#like......this is how i feel after coming home from work most days like

[mattrempeswife]

LITTLE QUINNY BEAR

pair: quinn hughes x f!reader

genre: fluff, domestic, emotional hurt/comfort, family.

warnings: mentions of surgery/recovery (c-section), postpartum insecurity, emotional vulnerability, soft crying, implied breastfeeding.

summary: after months of waiting, you and quinn finally welcome your baby boy into the world via c-section. from the moment he hears his son cry, quinn becomes the gentle, devoted father you always dreamed of and the partner who never lets you forget how deeply he loves you. as the days in the hospital blend into sweet exhaustion and late-night feedings at home, quinn proves again and again that there’s nothing he wouldn’t do for you. but when insecurities about your healing body begin to creep in, quinn’s emotional and heartfelt reminder of his love for every inch of you might just be the thing that saves you.

fia’s note: this piece can be read as a standalone, but it also works as a part 2 to ‘a mini hughes on the way’. totally up to you how you want to experience it! you might be wondering where i’ve been since i’ve been a bit inactive lately, i was actually on vacation! even though i haven’t had the time to get to your requests just yet, i’m totally free to chat if you want to talk hockey or just hang out a bit.

He hadn’t let go of your hand since you were wheeled in the operating room. He kept whispering gentle reassurances like soft petals against your skin, even when your nerves felt like fire under your hospital gown. The anesthesiologist gave the okay, the nurses moved around you like clockwork, and still Quinn never wavered.

His grip never faltered.

“You’re so strong,”

He said, forehead pressed to yours.

“I’m so proud of you, baby.”

And then it happened, forty-five minutes into surgery, a cry pierced through the room.

Loud. Clear. Perfect.

You barely had time to react before tears flooded your eyes. Quinn’s body shook beside you, a soundless sob catching in his throat as he looked over the curtain. The nurse held up a tiny, red-faced baby, and Quinn melted like snow in spring.

“That’s him,” he whispered, eyes locked on yours.

“That’s our boy.”

When they laid him in Quinn’s arms, he looked down at the wrinkled little face as though it was the most sacred thing he’d ever seen. And when he brought him over to you, both of you cried quietly together, hearts wide open in a way nothing could ever prepare you for.

You named him Finn Hughes.

And the world felt whole.

The hospital days were a dreamy blur of exhaustion and newborn cries, but through it all, Quinn was your steady constant. He learned how to hold Finn before you could even lift your arms fully. He guided him to your chest, helped adjust your gown for breastfeeding, always whispering sweet encouragements while balancing a plate of food to feed you at the same time.

“You’ve done enough,”

He’d murmur, nudging a fork to your lips.

“Let me take care of you now.”

Every evening, he’d sneak home just for an hour, long enough to shower, grab snacks, and come back smelling like home.

Sometimes he returned with fresh clothes for you, or photos from the nursery you hadn’t seen yet. Sometimes it was just a quiet, long hug that said more than words ever could.

And when it came time to help you walk again, Quinn was your crutch.

Ellen took Finn in her arms while Quinn wrapped one hand firmly around your waist and the other held your hand. Your first steps were shaky, your body weak and unfamiliar.

“Are you okay?” he whispered.

“Tell me if you need to stop. I’m right here.”

When you leaned into him, too overwhelmed to speak, he looked at you with guilt flooding his eyes.

“I think… I think Finn might be our only child,” he said softly.

“Seeing you like this, I feel so guilty, like I made you go through too much.”

Your heart twisted at the sound of his voice. This man, your gentle, golden-hearted man felt pain just watching yours. You reached up, cupping his cheek, grounding him.

“You gave me the greatest gift of my life,” you whispered.

“I’d do it again a thousand times.”

First week home was chaos. Finn fit into the house like he’d always belonged there. His crib sat under soft mobile lights, his name spelled on the wall in muted blue letters. Every night, Quinn would take the night shift with a sort of peaceful determination.

“You need sleep, mama,”

He’d always say, cradling Finn close.

“Let me take care of our little guy.”

Diaper changes, bottle warmings, rocking chair lullabies, Quinn handled it all with love. Even when you insisted on nursing Finn, he sat beside you everytime, whispering to him like it was the most normal thing in the world to stay up till 3 a.m. with his whole heart poured into this little boy.

Sometimes, you’d urge him to sleep.

But he never did, at least, not before kissing your temple and saying.

“I like watching you two like this.”

Then came the quiet storm.

More than three months postpartum, you stood in front of the mirror one evening, looking at the scar that marked your belly. You traced it lightly with your finger and felt a pang of self-consciousness. You didn’t feel ugly, but you didn’t feel beautiful either. You didn’t feel like you.

And you never said a word to Quinn. You tried to hide it.

But he knew you, really knew you.

He came into the bathroom quietly, arms around your waist, and kissed your shoulder before noticing where your eyes had fallen. Without a word, he slowly dropped to his knees in front of you. And then…

He kissed your scar.

Soft. Long. Meaningful.

You gasped, tears rising uninvited.

“Don’t ever think that this makes you anything less than the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen,”

He whispered against your skin.

“That scar… it gave me him. It gave me everything. It’s the most sacred part of you now.”

His voice cracked slightly as he looked up at you, eyes glossy but sure.

“I’d give anything to trade places with you. But since I can’t… I’ll spend the rest of my life making sure you never feel like this scar makes you anything less.”

And then he kissed it again, this time slow, reverent like it was the beginning of every love story ever written.

You broke.

In his arms, you cried for every fear, every ache, every second of doubt and in return, he held you like you were his whole world.

Because you were.

And now, you had a piece of that world swaddled in blue in the next room, waiting for the two people who loved him most to tuck him into the next chapter of forever.

[amoromniaodium]

Animal Kingdom

Andrew Pope Cody

Thank you all for reading the preview! I didn’t expect such a positive reaction to my writing. Your likes and comments have truly inspired me — I already have two more parts planned. Feel free to share your thoughts, whether good or bad. I always appreciate honest feedback.

We’ll be seeing more of the Cody family soon, but I wanted to give you some background on Pope and my character first.

Chapter 1

The Revival

—

When she was five, she witnessed something she’d only later come to recognize as bipolar disorder in her mother.

Her mother didn’t believe in medication. Said it made her too foggy, too far from herself. So she replaced prescriptions with “the good drugs.” And from then on, her daughter saw things no child should ever see — things done to her mother, things done by her mother.

By the age of ten, she was the unofficial head of the household. She cleaned, cooked, kept the apartment running. She stole — not because she liked it, but because it was the only way to survive. She lifted money from the men her mother brought home. Took soap, toothpaste, and pads from school. Stole lunches from bigger kids. She was a pro.

She loved her mother. Deeply. Enough to make sure she ate, drank water, showered. Enough to keep watch when her mother’s “friends” were over. She loved her even when she didn’t understand her — especially then. That’s where her obsession with psychology began.

She had seen people overdose. Seen how depression and addiction twisted people until they became unrecognizable. She didn’t judge. She watched. She asked questions. She wanted to understand. Needed to understand.

Her schoolwork improved. She started talking to the men who didn’t make her stomach twist. She made them feel seen. Safe. And in return, they opened up. She never gave advice. She just listened. By sixteen, she had done more emotional labor than most people do in a lifetime.

She read psych books from the library and used the tools they taught. Guided conversations, helped others find their own answers. She helped build relationships, and quietly helped end toxic ones, too.

They cried in front of her. Sat with her in silence. Let their rage unravel in the safety of her presence. And when her mother spiraled — manic or depressed — they were there. They helped her study. Helped her apply to university. Helped her celebrate when she got into med school on a partial scholarship.

And they were there when her mother overdosed.

In the quietest, darkest part of her chest, she was relieved.

She left. She studied. She was great at it — not just because she was smart, but because she understood. She could see pain before it was spoken. And she was determined to help fix both mind and body. That’s what led to her final rotation, at Folsom State Prison — and to the man who would change her completely.

⸻

Her first day at Folsom, she knew: this was not where she wanted to be.

Her attending was kind — as kind as one can be after decades in a place like this. He laid out the rules, the code, the expectations. Who to trust. What not to wear. How to walk, how to speak. He gave her a list of patients, diagnoses, medication routines.

That’s when she saw his name.

Andrew David Cody.

A massive dose of Thorazine. Enough to sedate rage. She didn’t meet the inmates until two weeks in.

And the moment she saw his eyes — dark, empty, emotionless — she should have known it wouldn’t end well.

⸻

There’s something to be said about leaving employment to return to school.

After her residency, she realized she didn’t want to be a prison psychiatrist. Not because she couldn’t handle it — but because she had no real power to help. She thought of a pair of eyes — dark, sad, and unblinking — and knew that wasn’t enough.

So she returned. Started a certificate in criminology, hoping to understand them better. But maybe it was something simpler than that: maybe she just didn’t want to grow up. Not yet.

Maybe she should work at a hospital in California. Maybe she should leave the country. Or maybe… maybe she should go back to her mother’s apartment. Let herself rot quietly, the way her mother had.

But then, walking out of class one evening, she saw him.

Not saw — felt.

A presence.

Straight-backed. Arms at his sides. Short sleeved shirt buttoned to the top like a priest.

And eyes — hawk-like, locked on her.

Andrew Cody.

But this time, for the first time since he’d been released, there was something new in his gaze.

A flicker of light in all that darkness.

⸻

There was something to say about the first time she saw him in months —it wasn’t fear that struck her. It was relief. A twisted kind of happiness.

Not about how he found her. Not how he knew where to look.

But because he was out. He had made parole.

Her first instinct, naive as it was, hoped he hadn’t gone back.

Not to that house. Not to her.

That maybe he’d gotten his own place, finally freed himself from the grip of that obsessive, broken mother — and the suffocating loyalty to his family.

But no.

She knew better.

Of course he hadn’t. They were the only thing he had ever known.

Letting go of them would be like letting go of oxygen.

She understood.

The only reason she ever left was because her mother was six feet under. These thoughts flickered and died the moment she saw him — standing there awkwardly, stiff as ever, eyes locked on her like always.

She moved toward him, not quite running, but not walking either.

Stopped just short of touching distance.

“Andrew!” she breathed. “You… you did it. Oh my God, I’m so happy for you. I knew you could do it.”

He didn’t say a word.

Just stared. But she saw it — the barest twitch of his mouth, a subtle lift of his brow.

He was happy to see her.

“How are you feeling? Have you seen your brothers?” she asked gently.

He replied, voice low. “Yes.”

She didn’t ask about his mother. She didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to open that door. Not yet.

So she reached for the first thing that surfaced — something safer.

“The fountain… did Baz ever finish it?” Her voice came out too light, too casual — even she could hear it.

But it was the only thing she could grab. He had once told her Baz promised to finish it while he was gone.

A flicker again — this time annoyance. A tilt of the head, the slightest grimace.

“No. I’m making it.”

So he was back there.

“Ah,” she said softly. “Well… I’m not really surprised. From what you told me about Baz…”

(From what your eyes told me. From what your silences said.)

“But it’s good, right? Keeps you busy. Keeps your mind quiet.”

He didn’t respond. Just stared.

“Right. Sorry… are you hungry? Want to grab something to eat?”

“I thought you were done with school,” he said.

“Yeah. I was. I don’t know —” she gave a nervous laugh, tugged at her sleeve, “—I guess I’m just not ready for the real world yet.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “I understand.”

“I know you do, Andrew,” she said gently. “Let’s go. There’s this Mexican place nearby — it’s amazing.”

She reached out instinctively, about to touch his arm — but paused.

He was watching her hand. Not with fear. Not quite with hope. Just a quiet, unreadable stillness. Like he wanted it more than anything but wouldn’t let himself show it.

There was something in his eyes — not pleading, but almost… waiting. The kind of stillness a child holds when something precious is near, afraid to move and scare it off.

She hesitated, her fingers curling slightly.

She knew how vulnerable he was in that moment. Knew what it meant — what it would mean — to touch him here, like this. There was desire under it, yes, but not sexual. Not yet. It felt more like comforting a child after a nightmare.

So she moved slowly.

When she finally took his hand, his fingers didn’t flinch. Didn’t tighten. Just rested there — solid, warm, resigned.

But he didn’t pull away.

And that was everything.

She led him forward, her grip light, his steps heavier — like he was trying not to fall into her.

[moesthoughts]

Hiiii i hope you’re doing weeeeeell I was wondering if you could write about Travis ? Travnat or xreader, which one you feel like doing the most, no need for a whole fic something like thoughts or headcanons :3 thank youuuu have a great day

-🦎

Travis Martinez as your boyfriend ꪆ୧

pairing ⛧ travis martinez x gn reader

warnings ⛧ fluff, some angst, suggestive themes, mentions of blood and cannibalism

summary . . you help the yellowjackets with misty, awkward travis

pre crash

➛ Travis, who begrudgingly went to every yellow jacket game because his dad forced him to come. He’d stuff his hands in his pockets and try to block out the loud cheering around him.

➛ Travis, who noticed someone who seemed just as overstimulated as him next to an excited misty. His curiosity taking over his brain.

➛ Travis, who refused to go up to you until you came to him. He would stare at you until you looked his way, quickly averting his eyes back to the field. He’d peek over his dad’s shoulder while he spoke to you and Misty.

➛ Travis, who was surprised when you finally approached him, not thinking his tactics would work. He felt his heart skip a beat once you smiled at him and introduced yourself, making him shake your hand.

➛ Travis, who stuck around you instead of his dad and Javi. You two practically had to yell over the crowd and announcer to speak to each other, but you didn’t care.

➛ Travis, who never failed to get a laugh out of you by saying the most stupid stuff ever. He was mesmerized with how carefree it sounded, he’d scoff and look the other way when you ask him about his staring problem.

➛ Travis, who started talking to you in your shared classes during school. You two barely got your work done.

➛ Travis, who eventually opened up to you about his home life and how the rumors in school affected him. You held him in your arms as tears burned his eyes.

➛ Travis, who thought of you as the only person he could trust, the only person that he could let himself be vulnerable around.

➛ Travis, who frequently went to your house to get away from his own. Memories of laughter always flooded his mind.

➛ Travis, who made the cutest noises while you kissed and gently pulled on his roots. You both swear you’re just curious friends.

➛ Travis, who didn’t seem happy that the yellowjackets are going to nationals when you called to tell him.

➛ Travis, who told his brother to screw off, but let you sit next to him with no questions asked on the plane.

➛ Travis, who held onto your hand for dear life while the plane went down, your head clouded while your fingers dug into his arm. All you could hear was him whispering about his dad and the screams around you.

post crash

➛ Travis, who disappeared after you got off the plane. You worriedly searched for him until you found him sitting alone next to a tree. Your eyes well up with tears as he gives you a pained look.

➛ Travis, who ignored yours and everyone else’s pleas not to climb up the tree his dad was on, you could only squeeze your eyes shut and look the other way once the branch broke.

➛ Travis, who seemed more broken than ever. You still hung out with him when the other girls wouldn’t, you ignored the stares.

➛ Travis, who grew apart from you after you found the cabin, pain filled your heart every-time you watched him run off with Nat.

➛ Travis, who came to you when he had a falling out with Nat, angry tears welling in his eyes. Your fingers raked through his hair comfortingly.

➛ Travis, who looked at you nervously while he made a blood offering to the wilderness. You couldn’t believe how far his hysteria went.

➛ Travis, who was so lost when they came back with his dead brother, his lip quivering as he held his brother in his arms. You crossed your arms and stood behind him, tears stinging your eyes.

➛ Travis, who held you close while the cabin burnt down, hope draining from his eyes.

➛ Travis, who finally confessed how much he loved you, how much he wanted you. He even picked some dandelions for you.

➛ Travis, who took you out into the woods to get away from the girls, kissing you passionately and whining into your lips.

➛ Travis, who wanted to act so tough but was putty in your arms, snuggling into your chest while his hammock rocked.

➛ Travis, who tried his best not to make noises while you kissed and suckled his neck, he couldn’t help it when you bit down on that one sweet spot above his collarbone.

➛ Travis, who squeezed your hand so tight when you ate another person, gagging as he swallowed.

➛ Travis, who no matter what won’t leave your side. He loves you with his whole heart and would hate for anything to happen to you.

Travis is such a sweetie, I don’t understand why people hate him. thinking abt making more stuff for him. Thanku for the req 🦎 anon! 🤍

req me!

masterlist

[dynaxplosion]

"I'm so proud of you"

after a rough and abusing day being the number one hero, dynamight always came home to his beautiful wife. his brain always short-circuiting whenever y/n would wrap her arms around his neck so lovingly, how her stares would linger, the sweet smell of his wife after such a long day

whenever the noise of keys jingling and the knob twisting open would fill y/n’s ears. she shot up, already knowing that it was her husband

your feet padded against the wooden floor as you made your way to an exhaustedly katsuki infront of the doorstep, a soft and gentle smile gracing your features that never went unseen by your husband. the familiar smell of caramel filling your nostrils that never got old, his gaze drifting down to y/n in such a loving manner that not even 13-year old him would believe

“how was work, kats?” you ask, the soft wind gushing against you from how strong katsuki kicked the door shut. not strong enough to slam the door, just strong enough to sway the oversized shirt you had on. your arms already interlocking around katsuki neck as you jump onto your tippy toes to get closer to his face, his height never failing to impress you. the way he’d always tower over you

“shitty. as usual” he states, a hint of softness in his gruff voice as his gloved hand caresses the small of your back. katsuki’s always loved coming home to such a sweet voice as y/n’s, he was convinced he could never find anyone like you and that he was lucky to share such a bond with you. it wasn’t just the ring that you both shared from when the two of you got married, how the ring would most likely make a dent in his ring finger from how long it’s been sitting there that made him love you, not that you were complaining. it was the little things, the soft spoken words at night, the way his heart fluttered at each word you spoke in that sweet voice he never got tired of. he was so obsessed with you.

“i’m still so proud of you.. my sweet boy” you murmur, your voice gentle and caressing the deep parts of his heart so softly, making his heart swell with love reserved for you. your fingers ran through his spiky but surprisingly soft hair, your fingertips deliberately massaging his scalp. he hummed in response, his head drooping to rest in the crook of your neck, the sweet scent of you filling his nose

he doesn’t respond at first, just lingers in the moment of having you in his arms as his arms cage you in a bear hug, a soft chuckle leaving your lips and blessing his ears. you pressed your lips to his hairline, his grip unwavering and only tightening his hold on you. his brain short-circuiting as he felt your soft lips press against his forehead. he’d never admit that everytime you kissed him like this, he’d always feel a flush creeping up his neck, only craving more

this is my first fic!! I'm still learning how to elongate my words and get my grammar right so im not yet like my favorite fanfic writers but I aspire to be like them! I hope you like my first ever fic, comments are appreciated

[internetgiraffekid1673]

FIFTH GRADE! I need everyone who listens to me to understand how formative fifth grade was for me.

So. First thing you have to understand: we had just moved to Utah and the school system there is pretty awesome. I went from a K-8 school on a military base that had rotting portables instead of second grade classrooms to a school with a 1 to 1 student to tech ratio and a robust enough system that I did not feel the need or desire to transfer to the gifted school---and I WAS a gifted kid, to the point that I homeschooled the second half of seventh grade after leaving Utah because I was so bored, and then skipped eight grade.

Second thing you need to understand is that I made some of my best friends in the whole wide world in my fifth grade classroom. I was adopted by the sweetest extrovert on the first day and we quickly became a troupe of around 8 theatrical 11 year old bookworms. We staged skits at recess. We wrote bad original fiction. Half of the incredibly good but somewhat obscure middle grade fiction that I read that shaped my entire being was done in 5th grade. I started my first book club. We spent copious amounts of time volunteering in the library and the lunchroom. We were an inseperable bonded pack. I am still in contact with half of them.

Third thing: my fifth grade teacher ties with my fourth grade one for the actual best teacher ever. She was an adult who truly understood kids---she did not like other adults and actively avoided socializing with them, but she loved children and just knew how to talk to us. She STARTED my Miraculous Ladybug obsession---this was back when season one was still coming new (and I think actively airing) and she let us watch episodes for fun on Fridays (that and ATLA or LOK).

Her google classroom was ladybug and chat noir themed, her profile picture was Korra, and we were allowed to call her Korra instead of Ms. Whatever if we wanted. We all also developed nicknames for each other (mostly fandom but not necessarily), that we got to write on our assignments and everything.

But most importantly, this was a woman who firmly believed that learning from experience was the best way to learn---and she meant it! When we talked about the French and Indian war in the first week of Social Studies, she had us go up to the front of the classroom and act out a war, and used that as a basis to tax us like King George taxed the colonists.

We had class money that you could exchange for little prizes on Fridays like cute erasers or candy, and that we also used as currency with each other when bartering lunch items and whatnot. It could be earned through good behavior and your class job (which was things like Floor Monitors picking up all the garbage on the floor or stuff like that). When we got into the unit about the taxes? We had to pay class money with the elementary school equivalents of all of those.

The Sugar act required you to pay class money if you brought lunch home. The stamp act required you to pay for a stamp on all your assignments before she would grade them. All of the laws and taxes that the British imposed on the colonists were imposed on us, and so were several others (the air pollution tax for talking when you weren't supposed to be, etc.), incluring plans for acts/taxes that never got imposed on our class because of. . .well, you'll see. If you didn't have enough class money to pay? You went into debt and had to work it off by picking up trash at recess.

Now, obviously we were 11 and pissed as all hell about this, so we decided that if we wanted to be freed from the tyrannical reign of the taxes, we'd have to stage a little revolutionary war of our own. During our free-read time in the library, the whole class pitched in to make signs that said "no taxation without representation" and then spent a recess marching around the teachers in circles and chanting "DOWN WITH THE CROWN!"

Our wonderful teacher, who understood we had internalized the lesson, accepted our revolution and had us hold class elections for a president, a judge, a tax collector, a mayor, a BANKER for borrowing money, and other officials. She then had us hold a congress where we debated on which of the taxes to keep and which ones not to. We spent an entire week writing a class constitution. The little RP history sessions for real history continued, even as our laws diverged from the real world, but our little 5th grade Republic got just as much dedicated time. And the new laws of the Republic were serious!

Now that we were a proper independent government and not a colony, we had to start payiny rent on our desks. When the new semester started, we got a new seating chart (since 90% of the class had ATLA/LOK nicknames, we were seated by nation and everyone who had an unaffiliated nickname went to republic city). Then, our teacher---without telling us why---had us rate every desk in the class from "Most desirable" to "least desirable" (predictably, the ones in the back tended to be highly coveted). Then, she used those results to charge us all differing rent accordingly. You could buy your desk, but it was equivalently as expensive as buying a real house instead of renting. You could also buy OTHER people's desks and have them pay rent to you as a source of income.

One kid couldn't pay rent on his desk, so his desk got removed and put in the back of the classroom, and he instead had to work in the hobo home, which was a box on the floor (he preferred this).

Opening a store in class (not unusual, we had kids who would fold origami or make little drawings or pawn off pencils for class money) now required getting a permit and a license.

There was also a running gag in our class about certain people being their friends' child, pet, or slave (we were 11) that got incorporated into our legal system. Legal dependents did not pay their own rent or taxes and their parents instead had to do it for them. If you wanted that changed, the legal dependent had to apply for emancipation with the judge and get it signed by their guardian.

This was all while we were still keeping to the regular structure of Math, English, Science, Social Studies and "specials" (art, music, keyboarding, P.E., etc), with all the usual elementary school trappings of singing silly songs to remember facts and writing essays on books or articles we read and losing our mind on field day. I am 80% sure the specials teachers had no clue what was happening in our main class and were deeply confused every time a third of their 5th graders started talking about needing to get legally emancipated so they could pay their own rent and open a bubble gum store.

It was just a really really fun class with a fun structure and a fun teacher and fun classmates and I learned a lot. I think, if I ever become a teacher, I want to be like my 5th grade one. Her style of teaching fostered one of the best learning environments in my life, and some of the funniest stories I have ever been able to tell people.

[apollabarnes]

part one // part two // part three // part four // part five // part six // part seven // part eight // part nine // part ten // part eleven // part twelve // part thirteen // part fourteen // part fifteen // part sixteen

getting out of his own clothes is harder because evan doesn't let go of tommy. he keeps his fingers wrapped tight around his wrist and tommy is pretty sure he'll have bruises in the shape of evan's fingerprints tomorrow. evan only moves when all tommy has left to do is get the sweater off his arm, but his free hand is already firmly on tommy's hip before he does.

tommy realizes he's humming fall out boy and stops himself. lets evan tug until he has to climb under the covers or fall over, doesn't ask if he's sure. tommy can't stand to see his expression crumple again, is scared that if he asks evan will realize he doesn't actually want tommy to stick around. more than that, he wants to stay. wants to spend his day off ferrying evan between the hospital and anywhere else he needs to go.

"tommy," evan mumbles, face mashed up against his neck.

"yeah, evan," tommy whispers, exhaling shakily. "what do you need?"

"tell me something you told athena," evan asks, breath hot against his collarbone. he hums and tommy knows he's close to falling asleep.

he picks something he won't mind repeating in the morning. evan falls asleep before tommy finishes telling him about the designated hitter rant and how pitchers should only have one job.

tommy stares at evan's ceiling and tries not to think about all the ways today could have gone worse. hen's punctured lung could have not reinflated. howie could have died before they flew the cure back. any of them could have died in the explosion. they could have run out of air. ravi could have bled into his brain when he collapsed. bobby could have— tommy presses the hand evan isn't holding onto like a lifeline against his eyes and breathes. evan could have been inside. their job is incredible and tommy loves every minute of it but every so often a call comes along that terrifies him down to his very atoms.

tommy wakes up to his phone vibrating on the bedside table. "'lo?" he keeps his voice as low as possible.

"i reached out to the 133 and harbor — we're keeping the 118 a shift staffed with our own guys until everyone is back in fighting shape."

"morning, sal."

"the one and only. sorry to call so early, i just got off shift. figured you'd be the one to pass on the good news. you at the hospital?"

"uh-uh. drove evan home."

"no shit." most people smile over the phone. sal smirks. "we're talking about that later."

"goodbye sal," tommy sighs, hanging up and checking the time. they can sleep for a bit. he texts athena, lets her know that three stations are sending over coverage until everyone is out of the hospital and approved to work again. bobby's probably trying to schedule everything from his hospital bed and driving her crazy. hopefully bobby can relax now that he knows it's been taken care of, and that should help athena resist the urge to kill him herself.

she texts back to ask if tommy's coming to the hospital.

tommy stares at the phone for a long moment, wondering if this is a trap. he's pretty sure sal doesn't have her number. finally texts her that he has a feeling evan will want to be there as soon as visiting hours start so yeah, they'll be there early. do they need tommy and evan to grab anything from their place?

there's a lull before athena replies and tommy braces himself.

may's planning to drop their bags off after breakfast. tommy wonders about their lives. he's got his own bag stashed in the front hall at home, is pretty sure most first responders do. knows evan's was in his bedroom closet at the loft. he might have moved it.

he likes the message and puts his phone back down, hoping to try and get some sleep. tommy doesn't remember falling asleep and he slept like it — he feels brittle and sore, aching down to the marrow of his bones.

athena waits long enough that tommy's nearly asleep and hoping that she missed the implications of driving in with evan before she sends a text that's just a long line of laughing emojis.

[queenothegeeks]

Hello! Sorry for the super long wait! This chapter is the prologue of the awkward creator series, which is based on a previous post I made which you can find Here!! I hope you enjoy!

Blah blah blah regular life with a Genshin obsessed probably neurodivergent gremlin gets hit by a truck blah blah blah Isekai shit happens. Let's skip to the good bit! 

You wake up with the most ear splitting headache known to man, feeling groggy and disoriented. Your limbs are hard to move and feel like jello, your ears are ringing, and to top it all off, you're seeing things. I mean, there's no way in hell you could actually be staring up at a 10 foot tall archon statue, right?

Just to be sure, you pinch yourself, hard.

“Ow!”

Yeah, not dreaming then. 

You know how in most stories the main character who gets isekaied is super calm, cool-headed, and just accepts their fate? How in most SAGAU fics the main character somehow balances playful banter and manages to not screw up the main timeline and spill everything about everyone? This apparently isn’t most fics, and you apparently are a horrible main character. 

“What the FUCK!?” HOW!?!? This can’t be happening ohmygodohmygodohmygod WHAT THE FUCK HAPPENED!?!?”

After a long while of screaming and hair pulling, you slump against Vanessa’s tree, trying to think of a plan.

“What do I do? I mean, I could stay here and try to wake up from this nightmare. Dream??? I don't know anymore. I can try and find town and pray that all of Mondstat doesn’t try to kill me… Maybe I should go to Springvale first. There's less people there, which means less playable characters, so maybe I can lay low for a bit longer. Then again, there's always the chance that they have no idea they are even in a game, and I'll just be a stranger to them…”

After much time spent thinking, you start to make the trek to Springvale. Taking in the sights and sounds of Mondstat, it’s more beautiful than you could have possibly imagined. No phone or computer could possibly do it justice. 

After what feels like forever, you arrive at the small and sleepy town of Springvale. Looking around, everything seems normal. No one is holding pointing swords or aiming bows at you. There's no cult meetings in the townsquare lit by candles, no elaborate summoning rituals, no ones preaching your life's history to the masses, demanding devotion to their “Creator” or “Decider”. It’s just a normal town. The hunters are just coming back from their day at work, Brook is still cooking her dishes, Myweiss is still singing songs of heartbreak by the windmill. It’s like no one cares about your existence.

~~Fast Forward a few weeks~~~

You've been in Genshin for about a month, and you've given up on the idea that you might wake up in your bed back home and realize that this has all been an elaborate fever dream or coma. You managed to secure a low stakes and low skill  job in Springvale, working as a meat and fruit vendor in the markets, as well as obtaining a low rent home on the outskirts of town. You've had contact with a few of Mondstats vision holders in the past, but nothing too serious.

 A passing glance at Kaeya when he did routine checks around Mondstat. 

A sale or two to Amber while she told you about her most recent adventures as an outrider.

Venti dueting with some of the other bards in town.

The distant explosions of Klee fish blasting in the pond.

Despite there being barely any signs that the playable characters have any knowledge of your existence, you can’t help but feel paranoid. The glances feel too long, the conversations feel too friendly, the songs feel directed at you, with messages of reuinition and lyrics about longing.

You try to convince yourself that you're overreacting, and that everythings fine, but you just can’t seem to shake the feeling of being watched. 

You realize that you should trust your gut more often when you see a pair of eyes watching you through your window in the dead of night. You grab a knife from the kitchen, but when you look again, there's no one there. 

Either they left, you stress yourself out so much that you've started to see things, or whoever or whatever it was is just laying in wait.

Waiting for the perfect chance to make their next move…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Don’t be afraid to comment your thoughts!

This is my first fic so if you have any suggestions or notice any grammar mistakes please let me know!

[douwatahima]

op i hope you don't mind me adding to your post, but this made me think of a story that'll be too long to fit in the tags.

so, when i was in my late teens/early twenties i worked at a little caesars. the job sucked, but it was close to home, and i needed the money, and the managers loved me for some reason and let me do whatever i wanted, so i stuck around. an important thing to know for this story is that this location did not do delivery. we would very occasionally get a large catering order and, if we were told far in advance, the owners would drive it to wherever it needed to go, but other than that there was no delivery.

anyway, one day i have an evening shift and the snow is crazy outside. i live in canada so snow is not new, but this storm was so bad that the owners told me when i got there that they had told a bunch of people not to come in (leaving only me and my sixteen year old coworker to work the night) and said we were allowed to close a few hours early because we probably wouldn't be getting many customers.

a couple of hours before we're set to close, the phone rings. i answer it and this guy proceeds to start ordering several pizzas. customers would occasionally call in if they wanted to do pick up so i didn't think much of it at first, until i asked what time he wanted to pick it up by. he laughs at me and says "obviously i want it delivered." i tell him that our store doesn't do delivery and this guy immediately gets mad.

he starts going off about how he ordered delivery from us all the time and how i'm just being lazy. at every turn i fire back at him in the nicest customer service voice i can muster given the circumstances: "no sir i can guarantee we do not deliver." "sir, i've literally been working at this location since we opened, and we have never done delivery." "sir, no one working tonight even has a car." finally, after like five minutes of this, he goes "look outside! do you really think i want to go out in that?" to which i responded "do you really think i do???"

he goes silent for a second and i honestly feel like this is the first time he realized there was an actual human person on the other side of the phone. when he spoke again all he said was "you have a nice night. bye." in like, the smallest, meekest voice i've ever heard. a complete one eighty from the way he'd been treating me for the last few minutes.

idk, maybe i read the situation wrong and he was actually still pissed. he didn't call later to complain about me as far as i know (and he seemed by our brief interaction like he would be the kind of person to do that) but hey, you never know. but i like to believe that he simply realized that the people making minimum wage at little caesars of all places did not have access to a magical vehicle that could move gracefully through even the most insane weather. and hey, if i could pass that info off to even one person i count that as a win.

[jenosonlywife23]

Soft Jeno thoughts (request from anon) — imagine these are the things running through his mind when he’s with you:

💭 "How did I get so lucky?" Every time you smile at him — really smile — Jeno feels it hit him all over again. Like the first time. He’ll just stare at you, heart squeezing painfully in his chest, thinking he must have done something really, really good in a past life to deserve you.

💭 "I wanna take care of her forever." Whether it’s making sure you ate, that you have a warm jacket on, or that you're safe walking home — Jeno is the type to quietly, naturally, always look after you. Not because he thinks you need him to — but because he wants to. It’s how he shows love.

💭 "She’s my whole world." When you laugh too hard at something stupid, or you trip and catch yourself and then look around all embarrassed — those tiny, unfiltered moments? Jeno falls even deeper. You’re not just someone he loves — you are his definition of happiness.

💭 "I hope she always feels loved." He worries sometimes. Late at night, when you’re asleep curled up against him, he’ll brush your hair back and wonder if he’s showing it enough. Telling you enough. That you’re everything to him. So he holds you a little tighter, hoping you feel it even if he doesn’t have the words.

💭 "I want a future with her." Sometimes when you're talking about something random — a vacation you want to take, a dream you have — Jeno finds himself thinking about rings, about homes with light-filled kitchens, about a dog you pick out together. And it feels so natural, like there’s no if, just when.

💭 "No one else compares." Other people come and go, but you’re it for him. No one else makes him laugh the way you do, no one else makes the world feel so light. He’s not interested in looking around. His heart already chose you.

💭 "She’s the best part of my day." Even on the busiest, most exhausting days — even when he feels like collapsing — knowing he gets to come home to you, hear your voice, hug you, kiss you... that's what pulls him through everything. You’re his safe place. His soft landing. His favorite feeling.

💌

: Soft Jeno thoughts when he misses you— like he’s apart from you for a while (work, tour, schedules), and he’s just full of aching love for you.

💭 "I wonder if she's eaten today." It’s the first thing he thinks about when he wakes up in a different city. Even before checking his own schedule, he’s texting you — "Good morning, baby. Did you eat yet?" He just wants to know you’re taking care of yourself, even when he can’t be there to nag you in person.

💭 "She probably looks so pretty right now." It hits him at random. Walking down a hotel hallway, sitting in the back of a van, brushing his teeth. He’ll stop whatever he’s doing and smile to himself, picturing you — messy bun, comfy clothes, maybe your nose a little scrunched up in concentration. God, he misses seeing you just exist.

💭 "I wish I could hug her." Jeno loves hugs — but only your hugs. When he's tired, overwhelmed, or just existing, he craves the feeling of you pressing your face into his chest, your arms wrapped around him. That kind of comfort no one else could ever give.

💭 "I hope she knows I’m thinking about her." Even if he’s too busy to call or text properly, he finds little ways to show it — sending you pictures of things that remind him of you, a quick selfie with a peace sign captioned "for you :)," a voice note saying "miss you, love you, be back soon." Small things, but so full of heart.

💭 "I can't wait to come home to her." He doesn’t care if it’s just sitting in silence together, if it’s eating takeout on the floor, if it’s falling asleep on the couch mid-conversation — home isn’t a place to Jeno. It’s you.

💭 "She makes everything better." Bad day? He imagines your hand in his. Your voice telling him it’s okay. Your laugh pulling him out of his own head. You're the background music in his mind, the person who turns noise into something beautiful.

💭 "Maybe I should buy her something." He’s strolling through an airport shop when he sees a stuffed animal, or a cute keychain, or a hoodie that looks just like something you’d love. He immediately grabs it. Not because it’s expensive or big — but because he wants you to have little pieces of him while he’s away.

💭 "She’s gonna tease me for being soft, huh." He can already hear your teasing voice when he sends you a text that says something like "I miss you so bad it’s not even funny." But he doesn't care. He wants you to know he’s soft for you. Always will be.

💭 "When I see her, I’m not letting go." When his flight finally lands and he sees you standing there — sleepy, maybe, or bundled up in a jacket — he doesn’t even bother trying to play it cool. He drops everything and wraps you up in his arms, heart pounding against yours like it never skipped a beat. "I missed you so much, baby. So much."

[jahdefender]

So I found this posted to reddit and I wanted to share it here because I'm sure there are some fans who haven't seen the Adventures Bible stuff. (I had not so this is just referencing myself)

[benevolenterrancy]

May your hardened heart be woken By the soft and distant song Of all you left here unspoken All the shards we keep stepping on - Take this body home Take this body home Call the wind, and let her know Take this life outgrown Take this broken soul Call the stars, call them all And take it high, take it far, take it home

[strange-anni]

Even though I've now changed my mind about the ship I was also a jncy shipper once and earlier seasons were indeed where they were at their best. That's was also the time when they were still just friends and I do think this plays a huge part of why they were working together so well back in the day.

It all starts to go down the drain when they are a couple and attempt to work together like we've seen in S3. Whereas working together isn't really what Nancy and Jonathan are doing in early S3 either. It's more like Nancy says what they should be doing and Jonathan can do nothing more then agree with her and follow her lead.

She isn't listening to what he says at all and she doesn't really care either. Jonathan doesn't want to destroy his car and doesn't want to get fired either. None of which Nancy cares for in the slightest. She even admits it to her mother later in the season. She says she wasn't thinking about Jonathan or anyone at all.

I know Jonathan gets more involved in the case of the missing rats later but that's also after he suspects it might concern Will. That's also just who Jonathan is: If someone he cares about is in danger or if it' about someone else who someone he cares about cares a lot for (meaning Nancy cares a lot about Barb and Jonathan cares a lot about Nancy) then he's in it no questions asked.

This is also why early S3 jncy feels so real to me despite the fact that the entire season has a lot of weird things going on. Until Will got involved it was just about the two of them. Just Nancy and Jonathan and how they would fare together if they were to share a working environment and the answer to that question is not good at all.

It's also that not everything in life is always directly connected to the people you love the most and sometimes (most of the times really) you just gotta go to work and do the job. We get to see what this would look like for Nancy and Jonathan and while I do not know how the US college system works I do suspect we'd get a very similar dynamic if they were to go to college together. Duffers over there are quietly dismantling jncys future by showing us how they don't work together very well after all.

Some people just live to work (Nancy) while others work to live (Jonathan.)

By now I am also wondering if stncys communication really is as bad as it seems or if it's just easier to see how bad they are for each other because they discuss their problems more openly?

I am thinking of this moment when Steve asked Nancy to tell him that she loves him which of cause she doesn't do because she doesn't love him. It's out there in the open for everyone to see.

It was also really brave of Steve to do that and try to face the truth head on. If we are thinking this from his perspective it goes something like this: His girlfriend is upset because of the death of her best friend. He then tries to help her by distracting her and going to a party which kind of works for a while until she's drunk and tells him everything they are is just a stupid lie which of cause upsets him a lot and to top it of it's the other guy (Jonathan) who later gets her home. Come next day she comes to him and is upset because he didn't pick her up and drove her to school which then leads to a discussion of their entire relationship and Steve asking for validation and an admittance that she still loves him.

It's not really an unreasonable thing to ask for if you ask me. It also shows us how stncy could never work.

Meanwhile we have Jonathan in S4 who's quietly also waiting for some kind of proof that Nancy still loves him ("Part of me expected her to be on that plane... or something..." I have talked about it here) but he never really confronts Nancy with it. He just does it the round about way later when they are fixing the cabin which also doesn't work and you know? At least Steve outright asked for it and got rejected. Jonathan doesn't have the courage to do that just yet.

Personally I really doubt Jonathan would ever become like his father. I think he is way more at risk of turning out like his mother which in turn doesn't mean good things for Nancy if you catch my drift. I think we also get a good impression of this during the fixing the cabin scene when they get outright paralleled to Lonnie. Their relationship is on it's best way to turn into an abusive one.

And Murray was the guy who started it by wanting them to kiss.

I also don't really know what his true role in the story is because to me it also seems like he isn't always wrong either. I think he probably also had the best intentions when he played that little game with Jonathan and Nancy (although he also really should have known better because despite it all: Nancys and Jonathans personal lives are none of his business no matter what) and it set them on a path that is not good for either of them.

The conformity is in forcing romance when people don't really want it.

This is very much true. It's what we see happening with Murray but he isn't the only one who engages in it. Once I realized that pretty much everyone in the show engages in it it changed my view entirely.

Barb does it by telling Nancy it'd be good if she were to date Steve because that'd make her more popular. Jonathan does it by lying to Nancy that Steve asked him to bring her home. Dustin does it by pushing Steve to date Robin which he calls creepy after he's already told him that Robin is not his type. And of cause Will also does it big time when he's trying to get milkvan back together. Lucas does it when he pushes Mike towards El. Robin does it and Eddie of all people does it too when they try to fix stncy and I'm sure there are plenty more.

It's like everyone else just always knows better and what's best for you except you yourself of cause.

Then to top all of this of it's Karen the conservative mom who tells Nancy to just unapologetically be herself (and also to completely disregard Jonathans feelings in all of this)

Complex characters. We just love them, don't we?

What is wrong with Joyce's boy?

Joyce of cause said this in regards to Will and while it leaves us without an answer as to what is wrong with him, we do get a transition to a scene with her other boy Jonathan in it.

So is there possibly a reason why Joyce would need to ask such a question in regards to Jonathan as well?

Note: This is about the infamous Murray scene with Nancy and Jonathan (and how he started their doomed relationship)

Jonathan and his friend Nancy who at the time are are probably only 17 years old get some vodka from this old conspiracy guy Murray

2. Leave it to the teenagers(!) to be the reasonable ones ones in this situation as they name very good reasons as to why they should stop drinking. Jonathan still has to drive and they want to go home.

3. Yet they get pressured into staying and possibly even more drinking

4. They also get pressured into staying in the same room

5. A suggestion said teenagers ignore because they don't really want to at this point although both agree that it is late

6. Old man is confused teenagers don't react like he expects them to

7. Still both Nancy and Jonathan are politely correcting him and telling him what they are: friends (It also makes me think of Dustin continuedly pressuring Steve into dating Robin in S3 which Steve also doesn't want and asks Dustin to stop and you know at least Dustin and Steve know and care about each other)

Imho it could have stopped here. Murray should have just accepted their word for it. It's none of his business anyway if they are friends or not.

Also notice how pressure comes from all sides? From the people we love, cherish and who are also our best friends and from people we barely even know like Jonathan and Nancy barely know Murray and he doesn't know them.

8. And we see Murray being completely dismissive of everything Nancy and Jonathan have to say -> He's just laughing at them

9. How does he even know if they're telling the truth or not? And even he's right and they did lie.. he has no idea of the reasons why. Not that would be any of his business either.

10. Look at these patient little babies and how they are still politely correcting Murray.

Also notice Jonathan is thinking.

11. What a bunch of utter nonsense. Even if we assume all of this to be true Jonathan and Nancy don't have to date just because of it. If they don't want to then they don't have to.

Also all of it is true for Steve and Robin in S3 and they are also not dating.

(sorry if Nancy looks a bit weird in that shot)

But also look at how attentive Jonathan looks here. It's like he's got someone on his mind which fits that description as well, doesn't he?

12. Murray is pressing Jonathans buttons and it's getting personal here. It's also none of his business.

13. Now he's getting REAL personal -> again that's none of Murrays business AT ALL.

14. They are trying to defend themselves again and are looking slightly uncomfortable. Plus Jonathan seems to be thinking again.

15. He's also only seeing what he wants to see and he's pressuring these young teenagers into conforming to his wishes

16. He also has no business of needing to read them at all!

Plus is it even true? Is Nancy harder to read than Jonathan?

17. Because Jonathan over here looks completely closed off. Guarded. Hugging himself, shoulders slightly raised and he also looks a bit scared tbh

18. Nancy also looks so uncomfortable here.

Plus retreating back to the safety of..

19. Notice how it is Jonathan who says Steve's name here and not Nancy? I really feel like Murray could have accidentally seen right trough Jonathan by sheer luck. Not that that would make any of this better at all.

20. Maybe Murray is right here. Maybe someone really does like Steve. Or suspects he could like him or maybe even just wants to talk to him to hear what he had wanted to say when he came to his doorstep in S1

But make no mistake as this is still meddling to the extreme as none of this is any of Murrays business at all. AGAIN.

Also Jonathan seems to be thinking again.

21. None of Murrays business

22. Jonathan still looks super guarded and Murray is making Nancy uncomfortable again

23. I would really like to know what Jonathan is thinking here

24. NOW they are getting told how cute they are as in you two should get together because that's be so cute

25. And just like that Murray acts like he's never said anything at all! Like he hasn't just meddled with them and their thoughts and told them what they should do and feel

Tbc in a reblog because I've reached image limit

Look here

[phagodyke]

aouuugh my uterus......

[atlxolotl]

Transcript and links to Reddit under the Read more:

I miss my husband so goddamn much

February 27th, 2025

I (35M) divorced my husband (36M) three years ago. And God, I miss him. I asked for a divorce for a few reasons, most of which being that his depression got exponentially worse day after day and he refused to seek treatment. Sometimes he wouldn't even go into work and ended up getting fired from his job. I stayed with him for so fucking long, praying that one day he would start trying to get better. It was all I ever wanted, but that day didn't come. I sobbed the entire time signing those papers, and when I handed them to him and asked for a divorce, he just gave me the emptiest, deadest look and signed them without a word. My heart felt like it had been shattered with a hammer, anger and sadness and fear tied together in the world's tightest, ugliest knot and inset deep into my chest.

I put on a brave face for my friends, tried to frame it as shackles coming off and a new beginning, but it was a lie. It just hurt, and it keeps hurting, and it will never stop hurting. He was my soulmate. I'll never love anyone like I loved him. He used to be so sweet and loving, so passionate and happy and every other wonderful thing a man could want from another.

They say each day gets easier, but it isn't for me. It's been three years and I'm still reaching over to the other side of the bed in the morning to pull him close, and it always stings when my hands touch fabric and not his skin. It's been three years and I'm still expecting to see his car in the driveway when I get home from work. It's been three years and my heart isn't any less broken than the day he left.

I've been stalking his socials, I'll admit. He's been getting back to the gym, started meds, and I see him smiling so genuinely in these photos. He looks so incredible. Maybe if I had just waited, he would have changed his mind and went to a doctor like he is now? Or was it me that held him down? Was I making it worse?

I hope not. I wanna go over to his place and just fall into his arms and beg him to take me back. Maybe he's wishing the same thing about me. If there's even a chance I could have my boy back I feel like I should try. I'll never know otherwise.

EDIT: One: I am a homosexual man. My husband is a homosexual man. I am not a woman. Yes, I know I'm effeminate and kind of emotional. Get creative.

Two: my husband was a binge drinker. He refused treatment no matter how much I begged. We got antidepressants but he wouldn't take them. I know he's started meds now because he's posted about them and his 2 yrs sober chip that he got last month.

Three: I never stopped loving him. I never loved him any less. Near the end of our marriage, I started drinking to cope. The second I realized I was, I realized he was dragging me down with him, and I couldn't help him anymore. I didn't dip the second it got hard. Many of you are being kind of rude. I'll accept that I wasn't the perfect husband, nobody is. But claims that I never loved him are just wrong and make me feel sick to my stomach.

EDIT 2: No, I am not the catalyst for this. His depression started when his young brother died terribly and unexpectedly. It's not because he just hated me so much. We were childhood sweethearts and had been together for years when this happened.

[UPDATE] I met my husband that I divorced 3 years ago

March 2nd, 2025

Well, with Reddit's advice, I did it. A few days ago, I called my (35M) ex-husband (36M) whom I divorced after 6 years when he refused to seek treatment for his depression.

I called him later in the evening. It was the first time we'd spoken since a bit of trouble he'd had while he was still drinking 2 1/2 years ago. He picked up on the second ring. Our conversation was a little stilted at first, as to be expected, but he said he was really glad to hear from me. We ended up meeting up for coffee yesterday as so many of you suggested. I'll admit: it was kind of hard to see him, but in a good way? He looked so much better than the last time I had seen him, but he looked exactly like the man I married. He had put off a ton of weight (he gained like 75ish pounds during his struggle with depression, and before some dick says so, I didn't leave him because of his weight gain), he looked way healthier and very put together. I'll just say it: he looked incredibly hot. What made it hard was that I couldn't kiss him hello like I used to. But God, the way his eyes lit up when he saw me, I barely needed to.

We got our coffee and sat, and he updated me a little on his life in the last 3 years.

What really turned his life around was in part the divorce but moreso a DUI (nobody was hurt, he was caught a few blocks from his apartment). He's since gone to rehab and AA, gotten his license back, and had to use a breathalyzer whenever he started his car for a while. He hasn't had a drop of alcohol since and I told him I was so fucking proud of him. He's also started antidepressants, and made a point of telling me that they're not SSRIs, but when I asked what that meant he got embarrassed and told me nevermind (???). Bottom line is that they've been helping him, he's back to being a gym rat, and he's almost completely turned his life around. This was around the point I started tearing up. It just felt so good knowing he was okay. Better than okay, he was *good*.

I also apologized to him for not sticking by him. He cut me off and said I had nothing to apologize for. He was a wreck, and I was being dragged down with him. That also felt good to hear. I apologized for not contacting him much during the last 3 years. That apology, he accepted.

He was dating someone for a few months, too. He broke up with him once he tried to get him to drink on New Year's. He seemed dismissive of the guy. Guess it wasn't too serious.

We got up and went on a walk after a few hours, and I think we both realized it felt like a first date. I had to stop myself from trying to hold his hand at a few points, I'll admit. We ended up sitting on a bench in a nearby park, and I confessed.

I told him I missed him more than anything, how I never stopped loving him, and how if he wanted to, I'd love to try again from the beginning this time. We'd go to couples' therapy, keep our heads above the water, and take it slow. He was quiet for a minute before he told me something. He said he was doing better now, but there may be a time where he sunk low again. Depression isn't easily cured, and he was far from cured. He still had bad days, but he said there would be one difference: he promised he would never stop trying to improve. He was never going to give up like he did before, and refused to neglect me like he used to. If I was willing to accept that truth, he was willing to try again. I agreed, and he pulled me into an embrace and snuck a kiss to my temple. You know when it's the first warm day of spring after a cold, harsh winter, and the soft breeze and basking sun hit your skin at the same time? It felt something like that, to the 1000th degree. After a while he walked me back to my car and squeezed my hand goodbye, and the second I got inside I started sobbing like a baby. Happy tears, though.

I'm currently sitting in bed, kicking my feet like a teenage girl, texting him back and forth to schedule an actual date. He said he'd plan everything, and try his best to make up for the birthdays and anniversaries he missed. He said it would "knock my socks off." What a dork. I love being in love. Not gonna lie, this is gonna be a bit hard to explain to my friends and family. Not looking forward to those conversations, but right now I don't care. My man loves me.

Thank you to everyone who had kind words to say, and all the people that messaged me with sympathy and advice. I hope we all find happiness, and love if we want it. I never would have made the leap if y'all hadn't encouraged me. Best of luck to all of you, and sorry for the overly flowery language <3

EDIT: we've scheduled a date for tomorrow evening. I'll let people know how it went two days from now in my final (unless something big happens) update.

EDIT 2: at his place presently. Shame me not, reddit.

[FINAL UPDATE] I went on a date with my ex-husband last night

March 5th, 2025

My (35M) ex-husband (36M) and I recently reconnected. I won't go over the details of why we split or our reconciliation since I'm sure the average redditor can click buttons and most likely read. He was the one taking me out, and promised that it would, in his words, "knock my socks off" to make up for his neglect of me. He sure as hell delivered.

A little backstory, we've been together since we were 15 and 16 respectively, and have never moved out of our hometown. This year would have been our 20th anniversary (of getting together, not marriage). We were dating secretly for about five years before our parents caught us one day during summer break. The fallout from finding out their son was gay actually made his parents split. His dad wanted to send him away to conversion therapy. He's seen his father maybe once per year on average, and every time he's incredibly cold towards me. Would never refer to me as his son-in-law, only my husband's "pal." I wonder why. Anyway, not what you're here to read. I'll get on with the lore.

He picked me up from the house and wouldn't tell me where we were going, but told me to dress warmly. He ended up taking me to the place where we met: a run down ice skating rink in our town. He used to do hockey, and I spent some time trying to learn figure skating until people started beating me up for it. Both sports would practice at the same time and I remember barely being able to keep my eyes off him. We went skating, I tried to pull off a few of the moves I remembered (he only had to catch me from falling on my ass once or twice, and I won't complain about an attractive man that I love hooking his arm around my waist), and we spent an hour or so there until our feet hurt. At one point I said that my face was getting cold, so he skated around in front of me and placed his gloved hands on my cheeks to warm me up. I just about burned a hole in the ice from how hard I was blushing, I swear to God.

He wasn't done then. We left and went to dinner, specifically the restaurant where we had our first date. It's a cheap hole-in-the-wall place, seeing as we were poor teenagers when we first met. We chatted and ate food that probably took 5 years off our lives, he was an incorrigible flirt, and even held my hand underneath the table like he did all those years ago. I know I said I never stopped loving him, and I stand by that, but I think I somehow fell in love with him a thousand times over again during that meal.

At the end of dinner, he asked if I had energy for one more simple thing, to which I agreed. He took me a while out of town to a dark sky zone park, specifically the one where he proposed to me ten years ago. He set out a blanket to sit on and another to cuddle under, and we went stargazing all bundled up together. You never know how much you miss the sound of someone's heartbeat until you haven't heard it for so long. We shared a bottle of sparkling grape juice in plastic champagne flutes and dumb, giggly kisses. It felt so similar yet so different. He told me in a moment of quiet that he loved me, and oh, God. It took everything I had not to cry. I barely hesitated before asking if he wanted to change venues. He seemed surprised, but eagerly accepted.

I ended up at his place, as some of you may have seen from my edit on my second post yesterday. I wanted to take it slower than this, but it was so hard to. I was so starved of affection and hadn't been intimate with anyone for just about six years. I'm gonna keep what happened at his between us, but all I'll say is that his medication was no issue and all of you should be jealous. I woke up in his bed this morning, reached over for him, and pulled him close just like I used to do. I haven't been this happy in a long time. We had a sleepy discussion and decided to get back together, but we're not using the term boyfriends. It just feels weird after all this time. So he's my partner, or my lover. He's mine.

Thank you, reddit. Wouldn't have done it without a little push from the internet. Let's see where all this goes.

[lizardho]

Before I knew I was bisexual I was just insanely dramatic and weird around guys I liked. I had a crush on this guy in my ward - he was older than me, he played bagpipes and had a cheerful dog and an old Volkswagen bus that he worked on all the time. He also had nice scruff and unnaturally attractive hands and a good sense of humor, so I was like FULLY smitten.

I talked about him a lot and about how he was just so dang COOL, dang it, because he was so frickin’ cool. And I really liked him. I thought he was funny and smart and interesting and cool and fascinating and a bunch of other weird feelings I barely had the attention span to think about (I think my ADHD may have prevented me from coming out for a while tbh).

One day, I’m like 14-15, his dad is called to be my Sunday School teacher. His dad is this ex-military hardass with a chip on his shoulder for absolutely no reason and unattainable standards for his children. He spent most of Sunday School talking shit about his eldest boy and how he was rebellious and didn’t listen to him and how that was going to make him a bad adult and a bad son forever. How his son was too lazy and unmotivated to be successful because he didn’t listen to his advice on how to read the scriptures. He complained about how our generation was too weak to do things right and that our generation would surely be the one that brought the world’s downfall because of our laziness and sin.

And like, first of all, that guy can already go fuck himself for that. To clarify, that’s already stupid. BUT. He was talking about the man I had uncomfortable dreams about at least once a month. I couldn’t stand it. I’d get so mad I’d go home shaking sometimes because how fucking DARE he insult his hardworking stunning son by calling him lazy? For not reading the Bible the way his dad wants? When he’s already spending his time learning bagpipes? And fixing cars? And being cool? And cute? Who the fuck even cares if he uses the footnotes in the Book of Mormon? Who gives a rotten rat’s ass if he doesn’t use the scripture study manual his dad uses? He’s so cool he doesn’t even need it? So fuck off?

And eventually I got fucking Sick Of It and decided to mutiny. And by mutiny, I mean skip class. I’d just not go. And after a bit, adults started noticing and bugging me about it. At first, this was put off by small talk and excuses, but as my absence from Sunday School became more well-known, my excuses began to be rejected.

“Oh, Lizard, why aren’t you in class?” Uhm idk because my Sunday School teacher is mean to his kid and that makes me so mad wtf do you want from me? 🫠🤔

“Where’s your class, I’ll go with you!” Oh no ty I’d rather peel my own eyes than have my taste in men critiqued tyty 🩷

“Lizard, you should go to class, I’m sure they miss you!” And I miss the innocent days where my stomach didn’t hurt when a cool boy I knew was being belittled but unfortunately for us both those days are LONG gone and all that’s left is a budding psychosexual clusterfuck that will render me almost fully incapable of functioning for the better part of a decade so Bye Bye, sister Smith 🙂‍↕️

It had gotten to the point that ward leadership was involved. I was being approached by members of the Young Men’s presidency and the Bishopric to try and make me to back to class. They were telling me God had told them to find me and instruct me on my rebelliousness. This is where I implemented my secret weapon - women. Mormons are weird as hell about a lot of things, but especially about women. And I was GREAT with women. So to combat the leadership’s attention, I started helping women.

Our ward had a lot of new moms with babies who were, as babies tend to be, fussy. But for Mormon women the church is often their only social outlet, so they try to power through as long as they can even if it means enduring the exhausting ordeal of taking care of a fussy baby at church.

For what it’s worth, I have a lot of sway with babies. I got baby street cred. Me and babies have a rapport. I have always known this. I have always loved this. And in this crucial gay time in my faggot life my baby mind powers came in clutch - Every time I saw a member of the bishopric getting close, or a young men’s leader giving me side-eye, I’d start walking slowly towards class, passing by relief society. I’d wait until a mom’s baby had gotten too fussy and needed to leave the room, and I’d swoop in like a knight. “Oh, don’t you worry sister, I’ll bounce him a bit. You go back and hang out with your friends in class. You deserve a break.”

If it was a diaper change or something they’d tell me no. But if it was just some good old-fashioned baby fusses, I mean, they’d be moved almost to tears. They just got their social time back AND a free babysitter who is renowned as the Baby Whisperer. And because I was holding a baby as a favor for someone else, I of course could not reasonably be bothered to return to class.

So just like that, I was out of everyone’s sights. This went on for about a month before the straw that broke the camel’s back, which was that without my class participation the classes were quiet and awkward. I’d often take the brunt of Sunday school lectures by answering questions impulsively and over explaining myself enough that the clock could run out without anyone needing to do or say much. My absence meant everyone else was getting hit with the full unpleasantness of this guy’s bullshit. And so slowly, one-by-one, I had a group of about 8 kids on baby-holding duty. These new moms were so overjoyed, they and their husbands were both so actively in our corner that now chastising us was untenable. Now we had bargaining power. So the Bishopric approached us, confused beyond confused and uncomfortable beyond uncomfortable, and said,

“What’s it gonna take to get you back to class?”

The POWER I possessed in that moment was addictive. By being kind to the women of the ward and ignoring the Mormon de facto Rule of Law of following rules en-masse so the rule breakers feel left out, there were now so many people breaking ranks that we had effectively enacted a church boy labor strike. And they crumbled so fast it was almost like we had swayed God himself to our cause.

“I want brother assholedad gone. He sucks at teaching.”

I didn’t even have to say it. One of my rebels said it for me. I just nodded sagely and said “Yes, his class is not edifying. It’s better to not go and hold babies.”

And just like that, with a snap of my limp-wristed, Christ-wounding, bottom-brained fingers my faggot will was enacted. God’s revelation that brother shitdad was his chosen Sunday school teacher flipped on a dime. Suddenly brother shitdad was asked to be an usher and the fun dad of another one of my crushes was called in to teach us. I still stayed to hold babies a lot, but the rest of the class returned and all was well again.

Although I didn’t recognize it then, I think that was a formative moment for me in a lot of ways. I learned that being really persistently annoying will get me what I want from authority eventually. I learned that God’s will can be swayed by going in strike. I learned that ignoring men’s made up authority forces them to level with you as a person. I learned that caring for women, especially vulnerable women, can make a whole world happier. I learned that letting women rest can help them feel more love for the things that matter in their life. I learned that social bonds make everyone stronger and happier. And I learned that loving others in a gay way can change the world.

Be gayer. Read Terry Pratchett. I love y’all 💕

[celestie0]

gojo satoru x reader | oneshot smut [18+]

title. around the clock

Hooking up with your little brother’s babysitter? That sounds more like a bad porno than a sensible decision.

ᰔ pairing. babysitter/boxing au - underground boxer & babysitter!gojo x college student!reader (f)

ᰔ summary. when underground boxer gojo satoru becomes a little strapped for cash, he gets a day job as a babysitter for a five-year-old kid named yuuji who most definitely has adhd (but that’s besides the point). the kid’s mom gave gojo two rules, and two rules only: don’t accidentally kill my son, and do not flirt with my daughter. he’s pretty sure he’s got a good hold on the former, but he’s got no self control over the latter.

ᰔ warnings/tags. 18+, fem!reader, smut, casual sex, lil bit of fluff, lil bit of crack, slight age gap (reader’s 22 & gojo’s 27), cum play, creampie, unprotected sex, praise kink, slight degradation, gojo is a sleazebag that cares?, sort of porn-coded smut except there’s a lil bit of lore so it’s kinda porn w plot, uhh having sex with risk of getting caught, gojo beats people up at night & then plays father figure to a 5 y/o during the day, mentions of violence/alcohol/drugs/blood/cigarettes

ᰔ word count. 12.6k

a/n. hiiii friends jeez it feels like FOREVER since i've posted some good ol' smut (still has plot tho xd)...hopefully you enjoy n see ya at the bottom! lmk if i missed any warnings! if you asked to be tagged but didn’t get tagged it’s bc you have your tags off aaa :( even when some ppl tried to fix it i still couldn’t tag them i’m sorry!!

alsoooooo so very much love to @starmapz for beta reading this for me :”) really helped me w my posting nerves haha. she is also a wonderful jjk author pls go check out her works!! 💕 ART CREDITS: @/3-aem

➸ masterlist

2:34 pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): heyy um i’m sorry if this comes off kinda rude i just am kinda bad with this but i was wondering if you could text my mom for questions about yuuji’s care instead of me?

2:46pm Gojo Satoru: Oh 2:46pm Gojo Satoru: Yeah, sure

2:34 pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): sorry i know my mom doesn’t know much ab how to take care of him bc i was the one that took care of him for a while but i just really want to separate myself from that guardian role now that i’ve transferred to NYU yknow? :/ i think it’s not my place anymore. i just wanna be big sis now haha

2:46pm Gojo Satoru: I get it. Sorry if I was making you uncomfortable with my texts

2:48pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): no no not uncomfy by it, thanks for looking after him. it’s just i’m kind of busy n stuff so it can be distracting 

2:49pm Gojo Satoru: Ok, got it

2:52pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): and it was kind of an issue with his last babysitter

2:53pm Gojo Satoru: Oh?

2:55pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): yeahhh like he would keep textinf me n stuff uhh kinda weird things… i told my mom about it and she was super pissed so she fired him

2:55pm Gojo Satoru: Weird things?

2:56pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): yeah he was always “accidentally sexting me” n like he sent me a dick pic once sooooo yeah

2:56pm Gojo Satoru: Who tf 2:56pm Gojo Satoru: I’ll go beat him up

2:57pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): oh no no its fine lol 2:57pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): please dont beat anyone up 2:58pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): i’m not saying you’re like him tho i just think maybe less texting unless its an emergency okay?

3:00pm Gojo Satoru: Are you sure because I will totally go beat him up for you

3:01pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): NO I DONT WANT YOU TO BEAT ANYONE UP FOR ME 3:01pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): also no offense but you dont look like you could beat someone up

3:01pm Gojo Satoru: WHAT 3:02pm Gojo Satoru: Tf you mean “no offense” that’s literally the most offensive thing you could say to a guy

3:04pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): yeaa i mean you have muscles ofc but in the ‘ohhh i wanna look good for instagram’ way and not like real man muscles yknow

3:06pm Gojo Satoru: Ok princess next time you visit home and go on one of your stupidly large grocery hauls I’ll make sure you carry all those groceries in by yourself 

3:06pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): NO 3:07pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): I WAS JUST JOKING 3:07pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): YOURE SO STRONG TY FOR ALWAYS CARRYING THE GROCERIES INSIDE 3:08pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): PLEASE KEEP CARRYING MY GROCERIES INSIDE

3:09pm Gojo Satoru: Nah 3:09pm Gojo Satoru: Should we be texting right now? I’m not sensing any emergencies here

3:11pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): pls. my groceries :(

3:16pm Gojo Satoru: I’ll let the kiddo know you say hi 👋🏼 

The irony of it all was that, if Gojo really wanted to, he absolutely could beat the shit out of someone. And he has, hundreds of times, pseudo professionally. Although that isn’t something he’d admit to you, out of fear that you might relay that info back to your mom who would then become mortified that she’s entrusted her five-year-old son’s life to the hands of an underground boxer. 

But he needed the money. A night-time job didn’t really make daytime money, not when they could easily replace him with the next dude the second he gets knocked out of the ring more than twice, let alone if he let it happen once. And although he sometimes made large sums, it wasn’t stable income. He needed a back-up plan, and so babysitting it was. 

The babysitter working nights at unsanctioned dojos and gyms located in the back of cartel blocks, knocking teeth out of men twice his size, would put any decent mother into a coma or induce some episode of syncope, hence why it wasn’t something he put on his resume before he got hired. Not that he even needed to provide a resume; your mom seemed desperate to cover the position as fast as possible, that promotion at work was moving faster than she wanted to, and Gojo’s beneficial attribute that he possessed as a candidate to look after her son, compared to all the other potential hires, was that he had a penis.

He likes the kid. Yuuji. He’s got kind of a short attention span, and makes Gojo weary of his age. Hold up, that makes him sound like he’s geriatric, he’s really only the ripe old age of twenty-seven, but the immortality and infinite stamina that a five-year-old boy has on him is enough to have him huffing and puffing at the end of every single evening shift he takes on with the rascal. 

Fighting is all sprint, and no stamina. Sure, there might be some more seasoned boxers that might disagree with him, but for someone as young as him in the field, it’s the tactic he’s been forced to gain. If he draws a fight on for too long, he'll get killed by a forty-two year old man with steroids clogging up his adipose tissue and enough  testosterone to grow a full-body beard by the time the sun starts to set. No, his strategy is to knock them out within the first fifteen seconds. Use their weight against them, and whatnot. A tactic he’s found has worked, since he’s been undefeated thus far. 

He can never wrap his head around it. The drug lords that run the rings who’ve gained millions the night before from selling crystal meth only to lose it all the night following in the second Gojo hooklines a solid punch to their betting boxer’s chin, making them see God & their Momma before they tap out (if they’re even able).

He doesn’t pocket much money from it, not anything compared to what the men who bet on him end up making at least, but it’s a decently solid sum. How lucrative it really is depends solely on what he thinks the value of his life is.

It’s not unheard of, boxers dying in the ring. Turns out, rich drug dealers care very little about the sheep they’ve captured to perform their entertaining little stunts. But Gojo wasn’t doing all of this to feel some sense of work-life pride, no, it was just sustenance. When basic needs are not met, humans resort to the most animalistic of all behaviors, and while he’s not proud of what he does, he can’t deny the fact that it’s turned him into an adrenaline junkie that gets a rush in his veins every time he knocks a jaw loose.

But balance was key. And hence why he’s a boxer by night, babysitter by day. For at least four days a week, he gets to pretend he’s the king’s most trusted appointed knight, or he’s the radioactive tyrannosaurus rex that wants to tyrannize all the other dinosaurs, or maybe he’s the evil power ranger (he always forgets which color that one was) that is determined to make the world a living hell by smashing mr. potatohead against the bunk bed post a billion times for all the other toys to see. Or whatever other imaginative hyperfixations Yuuji imposes on him in the later afternoon once he’s had his bowl of spaghetti-O’s and is ready to play. Lately, the kid’s been really into space. They’ve got all sorts of space toys these days. Back in Gojo’s day, he just had a good ol’ Buzz Lightyear.

“One rule, that’s it: don’t accidentally kill my son. Actually, one more rule. Don’t flirt with my daughter.” 

There’s a part of Gojo that believes your mom kind of knows he’s up to shady shit at night, otherwise why else would she clause for him to not flirt with you if she didn’t read the slight swell to his eye and the healing gash across his cheek as anything other than this boy is trouble and I want him nowhere near my too-good-for-him daughter of reproductive capacity since that’s the exact tale of how I became a single mother in the first place. Or maybe he inherently looks like he’s up to no good? He’s not sure which angle is more offensive, and which one was more flattering. Well in any case, she entrusted Yuuji’s life to him, despite acknowledging the plausibility of harm, and that means she overall thinks positively of him, right? ……right?

The first night he met you, it was awkward to say the least. Gojo spends most of his nights performing deadly stunts for middle aged men with potbellies, and most of his days hanging out with a five-year-old (one who he’d argue is his only friend at this point). Sure, he’s got some people he sees occasionally back in his high school hometown when he can brave hearing about how everyone’s in college now or doing a masters or they’re working respectable nine-to-five day jobs meanwhile he has to lie to his Pops that he’s been working in insurance for the past two years. Listen, in fairness, he probably makes the same amount of money as an insurance broker would anyways, but he can’t exactly own up to the identity of his craft. 

Anyways, the point is, he’s not used to seeing other people his age anymore. There’s the occasional hook-up with girls he hasn’t seen since Mrs. Tracy’s homeroom period back in sweet two-thousand-sixteen, or his twice-a-year hangout with Suguru where he only learns the day of where he's visiting from since the guy moves around more than Gojo can keep up with. But save for that, he mostly just sees your mom and then Yuuji. 

So seeing you standing in the kitchen for the first time when he went to put Yuuji’s half-finished GoGurt back in the fridge was startling to say the least. When the sight of a woman startled him, he knew he needed to start getting out again.

You were on your tiptoes, reaching up to grab at something over the fridge, and wearing these ridiculously short shorts to where he could see the curve of your ass, his line of sight trailing down the skin of your bare legs. He couldn’t see anything of your form above your shorts, given you were wearing an extremely baggy t-shirt with NYU on it in big bolded university letters. As far as he knew, you were a senior at NYU, studying psychology, made dean’s list consecutively for the past three years given the way your mother posted all your stellar transcripts up on the fridge (he gets that she’s proud of her daughter, but doesn’t that kind of stuff usually end in grade school?) But other than that, it was all the information he had on you.

“Here,” he said, pressing his front to your back, maybe just to get a feel, as he reached over to you to finally grab the box of cereal you were swatting for, the one that he purposefully placed at the back because Yuuji learned how to climb counters recently. “Is this what you want?”

He had heard you gasp, spinning around on your heel fast, staring up at him with wide eyes like you weren’t expecting some random man to be in the house right now, and your first instinct ended up being to grab the knife out of the kitchen knife block and lunge it straight at his torso.

If it wasn’t for his boxer reflexes, he’d have ended up at the ER that evening. Or dead. All depending on the strength you could pack into a stab. But instead, he deflected it, though not without a gash to his torso through the fabric of his shirt, one that you spent the rest of the evening profusely apologizing for and eventually mending to with cotton balls and neosporin. 

“I didn’t know you were my little brother’s babysitter,” you mumbled with a small wince on your face as you dabbed ointment on the wound while he pulled the hem of his shirt up to his shoulder. He’s never had an injury tended to before. It was nice.

“It’s fine, I get it, totally acceptable response to seeing a random dude in your house.”

He remembers the curl of your eyelashes while you stared down at his bare upper half, something he imprinted on his memory rather than the concern in your face as your fingertips traced the scars across his chest. He hoped they made you feel better about the one you just slashed into him, because after all, what was one more? 

He knows he shouldn’t have, but he kissed you that night. Two minutes before your mom came home, and right after you bid him goodnight with one more apology, he backed you up against the door of your bedroom, his hands on your hips pulling you towards him, and his lips pressed against yours. Something seamless, from candid conversation that was heading towards an end, to full fledged making out against white-painted wood, his teeth nipping at your lip and he wondered just how touch-starved those university boys were leaving you given the desperate way you’d clinged to his shirt for dear life as he deepened the kiss.

The moment only lasted one minute and fifty-seven seconds, and in the remaining three, your mother’s key pushed into the front door and he had to pull away. Always, on the dot, 10PM, she was home. It was how he knew he had two minutes left to make a move in the first place.

So much for no flirting.

6:57pm Gojo Satoru: Bahahah I accidentally forgot where yuuji’s epipen is 6:58pm Gojo Satoru: [sent a photo] 6:59pm Gojo Satoru: Turns out this can-o-soup was just covering it in the cabinet

7:01pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): ??? why did you need to find his epipen

7:08pm Gojo Satoru: Oh he accidentally took a bite of my pad thai 7:09pm Gojo Satoru: I freaked cuz I thought it had peanuts in it but I remember I asked for it without any  7:09pm Gojo Satoru: shit’s crazy

7:10pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): WHY THE FUCK DIDNT YOU TEXT ME????????

7:12pm Gojo Satoru: YOU SAID YOU DIDNT WANT ME TEXTING YOU UNLESS IT WAS AN EMERGENCY ?

7:13pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): SATORU YOU THOGHT HE ATE SOMETHING W PEANUTS IN IT AND YOU FORGOT WHERE HIS EPIPEN WAS THATSS A FUCKIGN EMERGENCY

7:15pm Gojo Satoru: THE KID IS DOING FINE HES ALIVE JESUS LEAVE ME ALONE 7:16pm Gojo Satoru: [sent a photo] 7:16pm Gojo Satoru: See. he’s chill 7:17pm Gojo Satoru: with intact airways might I add 7:18pm Gojo Satoru: Also isn’t he a little too old to still be watching baby sensory videos?

7:20pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): yeah my mom thinks he has adhd :(

7:22pm Gojo Satoru: oh

He tried to keep his word though (although he doesn’t recall ever giving it) out of the respect he had for your mom. She was a hard-working lady, single mom of two who went from working three jobs to now being a major administrator at a big law firm near the outskirts of town. It was an underdog story if he’d ever heard one, and he loved an underdog story. 

But a little texting here and there wouldn’t hurt, right? Or so he thought, until you told him to cut it out with the contact. Maybe you were just trying to be the good one in this situation. After all, hooking up with your little brother’s babysitter? That sounds more like a bad porno than a sensible decision. Still, he’ll eventually get your replies to his which shirt should Yuuji wear to the park? and look, the toothfairy gave him the butt of a joint and a couple thumbtacks for his front tooth. he’s ecstatic texts, although in a less timely manner than before when you weren’t trying to preserve propriety. And when you’d occasionally visit every other weekend, he’d do his best to keep his hands in his pockets, and you’d fill up your nights with hangouts with your hometown friends to avoid spending too much time with him at the house. A silent agreement to not fuck each other, it was. 

4:55pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): send pic of yuuji pls i miss him :(

5:04pm Gojo Satoru: [sent a photo]

5:08pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): IS THAT BLOOD?!?!?!?!

5:09pm Gojo Satoru: chillllllll it’s fake. We’re working on his halloween costume

5:09pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): WHY DOES IT HAVE BLOOD?!?!?!?!?!?

5:10pm Gojo Satoru: He wants to be a baby xenomorph and I'm his parasitic host. You know that iconic chestburster scene from the old school alien movies? yeah

5:12pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): satoru please for the love of god just dress him up as a dinosaur or something

5:13pm Gojo Satoru: I’m not the one that came up with the idea, okay? It was him

5:14pm yuuji’s sis (no flirting): because you let him watch adult swim with you before putting him to bed. you’ve deranged his brain.

5:14pm Gojo Satoru: He needs it. Builds character.

Gojo was living a double life, and if someone asked him, he’d say it was less of a Clark Kent way and more of a Bruce Wayne way, although in reality, he knows it’s close to neither. He’s no superhero with a concealed identity fighting crime, he’s a con artist that’s tricked a hard-working woman into hiring him just because he’s trying to save up enough money to get the fuck out of this godforsaken town, given he’s not knocked dead before then for the crime’s amusement.

But Yuuji looks up to him now. And Gojo’s grown attached to him too. He taught the kid how to tie his own shoes and piss inside the actual toilet like a real man. And that kid’s the only thing that’s made him question any of this. Maybe that’s what dads feel, suddenly held to all this impossible responsibility and the pressure to stop doing stupid shit so that you’ll stick around to see your kids get older. The thought that there are eyes on you now, eyes that are innocent and hopeful and learning, and because they know nothing at all, you feel the responsibility to protect them from everything. For fucks sake, remind him to never become a dad. 

“Do you like my sister?” Yuuji had asked him out of nowhere one afternoon after he just got home from preschool, stacking a blue cube over a yellow one at the dining table.

“Uhh,” Gojo starts. He wondered if your mom had put a wire on the kid, so his answer was as diplomatic as he could manage. “Yeah, she’s cool. You’ve got a cool sister.”

“But. But.” Yuuji stutters, trying to find his big boy words. He stretches up higher to reach the top of his stack of blocks, but he only has so much arm real estate at the age of five. “Do you like her like you wanna kiss her?”

Gojo grabs the block from the kid’s hand, for a moment questioning Yuuji’s decision to want to put a blue block over another blue block, but he figures aesthetics are the least of a kid’s concern, and so he places the block where Yuuji wanted it. 

Why does the kid know what kissing is anyway? Do kids know that kind of stuff at that age? Isn’t a kiss to a five-year-old just something their mom gives to them before they head off to preschool for the day? And not something that happens between adult men and women? Maybe he should stop watching that adult swim in front of him.

“No. I don’t want to kiss your sister,” he says, again, because he is suspicious of a wire. It was a lie and then some, because he wants to do a lot more than just kiss you.

Gojo lifts the RedBull he was nursing up to his lips and watches Yuuji in the corner of his eye as the kid stares at his growing stack of blocks with a concentrated expression on his face, his chubby fingers squeezing tightly into little round dimpled balls, like he’s putting together all his tiny brain cells together to form another coherent thought before turning to face Gojo on the chair.

“It’s ok. You can kiss her if you wan’ed to. You can marry her too,” Yuuji says.

Gojo almost spits out his RedBull. He barely manages to swallow it, a broken cough immediately leaving his throat when some of the liquid goes down the wrong pipe and he’s smacking a fist against his chest to knock the sanity back into himself.

“Where the fu—…where the flip did that come from?” he asks, blinking back tears from the rasp in his throat.

Yuuji’s small shoulders sulk as he sits back on his heels. “I want a papa.”

Oh fuck that hurt. Jesus christ, there was nothing more sad than that. Yuuji has literally never known what it’s like to have a dad, since his had left before he was even born. Gojo’s not really close to his old man by any means, but he had still been a fatherly figure in some pivotal moments when he had needed it growing up. Kids need their dads. And he’s seen enough people lose their way without one to know that the value of them is really underestimated.

He’s also kind of shocked that Yuuji really did think of you as his motherly figure. Maybe since it had always just been him and his dad, Gojo learned how to self sustain from a young age, and he and his dad became accustomed to just looking after their own interests to avoid the headache of tending to one another. My land is my land, and your land is yours, and there was the occasional Saturday night spent together with his dad’s millions of beer bottles emptied dry on the carpet in front of the 1992 box TV as the two shared a greasy pizza from the place down the street. That was the extent of family solidarity that he knew.

But he can’t imagine being barely eighteen and having to take care of your little brother all by yourself because your mom was too busy trying to put food on the table and was too poor to hire a babysitter. Your mom tried so damn hard to keep you away from the single teenage mother life, but somehow ended up giving it to you by proxy in the end anyway. It was no wonder you wanted space now that Yuuji’s a little older and your mom can afford a babysitter. No matter how much you might love your sibling, being their effective guardian out of pure necessity had to have taken a toll.

Gojo clears his throat before he speaks. “Buddy. If I married your sister, we’d be brothers. I wouldn’t be your dad.” 

Yuuji’s eyes light up at the word brother. “Brothers? Me and you?”

“Yeah. Bros.”

The kid giggles, all bubbly with cheeks rounding fully and eyes sparkling. Gojo reaches out to ruffle at his hair before Yuuji gets down onto one stubby leg at a time from the chair then bolts towards the kitchen.

“Juice!!” he yells somewhere around the corner out of sight.

Gojo sighs, staring at all the toys he pulled out for Yuuji to play with, all left in a scattered mess across the table. He gets up out of his chair and heads towards the fridge. “Yeah, yeah. I’ll get you your juice, you little demon.”

The conclusion he comes to, and it might read like an obvious one, is that kids don’t really know the reality of life, hence why adults hide so much from them. 

This is what he thinks of tonight when he wraps his worn out boxing tape around his hands and his wrist, tightening it with his teeth, and he can smell the sweat and grime from them. The back of the underground gym had an old dated locker room, and as Gojo stretches his neck side to side while sitting on the stiff metal bench, he eyes the peeling red paint of the locker in front of him, blurring vision making it look like spilt blood. 

His phone pings with a text. He shuffles inside his duffle bag to look for it while his other hand scratches at his bare chest.

1:07am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): hhhhhhhhhiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii 1:07am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): omgomgomg sor y i’m 

He blinks at the screen, confusion flashing across his face. He types one letter, but then he sees three dots and a speech text bubble in the bottom left, so he waits for you.

1:09am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): i drunk :(

The corner of his mouth ticks up slightly. 

1:09am Gojo Satoru: Yeah I can tell

1:10am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): at a apartyyyy

His eyebrows raise slightly, the thought of you tipsy on some frat party couch flashing through his mind, yet of all things you could be doing at that frat party, you’re texting him? Must be a really boring party.

1:11am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): whyyy are you aawake?

1:12am Gojo Satoru: Couldn’t sleep 1:12am Gojo Satoru: Don’t you have a midterm in the morning?

1:14am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): wtf hwo do you knwo that

1:15am Gojo Satoru: Your mom keeps your schedule posted on the fridge

1:15am yuuji’s sister (no flirting): im so fucked;’;(((

He snorts. He’s got a bit more life experience than you, five-ish years to be exact, more than enough time to master the no-hangover hangout, but just before he can offer you some advice, he sees another text from you. 

1:16am yuuji’s sister (no flirting): can i tell u smething 

His gaze flits up to the ceiling briefly, and he hears commotion outside the thick walls of the locker room. The previous fight was over, and fast. The guy must’ve been knocked out in under twenty seconds tops, which means that Gojo was next up against whatever superbeast just beat him up. 

1:17am Gojo Satoru: Sure

He stands up, placing his phone down on the bench before he flexes the muscles in his arms a couple times to get the blood flowing into them. And there’s the noise of another ping. Actually, four.

1:14am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): sonetimes 1:14am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): i thikn of  1:14am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): when u kisse me 1:14am yuuji’s sis (no flirting): *kissed me

His eyes widen slightly, irises dry to the ashy cigarette smoke from outside lingering in the air, and his heart rate picks up a bit. An adrenaline junkie with close to no fear in his veins due to the way his amygdala’s been fried to a crisp from years of boxing, yet he’s got his breath hitched from the memory of your soft lips against his. It makes the blood rushing through the muscles of his arms rush somewhere down south instead.

Loud banging on the door of the locker room jolts him out of his trance, and he’s stiff around the edges once more.

“Satoru! You’re up, man,” he hears Danny, the fight coordinator, yell at him from the other side of the heavy & poorly-installed steel door.

Gojo sighs, glancing down at the texts on his phone. To respond, or not to respond. You’re off your face, clearly chatty from the alcohol, and he knows for certain you’ll regret every life decision you’ve ever made once you wake up in the morning and see the self sabotaging behaviors you’ve engaged in tonight. He knows that responding to you might put you at ease rather than straight up ignoring you, but the feeling will pass, and he has a match to win with no more room left to stall.

He makes his way out the locker room, pushing past the crowded halls of people underneath dim flashing club lighting, some dudes angrily jerking to face him when he pushes past them with a stiff shoulder, only for their eyes to widen when they see just exactly who pushed them. 

There’s strippers in the ring, doing some routine for pre-match, and Gojo narrows his eyes at the man he sees laying back over the rubber boundary rope, head tipped back up to the ceiling with a wicked grin on his face. So that was his opponent? He’s never seen the guy before. Was he from a different district? Different district talent was tough, you had no background info on them, while they’ve been preparing to be here for weeks. Hence why boxers tend to do better when they visit a different district than they do in their own. There have been rules made to limit these types of fights, mostly over outrage that it was unfair to bid on them, but they were also usually more entertaining to watch. Gojo’s got a sick feeling to his stomach as the strippers clear the ring.

“Hey,” Gojo calls out, grabbing Danny by the back of his collar and dragging him towards him and away from the girls stepping down onto the floor, “what’s in for this fight?”

Danny glances up at the ceiling. “Tarp’s bettin’ tonight, so it can’t be anything less than ten grand for you. I’d say tops fifteen?”

Gojo narrows his eyes further, then glances off into the ring again. The man stands up, and Gojo gets a better look on his face. He’s got short hair, neon green in color with a dark fade underneath and tattoos all over his face. But those eyes. They were freakishingly red, and it made him uneasy. He knows the type. The type of boxers that do this to genuinely hurt people for thrill. Make no mistake, Gojo understands he’s made himself out to be like that too, gaining some kind of rush out of this profession, but this type of fighter was different. The type to literally continue smashing a dude’s face into the floor until they’re a bloody mess even minutes after the winning call, and no referee to stop it because that’s the kind of action the spectators wanted.

Danny reads his line of sight. “That’s Gale. Newton’s new boxing toy. Came outta nowhere about a month ago. He’s undefeated so far in his district, and Newton specifically wanted to see you up against him tonight,” Danny tells Gojo, resting his elbow up on his bare shoulder. “Chances are he’ll compete with Tarp for final bid if you win this one. I’m talking twenty-five grand in the next if you can knock him out in this.”

“Uh-huh,” Gojo acknowledges, rolling his shoulder so Danny’s elbow falls from it. Forget the money, he just wants to make it out of this alive.

He sets his foot up on the square, ducking through the dividing boundary straps and the tacky caution construction tape that the gym thinks creates an exciting ambience. He hears the static of the speakers as the announcers call out Gojo’s name, then this other guy, loud bass club music booming through Gojo’s chest as he tries to take a few deep breaths through the thick air of this low-ceiling arena. 

The dim overhead lights flickered, casting shadows over the makeshift ring, and the crowd pressed tight around at every perimeter area, yelling and pushing, one even tosses a beer bottle on the square and it shatters, spreading glass all across, a few shards reaching Gojo’s feet and he looks down at them with a shudder. A fight immediately breaks out in the crowd over something related or possibly entirely unrelated, and he’d have no way of knowing as he swipes the shards away with his heel.

The influential men always sat up on higher seating, off towards the back in their own VIP section where they suck in the smoke of fat cigarettes and peer through 100% tinted sunglasses to assess the boxers they’ve bid thousands on. The light reflects off the golden grills of their teeth with every snarl at any passerby that gets too close, like a lion in its den. That’s what the sanction was called. Lion’s den.

Gojo sighed, eyeing the twisted grin of this Gale guy across from him. Was that his real name? Usually, foreign district guys get nicknames. Gojo’s always thought the nicknames were tacky, and he’s accumulated some of his own over the years, but to his ears, none of them ever really landed, although The White Fox admittedly was kinda nice. Reminded him of throwback shooting games. 

He sucked a breath in through his teeth, holding his hands up in front of his chest in weak fists, storing energy in them in the form of pure anticipation alone, and then the bell rang.

His opponent lunged towards him immediately, fists flying in a barrage of reckless strikes, and Gojo’s eyes momentarily widened in the briefest moments of hesitation he had been allowed before ducking and dodging every one of this guy's shots, then jumping a step back to create distance.

Fuck. He was fast. Not just boxer fast, athlete fast. There was a difference. And it wasn’t a good one to be up against.

Gojo picked up light on his feet. He couldn’t win this one fast, that much was certain. One single careless or reckless move, and he’ll get tackled. He knows that by the malicious look he sees on that guy’s face, grin wide like he’s some cannibalistic beast. 

Stepping back towards the center, Gojo purposefully set himself up for Gale to swipe a vicious hook towards his head, before Gojo last minute ducked down, crouched to the floor, and swung his leg out to knock the guy off balance by his ankles, and he falls onto his back with a loud thud!

There’s a moment of momentary silence from the crowd, right before Gojo put the man in a torso-lock, twisting him in a way a human body should absolutely not be twisted, hearing the grunts of pain and the crack of spine even through the shouts of the crowd.

He can hear it. Kill him! Knock his fucking teeth out! Snap his neck like a goose, man! FIN-ISH HIM! FIN-ISH HIM! FIN-ISH HIM!

He feels like throwing up. 

Gojo looks up at the referee, who wasn’t really a referee, just there to run the clock when there was action and only barely stop it before near death. “This is enough, right?” he asks.

The referee nods. “1-0, next round.”

Gojo lets go of his opponent, leaving him there to heave for a moment before he gets up onto his feet again. Just needs one more, and he’s a winner. Ten grand in his pocket, and he won’t have to come back here for a couple weeks.

Gale gets up, swiping at the spit that had trickled out the corner of his mouth down to his chin, and he had an enraged look on his face. The second the bell rang for the second round, he exploded forward towards Gojo with even more fervor than before, gritted expression with a thirst for violence fueling the storm of punches he was throwing towards Gojo but he tried to remain calm, light on his feet, swiftly duck and avoid before he can find another opportunity to clear a sharp, clean jab right to the ribs—

sometimes, i think of when you kissed me

Gojo misses his strike, leaving his guard wide open, and Gale takes the opportunity to land a solid punch straight to his jaw, sending his mouth guard flying straight out of his mouth into the air, and knocking him backwards onto the ground with a thud and then he finds himself staring up at the rusting metal ceiling and a ringing in his ears that almost matches the roar of the crowd.

His head is in a haze, dizzy like where one second could feel like a millennia. He feels a soreness underneath his chin, a pain that radiates to his mouth, and he briefly swipes his tongue over his front teeth to make sure he still has all of them. 

What the fuck was that? That intrusive thought. There’s no intrusive thoughts allowed in life or death situations, not when he was always just one smash to the head away from a permanent concussion. But, fuck, he can’t help it. Can’t help thinking of you. Even when his vision has gone blurry and he should really be weary about what happens next in this ring, his mind’s just thinking about you, at some frat party, tipping back shots of tequila and waiting for a text-back in response to your tipsy ones. Were you even waiting up on him? Have you already passed out on the couch, or were your friends dragging you back to your dorm? Or are you fucking some other dude right now? Has he got his hand up your top, squeezing at you, sleazily feeling you up before spilling beer all down your shirt, and are you kissing him back with the same enthusiasm, your phone now somewhere long slipped between the cushions of the couch and out of sight?

Even though it’s still sore, he tenses his jaw. Grinds his teeth, even. Tasting blood somewhere along the line of his gums, he realizes his lip is split. He licks at it, the flavor of copper more rich on his tongue, and he clenches his fists tightly. Why’s he thinking of that right now? It just pisses him off, the thought of you with some other dude. Maybe that’s what he needs to win this fight. Spite. Although he’s not sure why the guy across from him at the ring has to pay for it.

He lifts his head up off the ground, and while it felt like years he had been down, a glance at the timer tells him it’s only been a solid four seconds. A solid four seconds that his opponent had to fully charge a lunge towards him with the look of death in his face, raising his elbow up into the air in time with his leap, ready to come straight down, and Gojo’s eyes widen at the sight above him from where he’s still lying on the wood.

“Shit—” he cusses, rolling his body over to the side so that the dude falls straight down onto the floor rather than elbow Gojo in the fucking ribs, and then he gets back up on his feet. 

Stakes were high, he has to end this, he has to end this now, and he flexes the muscle in his right bicep, channeling everything he has into this one blow, and before Gale even really has a chance to turn around and face him again, Gojo’s already three-fourths set up a knockout undercut that he drives straight up the guy’s chin, with so much force it has him lifting up off the floor, a vertebrate stretch to his spine before he’s sent flying backwards and slammed against the tight rubber lining of the ring to where he was half hanging over it.

The room fell silent for a split second, then erupted in a roar as the referee fell to one knee beside Gale, checking him for any semblance of consciousness, and when he found none, he waves the match off. 

Gojo’s eyes flit up towards the lion’s den, the only opinions that he really needed to care about were sitting in those mahogany chairs with glasses of scotch swirling around in their hands, and he sees some of them looking straight at Gojo before leaning towards one another and discretely talking about something he can’t make out because he doesn’t know how to read lips.

He feels someone tug at his arms from behind, pulling him to crouch down and he balances back on the balls of his feet. He glances down through the ring at the floor. Danny was leaning against the wooden surface of it. “Dude. Go.” He jerks his head towards Gale, who still laid there sprawled across the now stretched out rubber perimeter bands. “Go fuck him up. Knock a few more teeth out, I don’t know, get some more blood out of him.”

“What?” Gojo huffs, yanking his arm away from Danny’s grip. “The fuck are you saying?”

“I told you, man, Newton’s here and he’s got his eye on you. Go give him a show,” Danny says, “do it.” And when he sees clear frustration on Gojo’s face he sighs. “Twenty-five grand, consider that, will you?”

Gojo sneers at the man, an awful taste in his mouth as he spits blood towards Danny’s feet. “Go fuck yourself on his cock if he wants a show that bad.” And then he ducks underneath the bands and hops back down onto the floor, pushing past people who were trying to grab at him and pull at him and lift him up and even throw him down until he made it through flashing hallways and back to the locker room.

He shuts the door behind him, sliding the bolt lock into the frame so no one can follow him inside, and then he leans his weight back against the chilling steel before tipping his head back until it hits the surface too.

He lets out of a few deep breaths, then stares down at the sting he finds over his knuckles. Red and blistering from the last punch he delivered, and he’s almost certain he broke a bone in his hand. Fuck. It was bleeding across the cuts, too. He had to figure out a way to get it all healed by tomorrow, as if that was humanly possible, just because he doesn’t want Yuuji questioning him about it.

Yuuji. For fucks sake, when has he ever thought about the kid this much? When has he ever thought about much of anything when he’s out here or in the ring? He’s a babysitter by day. He’s a “part” of your family when the sun is up and normal functioning society is breathing their lives into the clean air. That’s it. He’s no five-year-old’s caretaker in front of all these primetime drug lords, and he certainly shouldn’t be thinking of you when facing big, burly men he’s aiming to rough up, all within the dead hours of night. So then how come these thoughts are on his mind at all times, twenty-four-seven, around the clock?

He heads further into the locker room, glancing down at the bench where he’d left his phone, then picks it up, neck craned all the way down to glance at the screen as he holds his phone by his hip because he doesn’t have any energy to pick it up any further towards his eyesight. 

He sees your messages. You never sent any follow-up ones, just your horrendously typed out sonetimes, i thikn of when u kisse me *kissed me across the span of four texts, and Gojo runs a tired hand down his face.

He tips his head back to groan at the ceiling, guttural with no basis other than a release of all the pent up frustration of every sort, then he types in a couple messages to you,

3:23am Gojo Satoru: That’s nice 3:24am Gojo Satoru: I think about fucking you all the time 

—and then tosses his phone into his duffel bag to call it a night.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

You’re awoken to your alarm blaring heavily, and you whack your arm across your nightstand table beside your tiny twin-size bed to hit the snooze button, then rub your eye with a loose fist while smacking at the residual taste of alcohol you have on your tongue. 

“Mm…” you mumble to yourself. And then the thirst hits you. The overwhelming, intense, unquenchable thirst that leaves your mouth feeling like the Sahara desert before you grab your twice-dented Hydroflask from the nightstand, twist the cap off and chug about twenty ounces of water in one breath. 

You let out a deep exhale and fall back into bed, your hand resting on top of your water-filled tummy, and you stare up at the ceiling of your dorm. 

Last night was horrible. You knew you shouldn’t have gone to that frat party, especially given you have an exam in—you checked the time on your phone—about an hour, and an hour was not enough time to recover from the raging hangover headache that’s pounding through your head. But your roommates insisted you went, and so go you did. You never knew what to expect, always torn between shaving your pussy before you go or throwing on a stained pair of sweatpants to keep the guys away instead. Sometimes, it was a combination of both. But last night, you ended up drinking more than you usually do, and that always led to poor, poor, poor decisions, in which all the sense of pride you had in yourself was washed down with the puke that you hurled into the upstairs toilet. 

You grab at your phone again, briefly seeing that your friends had sent you some photos from the night. You immediately swiped off to the side to dismiss the notifications, because as far as you were concerned, you never wanted to see those photos in your life.

And then, in the briefest of moments, you saw a familiar name in your notifications that made you heart skip a beat.

Gojo Satoru (yuuji’s babysitter)

With an immediate gasp, you pulled your phone to your chest and held it there, blinking up at the pale yellow ceiling, your heart picking up in rhythm.

Oh fuck.

That was right.

You drunk texted him last night.

You drunk texted your little brother’s hot babysitter.

Fuck.

Mortified was an understatement, possibly because you don’t even remember what you said, and so you don’t even want to see what he replied with.

You groan, rubbing both your hands across your face then kick your sheets back with your feet like a child having a temper tantrum because you were so embarrassed you had even texted him at all last night. I mean, he was hot. A little older than you, really gorgeous eyes, tall, and, yeah, you gave him shit for the Instagram muscles thing, but that’s only because you thought he’d find it cheeky that you were trying to humble him despite the fact that he’s more toned and ruggedly sculpted than any other man you’ve ever met. You didn’t want to have a flustered schoolgirl attitude because it would just seep through to his ego.

In any case, he was hot, there was no denying it, so can you really blame yourself? But still. There was collateral with this. You had to see him every other weekend. He knows your family, even your extended since they invited him to Thanksgiving dinner a couple weeks ago. A high-risque drunk text recipient if he ever was one (of course he has been, look at that face). Why couldn’t you have just drunk texted ECON160 guy from last semester who Clit DJ’d you underneath your desk at the back of the lecture hall instead?

The thing that made you nervous about Gojo Satoru was that he was just so…confident? Like, in that I was raised to be this way confident and not that I fought inner demons my whole life to barely end up this way confident, y’know? Never had to fake it ‘til he made it, he just was. At least that was the kind of energy you got from him, and unfortunately for you, it was nerve wracking but enticing all at the same time.

You sigh. “Stupid. Stupid. Stuuuuuupiiiiidddddddddddd. You. Are. So. Stuuuuuupiiiiddddddd,” you sigh, running your hands through your hair to grip at the strands.

You pull your phone away from your chest, and finally brave yourself to read the texts from your notifications screen, but not without blurring your vision a little to further stall. And then you finally refocus it to read them. The first one you see has you gasping—

3:24am Gojo Satoru (yuuji’s babysitter): I think about fucking you all the time 

It has heat spreading across your cheeks, and you blink at your screen, then quickly swipe up to read the previous messages with rushed glides of your index finger on the screen to see that he had sent it to you in response to your barely coherent texts about how you still so often think about that time he randomly pressed you up against the door of your bedroom to kiss you that night you first met him.

I think about fucking you all the time

At 3 in the morning? He decided to send that text at 3 in the fucking morning? That was the devil’s hour. What’s he trying to tell you? 

Oh come on, you’re not stupid. And you know he isn’t either. The sexual tension was palpable, it was there since the day you two met and you almost stabbed him, and also everytime you were visiting the house, and his shoulder brushes against yours when he’s trying to get past you in the kitchen, or when you’ve got Yuuji in your arms and the kid is clinging to Gojo’s sleeve because he wants him near him at all times. There’s even sexual tension over the phone, in those stupid texts he sends you all the time about meaningless child care stuff, and honestly, those little updates made your day.

But… you don’t know much about him, and your mom would kill you if she ever found out you wanted him. And she’d probably pulverize him if she found out he ever made a move on you. Cremated without leaving a trace behind would be an understatement. She thinks he’s no good and she thinks you’re too good. You know she’s warned him before to not get close to you, as if she was pre-emptively expecting him to try to get in your pants like it was some canon force of the universe, hence why he’s probably so fucking awkward around you whenever she’s there too. Like if he accidentally got caught staring at your ankles, your mom would light him on fire, so he’d rather not risk it by just avoiding looking at you at all.

Your mom has always been protective of you. Your father was a deadbeat, one she thought she loved, only to watch him leave. And she had to raise a baby all by herself. He re-entered your lives right before you graduated high school, knocked up your mom again with Yuuji, and guess what? Left again without a trace. To be doubly humiliated by a man is a fate you wouldn’t wish on any woman, but that’s exactly what your mom went through. It was a wake-up call for her, though. No more living paycheck to paycheck like you had been your whole lives up until Yuuji was born. The kid doesn’t even know how lucky he is with everything he has right now. Your mom worked her way up the corporate ladder and made something of herself and now you guys were comfortable, so it was safe to say she had some sort of right to look after her daughter, of whom she simply doesn’t want to follow in the same naive footsteps of her youth.

You get it. She wants to break the generational cycle. But it made being with men tough on all fronts, let alone dating. You could never bring a guy home because he’d never be enough, even if he cured cancer or could make you orgasm while doing a sixty-nine handstand. And while her overbearing paranoia over what you do or where you are or who you’re with has since dimmed slightly since you officially moved out to finish your last year of higher education at NYU, you can still feel her disappointment from a hundred miles away when you’re making out with some random frat guy on his beer-stained couch at eleven AM on a Tuesday.

But you got to college. You’ve already made it this far. You’re on dean’s list. You graduated high school as salutatorian. You’re the most highly decorated cello player in the state. You won Miss County pageant when you were sixteen for your philanthropic efforts towards feline leukemia. You did online community college for three years so you could stick back after high school and help your mom raise Yuuji, which meant that you had to forfeit your scholarship to Cornell. You’ve spent your whole life being good, you just wanna be bad for a little bit.

And if bad meant fucking the hot and mysterious babysitter, then so be it. 

You pick your phone up, begin blasting what the hell by Avril Lavigne on your dorm room bluetooth speaker, then type a message to him that says—

10:34am you: do it then

—then shove your phone under the sheets and belt out the lyrics aaaall my life i’ve been good, but now, ahhhh i’m thinkin’ what the hell!!! while kicking your feet and clutching your pillow.

⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘⫘

Gojo has no clue what divine entity has overcast their gratuitous spirit over him on this blessed Monday afternoon, but he’ll thank them for it later once his balls are empty. 

He’s got you on your back, sprawled across the couch in the living room, the first fuck being a rushed one that you offered him with before he has to go pick Yuuji up from circle time at preschool, which wasn’t ideal, but he’s delirious at the sight of you underneath him right now. Your little NYU shirt, a tighter one this time, bunched up over your bare breasts, otherwise entirely naked other than the flimsy panties dangling at your ankle, and the view of the tip of his cock looking hot and heavy against the velvet of your cunt, slowly pushing in, feeling the warmth of your walls squeeze around him paired with the sweet moan that leaves your lips, makes him fall forward with a bracing hand dug into the cushion by the side of your head because the sensation feels so fucking good he can hardly keep himself upright.

“Fuck, you’re so tight,” he grunts, pushing himself in further to try and bottom out but he’s still got a couple inches he needs you to take, and so you curl your hips upwards towards the cieling to make more room for him, practically putting yourself into a mating press and soon enough he’s balls deep, “you on any birth control?”

“Uh-huh,” you moan, eyes closed and head tipped back with one hand squeezing your own tit.

“I can cum inside then, yeah?” he asks you, pushing your knees to your chest, slowly drawing his hips back and you squirm underneath him.

“Let’s get there first, and then we’ll discuss,” you breathe out.

“I’ve been there for the past ten minutes, baby. I could cum at any second with the way you look and feel,” he informs you flatly, because it was just the truth and you had to know it, then he feels himself twitch inside, slowly working up to a languid rhythm, almost fearfully like your mom’s going to pop out somewhere around the corner with a camera crew ready like one of those retro TV shows just to humiliate him on national television for not keeping it in his pants like she’d told him to. 

“Harder,” he hears you whisper, and he rolls his eyes shut to just focus on the feeling. The feeling of your nails grazing down the skin of his chest and his abs, tracing the scars he’s collected over the years, and he feels you tightening around him. He leans down to kiss you, fucking you properly now with the squeak of the couch springs echoing across the room, your hums of moans seeping through his lips until he’s fully taking them on with an open-mouthed kiss of sloppy tongue. 

The fact that it was wrong felt right to him, and he realizes in this moment he’s lost all sense of control. He wasn’t just an adrenaline junkie that liked to rough up dudes, he was an adrenaline junkie that wanted to fuck you against all better judgement or moral compass. The way your tits were bouncing, the slap of skin on skin, his balls slapping against your ass while you wrap your legs around him tighter, all convincing him that any consequence made it worth it.

“Good,” he groans the praise, pinning your hands above your head as he rams his hips against yours, your cute moans and squeals sounding like literal music to his ears and he feels heat spread all the way up his neck, “goooood, keep squeezin’ me like that, fuck.” He slows down momentarily, just to take a moment and watch, really look and see the way his length disappears inside of your pretty self with every push forward, and then he works back up to a relentless pace that has you tipping your head back with a slack jaw and eyes closed tightly shut, sprained expression of pleasure spread across.

“Oh, oh my god, Satoru—” you mewled and he felt dizzy from the sound of his name from your softly parted lips.

“Fuck, I’m gonna—” His hand finds it’s way between your legs, calloused pads of his fingers brushing against your clit and you jolt underneath him, gasping as your hand shoots out to dig your nails into his bicep for purchase. “I’m gonna cum, better tell me where you want it.”

“In me,” you moan, “nowhere else.”

He presses his mouth against your cheek in a lazy smile, “Atta girl,” he drawls before pushing your ankles down as far as they’d go near your ears, folding you in half and then reigns all hell into your cunt. He should really care a bit more about your pleasure, but testing your flexibility like this with both his hands holding you down was doing sinful things to his brain, and besides, you had yourself covered with the messy circles you were rubbing over your clit. It was hot to see that too, your nimble pretty fingers so close to the place where he was pounding into you. 

“Oh shit, shit, shit—” he grunts when starts to see blistering white in his vision, balls straining with a pleasure that was almost painful. The moment he finishes feels like hot flashes in his brain, a heat like the cum he begins to paint inside your walls in time with your release, thrusting over and over and over, each one more staggered as he lets off a long, drawn out groan that comes from deep within his chest with the feeling of you milking him dry and the sound of you enjoying every second of it. He can’t remember the last time he came this much or this hard and even after coming down from the high, he feels the remnant pulse of your orgasm around his now half-flaccid dick.

He leisurely pulls out, hearing you let out a soft whimper as he marvels at the sight of his cum slowly dripping out of you and down towards the couch, before he scoops it up with a couple fingers and pushes it back inside. You grip his wrist tightly, but you weren’t stopping it, that motion of him plunging it all back into you.

“Want a taste?” he asks, casually.

“Mhm,” you nod, face looking flush.

He pulls his fingers out of you, coated with sex, then plugs your pussy with the fingers of his other hand because he kinda likes the idea of you walking around all day with him inside of you, so he doesn’t want it getting out. He’s then pushing his other fingers past your lips, pleased to find he’s met with not even so much as a grazing of teeth, and he grins, “bet you take a dick in your mouth as good as you take it down here.”

Your furrow your brows at him, the pout of your lips seen in the way they were puckered to lick his fingers off clean, and when you release the suction with a smack of your tongue and his fingers were wet from your saliva now, his eyes narrow with desire. You push his face away with the heel of your palm to his forehead. “Flattery won’t make me suck your dick.”

“Alright. So? How is it?” he jerks his chin towards your face, pushing against your hand with his forehead until he’s hovering over you again, “taste good?”

“It’s cum, Satoru.”

He shrugs. “Bad?”

“No,” you say, and you can’t make eye contact, “good.” You sigh. “Hot. I don’t know. Salty, sweet. I’m the sweet. You’re the salty. And this conversation is obscene.”

He kisses you, capturing your lips softly, tongue darting out to taste what’s on yours. “I like it that way. Dirty. Nasty. Obscene, whatever.”

There’s the slam of a car door heard from the driveway, and the two of you instantly make eye contact with round eyes.

“Sa—” you stutter, “Satoru.”

He gets up off the couch in a panic, and heads to the window of the living room fully butt-ass naked, then peers through the blinds to see—

Your mom was making it up towards the front door, rustling with her keys in her purse. And the last thing he sees before he turns around to face you is her pushing the keys through the lock.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit, shit,” he cusses, finding his boxers off of the floor, hopping on one foot with his cum & slick coated dick flapping around and slapping against his thighs unceremoniously as he tries to get one leg in through them and then the other. You’re trembling as you hook your panties back into place, pull your shirt back down your torso, and even in his extremely panicked state, he’s still sad he can’t freely stare at your tits anymore. You’re rummaging for your skirt in a haste, looking everywhere for it, and he finds it underneath the coffee table before tossing it to you and then he side-to-side hops towards the coat closet while he pulls his sweatpants up over his ass, in time for you to quickly run and shut the door of the closet closed just before the front door of the house swings open.

The inside of the coat closet is dark, barely enough space in there for a six-foot-four two-hundred-and-twenty pound man, but it’s better than being balls deep inside his boss’s daughter on the couch when said boss just came home from work.

He hears conversation on the other side of the door, albeit muffled, and he presses his ear to it to hear better while he tucks his dick into his boxers from where it was hanging over the waistline.

“Mom! You…you’re home so early,” he hears you squeak out.

“Yes,” your mom says, “The rest of my meetings today are online, so I figured I’d come home when there’s less traffic.”

Gojo feels you lean against the coat closet door.

“I see, I see, how was your day at work?” you ask with a tremble in your voice.

“Fine.” And then nothing. The silence could mean that was all she had to say, since your mom wasn’t really a woman of many words, or it could be a silence that means she’s suspicious about something. “Darling, why is your skirt flipped up and tucked into your panties? Your whole butt is showing.”

Through the wood of the door, he hears you softly gasp. “Oh, um, I just went to pee. Must’ve—…must’ve got caught when I pulled it back up.” 

“I see,” your mother says, and Gojo can hear her dropping her heels down near the shoe rack at the entrance. “You know, I really don’t like those short skirts you wear often. Maybe it’s just your generation, but I think it looks tacky and cheap.”

“Mom,” you say, in as stern of a voice as you can manage without sounding embarrassed.

Your mother sighs. “In any case, where is Satoru? I still would like him to go pick up Yuuji. I don’t have the patience to sit in preschool & daycare traffic right now.”

“Oh gosh, I don’t know,” you chirp, and then he hears you let out a small oh no before you lean even more weight against the door, this time somewhere lower, and he realizes you’re pressing your ass against it. His eyes narrow with a small frown, and then he realizes— his cum must still be trickling down your thighs. You couldn’t put your panties on fast enough. 

Shit. That’s hot. A little fucked up, but hot. He feels his dick harden against the fabric of his boxers, and he rests his forehead against the door, fringe stuck to his forehead with sweat as he slips his hands down his sweatpants and then gives his cock a firm squeeze. The thought of you discretely swiping his cum up your inner thigh and smearing it against your thin panties so your mom doesn’t catch sight of it dripping down your legs has him slowly working up to a rock-solid erection, and he almost lets out a broken grunt from the feeling.

“What?” your mother says, “what do you mean you don’t know?”

“I’ve just been watching TV this whole time,” you say, “last time I saw him…he was…um, in the backyard pulling weeds?”

He lets out a small scoff through his nose at your cover-up. Cute. And not bad. 

Your mother sighs loudly, and he glances down at the strained veins on his dick as he tugs it through his hand, the tip rearing and appearing flushed and dripping with precum. God, you were just on the other side of this door. Less than a few inches away, and he’d be inside of you. 

“I’m going to take a shower. Go find him and tell him to pick up Yuuji soon. But before then, change into something less revealing,” your mother says in a more or less detached tone, and he can hear the stomps of her footsteps up the stairs from above him in the coat closet.

The two of you wait at least a solid minute, and just when the coast is clear, he hears you turn the knob of the coat closet and slowly crack it open.

“Okay, I think she’s in the shower, I hear the water running,” you whisper at him, “you can go now—” You glance down towards his groin, your jaw dropping. “What—…Satoru, why the fuck is your dick staring at me right now?!” you whisper-hiss at him.

He pulls you into the coat closet, pushing your front against the door to where it clicks shut, and you gasp when his hands pin your wrists crossed behind your back and his dick presses into the plush of your ass.

“You talkin’ to your mom while your pussy’s stuffed full of my cum was the single hottest thing that’s ever grazed my lizard brain,” he tells you, flipping your skirt up and hooking your panties to the side, his index finger briefly brushing against your entrance to find it still leaking from the way your walls were pulsating from his words. And then he aligns his tip to your entrance. “Now keep quiet while I do this, ‘kay?”

“Oh—” you gasp, your cheek pressed against the door as you arch your back and push your ass out for him, “okay—” you say, barely vocalizing the first syllable before he’s already stuffing himself inside of you with one solid glide of a push, making you yelp loudly and he has to instantly cup a hand over your mouth.

“Shhhhhh,” he hisses at you, immediately starting to pound you from behind, ���told you to— fuuuck,” he catches sight of his length covered with a mix of your glassy arousal and his white cum, now starting to cream at the base of his cock, “jesus christ—” he breathes out, squeezing the flesh of your ass harshly with his other hand and you let out another yelp, “I told you to fuckin’ keep quiet.”

“I’m—mff,” you muffle against his palm, “I’m trying but,” your hips move back in time with his, “feels good, feels too good,” you mewl, and his hand desperately yanks up the fabric of your shirt so he can squeeze at your breast.

“Yeah?” he grunts, hypocritical for telling you to keep it down when he was slamming his hips against your ass with so much fervor he wouldn’t be surprised if the sound was reverberating across the entire house, “you like it when I fuck you while your mom’s all clueless just up the stairs?” His rhythm falters, feeling his release building, and his hand reaches in front of you to rub your clit, making you drop your head against the door with tightly closed eyes. “Gets— you—wet, doesn’t it?” he torments you, his lips near your ear as he slams his hips against you harshly with every enunciated syllable. 

“Mhm, mhm,” you easily agree, or maybe that’s because it’s all you can really articulate, and he angles his hips up so his balls slap more fervently against your clit, making you scream into his palm while he picks up the pace of the circles he draws on your clit and in one, two, three— beats of his pounding heart, he feels you come undone around his cock, gushing wetness leaking out of you, he can feel the mess of fluids splattering on the skin of his thighs due to each of his heaving thrusts as he cusses out a fuuuuuuckkk before spilling his cum inside of you, a short-lived and thicker release this time that has you mewling from overstimulation, and in a few following thrusts, he’s given you everything he had to give.

His eyes open, he wasn’t even aware he had shut them in the first place, and he glances down at where the two of you were joined. Rings of arousal coat the length of his half-pulled-out dick, and the second he retreats all of it, a bulging push of his cum seeps out of you, dripping and pooling all over the hardwood floors.

“Holy shit, I wish I could take a picture of this,” he says, taking a step away to commit the sight to memory, your legs trembling and still slightly spread, ass pushed out and when you wiggle it a little, he lets out a huff of an exhale because he just can’t believe how sexy you are. Are all college girls like this? He’s never been to college, his old man’s been trying to get him to go for years, but maybe this is what finally convinces him.

“No pics,” you breathe out once you catch your breath, standing up straight slowly, “that’s my one sex rule.”

He takes a step closer to you, flipping your skirt back over your ass while you shimmy your shirt down to cover your chest. “That’s the only rule you have? Anything else goes?” he asks.

You spin around to face him, his eyes briefly flitting down to the still exposed skin of your midriff. “I have a feeling I’d be making up more specific rules if it was with you.”

He smiles, his hands grabbing your hips before pressing you up against the door again. “I also had a rule. It was to not fuck you. Wait, no, to not flirt with you. Which, technically, I didn’t do.”

You blink your eyes at him. “You’re kidding, right?”

“What?” he asks, genuinely confused, “I didn’t.”

“Huh—” you scoff, “how do you think we got into this situation in the first place?? You didn’t just say wanna fuck? You were insufferably flirty with me.”

“Nahhh nah nah nah nah, baby, that’s not flirting,” he tells you, thumb running circles over your hips, “that’s, like—…I don’t even fuckin’ know how it worked on you to be honest, I was just being stupid.”

“Oh okay so I’m stupid.”

“I never said you were stupid?”

“Well you said you were being stupid so me falling for it must mean I’m stupid.”

“Pshhh. You’re cute. Pulling weeds, by the way? Adorable.”

Your hand slowly roams up the front of his shirt, the fabric bunching at your wrists until you uncovered up to his collar bone, and you stare at his skin. He tries to not let the way his heart’s beating faster show through the heave of his chest. 

“Why do you have all these scars, anyway?” you whisper to him.   

“Too many girls tryna stab me,” he tells you.

You roll your eyes. “Seriously.” Your thumb traces the one you had left on him. 

“I—” He stops himself.

Does he tell you? Should he tell you? What, just because he’s seen you naked and you took his dick like a queen he’s supposed to open up to you about these things now? He doesn’t know. Maybe he could? Maybe you already suspect what he does at night. And if not, at the very least, I’m an underground boxer might make you think he’s hot? At the very worst, you’ll report him to the cops and he’d get fired as your little brother’s babysitter then thrown into jail, but not before the busted cartel gets him first.

“Maybe I’ll tell you some other time,” he says, his hand wrapping around your wrist and pulling it from his chest, “no hyper personal details until you’ve had my dick in your mouth at least once or twice. That’s my one rule.”

You snort. “I could’ve guessed that rule from a mile away.”

He hums. And then there’s the sound of steps creaking down the stairs above the two of you.

You both make eye contact, eyes widening, internally yelling at each other: how the fuck did we get into this situation twice?!

This time, Gojo opens the door and stumbles out of the closet, leaving you inside of it, just in time for your mom to come down the stairs.

“Satoru. I was looking for you,” she says as she rounds the post. “Have you picked up Yuuji? He has to go for his swimming lessons soon.”

“Ah, nope, was just about to head out,” he says, letting out a cough to diffuse tension, “sorry, I was—” he points his thumb over his shoulder to behind him, “…pulling out some gnarly weeds.”

She narrows her eyes at him. “I see. Well, thanks. If you want, I can add a gardening stipend to your paycheck. Let me know.” And he’s not sure how to respond because he’s not sure if she’s joking. 

He heads out the door, the keys to your mom’s minivan in his palm as he throws them up into the air and catches them a couple times. And just before he gets inside the car, he turns on his heel to face the house and pulls his phone out of his pocket to type in a message for you.

3:22pm Gojo Satoru: Send over those me-specific sex rules soon

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[the end]

a/n. hope u enjoyed im shitting bricks posting this bc i haven't posted a oneshot smut since february but thanks so much for reading i appreciate u!! i got way too invested in the whole underground boxer thing 😂😂 but the fact i managed to keep everything under 12k is an accomplishment to me bc if u read my other fics you know i’m a yapper LOL i have another kind of a similarly written smut oneshot n it’s a lil angsty (totally different au tho) i’ll probs post that one next but yea i really like, hmm, i really like exploring entire characters within a short amount of time i enjoy writing the obscure lore drops xd it’s been kinda fun so far anywho much loveee hope to see u around! <3

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