wasn’t about to jump into an already planned vacation. She knew what it was like having a new person join the family. She didn’t want to make it any harder than it had to be. 
Quinn huffed. 
“The last thing I want is to come between you and your brothers,” she said gently.
His expression softened. “Okay. I’ll talk to them about it when they’re here.”
“So, it looks like we’ll see each other every three weeks or so, depending on when you come to Nevada and what Hawaii looks like. At least until August.”
Every three weeks felt like too long. He could hardly stand a week on the road, and they weren’t even living together. Yet. 
“I’d like you to come out to Michigan,” he said, “meet the guys. See the house.”
“Okay,” she agreed. “And you can come back here sometime here,” she said, her finger circling over a few weeks in August. 
Quinn nodded. It certainly wasn’t going to be easy, but it did feel better to have a plan.
“Are you renting this place out for the summer,” she asked, “while you’re gone?”
“I kind of thought you might move in here.”
“What?” 
“I mean, it’s just going to be empty, and I’d really like to live with you when I move back.” 
She couldn’t believe he could drop such a huge bomb so easily. As she tried to reconcile what he was saying, she repeated, “what?” 
“I mean…” he paused, voice and expression suddenly hesitant, “only if you want to.” 
Her brain finally caught up, “it’s not that. It’s just…we haven’t even talked about living together, and now you have this whole plan about how I should live here over the summer.” 
“I just thought there’s no real need for you to pay for rent anymore, since you spend so much time here anyway.” 
“I…” she was struck with the care in that statement, “that’s really sweet, Quinn.” 
He beamed.
“But I can’t live here alone all summer.” 
Expression falling, he opened his mouth.
“I just —” she interrupted before she lost her nerve. What was one more in a series of already vulnerable conversations? “I’d love to live here with you, but I can’t…I don’t know how my depression will act up if I live alone for that long. I’ve never lived on my own before, and I don’t think a summer where I’m missing my boyfriend is the best time to start.” 
The thought that she’d be here alone hadn’t crossed his mind. Not in a concrete way. Like, he knew she’d be here, and he knew he’d be in Michigan, but he never thought about it like she would be the only one in the apartment.
“Oh,” he whispered, taking her hands in his, “then of course not.” 
His immediate acceptance made tears rush to her eyes. 
“What’s wrong?” Quinn asked as she took a hand back to wipe her face. 
Smiling despite the tears on her cheeks, she shook her head. “I just really love you.” Her voice sounded full, almost like she had a cold.
“I love you, too,” he said, feeling a little confused, “but I don’t know why you’re crying.” 
“Just…” How could she explain something like this? “The way you accept and trust my needs. It’s really nice.”
“The last thing I want is for you to be unhappy, Sarah.” 
This brought on a new wave of tears, and she tucked her head into his shoulder, trying to pull herself together. 
Quinn still felt a little whiplashed but tried to roll with it, running a soothing hand over her back. 
“What?” he asked when she mumbled something into his shirt. 
Pulling back, she wiped her nose before repeating, “I’ll have to sign a new lease. It comes up in July.” 
“I’ll buy you out of it,” he said as if it was the simplest, easiest solution to any of the problems they’d discussed that day. 
“I can’t let you do that, Quinn. That’s a lot of money.” 
He hated having this conversation, but it needed to be had. It was actually a little surprising to him that it’d taken this long for it to come up. June had asked him about it a month into dating.
“Sarah, I make eight million dollars a year. I can buy out your lease.” 
Her eyes went wide. They’d never discussed money so concretely. She knew he made big bucks. All pro athletes did, but, “eight million?” she asked. “What do you do with it?” 
“I have a financial advisor who’s helped me invest most of it,” he said, “and I don’t really have all eight million available all the time. But I paid off my parents and some of our families’ houses, and I give quite a bit to charity.” 
She’d seen the way he was with money. He never worried about it, but he certainly didn’t throw it at anything and everything. He wasn’t irresponsible. 
Opening her mouth to say something, she found her mind still reeling and closed it again. 
The annoyed look he would give her when she paid the dinner bill flashed in her mind. No wonder. He made so much more than she did. All the same, she wasn’t about to become some sugar baby. That went against nearly everything her parents had taught her.
“I still want to pull my weight,” she said.
Quinn was a little taken aback by the fierceness in her voice, “what?” 
“If we move in together, I still want to pull my weight.” 
His lips pursed, and he held back his initial response in favor of gathering more information. “What do you mean?” 
“Like, if I make $80,000 a year, I want to pay whatever percentage that is of what you make.”
“You only make $80,000 a year?” he asked. 
“No. Right now, I make $50,000 a year from my research stipend. It pays for my schooling, too, so it’s technically more, but $80,000 is a general base salary for a marine zoologist.” 
“You’ve been living on $50,000 a year?” 
“Yes, and I’ve been fine,” she said, giving him a look that stifled any follow-up questions he may have had. “My point is that if —” she paused to correct herself, “when we live together,” he beamed and she lost her thought for a moment before continuing, “I want to pull my weight, even if it is just a small percentage of the household. I don’t want to be some beholden trophy wife.” 
“Beholden?” he repeated, an amused smile playing on his lips.
“Yes, I don’t want to be some kept woman. A lot of financial advisors that I listen to say you should split the household and each pay the percentage compared to your salaries. How much do you pay here a month? Do you rent? Is it a mortgage?” 
“It’s a rental. It’s not really smart for me to buy a place when there’s a chance I may get traded in three years. It’s not enough time to build adequate equity on a home.” 
Sarah stuck a mental pin in that to come back to, “and how much is your rent?” 
“12,000.” 
“A year?” she found herself asking, even though she knew that couldn’t possibly be the answer.  
“A month,” he said with an indulgent smile, knowing it was her shock speaking more than anything else.
She wasn’t quite sure why, but this fact struck Sarah harder than anything else they’d talked about. She knew she’d never be able to afford an apartment like this on her own, but this was insane. More than a fifth of her yearly salary went to Quinn’s rent each month. She counted herself lucky to find a private room for under $2000.
“Okay, so if I make,” she paused, doing mental calculations - moving decimal points. Her voice was flat when she spoke again, “one percent of what you do…” She trailed off, looking into his face, “Quinn, this is insane.” 
“I know,” he agreed. “I’m happy to just pay, but if you would feel better paying whatever, I’m happy for you to do that, too.” 
 “So, I’d pay one percent of the household expenses.” Saying it out loud, it sounded so silly. One percent? That seemed minuscule, too insignificant to matter. “Maybe I could pay ten percent? One feels too tiny.”
“Sure,” Quinn said, knowing this was important to her. Unless she was storming in, trying to take over all the bills, he was happy to have her contribute in whatever way she wanted. “If you want to do that, let’s do that. Whatever you’re comfortable with.” 
They sat quietly for a moment, and he gathered his thoughts.
“I know it’s important to you to contribute,” Quinn said gently, “and I’m not saying you shouldn’t - but I just want you to know I’m happy to pay for things. I know I’m insanely blessed to make the kind of money I do to play a sport that I love. I’d really, really like to live together once I move back. So if that means I need to buy out your lease, I’m happy to do it if you’re comfortable with that.”
Pulling her bottom lip between her teeth, she thought. If Quinn paid off her lease, she wouldn’t have to put off moving in with him or live on her own in this giant apartment or find a place to live for the two months between when he was home and when her lease was up. 
She wondered if this was one of those instances her grandmother often talked about. “Sometimes,” she would say while they were cleaning the basement or kneading dough, or working in the garden, “life showers you with blessings. And it’s up to you to catch them.” 
She always accompanied this wisdom by shaping her hands into a bowl as if to fill them with water. 
Sarah did the same now, pulling her other hand out of Quinns to cup them together. 
Eyebrows knitted together, he glanced from her hands to her face. 
She giggled and told him the story. 
“I should start doing that every morning,” he said, cupping his own hands together. 
“Every morning?” she repeated. 
“Well, every morning that you’re here. When I wake up next to you, I feel like the luckiest guy alive.” 
Despite it being incredibly cheesy, Sarah couldn’t help feeling moved. “Quinn that’s really sweet,” she said. “I feel like that, too,” she paused, feeling like she needed to add a caveat. “And I want you to know your money isn’t part of that. I would love you no matter how much money you were making.” 
“I know,” he said, leaning in to brush his lips over hers, “I’ve known that from the start.” 
His hands found her waist as their lips connected. 
A while later, that pin she’d stuck in for later snapped back into her mind, and Sarah pulled away. “What did you mean about getting traded?”
Well, they might as well have all the hard conversations all at once. “I’m in contract for the next three years, but after that, or even before, there’s always a chance I could get traded.” 
The trade deadline had already passed for the season, and Sarah had watched, fascinated, as players were moved around from club to club, like pieces on a chess board as organizations tried to build the best teams possible. Now, she had a new level of understanding, knowing lives and families were being uprooted in the process.
“But they love you here.”
His smile was wide and genuine, “I love it here, too. I don’t really expect I’d be traded anytime soon, but I can’t say never with what I do. I could get seriously injured, or my game could crash.” 
She gave him an incredulous look. 
“Its happened before.” 
“To you?” 
“No, but it has to people I know. I really like it here, but I can’t guarantee I’ll play here forever, or even for the next three years. I think I will, but I can’t say for certain.”
“What happens if you get traded while I’m still finishing my degree?”
“I don’t think that will happen, but I guess we’d make it work apart until you were done. Most players get traded right at the end of their contract, so we’d be apart for the rest of the season, and then we’d decide what to do moving forward. If I was moving clubs by choice, we’d decide where to go together. ”
She nodded. “Do you get any say in trades?” 
“I think I probably would, but it doesn’t always work out that way. I mean, Bo had a monster year last season, but they couldn’t come to an agreement, and so he got traded, and I know he would have liked to stay. It’s just never guaranteed.” 
“How do you live your life like this?” she asked. 
He shrugged, “you just kind of have to get used to the idea that things could change tomorrow.” 
“That sucks.”
“Yeah.” 
The concerns his parents had expressed when they were here snapped into place, and a sudden, consuming worry that she might not want this kind of life overwhelmed him.
“Are you,” he paused to lick his lips, trying to find the right phrasing, “I mean, do you think you could be okay with that?” 
Even as it was racing with anxiety, the worried look on his face melted Sarah’s heart. It was difficult to reconcile the fact that while it felt steady now, his life had the possibility of being in flux all the time, and that where he chose to work was only partially up to him. At the same time, she didn’t want to be without him. The pull between them was too strong, too fated in a way she couldn’t deny. She was too in love with him to be scared of the reality of his life. 
There was only one thing for it. “It’ll take some getting used to, but I think I can,” she said. Perhaps this wasn’t even something she needed to be worried about. Thoughts buzzing, she tried to think of players on Quinn’s level who’d been traded recently. She couldn’t remember any off the top of her head. She’d have to look it up. 
He gave her a relieved smile, and she saw moisture shining in his eyes. 
“Oh, Quinn,” she said, her hands coming up to cup his face. The course hairs of his beard tickled her palms. “I think I’d probably move to the ends of the earth with you.” The words just fell out of her mouth, and once they were out there, spoken aloud for everyone to hear, she realized how true they were. For someone so practical, it was strange for her to have such a frivolous thought mean so much. 
His face split into a beaming smile, and he pulled her into a hug. Tucking his nose into her hair again, he let a few grateful tears fall. “I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you,” he said. 
“I don’t know either.” 
A sudden, surprised laugh barked from his chest, and he pulled back with a raised brow.
“Oh no,” her hand went to her mouth as a blush blazed over her cheeks. “I meant that I feel the same way.” Shaking her head, she wondered if she had ever said something so stupid. “You’re the most understanding, accepting man I’ve ever met, Quinn. I’m so glad the Universe brought us together.” 
He nodded, “me too.” 
Looking into his eyes, which seemed more hazel than usual to the point that she could almost see a ring of green near the iris, the reality of what was coming hit her square in the chest, “this summer is gonna fucking suck.” 
“I know,” he said, pulling her into his lap. 
Arms around his shoulders to bring herself closer, her feet hung awkwardly off the sides of the chair. Though she knew her toes would be tingling from lack of blood flow within a matter of minutes, she didn’t readjust, savoring the feeling of his solid chest against hers. 
The deep breath she sighed out moved her whole body against his. “We’ll get through it together, right?” 
Tightening his grip, Quinn agreed. 
As the minutes passed, his hands traveled over her back in slow, calming waves that put her totally at ease. 
“Do you have homework?” he asked quietly, almost as if he didn’t want to hear the question himself. 
“Yeah, but it can wait a while.”
A pleased little hum filtered up his throat, and he pulled her tighter against him. 
“Can we move to the couch, though?” she asked. “My feet are falling asleep.” 
Laughing, he stood, hands cradling her butt to keep her wrapped around him. When she hooked her ankles around his back, Quinn filed the position away to try later. 
Halfway up the stairs, Sarah unwound herself from him. Sure, he was an athlete, but carrying her up the stairs was still taking a toll. 
She lay down on the suede couch and held her arms open for him. He gratefully lay on top of her, his head on her chest. 
Running her fingers through his hair, Sarah replayed their relationship in her mind. Knowing what she knew now, both about Quinn’s celebrity status and his quiet nature, the fact that he came up to her at all was a miracle. He could have any woman in the city, and he’d stuck his neck out for her. It was overwhelming to think about sometimes. She hoped she was living up to his expectations. 
Half an hour later, Quinns phone chirped with a notification, bringing them out of their sleepy reverie. By that time, they’d switched places, and Sarah was draped over him. 
“It’s 6,” he whispered into her hair. “I’ve got to get up to make dinner.”
Even as she whined, Sarah pushed herself up. This soft, caring version of Quinn was always her favorite, and she didn’t want to let him go. “I love you,” she said, looking down at him.
“I love you, too,” he said, standing and hugging her to him again before they had to get back to real life.
Her arms tightened around him. “I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you, Quinn Hughes, but I’m so glad you’re mine.” 
Tucking his face into her neck, he pressed a few soft kisses there before telling her, “Sarah Roberts, you are the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
Want more Quinn & Sarah? Check out the Snapshots Masterlist
To read all my fics, check out the Fanfiction Masterlist
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prettiestgrlinthemorguexo · 9 months ago
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Swipe (Lucifer Morningstar x reader) Preview
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This is a preview of my WIP fanfic for Lucifer, it’s a three parter and this is a small about of part 1, since it’s still a WIP it’s not yet proof read :) Description: after his divorce, he finally gets back into the dating game…through a dating app :)
Please note I’m writing this before the release of ep7 and ep8 so- 
Takes place between ep 5 and right before ep 6 
I wrote nearly 98% of this at like 3 AM-
 Warning: Lucifer being a dork, Lucifer being a dorky dad, age gap(reader died at like 25 and Lucifer is like a good few thousands years old so), talk of divorce, Charlie being a supportive daughter, I’ve never used a dating apps so i might get info wrong, Lucifer doesn’t know modern day technology or slang, lying
⛧☾༺♰༻☽⛧ ⛧☾༺♰༻☽⛧ ⛧☾༺♰༻☽⛧
Lucifer’s POV
“Charlie, are you sure about this?” I ask still hesitant, I knew Charlie just wanted to help and had the best intentions, but a dating app?  “Of course!” Charlie exclaimed, face lite up. “It’s perfect! You get to meet people without the face to face interactions!” Charlie said downloading the app, viva by Voxtech.
Charlie’s was more excited than I was, I wanted to meet people but an app? I can’t help but feel my heart race and my body get heavy, why was I this nervous. In the middle of my overthinking Charlie handed me the phone, it had a profile made it had my name and many details. It felt like I was giving it to all 9 rings of hell! “Ok! How we gotta add some photos an-“ 
“Charlie!” 
We both turned are head to see Alastor and Vaggie standing there. “Can you help with something real quick?” Vaggie ask seeming annoyed. “Of course!” Charlie’s called back before as standing up. “You go ahead and add those photos dad I’ll be back!” Charlie said as she ran to the two, leaving me alone on the couch staring at the screen. 
I read over the info and it all was so…personal. How would anyone be comfortable putting this much out? I Don’t get me started with being the King of Hell it’s self, then an idea popped in my head. I turn my head slightly to see Charlie still talking to the pair so I decided to take matters into my own hands. I added photos of my duck inventions and made a duck with a white top hat as my ‘icon’. Now onto the name, Lucifer was too out there everyone would know, think! L names that are similar.
Lucifer..
Luci…
Luc…
Luca..
Luca! I instantly think changing the name quickly, removing the last name from the profile along with it. After that it looked like a normal profile. When I finished and satisfied with it Charlie was walking back over. “Sorry bout that dad! Now back to w-.” While she was speaking I shove my phone in my pocket and stand up. “No it’s fine! I set it up!” I nearly screamed it out as I stood from the couch. Charlie stared at me shock for a moment before her normal bright smile returned to her face. “Wow that’s great!” She said as she walked over “Look at you getting the hang of technology!” Charlie said happily. I didn’t know why I was so nervous by an app, but it was on my mind. After finishing talking to Charlie I was able to leave, soon I was back in my bedroom. I let out a sigh and feel onto the massive bed and pulled out my phone, Viva still open.
Y/N POV
Left..Left..Left..
God this app was a never ending app of swiping left on people wanting hook-ups was tiring. This was the last time I’d take F/N  advice and use a dating app, the fact they exist in hell was already surprising. It was nude after nude of people looking for a hookup. Then something different popped up, instead of the naked body I almost have gotten used to, I was greeted by a rubber duck with a white top hat. My eyes widen a bit as I layed there I swipped to look at the second photo, more ducks. I then moved and read the bio. “Luca..” I said quietly to myself reading the short info. I looked at the photos and the bio, it stood out in the sea of profile, i stair a while longer…
…Right. 
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livwritesstuff · 11 months ago
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i hit 100 followers while i was asleep (absolutely bananas imo but i’m so thrilled y’all are enjoying my steddie dads verse bc i’ve literally never had so much fun writing before) so here's a sneak peek of a wip featuring the Harrington fam
Eddie does not understand sports. 
He may be approaching fifty years old and way past his old ways of rejecting every notion that doesn’t perfectly align with his own interests, but even after all these years, the wires in his brain simply cannot wrap themselves around sports no matter how hard he tries.
And he does try because, naturally, he has three daughters, Moe, Robbie, and Hazel, all of whom play sports.
To be clear – his kids can do literally anything they want, bar none.
He’s still in goddamn awe with the whole arrangement that is the life he lives every day – kids and a house and a job he loves and all that with Steve Harrington of all people. There’s no way Eddie would start fucking all that up by projecting his own weird quirks onto his children. He refuses to be the kind of parent that prevents their kids from doing anything just because they don't get it. If the girls want to play sports, they’re gonna play sports. Nothing wrong with that.
Still, sports are one of those things he takes the back seat and lets Steve hold the reins for, especially now that thirteen-year-old Moe is pretty deep into the whole basketball thing. 
Steve understands the politics of the game, both on the court — like knowing which refs are gonna be biased towards which team and noting Moe’s play-time each game — and off. He schmoozes the coach, he’s friends with all the parents, all the things Moe, at thirteen, doesn’t even notice and Eddie, while aware of it, doesn’t understand. He still can barely follow the games themselves (and he goes to as many as he can, though he and Steve are outnumbered by one and with the prospect of the girls carting themselves around still a distant fantasy their schedule is insane so he can’t make them all). He does his best to follow his husband’s lead but Steve doesn’t always react to things the way Eddie thinks he will. He doesn’t bat an eye when a kid gets smacked in the face with a ball, nor at the impossibly loud thud when someone hits the deck (look — he gets the floor is hollow, but it is loud). He’s completely unbothered by the fit Moe throws every game whenever she’s inevitably benched for having an attitude with her opponents or her teammates or the coach or the ref or just about anybody who tries to get in her way.
As is what happened at Moe’s game yesterday.
Eddie hadn’t seen it — well, he’d seen it, but seeing something and understanding what he’s actually looking at are two totally different things. From what he gathers, Moe had missed an easy shot and gotten pissed off in her own little way about it, so she’d launched herself at whoever on the opposing team had gotten their hands on the ball after it ricocheted off the backboard. Unfortunately for Moe, the team they were playing had a reputation for being a little too aggressive for a middle school league, so when she’d hit the ground, she hit it hard. Moe had been pulled off the court by her coach (carded, maybe? Eddie still isn’t sure how that works in basketball) and scowled on the bench for the rest of the game.
Steve had tried to reason with her on the drive home (an interesting choice, in Eddie’s opinion).
“Darling,” he’d said, “I totally understand being upset about missing a layup, but I don’t know how to get it through your head that intentionally fouling someone isn’t the way to go about resolving that emotion. I love you and I support you, but I’m getting tired of watching you play for three minutes and then sit on the bench for the rest of the game.”
“Talk to the coach then,” Moe had grumbled.
“About what?” Steve exclaimed, “Moe — you do it on purpose!”
The conversation had ended not long later because Moe decided to give them both the silent treatment (a clear sign that she knew she was in the wrong even if she didn’t want to admit it) and Eddie thought that was the end of it (for that game, at least). Then, Moe threw them a curveball by spending most of that evening in the bathroom throwing up, at which point she admitted that her head had caught more of that fall during her basketball game than she’d originally let on.
Steve doesn’t mess around with head injuries (for obvious reasons), so the next morning he calls Moe out of school and brings her to their pediatrician to get checked out.
A couple hours after Robbie and Hazel boarded the school bus bound for their elementary school, Steve and Moe return home.
“So what's the verdict?” Ed asks as they enter the kitchen.
“She's concussed,” Steve announces.
“Like father, like daughter.”
“No sports, no bright lights, no reading, no school, no phone,” Steve says pointedly, and Moe only scowls harder. She’d been using the incident as a leveraging tactic in her crusade to get a phone. Not being able to play sports was a no-brainer; they’d all seen that one coming, so even as recently as this morning, she’d been claiming that she’ll “die of boredom without a phone,” while she recovers.
Even as recently as this morning, she’d been largely unsuccessful.
“Thirteen-year-old children do not need phones,” Steve had told her, “If someone wants to talk to you, they can call the house, and if it's urgent enough that it needs to be right now, you can get walkie talkies.”
“No one uses walkie talkies.”
“Your dad and I used walkie talkies all the time.”
“Uh, pretty sure it was just the one time, Steve,” Eddie pointed out.
“Yeah! And it worked out great!”
CONTINUE ON AO3
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kyracooneyx23 · 5 months ago
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° *₊ ° . ° .• MASTERLIST and WIPs •. ° . °₊* °
⋆ ★ Kyra Cooney Cross ★⋆
Missed You More | 2.4k It's your first camp back after your ACL injury, but you best friend Kyra's acting strange
 ↳ Favourite Pest | 3k You finally find out what's caused Kyra to act so weird
Friend of a Friend Charli introduces you and Kyra, and the two of you end up getting along a bit too well [aiming to post it around late August]
Forget About it After avoiding her for as long as possible you have to play against the girl who broke your heart so many years ago. [aiming to post it around late August]
-> ⋆ Kyra and Sunny Series ⋆
•.¸¸☆Sam Kerr☆¸¸.•
6ft 5 | 0.9k You're filming a tiktok and Sam wants everyone to know your hers.
 ↳ 5ft 8 After signing a contract extension with Chelsea, you can't help teasing Sam over a lie she tells in a video
✧ ✦ ✧ Caitlin Foord ✧ ✦ ✧
Caitlin x child!reader series (coming soon)
Squirt You're meeting the Arsenal girls for the first time
Popular You find yourself the center of attention when all the girls are fighting to be your favourite
But you're my mumma? Caitlin starts spending more time with Katie and less time with you
•♬✧Leah Williamson✧♬•
Enchanted | 1.6k You write a song about England's captain after meeting her briefly at an event not expecting her to share your feelings
 ↳ You are in Love After back and forth messaging and a few dates you and Leah begin to go more public with your relationship causing the fans to go wild [posting date tbc]
Waldosia | 2.8k a condition in which you keep scanning faces in a crowd looking for a specific person who would have no reason to be there, as if your brain is checking to see whether they're still in your life, subconsciously patting its emotional pockets before it leaves for the day.
Maybe in Another Life | 3.3k You hadn't seen Leah since you'd broken up three years ago and now when you see her again you being to regret ever letting her go
Buffet (18+) | 1.1k Leah can't resist an all you eat meal, especially when your the main course.
baby fever | 1.6k you'd always heard your friends talk about how much they wanted kids but had never felt the same until now.
Crossing Loyalties Leah's a red, you're a blue and you 'hate' each other. Well at least that's what the fans think.
⋆ ★ Katie McCabe ★⋆
Take a chance on me | 1.6k With the help of a karaoke machine and a good song, Katie finally confesses her feelings for you
Snapchat Katie accidentally leaks your relationship on snapchat with all the fans [posting date tbc]
St Patrick's Day You're first time meeting Katie's family is on Saint Patricks day and it's a bit overwhelming [posting date tbc]
∘₊✧ Lionesses ✧₊∘
Winners are Grinners You've just won your first major tournament with your country (teen reader) [posting date tbc]
•.¸¸☆ Matildas ☆¸¸.•
No 1 trio It's a fight to see who the better trio is - Macca, Alanna and Caitlin or You, Mini and Kyra [posting date tbc]
Little Menaces You and your best friend Harper Gorry are bored and decide to annoy all your aunties. (part of the Caitlin Foord x child!reader series) [posting date tbc]
⋆ ★ Alexia Putellas ★⋆
Odio Amarte | 1.6k All of your Barca teammates think you and Alexia need to get together, but the two of you are 'enemies'.
First Camp It's all to much for you on your first ever Spain camp (teen reader) [posting date tbc]
La Reina You finally shoot your shot with the queen of Spain [posting date tbc]
✧ ✦ ✧ Niamh Charles ✧ ✦ ✧
I wanna ruin our friendship Niamh wants more than anything to tell you how she feels but she's to scared to lose her best friend [posting date tbc]
Let's tell the world you and Niamh decide it's finally time to go public with your relationship [posting date tbc]
•♬✧ CWFC ✧♬•
We made it After battling injuries, sicknesses and mental health problems for years, you finally made it all the way to the final day
•.¸¸☆AWFC☆¸¸.•
Go away (platonic) You and Kyra are always up to no good, but one day it gets all to much for your Arsenal teammates.
Scare Cam Kyra sets up a scare cam and it doesn't go to plan
✧ ✦ ✧ Lucy Bronze ✧ ✦ ✧
Don't be sorry | 3.1k the matildas lose to england in the semi final of the world cup and you take the blame
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writingquestionsanswered · 1 year ago
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IDK how many people are running the account, but if you or a member of the team running the account has ADHD, do you have any tips for ADHD writers, particularly when trying to get WIPs done? Outlines don't work for me like 99% of the time ;_;
Tips for Writing with ADHD
Here's what works for me, but your mileage may vary...
1 - Know What Outline Works for You - You say outlines don't work for you 90% of the time, but what type of outline are you using? Many people hear the word "outline" and imagine an academic outline with roman numerals and bullet points, but that's not what most fiction writers mean when they talk about using an outline. For fiction writers, outlines can be anything from a beginning to end written summary, to a scene list, to a detailed timeline. My post How to Outline a Plot has some different things you can try. Ultimately, there's no right or wrong way to outline your story. Anything that works as a "road map" to guide you through your story can help.
2 - Pants When You've Got to Pants - Some writers are "pantsers" or in other words, they prefer not to go off an outline. Some don't even plan in advance. They "write by the seat of their pants" and let the story take them where it may. For some writers, it depends on the specific story they're working on. Some stories might require planning, others might work better if you pants them. What works for me is understanding my needs (what type of story I'll usually need to plan/outline ahead of time, and what type of story I can pants) and then planning/pantsing accordingly. If I spent time outlining a story that I could easily pants, it would definitely take the wind out of my writing sails.
3 - Schedule Your Writing Time... Sort Of... - For me, I can't just rely on myself to write when the mood strikes me. If I did that, I'd never get any writing done. So for me, it's important to have a dedicated writing time each day. That doesn't even have to mean my butt's in the chair writing from this time to this time, it just means I'll do my best to write during whatever span of time. So, let's say this week you're home every day from 2pm until 6pm and some of that time is free time. That's going to be a good time to write, so you could say you're going to sit down every day at 3pm to write. Or, you could do 10-minute writing springs every hour, or every other hour. Or you could say you'll write when the mood strikes you, but definitely from 5:30 to 6 if you didn't get it done earlier.
4 - Try Random Writing Sprints - Writing sprints in general can be a good way for people with ADHD to write. You can schedule them or you could do them when the mood strikes. Get a timer and set it to whatever works for you... 5-minutes, 10-minutes, 30-minutes, whatever. Then just set it and go when you have time. Even if you don't feel like writing, getting into that habit will make it easier to write as soon as the timer comes out.
5 - Don't Give Yourself a Hard Time - One of the most profound things I ever heard about writing resistance is that it's often the product of writing feeling stressful. In other words, the idea of writing causes you stress, so your brain says, "Avoid! Avoid!" and you sit down to write and nothing happens. One of the ways we make writing stressful for ourselves is by giving ourselves a hard time when we don't write or don't write as much as we wanted. So, just do the best you can and congratulate yourself on small victories. Find ways to make writing fun and relaxing rather than stressful and like a chore.
Bonus - Sometimes the problem isn't ADHD but something else. My post 5 Reasons You Lost Interest in Your WIP, Plus Fixes! has some other things to consider.
I hope that helps!
•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
I’ve been writing seriously for over 30 years and love to share what I’ve learned. Have a writing question? My inbox is always open!
LEARN MORE about WQA
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backtothefanfiction · 5 months ago
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Make Me Forget | tasm!Peter Imagine
Summary: After Harry nearly strangled you, things can never be the same again. (A follow on from Crushed)
Warnings: 18+ Only, smut, cheating, guilt, violent boyfriend, trauma, angst, hurt/comfort
A/N- I never planned on making a follow up to crushed but this just came into my head and I needed to get it out. This is a quick one before bed, but smutty because I’m trying to get my head back into the smutty game to complete some of my other WIPs. Also I haven’t written for Peter in a while and thought he deserved some love.
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You: Hey…
You: Can we talk?
You: Please?
You: ….
You: Peter?
You: Please Peter, don’t ignore me.
You: ….
You: Please….
You: I need you.
It had been nearly two weeks now since the night Harry almost killed you. The night that Peter saved your life. The night you kissed him and asked you to stay. When you had woken the next morning, he had already gone and he’d clearly been avoiding you ever since.
You tried to push the whole thing to the back of your mind. Tried to play along with Harry and pretend nothing had ever happened. But ever since that night, it was like something had died inside you.
You didn’t want to look at Harry in a different light, but you couldn’t help it. Although you both tried the bruises around your neck, the one clear reminder of Harry’s little episode remained; and although you covered them with a scarf until they disappeared, you still felt them as if they were burned on your skin. Every time you breathed, it was like the scarf that covered them, grew tight and brought you back to that moment every time.
All you wanted to do was talk to someone about it. As Peter was the only other person who knew, you wanted to talk to him about it, but you hadn’t seen or heard a single word from him since that night. You dared not ask Harry about Peter either, for fear it would trigger something. So you just sat and let it eat you from the inside out alone.
In all truth, the moment it had happened you knew you wanted to leave Harry, but every time you tried to do it, you couldn’t, guilt eating at your insides like a parasite. Guilt for knowing it wasn’t truly Harry’s fault. Guilt for knowing his illness would kill him before long and not being able to make him go through it alone. Guilt for kissing Peter, Harry’s best friend…. and of course for wanting to do it again.
You: Peter, please talk to me!
It was no use. No matter how many times you tried, he just seemed to ignore any attempt you made to contact him.
2 weeks turned into 4. The bruises faded completely. Harry was trying to do everything he could to make it up to you. You knew Peter had been around because Harry began to bring him up in conversation again; but it was clear he was making sure to see Harry only when you weren’t around.
At 6 weeks, things began to turn again. Although he never laid a finger on you, Harry became spiteful again. He would rant about work. Rant about random people he’d run into on the street. When he grew extra heated you would see a flash of green in his veins at his neck or he’d smash a glass and it would take you straight back to that night. But he’d always see you flinch. Always realise when he’d gone too far… until one night, he didn’t.
“WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS?” Harry screamed, the highball glass in his hand collided with the marble floors and shattered into a million pieces. “I MEAN I-“ he said storming towards you, his finger prodding at his chest, “I!” He reiterated louder, “PAY FOR HIS FUCKING SALERY!”
You shrank back against the wall as he stomped passed you, crossing to the bar in the living room to fix himself another drink. You knew it was a bad idea to let him, but you couldn’t bring yourself to stop him, worried it would only anger him more.
“The ONLY reason he’s still even on the board is because he was my father’s best friend.” He seemed to laugh at that. “As if you could imagine anything so ridiculous as my father having a best friend. SOME BEST FRIEND, LETTING HIM DYE ALONE!” He knocked back the last of his drink, before that glass collided with the wall. Suddenly it became all too clear this wasn’t about the guy on the board at all- but Peter.
“Harry-“ you said tentatively as you stepped forward, wanting to know what exactly had happened, but the closer you got, the clearer the green in his veins showed. When his eyes locked on yours, you knew he was gone.
“DON’T HARRY ME, SWEETNESS! WE BOTH KNOW THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!” He spat as he crossed the room towards you. “You in your little SLUT dresses! Fluttering your WHORE LASHES all over the place.”
It was like walking into a lions den wearing the famous Lady GaGa meat dress, you knew you’d fucked up, quickly trying to step back and run away before you got eaten, but it was no use as he charged at you. “Harry- stop- please!” You cried, “I don’t know what you’re taking about. I haven’t seen Peter in weeks. HARRY! PLEASE LISTEN TO ME!”
You raced around the room, attempting to place large pieces of furniture between you. To give yourself enough space to get out. At the memory of what happened before, your throat grew tight. Words began to fail you. You knew you were on your own this time. You had to get out. You needed to distract him. You used the only thing you could think of that Harry hated more than anything else lately- Spider-Man.
You made your eyes dart towards the window behind him and back again. Then you did it a second time, catching his focus before you said, “Hey, is that Spider-Man?”
“SPIDER-MAN!” Harry fumed, his anger dialling up a notch, but with his new hatred peaked, he turned his back on you to face the window. As he stalked towards the rooftop doors, ready to fling them open in search of the masked vigilante, ready to curse him out, you ran. He barely had time to realise what you had done and come back and curse you out for it, when you were already in the elevator and on your way back down to the lobby.
🕷️ 🕷️ 🕸️🕷️🕷️
When Peter got back to his apartment, the last thing he was expecting was to find you, curled up in a ball on his doorstep waiting for him.
“Y/N?” He asked confused. When you looked up at him, he immediately knew something was really wrong. Your eyes were red and puffy from crying. He immediately knew it was because of Harry. Peter frowned, remembering what had happened last time, sudden fear coursed through him. Fear… and guilt. He should have never ignored you. Never left you alone. No matter how hard it hurt to see you with him. “What did he do?” He almost snarled, but knew it was the wrong move as he saw the panic and fear in your eyes.
He quickly softened and you picked yourself up off the floor so he could get to the door to open it for you both. Neither of you said anything more until you were inside. The silence as you both made your way through the tiny apartment, Peter dumping the bag of groceries that had been in his hand on the small kitchen side, gave you time to compose yourself, to wipe at your face and the last traces of tears on your cheeks, as you took in the boxy studio apartment. You sat yourself down on the end of his bed.
“Do you want anything?” He asked as he quickly put away his groceries; a carton of milk, a box of sugary cereal, eggs and three frozen pizzas- all pepperoni. “A glass of water or-“
“I want you to make me forget.” Your small voice said as you looked down at your hands.
His hand hesitated a moment, half frozen on its way to get a cup out of the cupboard. You mustered up some confidence and stood again, moving across the floor towards him. He slowly lowered his hand from the cupboard as your hands reached for him. Your fingers clawed at his shirt with need as you came to a stop and stared up into his soft brown eyes. The only eyes you had thought of for the last 6 weeks. The ones that had got you through. You then lowered your eyes to his lips. “Please, make me forget.” You spoke to them, your eyes heavy, your need for him now you were stood before him once more growing too great.
“Y/N, I can’t. You know- Harry- I”
“It’s over. Me and Harry are done. I’m not going back- I can’t- just… please.” You said, your eyes meeting his once more, softly pleading with him. He hesitated as he stared at you, clearly weighing up the right thing to do in his head. “Please, Pete,” you whispered as your hands ran back up his sides, your eyes falling back to his lips, “please just make me forget.”
You reached up on tiptoes to capture his lips in yours. When his hands gripped hold of your arms you stopped, moving your head away. Sure he was about to push you away. You watched closely as he fought to push away, to do the right thing- but he just pulled you in closer.
His mouth was on yours hungrily as you both leaned into the kiss, your arms flying around his neck, his arms twisting around your back as he lifted you off the floor, walking you both towards the bed. As he tried to place you back down on it, you refused to let go of him, pulling him down on top of you, your tongue reaching to lick into his mouth. He tasted of coffee and sugar, far from the bitterness and whiskey Harry tasted off.
His fingers were gentle as he pushed your hair back away from your face, his fingers tangling with it behind your ears, the safety and security of his touch making you soften beneath him. The realisation made you well up and when Peter wiped his thumb across your cheek and it came away wet, he quickly moved back.
“You’re crying.” He said.
“I know.” You replied as you reach to pull him back to you.
“Wait-“ he said.
“It’s okay. You replied, they’re happy tears.” You said softly, but he didn’t quite believe you.
“Pete, please, you just-“ you swallowed away your tears, willing him to believe you, “you make me feel safe.”
“And that made you cry?” You didn’t say anything, but he could see the truth in your eyes- and it made him soften. “I’m sorry,” he sighed, as he wiped away at the trail your last tear had left behind. “I’m sorry he did this to you. I’m sorry I wasn’t there-“
“You’re here now Pete,” you reassured him, “please, Peter, I don’t want to talk about him anymore. I don’t want to think about him. I just want you,” you said, breathing the last words into him. “Please… make me forget.”
He paused for a moment, letting you know with his eyes that he understood, a silent promise that he would. He had already let you down once- had been letting you down these past 6 weeks. He wouldn’t let you down again.
When he leaned back down to capture your lips with his again, they were softer, his kisses slower, more gentle, with more purpose. Lazily pulling every little tingle, relaxing every tight pent up muscle from you, one kiss at a time. He moved from your lips, to your jaw, down your neck, your fingers curling into the strands of hair on the back of his head. He suckled and licked his way all the way down the exposed skin on your chest. When he reached the neckline of your top he stopped, moving away and shuffling himself back, his fingers reaching for the fastening of your trousers.
He paused only for a second to double check this was truly what you wanted and when you silently nodded your head at him, too relaxed, too dreamy and drunk on him, he finally pulled down your trousers and your underwear, exposing your lower half to him.
When he knelt down and parted your legs, you barely had time to acknowledge the cold air against your sex as he covered it with his warm tongue, slowly licking and kissing his way between your folds. He relished every sigh and moan that escaped your mouth. You wanted him to make you forget, but he took his time, savouring every second so he would always remember.
When he sucked your clit between his lips, your back arched off of his bed, body squirming with over stimulation, breath hitching and squeaking in your throat. He hoped to all gods it was healed enough and that you’d let him slide his cock down it later.
When he began to work two of his fingers into your now dripping cunt, curling them, begging for you to give him all you had, you sighed his name and he swore he almost came in his pants.
He seemed to drag out your pleasure for nearly an hour, building you up, letting you cool back down again until you were a pleading puddle, putty in his hands with nothing on your mind other than him.
When you whined, “Peter, please,” after your third lazy orgasm, he finally obliged, climbing back up on top of you, safe in the knowledge that the only thing you will ever have on your mind now, for the rest of time, will be this moment and him.
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gilverrwrites · 3 months ago
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Dumping some stagnant WIPs that I’d love to revive in the hopes that some feedback/interaction might reignite my fire for them. Or at least show them the light of day they might never see otherwise.
Ft. (in order) PT!Dick Grayson, Nightwing, The Riddler, Two-Face, Harvey Bullock, Leatherface, and Jason Voorhees.
Colour co-ordinated for ease of navigation. Some of these are really short and sweet, some are whole-ass first chapters to potential series. Comments appreciated!
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Untitled, PT!Dick Grayson/civilian reader, undecided
Nobody ever showed to the 2PM class. He’d meant to take it off the schedule since he spent most of them unofficially working on Nightwing business. Then you started showing up.
The first time he’d been in the back, hunched over his computer in nothing but his boots and boxers.
“Hello?” Your melodic voice chimed through the building, and he scrambled to find work out appropriate clothes, hopping his way to the front of house as he tied the laces of his sneakers. “Anyone here?”
As he pushed through the doors, he was mentally juggling how to get rid of you. It would be scammy of him to under or over work you in an attempt to put you off of coming back. Maybe he’d just tell you the class of cancelled due to unforeseen circumstances? But then he saw you.
Blue Bird: Missing, Nightwing/villain reader, multi chapter slow burn
Nightwing had been a part of your life, at least your life of crime, for as long as you could remember. Since you were teens fighting on opposite sides of the law. While he wasn’t your target tonight, he was in the way. He hadn’t been responsible for you latest stint at Blackgate.
It didn’t take a detective to know that the saftest course of action would be to lay low, to hide out until his patrolling took him a safe enough distance away for you to act without his alerting him. The smart part of you knew this, the petty part of you didn’t care.
“Stay still, I promise I wont look.” You instruct, closing your eyes as you paw at his mask until it comes off into your hands. His comms needed to be shut down, ensuring none of his bat or bird friends could come to his rescue and interfere with your plans.
With caution, you turn your back to him and begin to play with the tiny buttons and notches until you’re satisfied that you’ve turned it off. Shutting down his comms. You’re expecting a witty retort, something flirty about you missing out on his good looks, but nothing comes, and you don’t have time to wait.
“See, I kept my promise.” You continue as you turn back to him, eyes shut once more as you secure the mask back to the space over his eyes. When you look at him again, you find yourself struck with more curiosity than expected. You wouldn’t break the unspoken rule, you’d keep to your promise, but being so close to exposing him really has you wondering how he looks uncovered. What colour his eyes are. Blue, dark blue, you bet. He’d be cheesy enough to match his suit to his eyes.
“So, what’s your end game here, sweetheart?” He looks up at you expectantly, smirking in a way that’s far to smug for his position.
“Why? You gonna talk me down? I already told you, power bottom…” A gust of cold wind blows against you, pushing a piece of dark hair against his face and you brush it back, savouring its softness without even thinking. When you realise what you’re doing you tighten your grip and tug his head back against the post, saving face. At least you would be saving face if he didn’t let out an inexplicably lewd moan that made you suck in an audible breath. Theres an awkward pause between you both before you distract by continuing your answer to his question “This isn’t about you, you just got caught in the crosshairs.”
“Crosshairs of what battle?” He asks, and maybe he’s entitled to know, given that he’ll be sat on his ass, and undeniably inconvenienced by all this, but he’d put you in the same situation many times. Yes, his motivations were far more just than yours, but that meant nothing to you.
“It’s need to know bird boy.” You poke his nose, before finally stepping back, reassessing your surroundings, noting your next step before leaving him with a wave and a final shout; “And you don’t need to know.”
That should have been that last time you’d seen him, for that night anyway. But when you’d reached Nygma’s hideout, it was empty. It didn’t make sense. Your sources were reliable, you’d staked it out the night before. He’s been there, his henchmen had been there, boxes full of stupid trophies and half-built robots had been there, and now they were gone. The old mill factory was wiped clean, you were fuming. You’d called your informant to no avail. Reached out to some old contacts, who couldn’t help you. Tracked across the city, checking out his other known safehouses, all of which empty.
Now, just over two hours later you were climbing your way back up to the top the Gotham Bank. Nightwing would probably be gone by now. His radio silence alerting one of his birdbuddies that he’s need a save, and there’d almost certainly be a tracker in his suit. You were just checking in on him. Not because you care. Just because, if he was still where you’d left him, maybe you could set him free and cool him off. He couldn’t, and wouldn’t help with your predicament, but tracking down The Riddler would be a whole lot easier without Nightwing on the war path to put you back behind bars.
Per your suspicions, when you reach the roof, it’s empty. It’s not safe to linger, to return to the crime scene for too long, so you ready yourself to take off again. It’s when you’re stepping onto the ledge that you spot it. Something shiny and green, glinting in the corner of your eye. Upon closer inspection you release it’s a coin, made of some kind of green bottle, with a question mark engraved onto it, sitting right where Nightwing had been just a few hours earlier, and above it, a note, duct tape to the pole which read:
Blue Bird: Missing Want it back? Bring your coins, To the racetrack.
Well fuck.  
Patterns, The Riddler/henchman reader, Multi chapter successor to Stockholm Syndrome
Eat, sleep, repeat. Lather, rinse, repeat. You’d be tracking target number 1 for 9 days, and besides a lonely weekend filled with racking up credit card debt at T.J.Maxx, and failed attempts at home cooking, it had been the SAME THING, every, single, day.
Pursing your lips, you lean back against the driver’s seat and let out a long sigh. You glance back up at the targets window before checking the time again. 10:01PM
You tap your fingers against the wheel before pulling out your phone. Ed is notoriously bad at picking up, (also notoriously bitter, if you don’t answer on the first ring) but you didn’t want to call it a night without checking in with him. He's your boss after all.
Dialling his current burner number and hitting loudspeaker, you sink down in your seat, studiying the cars roof as you wait for it to ring out.
“Hello?” You shoot back up. Startled by his answering on the 4th ring. Guess there’s a first time for anything.
“Oh…. Ed, hey, hi.” You stammer, trying to find your bearings again. “Um, so, riddle for you?”
“A riddle for me?” He scoffs, amused. maybe you're delusional but there seems to be a warmth in his tone. “This should be good.”
“Yeah, um, so…. If you're a child, you know me well, and when you're old I'll be your hell. I'm often felt but rarely shown. I'll drive you mad if you're alone.”
“Is the target sleeping now?”
“You didn’t answer the riddle!”
“Because it was an insult.” He scorns you before repeating. “Is the target sleeping?”
“Yeah. She crashes at about this time most nights.” You state factually. Trying not to let his sharpness get to you.
“Well….” He seems to hesitate. You hear what sounds like the click of this tongue, something rustling on his line. “If you’re bored, come see me.”
“At this time of night?” You begin to tease. “Ed, what will people think?”
Your joking might have been more convincing if it wasn’t punctuated by the sound of your engine starting before you proceed to speed down the road.
“I think a better question might be, ‘what are you thinking’?”
It wasn’t fair that you had started this line of conversation, but he was the one making you flushed. Especially since he wasn’t even there. In his presence you can blame it on his proximity, his scene, the intensity of his gaze when he’s focused solely on you for once, but he wasn’t here, and you had nothing to blame but your big fat crush on him. The silver lining at least was that he couldn’t see what he had done to you.
“I’m thinking….” You hesitated, unsure how to get him back. “I’m thinking, I’ll be there in 10.”
You hang up. He's sure to chew you out for that later, but it was worth it. You could just picture the tantrum he was having right now, leg stamping, and arms crossed. Probably muttering to himself, coming up with a sly comeback for then you arrived.
You’d been working for The Riddler for 6 and a half months now, and while he knew exactly how to use your infatuation with him to keep your moral compass spinning, you were slowly learning how to push his buttons right back.
Later
15 minutes later you lean against his desk, watching intently as he scans through your notes.
You watch greedily as his blue eyes bore into each word, deft fingers flipping through the pages, watch the way he stuck out his soft lower lip, still pouting at your earlier antics.
“So, what do you want with her anyway?” You try so spark a conversation.
“You’ve been monitoring her for almost two weeks.” He replies, refusing to look up at you. “Haven’t you figured it out yet?”
Your brows scrunch together as you think back, racking your brain for anything remotely remarkable about the woman you’d been tailing. She was pretty, sure, but besides that she didn’t really seem to have anything going for her. Dead end job, no real friends, no romantic prospects, just her and her cat.
Not totally unlike yourself 7 months ago.
You briefly study Ed’s fave for any form of a giveaway, but his nose remains buried in your notes. With a shrug you conceded.
“I give up. What is it?”
Almost immediately Ed’s face began to morph. The corners of his lips curving into a coy smile, his eyes sparkle as he finally looks up at you.
“It’s her blood.” He answers, finally closing your notebook and unceremoniously letting it fall onto his desk.
“Her blood?” you quiz, more confused than ever. “What? Is she like a metahuman or something?”
“Oh no.” He says, making no attempt to conceal the amusement in his voice.
His fingers brush against your own as he locks his hands around your wrist. A jolt shoots up your body, but you push it down, steadying yourself to his touch.
You watch as he flips your arm around, baring your wrist to him. Gently he runs his fingers along your veins. “It’s blue. Her blood is blue. A member of the Finnish royal family, attempting to live like common people. Do whatever common people do.”
“Right.” Your voice shakes more than you would have liked. Even the smallest of touches from him are enough to melt your brain. “And what do you want with her? Money? O-“
Your questions were silenced as Ed brings your wrist to his face. Briefly pressing it to his nose and inhaling with a satisfied smile.
“Come now, Dear.” He silences you with the soft brush of his lips against your skin. You suck in a breath, fingers digging into the wood beneath you as you watch. Your concerns were long gone as he looks up at you, his studious gaze locked onto you as he pressed another, firmer kiss inches above the last. “I already gave you my word, did I not?”
In lieu of a response, a breathy moan escape your lips. Ed is clearly pleased with your response to his affection. Standing from his chair, he continued pressing progressively fevered kisses up your arm, over the curve of your shoulder, into the crevice of your collar.
His gloved hands gently cupped the curve of your hips. His fingers traced circles against your body as they dip lower, and lower until they're hooked under your knees. He plants one deep, open-mouthed kiss against your jaw as he pries your legs apart.
“Did I not, give you my word?” He pushes, his breath brushing against your ear. The feel of his lips curving into a smug smile that tickles your skin.
Flustered, but determined not to turn into a total puddle, you stroke your hand up his spine, thread your fingers into his hair, and direct his face to yours. Heads together, noses brushing, you answer; “yes.”
“Yes?” He raises one brow at you. His hands climb back up your thighs until they’re kneading at your asscheeks before pulling you closer. Your legs lock around his waist as you feel the pressure of his tented trousers press against you centre.
“Oh, yes.” Your exclaim again, arching your back to press yourself deeper against him.
You close the gap before he can. You didn’t miss the way his eyes widened before they fluttered closed. You may have initiated but it takes no time at all for Ed to take control. Your jaw grows slack at the pressure building between you legs, and Ed wastes no time taking advantage. His tongue shamelessly diving between your lips, filling your senses with the taste of him.
As soon as it starts, the moment is over. He breaks away to the sound of his phone ringing. Eyes never leaving yours as he brings it to his ear. Trust him to start answering his phone promptly when its least convenient for your.
“Speak.” He orders. His shoulders lean back, one hand resting on his hip as he mindlessly continues grinding against you. Desperate to keep him close you reach out to him, running your fingers up his chest, incidentally untucking his shirt.
“What?!” His outburst makes you jump. Abruptly, he pulls away from you completely. “Are you a complete and utter moron? How could you let this happen?”
With him now out of reach, all you can do is sit and watch patiently. You'd hate to be on the receiving end of it, but you have to admit, Edward can be really sexy when he was angry. Lean muscles taut; jaw clenched. You’d never admit that to him though, his ego is already 3 sizes to large.
So lost in your ill-advised admiration you almost didn’t notice when he gestures to you. Gloved hands waved in you face until you nod to express your attention. He points over at the pitiful stack of junk you call a desk, huddled in the corning of his office.
Hopping off his work bench you make your way over to it, looking over at Edward for further guidance. In response he lifts two fingers. You raise the file for target number 2 and waved it at him. He nods back at you and gives you a thumbs up, before waving you to the door.
“I cannot believe this. I swear if you want a job done….”
Was he dismissing you? What could possibly be going on that he could shrug you off so indifferently?
Some people have all the luck [Part 2], Two-Face, smut CWs: Dubious consent, alcohol
The trip from the bar to wherever this is had been a blur. You vaguely remember complaining about your tired feet getting wet in the dreary Gotham weather. Two-Face laugh at you then, pulled you closer and told you; “Don’t worry about it, Doll.”
Then there had been a car, an old, classy one. The streetlights blurred by the rain on the windows. At some point he’d carried you, bridal style through somewhere old and dusty. You just remember old hanging light fixtures dangling from a high ceiling. There’s been voices, muffled snickering until Harv had barked at them, something loud and authoritative. A little bit sexy.
Now you were here, legs dangling off the edge of a desk. The wallpaper is peeling. Diplomas and newspaper clippings hang on the wall in broken, lopsided frames. Harvey is pouring something amber coloured into a tumbler, whiskey, probably, he seems like a whiskey drinker.
With the imposing thought in mind that this might be your last chance, you ask him for a drink of your own.
“Nah.” He looks smug as he approaches. He downs the two-finger pour in one, faces contorting as it slides down his throat. Then he’s standing before you, guiding your legs open, making space for him to stand between him. You’re not sure which is more unnerving, the ease in which he touches and directs your body, or your willingness to allow it. As he speaks again, you catch a whiff of his breath, definitely whiskey. “You’ve had enough, if you’re gonna pass out tonight, it’s gonna be because of us.”
He probably means torture, but the idea of him fucking you unconscious sends a wave of arousal to your already heated core.
---
Allowing you zero time to get good look at, he sinks the tip between your folds, pumping the wetness along his length before lining himself up with your entrance. You suck in a breath as he penetrates you, bottoming out with one hard thrust, stretching your walls around his noticeably thick girth. The sheer size of him pushing against every inch of your insides stings, makes you throw your head back with an aching moan.
No sooner do you look away before his grabs your face with his scarred hand, nails dig into your skin as he compels you to look into his face. He whistles, short and sweet before ordering; “Eyes on us, hon.”
His scolding has you twitching around him, having allowed you a grace period to adjust to his size.
“Yes.” You nod, not trusting your mouth to coherently say anything else.
“Good girl.”
Untitled, Harvey Bullock, fluff
If you see something, no you didn’t. That’s number one unspoken rule of Gotham.
But after witnessing what happened to the poor boy, you just couldn’t stay quiet. Now the city was punishing you by having your witness statement be taken by the hottest cop the GCPD had to offer. Sure, he was rough around edges, scruffy beard, beer belly and an Irish American accent to die for. He was definitely a drunk, that much was evident from the hint of whisky on his breath but damn if that didn’t add to his bruiser charm.
Untitled, [DBD] Leatherface, Horror & smut – partly inspired by that scene from TCM2 CWs: Mentions of gore
How long would this go on for? Until he was finished? Until he grew bored of you? And then what? He could drive his saw straight into within second, the sound of him revving its engine would serve as your only warning before he mutilated you, before he swung forward and carved your body in two. It's not as if you could just take off right now. He had you completely cornered. Not just geographically, but physically – leather face is 6'3 and jacked. A single flinch in a direction he didn't like and he could have you pinned, sawed, and quartered in second.
(Re-)Learning to swim, Jason Voorhees, Fluff CWs: Captivity, mentions of violence
Taking a deep breath, you creep deeper into the lake, submerging yourself up to your waist. The water looks so peaceful and calm. Before Jason, water had been your one true love. Swimming had given you an escape from the trials of everyday life.
Jason was the opposite, and you completely understood why. You're heart clenched at the thought of it. Even before you'd come to know and love him, you'd felt compassion for his story. Jason didn't deserve what happened to him. Blood hadn't been spilt that day but it stained the hands of the incompetent counsellor that night. Water it seemed had always been his foe. He drowned here in one life, was chained and trapped beneath its waves in another.
You understood why he avoided it. He was always vigilant of it, he had traps and weapons to take down anyone who tried swim to sail away from him without having to venture to deep, but walking beside the Lake, taking a boat out, or simply swimming in it, was never something you could get him to agree to during the small times the two of you had the area to yourselves.
So, you were going to do it alone. You were reclaiming a part of yourself, doing something just for you.
It was late May, a few weeks before police did their final searches, ticking the last few boxes before they let counsellors in to start setting up camp. You waited until Jason left to do his own rounds before slipping out into the darkness. He wouldn't have let you go if you'd told him your plan. He'd have crossed his arms and shaken his head at you. If that failed he's have held you, crushing you in his loving embrace as a way of begging you not to go, not to the Lake, to dangerous, and you would have caved. Listening to his sad hums, looking into his pleading eyes would have swayed you to stay home.
You had to wait until he left. No doubt he'd know, he seems to have some kind of connection to the camp and its goings on. He'll know where you've been and what you've been doing and he'll watch you even closer, but it needed to be done.
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gffa · 7 months ago
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I haven't read any STEVE/BUCKY FIC in the last five years or so (Endgame really burned me hard), BUT I can at least offer what I read up to that point! Most of my recs are from around when Captain America: The Winter Soldier first came out (some from before, so there's a few speculation fics) and then I was ready semi-regularly up through Inifinity War, so these may be a bit dated but also the fandom had some ABSOLUTE BANGER fics from that era! I mostly read from about 2014 to 2019 and I can't say how well many of these held up, but I know my tastes haven't changed that much, so there should hopefully be something for anyone interested here! Anyway, I think I'm finally Not As Mad As I Once Was enough to read fic again/celebrate the 10th anniversary of TWS, but also let's be clear. I will forever hold a grudge about what Marvel did with Steve and Bucky post-TWS, that was bullshit from start to finish. ESPECIALLY the finish, oh my god okay so I'm still Actually That Mad and-- NO, OKAY, HAVE SOME FIC RECS BEFORE I MELT DOWN AGAIN.
CAPTAIN AMERICA FIC RECS YOU'LL FIND HERE:
STEVE/BUCKY SHIP FICS
STEVE/BUCKY - PRE-THE WINTER SOLDIER SPECULATION
STEVE/BUCKY - POST-THE WINTER SOLDIER
STEVE/BUCKY - POST-INFINITY WAR
STEVE & BUCKY-CENTRIC FICS (WITH A LITTLE OF EVERYONE ELSE, TOO)
STEVE&BUCKY&CAST - POST-THE WINTER SOLDIER
CAPTAIN AMERICA: STEVE/BUCKY FIC RECS: ✦ Brooklyn, Brooklyn, Take Me In by victoria_p (musesfool), steve rogers/bucky barnes + natasha romanoff, reunion fic, 4.1k Bucky finds himself, and then he finds Steve. ✦ you got blood on your hands (and i know it’s mine) by nighimpossible, steve rogers/bucky barnes + natasha romanoff + brief mention of sam wilson/natasha romanoff, suicidal ideation, 2.9k Bucky refuses to see Steve after his deprogramming. ✦ take all you can carry by havisham, steve/bucky & cast, 2.4k    Bucky Barnes reassembles himself to a reasonable degree and makes romantic overtures to one Steve Rogers. It’s happened before and will happen again. ✦ I’d Know That Face Anywhere by Shay081793, steve/bucky, NSFW, divergent timeline, 2.7k The 107th never got captured. Instead, Bucky Barnes is in the audience when that clown "Captain America" performs to rally the troops, and holy shit, that clown is Steve Rogers. ✦ and we are finally home by springsoldier (ladydaredevil), sam & bucky + steve/bucky + implied sam/natasha + implied bucky/natasha, 7.3k The Winter Soldier shows up in Sam's kitchen, one morning. He deals with it. (Natasha helps. Steve would, if they let him.) ✦ Capture the Flag by Shiny_n_new, steve/bucky + sam, dark au, 9.4k wip Bucky has always been willing to do Captain America’s dirty work. This was no different. Sometimes, the day isn’t won by high ideals or bravery or compassion. Sometimes, it’s won by monsters. ✦ Memories are Made of This by eleveninches, steve/bucky & natasha & sam, 13.2k Nearly a year after turning himself into SHIELD and the Avengers, Bucky struggles to find himself in the 21st century. Unfortunately, no one told him about the aliens.
✦ but hey, you’re all right by beardsley, steve/bucky + other marvel characters, 5.5k Yes, this is the story where the Winter Soldier is a Russian mail-order bride. Everything goes about as well as you’d expect. ✦ I Left Myself in 1943 (Who the hell is Bucky?) by originalblue, steve/bucky + sam + natasha + other marvel characters, 21k You have a mission, but your mind is being split in two, and there's a man on the bridge, and you know him. You don't know why, but you know him. ✦ sam deserves better than these assholes by lazulisong, steve/bucky + sam + natasha + other marvel characters, 18k IM SORRY BUT SAM WILSON STARING IN BAFFLED WONDER AT STEVE AND BUCKY AND HOW WEIRD THEY ARE ABOUT EACH OTHER ✦ broken pieces (the rough edges remix) by legete, steve/bucky, 2.1k It’s wrong, he knows it’s wrong, but sometimes Bucky prefers the nightmares that actually happened. ✦ Talk Dirty to Me by PeetaPan, steve/bucky, NSFW, wall sex, 2.5k Steve spends months tracking Bucky down, and when he eventually find him, it’s in a nightclub in Europe. ✦ the body adrift by Febricant, steve/bucky + sam, mildy nsfw, 4.2k Steve has no drawings of Bucky from before. Those are all gone, destroyed in the war or by his own hand; it wouldn’t do for anyone to see how easily the details came from memory, how often Bucky was in his thoughts. ✦ Tony Stark and the Illegal Cross-Country Road Trip from Hell by ActionAddiction, steve/bucky + tony + sam + clint + natasha + fury, 21.8k wip A stir-crazy genius, a secretly sentimental assassin, two soldiers lost in time, and an undercover archer without an identity zigzag across the continental United States in Fury’s stolen van. Or: How Bucky Met Steve (Again)
✦ Didn’t know I was lonely till I saw your face by gunboots, steve/bucky + bucky/natasha + sam + bruce + tony + xavier, 2.9k There are words on paper, actors in movies, and a grand story that fills a whole corner of a museum defined by history. There are words, there are pictures, there are movies, but they’re limited, fragmented. They can’t do justice to the sniper that Captain America trusted, the man that grew into a boy in the streets of Brooklyn with his best friend at his side. The man that could be James Buchanan Barnes leaves a legacy that is barely defined. The man that Steve Rogers says he is. ✦ the inaccuracy of historical wartime dramas by Mici (noharlembeat), steve/bucky + sam + natasha, 3k (or: Steve has feelings, and shouldn’t ever watch television) ✦ The Shape I’m In by radialarch, steve/bucky, 2.6k [AU where Bucky never fell.] They win the war. Steve and Bucky come home and deal with their feelings. ✦ дорогой by smilebackwards, steve/bucky + other marvel characters, canon divergence, 1.8k “Are you goddamn kidding me?” Fury asks when Steve shows up to the rendezvous point in Fredericksberg with the Winter Soldier. ✦ have you ever thought just maybe by Desdemon, steve/bucky + tony/pepper + other marvel characters, humor, 4.4k “JARVIS,” Tony called thoughtfully. “Yes, sir?” “Those young people are in love,” he said. ✦ Use Your Damn Words by wilddragonflying, steve/bucky, NSFW, omegaverse, 4.2k There’s murmuring, indistinct voices, all around him; all he catches, at first, are the occasional words. “—mated.” “—no difference—“ “—make him forget—“ That’s when Bucky starts fighting. ✦ It’s an Adequate Life, Bucky Barnes by what_alchemy, steve/bucky, it’s a wonderful life fusion, 10.2k This is a world without Bucky Barnes.
✦ and it starts just where the light exists by caughtinanocean, steve/bucky, mildly nsfw, 3.4k In which Bucky can’t admit the things he needs, but Steve knows them anyway, and Steve and Bucky are definitely a couple, even if they don’t know it. ✦ tango till they’re sore by sciencemyfiction, steve/bucky, nsfw, 4k Four shorts about Steve and Bucky, and romance, and sex, and dominance, and grief, and forgiveness. ✦ Permission by derekstilinski, steve/bucky + other marvel characters, 2.5k After Bucky’s captured by SHIELD, they put him in a holding cell, and strip him of everything but his clothes. He’s dirty, damaged, and Steve can’t just watch him like that, protocol or not. ✦ Milkshakes & Penguin Suits by TheLocket, steve/bucky, fluff, 2.9k At the latest Stark party, Steve and Bucky share a milkshake — and spend the evening together. ✦ Practical Mathematics by Grey_Bard, steve/bucky + steve/peggy + steve/peggy/bucky + tony, 1.7k After a hard shift saving the world, Stark - in his infinite wisdom - has decided to bond with Steve by talking about his favorite subject. Well, third favorite, after building things and smart-mouthing people. Steve is pretty sure none of his experiences really count. Tony is starting to wonder what Steve’s definition of “is” is. ✦ how happy must be angels thus employed by lanyon , steve/bucky + clint/coulson, mildly nsfw, humor, 2k It begins entirely accidentally. Clint walks in on Bucky and Steve in a compromising position and then Bucky escalates by tapping a private line between Clint and Phil. Also known as The One With The Cock-Blocking Competition (and it’s all fun and games until Phil and Steve find out.) ✦ Fate by grumpyowls, steve/bucky + peggy, 2.1k Bucky finds a drawing and it turns out to mean something more than he thought.
✦ One More Time by DevBasaa, steve/bucky, pre-serum, ~1k Steve’s clueless and Bucky’s not yet ready to acknowledge these feelings. But that doesn’t stop him from having them. Set before Bucky ships out, but after Steve receives his A1. ✦ Bucky and Bear by fromgoodbones, steve/bucky, fluffy, ~1k Steve gets Bucky a cat. ✦ Size Isn’t A Problem by bondboy68, steve/bucky, NSFW, 1.8k It’s the first time Bucky has seen Steve naked in some seventy-odd years, and things have definitely changed.
STEVE/BUCKY - PRE-THE WINTER SOLDIER SPECULATION:
✦ devil’s gonna follow me (wherever I go) by Lyaka, steve/bucky & natasha & cast, the winter soldier speculation, 63k The man who used to be Bucky Barnes lined up his shot. His finger twitched, only once, very precisely. Help me, the bullet sang. Ninety-eight floors below him, the bullet glanced off a vibranium shield with a musical ping. And Steve Rogers looked up. ✦ And it felt like a kiss by orphan_account, steve /bucky & natasha & sam, the winter soldier spoilers, ~1k We can’t stop feeling Winter Soldier feelings. And neither can Bucky or Steve. ✦ testament by paxlux, steve/bucky + other marvel characters, the winter soldier speculation fic, 10.6k His memory runs backwards in crooked bright flashes, hard as the noise flare of an assault rifle. ✦ persistence of memory by hollimichele, steve/bucky/natasha, NSFW, the winter soldier speculation, 11.5k It’s a nondescript sort of a Wednesday morning when the Winter Soldier walks into SHIELD headquarters, bold as brass, and announces his intention to surrender. ✦ To Be Modified As Necessary by ignipes, steve/bucky & bucky/natasha & clint/natasha & thor/jane & avengers, the winter soldier speculation, 5.9k They only need ten rules to ensure (relatively) peaceful cohabitation. ✦ lights at two dollars a strand by legete, steve/bucky + tony, the winter soldier speculation, 1.4k They don’t mean to decorate for Christmas. It just sorta…happens.
STEVE/BUCKY - POST-THE WINTER SOLDIER: ✦ Out of the Dead Land by orphan_account, steve/bucky + sam + natasha + nick fury + other marvel characters, nsfw in one scene at the end, 62.7k Someone is building machines that look and act like people. Meanwhile, the Winter Soldier tries to be Bucky Barnes. ✦ this is a back alley by saintsideways, steve/bucky & natasha & sam, the winter soldier spoilers, 14.2k Here is the only thing you know: the body remembers. ✦ your blue-eyed boys by Feather (lalaietha), steve/bucky & cast, 123.3k Steve has no plan. Not because he hadn't tried to make one. He'd tried to make lots of plans. Plan, adapt, plan again, tried to think of every contingency. [post-Winter Soldier recovery fic] ✦ The man on the bridge by boopboop, steve/bucky & tony/pepper & clint/natasha & cast, 107.5k Steve Rogers turning up at Tony's door with an amnesiac assassin - who may or may not have some of Tony's personally designed hardware attached where his arm should be - well that's just far too interesting to turn away, even if Tony is trying to avoid all things S.H.I.E.L.D these days. ✦ Soft Spot for the Hell Raisin’ Boy by ifeelbetter, sam & bucky + steve/bucky, the winter soldier spoilers, (some) humor, 1.9k The Winter Soldier takes an interest in Sam Wilson. Bucky Barnes wants to tell him how to be Steve Rogers’s best friend. ✦ Reconstruction Site by EmilianaDarling, steve/bucky + sam, the winter soldier spoilers, 7.6k He is the Winter Soldier. He is James Buchanan Barnes. He’s not one and he’s not the other, and he’s not sure if that makes him anything worth saving. In which the Winter Soldier leads Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson on a wild goose chase through Eastern Europe so that he can learn more about the man who actually thinks he can be saved.
✦ hold me tight by hollimichele, bucky/steve + sam + natasha, nsfw, the winter soldier spoilers, 11.1k In the old days, before the war, Steve got cold at night. That was all it was, at first. ✦ A Bullet in the Barrel (of your best guy’s gun) by lc2l, steve/bucky, the winter soldier spoilers, canon divergence (sort of), violence, 6k You return to the concrete hole in the ground where the mission is not dead and not in the sewers and is looking at you. “Bucky,” says Rogers, Steve (deceased). ✦ Sleeperhold by Argyle, steve/bucky, the winter soldier spoilers, 3.2k He’s hardwired to disappear. ✦ lost my fear of falling by ftmsteverogers, steve/bucky + natasha + sam, 1.8k “It’s been two weeks,” Natasha says, pressing a coffee cup into Steve’s hand. “How long are we going to do this?” Steve watches the steam curl into question marks above his cup. “I know he’s still in there,” he says, and that’s that. ✦ but the fires are coming by stitchingatthecircuitboard, steve/bucky + bucky & natasha, the winter soldier spoilers, 4k He does not remember, except that is better than being made to forget, again, and again, and again. He does not go to Brooklyn. ✦ we did not make ourselves by M_Leigh, steve/bucky + sam + natasha + tony, the winter soldier spoilers, 25.1k It is like steel, the determination inside of you that tells you you will achieve this, that you will find him. Nothing will stop you. You are two sides of the same coin, you and he: he cannot escape you forever. Bucky runs. Steve follows. ✦ measured my life in cooking lessons by FoxGlade, steve/bucky + clint + avengers, fluff, the winter soldier spoilers, 4k He knocks on Clint’s door, sharp and loud, and half a minute later Clint is standing there in boxers and a baggy Army Rangers shirt. “Morning,” Steve says shortly, before Clint can say anything. “You up to teaching me how to make those French toasts? I think I need to talk.” Clint yawns and stretches. Something in his back makes a loud cracking sound and Steve winces. “Yeah, I’m up,” he mumbles, then squints. “This is going to be a long cooking lesson, isn’t it?” “I found Bucky sitting outside the tower on the street when I went out for a jog and he remembered me but I’m pretty sure that’s all he remembers.” Clint just waves a hand and heads for the kitchen, Steve shuffling in his wake.
✦ and we are finally home by lastembers, sam & bucky + steve/bucky + sam/natasha, 7.3k The Winter Soldier shows up in Sam’s kitchen, one morning. He deals with it. (Natasha helps. Steve would, if they let him.) ✦ Circling Back by chaya, steve/bucky + sam + natasha + tony, the winter soldier spoilers, 59.6k Steve looks for Bucky, Bucky finds Steve, Steve tries desperately to put Bucky back together. Bucky tries desperately to let him. ✦ your favorite ghost by augustbird, steve/bucky, the winter soldier spoilers, 21k It’s harder than Steve ever expected to bring Bucky home. ✦ Green-Eyed Monster by storiesfortravellers, steve/bucky + steve & tony + steve & sam + bucky & natasha, humor, 1.9k The Winter Soldier has joined the team and is slowly recovering, but he goes into a jealous rage whenever he sees that Steve is close friends with Tony, Sam, or Natasha. Past Steve/Bucky. ✦ Castor and Pollux by StringTheori, howard stark & steve + steve/bucky, mild the winter soldier spoilers, 2.9k A fic where Howard is emotionally constipated, a terrible human being, catches someone doing something, and brushes off friendships because he can. ✦ Find My Way by Brenda, steve/bucky + oc pov, the winter soldier spoilers, 4.6k Well, someone had to write the post-Winter Soldier fic where Bucky gets a decent meal and some homemade apple pie, right?
✦ Parallel Constructions by freshbakedlady, steve/bucky + sam + natasha, the winter soldier spoilers, 13.6k In the absence of orders, the man wearing the face of Bucky Barnes must figure out who he will be. The answer, mostly, is “somebody Steve Rogers can love.” Nothing so easy should ever take this much work. ✦ five people bucky barnes never was. by rhllors, steve/bucky + bucky/natasha, the winter soldier spoilers, 1.9k Five lives that never came to pass. ✦ no heart to recall by KiaraSayre, steve/bucky & sam & natasha & tony, the winter soldier spoilers, 15.3k He’s been in Steve Rogers’s company for less than twenty-four hours and he’s already losing sight of his mission. ✦ Bring Us Back a Souvenir by newredshoes, steve/bucky & sam & bucky, the winter soldier spoilers, 1.5k Even with all his hair hacked off, he doesn’t look like a Bucky, Sam thinks. Maybe as some sort of stupid joke, like naming your most vicious dog Sweetpea. Steve’s told him the stories, and he’s seen the old newsreels; he knows what this Barnes guy used to be like. But it’s not like knowing what to look for is going to magically make some spark rise to the top. This isn’t an excavation. ✦ i will be your ground by misprinting, steve/bucky, the winter soldier spoilers, 4.7k A character study. The subject: Bucky’s hair. (Also, a Bucky comes in from the cold fic.) ✦ Debts by vestigialwords, steve/bucky, the winter soldier spoilers, ~1k Steve’s life is a collection of debts, and the balance does not work out in his favor. ✦ Five times Steve kissed Bucky by paragon, steve/bucky, the winter soldier spoilers, 16.5k (+ once, finally, it was the other way around) ✦ Run Until the Road Runs Out by ignipes, steve/bucky + sam & bucky + natasha, the winter soldier spoilers, 5.2k Sam’s along for this ride because he’s not about to let Steve Rogers go it alone, but Steve’s not the only one who needs a friend.
✦ And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me by ifeelbetter, steve/bucky, the winter soldier spoilers, 4.4k The Captain woke quickly and tested the chain before he saw the Soldier. All the tension in his body evaporated once he met the Soldier’s eyes and he slumped downward, back up against the wall. “Oh, thank god,” he said. He repeated it twice, quiet. Like a secret. ✦ Your Mind Rings by Amberly, steve/bucky, the winter soldier spoilers, 1.2k You aren’t Bucky. You’re not the Winter Soldier anymore, either, but you’re not Bucky ✦ tabula rasa by dance_at_bougival, steve/bucky + natasha + sam, the winter soldier spoilers, 10.3k Bucky Barnes screamed himself hoarse on that table and screamed falling off that train. He screamed when they programmed him and screamed and screamed until he isn’t Bucky Barnes anymore, not really. He is still screaming, a trapped rat running around a labyrinthine machine, clawing at the doors and running into dead ends. He has been screaming for seventy years. ✦ The Age’s Most Uncertain Hour by dewinter, steve/bucky + peggy, the winter soldier spoilers, 1.8k Five times the Winter Soldier remembered (and then forgot). ✦ The Steven G. Rogers Guide to What You Missed the Last Few Years by what_alchemy, steve/bucky, humor, 5.1k Steve’s got the hang of this 21st century thing. ✦ All the First Times by Vera (Vera_DragonMuse), steve/bucky + other marvel characters, the winter soldier spoilers, 9.6k Bucky starts over and finds new ways to survive. ✦ Me Against Your Memory (It’s a Two-Step Recovery Process) by thisiswhatthewatergaveme, steve/bucky + steve & natasha + steve & sam + natasha & sam, the winter soldier spoilers, 56.5k wip The Soldier needs answers. It’s the only mission he has left. And the mission is all he has.
✦ Make It Up as We Go Along by hannahrhen, steve/bucky + natasha + sam, mildly nsfw, the winter soldier spoilers, 1.6k Steve’s a terrible liar when he opens his mouth. ✦ What’s in a name by Ark, steve/bucky, the winter soldier spoilers, 3.4k Steve doesn’t resist. He is dipped back: a dance. “Bucky,” says Steve. The severely serene surface does not stir. “You will answer the questions I ask.” The Soldier’s voice is Bucky’s but the accent is all wrong. His face is Bucky’s, perfect, and all wrong. ✦ Drawn From Life by littlerhymes, steve/bucky, the winter soldier spoilers, 2.5k “I remember,” Bucky says, but that’s not entirely true. Set after The Winter Soldier.
STEVE/BUCKY - POST-INFINITY WAR: ✦ Coming Back by Emotionallyunstabl, entire cast (some steve/bucky), infinity war spoilers, 1.9k    Fixing Avengers: Infinity War. ✦ How ya been, Buck? by dvorahbee, steve/bucky, NSFW, infinity war spoilers, 2.3k    A fix-it for Bucky and Steve’s reunion because I wasn’t too happy with that half-assed reunion we had. ✦ hold some dirt with those hands by magdaliny, steve/bucky & cast, infinity war spoilers, 3k    It had sent him to his knees. ✦ To Never Have Loved At All by hitlikehammers, steve/bucky & cast, infinity war spoilers, 2.8k    Steve will say they had work to do, and a universe to put to rights. They had people to find and hearts to unbreak. They had a mission. There was no time for any of them to mourn. Steve, as it turns out, says a lot of things that are mostly bullshit.
CAPTAIN AMERICA: STEVE&BUCKY GEN FIC RECS: ✦ This, You Protect by owlet, steve & bucky & everyone else, humor, 64.3k The mission resets abruptly, from objective: kill to objective: protect ✦ By Choice or By Habit by Sholio, steve & bucky & natasha & clint & tony, 6.4k He is useful. He holds onto that. He is useful and a useful tool will not be thrown away. (For illumynare’s request: How about something with Bucky realizing the Avengers actually think of him as a person? And off I went to the utterly shameless h/c place.) ✦ 5 (+1) Times Bucky Was Already a Supersoldier by chaya, steve & bucky, 1k Erskine made it plain for Steve - the serum makes you stronger, faster, harder to kill, and it amplifies your existing qualities. Barnes, though, didn’t get any such heads up. ✦ Thaw by danveresque, steve & bucky & sam & natasha, 7.5k The Winter Soldier tries to find Bucky Barnes. ✦ Brothers In Arms by copperbadge, steve & bucky & sam & sam & tony & pepper & clint + background tony/pepper, 11.4k Bucky Barnes gets a tune-up, a new pet, and a home. ✦ You Know How I Feel, aka, The Adventures of Bucky and Muffy the Dinosaur by ifeelbetter, bucky & avengers, fluff, 4.5k Bucky saved a tiny dinosaur and took her home to Avengers Tower and on the way remembered how to laugh and sleep in soft beds. ✦ Strawberries in Wintertime by Sholio, steve & bucky & sam & natasha & sharon, 3.2k Or, how Sam’s apartment turns into a hangout for superheroes, spies, and rogue assassins. ✦ This Lonely Hour Before Daybreak by cheesethesecond, steve & bucky + sam + natasha, 2.9k Steve knew there would be good days and bad days. That’s how this sort of thing worked. Except sometimes, the bad days go like this.
✦ Almond, Clavicle, Orchid by kvikindi, steve & bucky & sam & natasha, 4.5k You say, “I don’t know what I am.” “It’s okay not to know,” Steve tells you. His face is very careful. But you know. You know that it’s not okay. ✦ you can’t fly on dinosaurs, bucky by scorpionbythesea, steve & bucky & clint, humor, 1.2k Based off the tumblr post by embracingthemadness and the tag that followed: steve and bucky making up random stories from their past and convincing the other avengers that it actually happened (◡‿◡✿) #there’s no way you guys fought nazi dinosaurs ✦ Fly on the Wings of Love by Omnicat, steve & bucky & sam & natasha & tony & clint + some background pairings, domesticity, 13.2k The Wings: Bucky just wants to show his appreciation for everything Sam has done for Steve. Of course, Tony Stark’s middle name is ‘needlessly difficult’. The Love: Bucky tries to set Natasha up with Sam. He’s a bit late for that party, but he managed to find Steve’s shield and replace Sam’s wings: he’ll come up with something for her. ✦ Swap by sparkles_stars, steve & bucky + avengers, body swap, 1.2k Steve and Bucky switch bodies. Nothing of substance happens from that moment on. ✦ Escape by Sholio, steve & bucky, 2.4k Missing scene for Captain America: The First Avenger – freeing the prisoners was just the start of getting away. ✦ think of it as personality dialysis by KiaraSayre, bucky & darcy, humor, 1.4k “I strangled someone with a shoelace once,” Barnes says. “Does that count as expressing myself through clothes?” “Uh, no.”
✦ Name, Rank, and Serial Number by forthegreatergood, steve & bucky + other marvel characters, 1.5k A Nazi peeling off his skin and declaring himself beyond human doesn’t even get a rise out of him anymore, but Bucky doesn’t think he could stand it if Steve ripped off his face, too. ✦ The Dawn of That Last Great Day by ignipes, steve & bucky + avengers + minor pairing references, the winter soldier speculation fic, 13.8k The Winter Soldier has a mission: kill Captain America. ✦ All The Leaves Are Brown (And the sky is gray) by AvocadoLove, bucky & tony + some tony/pepper + very mildly implied steve/bucky, 17.4k The Winter Soldier's mission is nearly complete. Howard and Maria Stark are dead, leaving him to dispatch their four-year-old child. One quick twist of the neck is all it will take, but the Soldier finds he cannot do it. So instead of killing Tony Stark, the Winter Soldier takes him away to raise as his own.
CAPTAIN AMERICA: STEVE&BUCKY&CAST - POST-THE WINTER SOLDIER: ✦ so this is how it is by sciencemyfiction, steve & bucky & sam, the winter soldier spoilers, ptsd, 29.1k Following the events of the Winter Soldier film, Steve and Sam finally find Bucky, and work to get back to a good place. ✦ On Your Left by TravelingRoses, steve & bucky & natasha & sam & tony thor & fury peggy, the winter soldier spoilers, 12.9k Five times someone told Steve to give up looking for Bucky and two times someone didn’t. Alternately, five times someone smacked Steve on the head and said “Don’t do the thing” and he continued doing the thing and two times he listened so he could keep doing the thing. ✦ and i have fought (in flesh and blood) by ChristinasInferno, steve & bucky, the winter soldier spoilers, 1.1k “He is Bucky Barnes and his best friend is Steve Rogers, and Steve Rogers is Captain America.” Bucky, post-Winter Soldier. ✦ The Care and Feeding of Traumatized Ex-Assassins by Sholio, steve & bucky + natasha + sam, the winter soldier spoilers, 6.6k Steve starts to notice someone’s been in his apartment while he’s not there. Set after Winter Soldier; spoilers. ✦ Glass of Milk by Lauralot, bucky & avengers, the winter soldier spoilers, 6.6k In which in the Winter Soldier is in the care of the Avengers. He has yet to regain his memories, but he has developed a fondness for dairy products.
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