#nine percent more than forever | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

runariya · 13 days ago

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Beyond Probability JJK (m.)

summary: Matching with an idol? Unlikely. But with a 99% compatibility? Beyond probability. pairing: idol!Jungkook x f!reader genre: idolvers, S2L, fluff, smut rating: 18+, MDNI! warnings: fluff, fluff, a bit of self doubt, fluff, fluff, explicit sexual content, shower sex, unprotected sex, pls lmk if I forgot smth word count: ~ 4k

a/n: It’s a rly cute and short oneshot, light and mainly fluff, nothing too deep, no big words etc this time. Just had to get it out of my system since the idea’s been on my mind for months now (unedited bc I fell ill halfway through writing it 🤒)

a/n 2: This work is purely fictional. All characters and events are entirely imaginary and do not reflect reality. No translations are allowed without permission. Thank you for understanding! 💕

Your biological clock’s ticking—has been for some years now—and even though you’re only now nearing 30, you’re painfully aware that the life you pictured as a kid might never come true.

It’s not like you’re unstable in who you are or what you’re doing. You’re fairly successful at your job, you’ve got your own place, and you’re more social than most people these days. Still, you’re only what most would call average-looking, and even though you’ve got a good career, you’re too soft to keep it up forever. You picture yourself more as a loving wife and mother than a corporate boss bitch climbing the ladder of success.

That’s also why your dating life has been rocky all along. Men see what you put out there, but they don’t like who you really are or what you want from life, which has left you single for most of it.

So, when a new project starts—after the K-pop industry finally acknowledges that idols need partnerships and a life of their own, and fans finally understand that these people are human too, that they deserve to experience love and happiness like everyone else—you decide to take your chances too.

Funnily enough, all the labels have teamed up, hiring not only the best scientists and psychologists from Korea but from around the world to create a program that can find ideal matches for their idols. Sure, science shouldn’t determine who you fall in love with, but… what if it could?

After being pre-selected—just to confirm you’re not some crazed fan—you’ve spent over two weeks going through tests. Recorded interviews, personality assessments, even physical evaluations… now you’re staring at your company’s computer screen, listening to Dr. Song explain the results through the phone.

“Ninety-nine percent?”

“Yes. The chances of such a high compatibility score are next to impossible. We see it as a perfect match and would like to introduce you to your match.”

“Sure, of course.” Even though your voice is steady, you can feel your nerves flaring up like never before.

“Is tomorrow at 8 p.m. alright for you?”

“Yes, that works for me.”

“Perfect, we’ll see you then.”

Well, joke’s on you, you didn’t expect this outcome.

Meeting an idol feels surreal, and the closer you get to 8 p.m. the next day, the more you can feel the anxiety and doubts inside you rising. Every last detail in Dr. Song’s calm, clinical rundown replays in your mind, the ninety-nine percent match, the endless rounds of testing, the surreal realisation that, somehow, all those numbers and algorithms miraculously spat out a name next to yours.

You want to trust that there’s a reason for this, that somehow science isn’t just working with chance, but the tension of actually meeting someone this special is so overwhelming you barely notice yourself entering the lab building until you’re standing outside Dr. Song’s office.

“Right on time,” she chirps, giving you an approving nod. She seems to sense your nerves, and as she leads you down a hallway you’ve never been before, she gives you a reassuring smile. “I know this is all a lot. But he’s likely feeling the same way. The tests told us that he’s, well, quite like you.”

Her words would make you laugh in any other situation, though disbelief and a strange kind of comfort floods through you still. Like you. An idol, standing here in a lab somewhere to meet some random stranger, feeling just as out of place as you. You’re not sure of that but still like to think it must be true.

You don’t have time to process it fully before you’re led into a quiet room with yellowish walls so plain they almost blur in the corners of your vision, a low, comfortable couch and a couple of chairs standing there and none of the lab equipment that surrounded you in the testing rooms all those weeks ago.

And then you spot him, sitting on the couch, alone. He stands the second you walk in, hands half in his pockets, a slight, almost unsure smile grazing his lips as he glances down at you. He’s got that casual look about him, the same dark eyes you’ve seen a hundred times on a screen that somehow feel warmer and more human here.

He looks not quite better than he does on screen, but not worse either. Somehow, he’s realer, if that’s a word—close enough that you can see the little flecks of colour in his irises, the slight tension in his posture, the faintest trace of nerves hiding under his composure.

“Hi.” Jungkook’s voice is lower, softer than you expect from an idol. “Nice to meet you, I’m Jungkook.”

“Nice to meet you too. I’m ___.” There’s a pause, and you can tell he’s just as unsure what to do with the space between you two as you are. The click of the door makes you turn around briefly, only to realise Dr. Song has left you both alone. “This is, um, weird, right?”

He nods, a quick, breathy laugh breaking through. “Very. I mean, this isn’t exactly a ‘normal’ kind of meeting, right?”

His words are awkward but disarming, and suddenly, you’re aware of all the tiny, meticulous details of him that somehow make him feel more relatable than his polished, on-screen persona. The way his hand keeps moving to rub against his thigh or abs, his tongue playing with his lips and piercing ever so slightly—everything about him is familiar but also somehow close enough to feel completely new.

“I don’t think I was ready for this,” you admit. You aren’t really talking to him but more like letting your own thoughts slip out in the safest way possible, like saying it makes it feel less absurd.

“Honestly, same.” He laughs, and you think there’s a light flutter in your chest now. “I kept thinking about this whole ninety-nine percent thing. Like… how does that even work? Isn’t it supposed to feel, I don’t know, obvious? Like you know the moment you see someone?”

You nod, understanding exactly what he means, and somehow you move on autopilot, walking towards him and sitting down on that couch with him beside you. It feels like you should both somehow know, like there’s a sign or an instant connection, something that would make all of this feel simple, easy. But it’s just the two of you in a quiet room, barely knowing each other, held together by nothing but a number on a report.

“Yeah, that’s so wild. I didn’t think I’d have a match, this close to a hundred even less. Might be a glitch if our score is this high.”

Jungkook nods with sparkling eyes, seemingly relieved by your honesty and humour. “Yeah, I get that. I kept thinking about it too. Wondering if maybe the tests were wrong, or maybe I was just…thinking too much.” He lets out a sigh, his gaze meeting yours for a long, meaningful second. “But I think maybe this is about finding out, right? Not having it all make sense right away.”

“Hm, makes sense.” You giggle, because what else can you do in the presence of him.

The two of you sit there in a momentary silence, as if testing each other, feeling out the small boundaries that keep you both distant.

“So, what did the report tell you about me?” You ask the question half-jokingly, trying to break the quiet, but also curious. You want to know what he knows, how much of this supposed ninety-nine percent compatibility is actually something that either of you feel.

He lets out a silent breath, looking down as if slightly embarrassed. “Honestly, not as much as you’d think. They told me you were kind of… soft-spoken but resilient? And that you have a job that’s, uh, stable and…” He trails off, the tips of his ears slightly pink, like he’s embarrassed to keep going.

“And?” You can’t help but push further—not maliciously, just way too curious and playful for your own good. Jungkook’s expression shifts from embarrassed to surprised, and then to a look that’s just as playful.

“And that we’re, apparently, very much sexually compatible.”

Really, you should be the one feeling embarrassed or shy now, but you can’t help the laugh that slips out. You know exactly what he’s hinting at—your report clearly showed the same.

“Well, it might be not wrong. And they told me…” You pause, realising that you barely remember the details in the face of the reality in front of you but alas. “They said you’d be a good match because, I think, there was something about humour?”

He chuckles, shaking his head. “Humour? Never heard of it.” And it makes you laugh all over again. “I feel like they just told us things we’d want to hear, to make it seem easier and normal.”

His words hit close to home, but they’re strangely comforting in the way he says them. You reckon, he’s just as bewildered by this as you are, maybe even more so. And somehow, in the middle of all the awkwardness, you find yourself genuinely smiling at him, naturally gravitating towards him, finding that there’s a softness and reassurance in his gaze, a gentleness that cuts through your nerves like a knife through melted butter in the sun.

You start talking more freely after that, exchanging stories that are too mundane to make sense in any real context but feel right here. You tell him about your last trip to the beach, how you got sunburned and spent the whole evening sitting on your balcony, nursing it with iced water and aloe, wishing for a helping hand that you didn’t have. He laughs, nodding along as if he can picture it exactly and tells you about how he tried to make pasta he ate in Italy for the first time a few months back and ended up burning the whole batch, because no one was by his side, so badly his kitchen smelled like smoke for days.

The more you talk, the more you notice the little things about him that aren’t so polished, aren’t so perfect, and make him feel more human and real than anyone you ever met. He has a way of listening, eyes intent on yours, like he’s trying to pick apart every word to understand it better. When he laughs, it’s with his whole face, even body, not the careful, composed look of an idol but a natural, carefree laugh that makes you feel like maybe he’s as relieved as you are to be here, to have someone he doesn’t have to impress.

At some point, you both lapse into a comfortable silence, each lost in your own thoughts but somehow still connected. The tension from earlier has faded away, replaced by a soothing aura you know you don’t want to miss for a day in your life.

Eventually, Jungkook glances over at you, his eyes sucking you in without much resistance. “I kept thinking this would feel forced, you know? Like we’d be sitting here, struggling to find anything in common.” He leans back, drapes his arm around the back of where you’re sitting, glancing up at the ceiling as if searching for the right words. “But… it doesn’t feel that way. You feel… I don’t know, right?”

The slight flutter in your chest has now swelled into a full-blown hurricane, and you’re not sure if it’s that ninety-nine percent compatibility causing it. But you don’t let yourself think too much—not when you’ve both been inching closer with each word, not when you take a chance and lean in, resting your head against his side. Especially not when his arm settles directly over your shoulder, pulling you a little closer, his other hand finding yours, fingers intertwining just to see how it feels.

“Yeah, it feels right. I really like this.”

As you absently play with his fingers, breathing in his scent for the first time and deciding it’s like heaven, you let yourself trust science. Because this feels like exactly where you’re meant to be.

While the first meeting with Jungkook went better than you’d ever hoped, you’re painfully aware of your overthinking nature. Overthinking in a way that makes it painfully clear there are countless women out there who, on the surface, would seem a better visual match for him than you.

Overthinking to the point where you wonder why Jungkook would even need matchmaking when he could so easily choose a partner on his own. It’s also why staying focused at work isn’t exactly easy today, knowing that soon his label will be sending a car to pick you up for your next meeting with him.

You understand the precautions they’ve taken and completely agree it’s better to meet in a private, safe space rather than making headlines this early on. That’s why, as the tinted car arrives, you feel a bit more at ease than you have all day.

Soon enough, you’re driving down the path to the label’s underground garage, and while you fix your makeup real quick, the car comes to a stop. The driver nods and guides you towards the lift, where the lights are dim and everything has this quiet, professional atmosphere you’ve only seen on screen.

You try to take it all in, letting your thoughts settle just a bit more as you follow through to the hallways upstairs, past doors labelled with room numbers and studios, and then finally, you’re outside the door to Jungkook’s studio, right where you’re supposed to meet.

Your heart beats a little faster as you hear Jungkook’s familiar voice call out, “Come in,” and when you open the door, you find him leaning casually against the chair before his equipment with an easy smile that somehow manages to be both happy and slightly flirty.

Again, Jungkook’s dressed just like uniquely him, with a few silver rings glinting on his fingers. And while you didn’t think he’d even get up to greet you, he steps forward and embraces you in hug so tight, it leaves you drowning in him.

“Hey,” he greets with that disarming grin, eyes boring into you, taking in your formal work attire, as he gestures to the coffee set up besides his laptop. “Hope you don’t mind the casual vibe.”

You laugh a little, settling onto the free chair beside him, feeling a bit strange but somehow not. “I think it’s perfect. And to be honest, I don’t think I’d cope well with the whole five-star dining treatment and whatnot.”

He laughs, nodding in agreement, taking your purse from your hands and draping it casually over the back of his chair. The fact that he’s still so attentive, even though he’s clearly in his element here but completely relaxed, is rather fascinating and pulls you in even more.

Like the day before, talking with him comes easy, and while there’s nothing groundbreaking in your conversations, every word feels meaningful in the bigger picture.

Eventually, you feel yourself relaxing like you were at home by your own, getting comfortable enough to let out the thoughts that have been swimming in your head since last night. “I’ve thought a lot about how all of this could play out,” you admit, taking a sip of your coffee, trying to find the right words, though knowing there won’t be any wrong words when talking with Jungkook. “And honestly, I’m not really interested in taking things public if they did work out. I know that’s probably strange to say, but I’m not cut out for the spotlight.”

He tilts his head, watching you thoughtfully. “No, it’s not strange at all. I get it.”

A small smile tugs at your lips as you go on, “I just want something real. A partner who’s loyal, someone who’s there because we get each other, not because we’re some public ‘it’ couple, parading around every chance we get. Does that sound crazy?”

He shakes his head, while he swings from one side to the other. “Not at all. That actually sounds perfect to me.” There’s a sincerity in his tone that makes you feel, for the first time, like there’s some truth to your report. “The whole ‘idol’ thing is just a job. It’s not who I am, not at the core. And having someone who sees it that way, is what I want too.”

It elates you to know that you could have something like this, with him, someone you could genuinely share your life with.

Then, in a thoughtful voice, he asks, “What do you want for the future? I mean, outside all of this.”

You take a breath, feeling a little nervous but wanting to be honest. It’s not like it’s news to him, seeing that this information’s written in the report he was handed. “I want something traditional. A home, a family, maybe staying home with kids, having that steady, grounded life. It sounds simple, I know, but it’s what I’ve always pictured.” You look up at him, expecting maybe a hint of judgement, but instead, you find him nodding, his eyes lighting up like a candle in the night.

“I don’t think that sounds simple at all, but meaningful.”

A shy smile forms on your lips as you add, “Sometimes I feel like people don’t see that side of things anymore, you know? Like everyone’s so focused on careers and success and everything else… and I get that, I do, but I’ve always just wanted something steady. Something I can hold on to.”

His hand finds yours, his fingers like second nature intertwine with yours, and the gesture is so simple yet so heartwarming that you feel like squealing out of happiness. “That’s exactly what I want too.” It’s nothing new to you too, but him saying that, seeing the honesty in his eyes, is better than any data shown to you. “I want that sense of home.”

You feel yourself falling a little harder, a little faster, and maybe that scares you a bit. You’ve seen the kind of attention he gets, the kind of girls that throw themselves at him, and it’s hard not to let those doubts creep in. Especially now. “I know this probably sounds insecure,” you start awkwardly, glancing away, “I think, I don’t know, maybe I’m not the kind of person someone like you would go for. I mean, you could have anyone, and not just because you’re an idol.”

He gives your hand a gentle squeeze, his thumb tracing soothing circles against your skin. And while his mouth opens to say something, the pull against your hand surprises you as much as him settling you in his lab. “Hey, don’t think like that. I’m here because I want to be. And trust me, I’m not looking for ‘anyone’. I’m looking for someone who gets me. And that someone is you, no?”

The look in his eyes is so genuine, so unguarded, that it’s hard to keep your heart from doing all sorts of stunts. He’s not the polished idol right now; he’s just Jungkook, being flirty, being compassionate, being so him, sitting in a cosy studio with his tattoos, his piercings, his moles, his beautiful smile, his whole presence more comfortable and inviting than you could have imagined.

And as he sits there, looking at you like you’re the only person in the world, you realise that you definitely don’t have to doubt this. Maybe it’s okay to let yourself believe that he’s here because he wants to be, that he’s falling for you irrevocably just as you’re falling for him.

“Sooo… that means?” You know you need to be brave now, because if this isn’t a dream, you’d never forgive yourself for not taking the leap.

“That means, if you want to, I’d love to have you as my girlfriend.”

“Isn’t it a bit rushed?” You don’t actually think so, but you still need to be sure.

“I’m all in if you are. I don’t want to waste any more time, and even though it’s just a report, I can feel there’s real truth behind it.”

Fast forward seven months, and you find yourself pressed against the shower wall like you do every night. But this time, it’s different—just hours ago, you made your first public appearance on a music show with Jungkook, just because you both felt ready, where he was not only nominated for Best Singer of the Year but won as well.

“Koo, right there, right there.”

It still amazes you how his cock seems to find your g-spot as soon as he enters you, though you wouldn’t want it any other way.

“Yeah? Right there, hm? Or is it…” he trails off, shifting his hips ever so slightly, making you realise he’s actually hit the centre point of your g-spot now, his hard, unrelenting thrusts pushing you over the edge without warning.

“Oh my goooddd,” your eyes roll back, mouth hanging open against the cool shower wall, as your cunt keeps gripping him even though it’s already creaming around his cock.

“Good girl, keep going, love. Show me how many you can take tonight.”

There’s nothing you can do, not that you’d want to do anything other than let him rearrange your insides. Especially not when his tattooed hand finds its way from the back of your hair to your jaw, tilting your head to the side, giving you the perfect view of his upper body—rivulets of water cascading down his chiselled form, lips parted, eyebrows furrowed.

He’s the epitome of perfection. Not just a ninety-nine percent but a hundred.

His eyes, though hooded, bore into your soul as his hips pick up the pace. It’s this connection you share with him make being with him feel so special.

“Koo…”

“I know, love, just a bit more. Can you be a good girl?”

“Yes,” you moan, because hell, you can. “Yes, for you…ah, winning the trophy.”

Even though you shouldn’t feel his cock twitch with the pace he’s set, you do, realising instantly what he needs tonight.

“Best singer, Koo…fuck…best boyfriend, only fucking me when, hmm, the whole world wants a piece of you.”

“Only you. Always you, ___, love.” You think you catch him licking a drop of saliva from his lips as he stares down at where your bodies connect, sending another wave of arousal from your stretched-out hole.

“You’re so big.”

“Just for you, fuck, squeeze a bit more.”

It’s not that you did it on purpose, but when his hand shoots down to your clit, circling it just right, your body responds as though it’s never felt this good, soaking him even more and gripping him tight as a vice.

“Like that, love, like that.” Jungkook grunts and pants, holding you harder, tighter as his cock seems to swell even more, pumping frantically in sync with your impending second orgasm.

When Jungkook can’t hold back any longer, it’s all you need to let go too, the rush flowing through your veins just as fiercely as the love you feel for this man.

After some time, Jungkook pulls out, helping you straighten up and lean against his chest under the stream. His veiny hands trail down your body, washing away his release dripping out of you, as he plants kisses along the side of your face.

When he’s had enough, he, like always, turns you, brushing the wet strands of hair from your face. And as you do the same to him, captivated by how content and in love he looks, you can’t help but feel like the luckiest girl in the world when, for the first time, Jungkook declares his feelings.

“I love you, till the day I die, ___.”

“I love you too, and beyond.”

Because this, because having Jungkook calling you his, is beyond probability.

a/n 3: lmk what you think in any way you like! 👀 If you liked what you read, pls consider buying me a ☕️ Ko-fi.com/runariya 💕

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permanent taglist: @runariyaluvr , @kookiewithluv , @closer-to-jungkook , @dreamcatcherluvr , @blueofocean, @https-mei, @xsyruhh , @nemelkawar , @joonlover1207 , @elinaki92

#fic: beyond probability #bts imagines #bts fanfic #bts army #jungkook x reader #bts jungkook #jeon jungkook #jungkook fanfic #jungkook x you #jungkook imagine #jjk x reader #jungkook #idolverse #Jungkook idolverse #Jungkook smut #bts smut #Jungkook fluff #bts fluff

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saerins · 2 months ago

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birthday wish;

itoshi sae x female reader. wc 2.4k

content: fluff. some profanity. slight making out. birthday fic for sae <3

summary: it’s itoshi sae’s birthday. the world hates you. you’ve never been a lucky one. being “shit out of luck” is the only thing you know. the tables must turn.

if higher beings do exist, they really must hate you. they must. you can’t fathom your bad luck otherwise.

not only did your cab to the airport run into an hour long jam, your connecting flight also got delayed and now you’re running a day late.

all you get to see is the group chat blowing up, people sending pictures of others, of each of their antics. there’s a photo of everyone together except you.

because your business trip is a pain in the ass.

because it made you miss a weekend getaway with your friends in hokkaido.

because even when they made the effort to convince the birthday boy to make a little side trip back to tokyo, you’re still too late for that.

if it was anyone else, you’d have been fine with it. as much as you feel guilty about that.

but it’s sae. it’s itoshi fucking sae and you can’t even remember the last time you saw him in person because everyone else’s schedules match except yours. the world has driven a constant wedge between you and sae and you hate it.

is there any other emotion to be reserved when that happens to you and a boy you’ve had a crush on since forever?

meeting itoshi sae as a kid was exciting, hopeful. falling for itoshi sae when he was a teen leaving japan for opportunities elsewhere was giddying. sometimes you can’t believe that someone you know is that successful, and other times you hate the fact that he’s so far away because of it.

more than half the time, he’s in spain. he’s never where you are at least ninety-nine percent of the time. the one occasion he was, which was three years ago over new year’s, you were fucking sick.

and all he sent you was a text telling you to get better while the rest of your group of friends get to hang out with him.

though, you suppose that’s a good thing. he barely ever texts anyway, and you don’t initiate, if only out of fear for getting in his way. (as if small speech bubbles could get in his way at all.)

you sigh helplessly as you reach the immigration hall, even more irritated as you look at the time. already past midnight, sae’s flight would’ve already left by now—or, actually, an hour ago because he doesn’t have your bad luck—so you don’t even have the chance of bumping into him at the airport.

whoopee.

your phone finds itself tossed into your duffel bag at your irritation. unwarranted but it is what it is. by the time you finally get your luggage and exit, you’re exhausted. from the disappointment, the delays, everything.

it’s only when you walk a couple more steps, lugging your things behind you when you stop in your tracks, your boots suddenly feel like they’re one with the marble below them.

“didn’t think your luck could get any worse.”

is it possible for your heart to feel like it isn’t functioning properly after hearing a voice? a voice that you haven’t heard physically for who knows how long now?

you have to take a deep breath to even get his name out. “sae…?”

his brows furrow before he cocks one, sighing as he propels himself forward from against the railing, hands in his jacket pocket as he takes a few steps towards you. his face is hidden behind a black mask, his hood pulled over his head but you can still see the clear piercing teal of his eyes and the same nonchalant expression he always wears in his interviews.

you’ve seen a bunch of them.

“who else would i be?” he sighs again, like he’s exasperated, before he grabs the luggage handle from you and starts tugging it behind him.

it occurs to you seconds later that he expects you to follow him when he doesn’t even turn behind.

“wait wait.” you nearly trip over your own feet as you scramble to catch up to him, feeling out of shape the moment you fall into step beside him. “didn’t you have a flight to spain, like, an hour ago?”

you couldn’t have gotten the timing wrong because you triple checked it in the group chat.

sae makes a confused noice in his throat before shrugging. “pushed it a day later.”

he doesn’t elaborate. like he always does. or doesn’t.

“but why? don’t you have training right after you land? or, when you were supposed to land?”

his body brushes your side when he sidesteps someone on his right. you’re ashamed of how your heart skips a beat.

“i have training the day after. i just wanted to get a day to nurse my jet lag if i could. i could still make training if i leave tomorrow.”

he’s always to the point. but he’s intentionally evading a part of your question.

“but why—”

“i’m hungry. you hungry?” he asks, and you can only blink. you can’t even say anything before your stomach growls and answers for you and sae doesn’t have to wait for your response.

he holds your luggage with his right, and his left hand reaches out for you, warmth enveloping as he tugs you beside him into the nearest izakaya, swiftly getting a table for two in the privacy of their special corner table and all he had to do was remove his mask.

“it’s a little late but… happy birthday,” you whisper to him across the table.

sae’s gaze flicks over to you, blank expression as he just stares at you for a moment. “no it’s not,” he says, and upon your confused expression continues, “i got your text.”

right, because you used the shitty in-flight wifi to try and get your message to him. looks like it worked.

“oh, good then,” you heave a sigh of relief as you let yourself relax, subtly slinking lower against the booth.

over supper, sae purposely asks you questions, about your work, your days, life in general, overloading you with them so you don’t even have a chance to ask him anything thus far.

neither of you even realise that it’s not a 24-hour place, but it’s not a surprise that being itoshi sae has its privileges. before long, the only customers are you and the boy you like and your impatience that puts its foot down and bites the bait.

“why did you push your flight back, sae?”

his bowl is long cleared and all he has to busy himself with is the hot ocha on his side. he looks out the window for a moment, as if contemplating something before he spots the waiter and asks for the bill.

another attempt at shaking the question off that won’t earn him any points because the moment you step out of the airport and into the chilly air outside, you question him again.

“sae, tell me.”

sae takes a deep breath, and you can see the bare hint of a flush in his cheeks. it’s not that obvious, but you can see it.

he finally lets up for the first time tonight, the life granting a glint in his eyes. he chuckles, and he shakes his head, though his smile is subtle—just barely visible.

“you’re still as irritating as when you were a kid, you know?” he remarks, and you find yourself crossing your arms before he finally relents.

after a small pause, he takes a step towards you, his body barely inches from yours. he leans down to your ears, with a voice that’s barely a whisper, “i wanted my birthday wish to come true.”

this isn’t fair, itoshi sae.

“and what’s that?” you ask because he’s still there, his neck right next to your lips and sucking the energy out of you because it’s always nerve-wracking being near him even if you’ve known him most of your life. l

“i wanted…” he pauses, hesitant to say, “to see you. in person.”

and he finally straightens back up, giving you room to breathe.

is it greedy of you to not be satisfied? you feel like this could be a fever dream. are you sick?

“why?” you ask again, and you find yourself trailing after him when he refuses to answer.

sae flags down a cab, telling him your address, word for word correctly and it doesn’t register to you that despite never having been there, he remembers it like the curve of the soccer ball, like the arc of his passes.

nothing is ever too much effort if it’s worth it.

you’ve just never thought you were ever in sae’s head.

by the time you reach your apartment, the both of you are shriveling in awkwardness, too stubborn and stupid for too long that you’re too used to it.

“this one, right?” sae asks when he gets to your unit, the one in the corner of the top floor.

you nod weakly, and sae purses his lips before he pushes the luggage towards you.

“get some rest. you must be tired,” is all he tells you before he starts to make a move, heading back towards the elevator.

but you’re sick of it. sick of the chances you never take and sick of how you’re too scared to even try. your fingers reach out to grab the hem of his jacket sleeve, holding him back.

“i wanted to see you too,” you declare, even if he never asked. you get greeted by the sight of his widening eyes, by the slight upward tug of his lips. “you’re never free when i am and i just—fuck—i hate it. and you’re so accomplished and i’m happy for you, really, but i… i miss you.”

(sae looks at you, looking at the floor, looking guilty as if saying you miss someone is a sin. he feels the way his heart aches in his chest—fuck, did he really miss you this much too?

he’s used to having the upper hand, always having you squirm in embarrassment, but why does he feel like it’s slipping with every instance he’s about to tell you how he really feels about you? why is it slipping every single time he sees you smile? in your photos, your stories, even the emojis you send in your fucking texts.)

“yeah, missed me that much?” he asks, teasing you a little as he sees your feet shift nervously.

what you do next catches him completely off-guard, his eyes snapping shut the moment you grab his jacket lapel, pulling him close and kissing him, tasting so sweet he would be tempted to ask you to do that all night.

by the time you pull away, sae isn’t ready. he’s not ready anymore. to leave you. not so soon. you’ve always been one of the few reasons he couldn’t bear to leave japan and not seeing you all this time has helped him tolerate it. now that you’re here, in the flesh, his fingers digging into your hips, he doesn’t think he can leave.

“you- um- what time’s your flight tomorrow?” you ask, breathless when you finally manage to pull away.

sae groans, shaking his head. “don’t wanna talk about that, doesn’t matter it’s fine, i’ll make it,” he mutters, eyes shutting close again because the next second he’s chasing your lips, swallowing your chuckles as you stumble to open your apartment door.

he makes the effort to kick your luggage inside before he feels his back hitting the back of the door, eyes flying open and being greeted with a smirk on your face.

so you have this kind of side to you too.

sae smiles a little wider now, shaking his head when you wrap your arms around his neck, jumping up with your legs around his waist as you drown him in kisses that would probably last him at most a few days.

“sorry, i know this is more than you wished for,” you laugh weakly in between kisses.

sae shakes his head. “i don’t mind a bonus,” he jokes, and you hit him playfully on the chest.

it’s a little surreal to you that the boy you’ve had a crush on for half your life is actually reciprocating. you’ve watched him play pro-soccer since he was a teen until now, when you’re both full-fledged adults. you’ve never thought that anything would work out. not when you’re just barely navigating through life while he has his whole career figured out.

not when you’re always shit out of luck. but if this is the kind of luck that you get, you’ll take it.

“i… i’ve always liked you, itoshi sae,” you confess, foreheads pressed against one another’s as he continues to hold you in his arms, stronger than you remember.

a low hum leaves his throat. “i know, rin told me the first time i came back to japan from spain.”

you might actually kill rin.

(sae bites back a chuckle. he never thought of it much at all back then. he barely cared for anything except soccer. he can’t even remember when he started to think of you more. miss you. wish to see you on birthdays, on new year eves, on new years, christmases, whatever occasions there are in a year.)

“i think i might love you,” he confesses, and it takes your breath away.

you can only blink, slowly letting it sink in. you get down off his arms, both of you locking gazes and never looking away.

“think you could do that from halfway across the world too?” you ask.

it dawns on him what you’re afraid of, but after years of pining for you, sae has no doubt in his head.

“think i could do that forever, no matter where we are,” sae assures you, pressing a kiss on your forehead. “could you grant me one more wish?”

you swallow the lump in your throat. “what is it?”

“be mine.”

and this is his birthday (it’s still not 11 october in other parts of the world!) but you feel like it’s your lucky day.

“i think i’ve always been yours, itoshi sae.”

and for the first time since you’ve known him, you see him smile. wider than you’ve ever seen. you finally see the path clearing, you can finally tell, somehow—itoshi sae will be yours for life.

#i JUST put this together so pardon any mistakes :’) but i hope you guys still enjoy it <3 #bllk x reader #blue lock x reader #sae x reader #itoshi sae x reader #bllk x you #bllk x y/n #sae x you #sae x y/n #itoshi sae x you #itoshi sae x y/n #itoshi sae fluff #bllk fluff #blue lock fluff #૪ aeri’s fics !

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estapa-edwards · 8 months ago

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I THINK I LOVE YOU - L.FANTILLI

paring: Luca fantilli x fem! reader

word count: 2.2k

requested? yes - “i think i love you…?” “….. think?” “let’s just say a ninety-nine percent chance.” “i’ll take it.” w/ luca !!!

warnings: use of y/n.

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The first time I realized I had feelings for Luca was a moment that was etched into my memory forever. It was a warm summer evening, and Adam had invited me over to hang out at their house. We were in the backyard, sitting around a crackling bonfire, the soft glow illuminating our faces as we roasted marshmallows and shared stories.

The atmosphere was relaxed and carefree, the air filled with the sweet scent of burning wood and the sound of laughter. As the night wore on, the conversation turned to crushes and relationships. Adam, being the cheeky younger brother, started teasing Luca about his love life, which he brushed off with a laugh.

"Come on, Luca, there must be someone you're interested in," Adam persisted, grinning mischievously.

Luca looked thoughtful for a moment, his eyes scanning the faces around the fire before they landed on mine. "Well, there is someone," he admitted, his eyes locking with mine, the intensity of his gaze sending a shiver down my spine.

I felt my heart skip a beat as I met his gaze, a rush of emotions flooding over me. My cheeks flushed with warmth, and I quickly looked away, trying to conceal the sudden intensity of my feelings. I tried to brush off my emotions, convincing myself that it was just a passing crush. But as the days turned into weeks, my feelings for Luca only grew stronger, consuming my thoughts and filling my dreams.

I found myself thinking about him constantly, replaying our conversations in my mind and longing for the next time I would see him. Every smile, every laugh, and every touch sent shivers down my spine, and I knew deep down that what I felt for Luca was more than just a crush.

I would catch myself stealing glances at him when he wasn't looking, admiring the way his eyes sparkled in the sunlight and the way his smile lit up his face. I would replay that moment by the bonfire over and over again, trying to make sense of the whirlwind of emotions it had stirred within me.

It took me a while to come to terms with my feelings, but that summer evening by the bonfire was the moment I realized I was falling in love with Luca. And as scary as it was, it was also the most exhilarating feeling in the world, a secret thrill that I carried with me, treasuring it as my own little secret.

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The sun streamed through the leaves, casting a mosaic of light and shadow on the ground. I sat on the porch swing, swinging gently back and forth, lost in my thoughts. It was the usual spot where I would spend countless hours with Adam, my best friend and Luca's younger brother.

Adam and I had been inseparable since childhood. Our friendship was the kind that withstood every test of time and distance. We shared everything, from secrets to dreams and fears. And yet, there was one secret I had kept buried deep within me – my feelings for Luca, Adam's older brother.

Luca was different from anyone I had ever known. He was intelligent, witty, and had this irresistible charm that made everyone around him gravitate towards him. But what drew me to him the most was his kindness and the way he treated people with respect and genuine interest. Every time he smiled at me or brushed against my hand accidentally, my heart would skip a beat.

I knew it was wrong to feel this way about my best friend's brother. I had tried to push those feelings aside, convincing myself that it was just a silly crush that would fade away with time. But the more I tried to deny it, the stronger my feelings grew.

"Y/N, are you okay?" Adam's voice interrupted my thoughts, pulling me back to reality. He sat down beside me, concern etched on his face.

"Yeah, I'm fine," I replied, forcing a smile. "Just lost in thought, I guess."

Adam looked at me for a moment, as if trying to read my mind. "You've been acting strange lately. Is something bothering you?"

I hesitated, unsure if I should confide in him about my feelings for Luca. "It's nothing, Adam. Just some school stuff and… well, you know, the usual drama."

Adam seemed to buy my explanation, but I could tell he wasn't entirely convinced. "Alright, just remember, I'm here for you, okay?"

"Thanks, Adam," I said, feeling a pang of guilt for keeping my feelings a secret from him.

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As the days turned into weeks, my feelings for Luca became harder to ignore. Every time I saw him, my heart would race, and my palms would sweat. It was becoming increasingly difficult to hide my emotions, especially when Luca started spending more time with us, joining Adam and me on our usual adventures.

One evening, while we were all hanging out in Adam's backyard, Luca suggested we play a game of Truth or Dare. I hesitated for a moment, remembering the last time we played and the embarrassing dare I had to do. But before I could object, Adam eagerly agreed, and Luca set the rules.

As the game progressed, the dares became more daring, and the truths more revealing. I was starting to regret agreeing to play when it was my turn again.

"Y/N, truth or dare?" Luca asked, a mischievous glint in his eyes.

"Um, truth," I replied, not wanting to risk another embarrassing dare.

Luca grinned, leaning slightly forward as he asked, "Alright, who is your secret crush?"

My heart skipped a beat, and I felt my cheeks turn crimson. I glanced at Adam, who was watching me intently, waiting for my answer. A mischievous idea formed in my mind, and I couldn't resist the urge to make Luca just a little bit jealous.

"Jake from my English class," I said, trying to sound casual but unable to hide the hint of excitement in my voice.

Luca's grin faltered slightly, his eyes narrowing as he processed my answer. He cleared his throat, trying to mask his reaction. "Really? Jake, huh? I didn't know you liked him."

I could see a flash of something in Luca's eyes – was it surprise, or maybe a hint of jealousy? It was subtle, but I noticed it, and it gave me a thrill.

"Yeah, well, you learn something new every day," I said with a playful smirk, forcing a laugh as I turned my attention back to the game.

The atmosphere shifted subtly, a new tension forming between Luca and me. I could feel his gaze on me, a bit more intense than before, as if he was trying to figure out my true feelings. The game continued, but the dynamic had changed. There was a palpable distance between us now, a barrier I had unintentionally created by lying about my feelings.

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A few days had passed since the game of Truth or Dare, and I could feel a subtle shift in the dynamics between Luca and me. There was an unspoken tension, a distance that hadn't been there before. I knew I had to address the elephant in the room, but I wasn't sure how to bring it up.

One afternoon, I was in the kitchen making a sandwich when Luca walked in, his expression serious. He paused for a moment, studying me as if trying to read my thoughts.

"Y/N, can we talk?" he asked, his voice hesitant.

"Sure, what's on your mind?" I replied, trying to sound casual despite the butterflies in my stomach.

Luca took a deep breath, choosing his words carefully. "I couldn't help but notice your reaction the other night during the game. When you mentioned Jake from your English class, it seemed... genuine. Do you really have a crush on him?"

I hesitated for a moment, taking a deep breath before answering. "Yes, Luca, I do have a crush on Jake," I said, forcing myself to maintain eye contact with him.

Luca's expression faltered, a flicker of disappointment crossing his features. He looked down, running a hand through his hair, clearly struggling with his emotions.

"I see," he said, his voice barely above a whisper.

I felt a pang of guilt, realizing that my attempt to make Luca jealous had backfired. I took a step closer to him, reaching out to touch his arm gently.

"But that's not the whole truth," I admitted, my voice trembling slightly. "I said that to hide my true feelings. The truth is, I have feelings for someone else... someone I shouldn't."

Luca looked up, his eyes searching mine for clarity. "Who?"

I took a deep breath, summoning the courage to confess. "It's you, Luca. I have feelings for you."

There was a moment of silence as Luca processed my confession. His eyes widened, and he took a step back, clearly taken aback by my admission.

"Y/N... I don't know what to say," Luca stammered, his voice filled with a mixture of shock and confusion.

I felt my heart sink, regretting my decision to lie about Jake. "I'm sorry, Luca. I shouldn't have lied to you. I just didn't know how to admit my true feelings, and I thought it would be easier to pretend."

Luca sighed, his shoulders slumping in defeat. "I understand why you did it, but it doesn't make it any easier to hear."

I looked down, feeling tears prick at the corners of my eyes. "I'm so sorry, Luca. I never wanted to hurt you."

Luca reached out, gently lifting my chin to meet his gaze. "It's okay, Y/N. I appreciate your honesty, even if it took a little while to get there. We need to talk about this, but for now, let's just take some time to process everything, okay?"

I nodded, grateful for his understanding despite the mess I had created. "Okay, Luca. Thank you for being understanding."

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A few days had passed since our awkward kitchen conversation, and the tension between Luca and me had only grown. We had barely spoken since that day, both of us avoiding the elephant in the room. But today, it seemed like Luca was ready to address the situation.

We found ourselves alone in the living room, the soft glow of the afternoon sun filtering through the curtains. Luca took a deep breath, his eyes meeting mine as he began to speak.

"Y/N, we need to talk," he started, his voice steady but filled with emotion. "I've been doing some thinking, and I realized that I can't keep pretending anymore. I've been feeling something more than just friendship for you for a while now."

My heart skipped a beat, a rush of emotions flooding over me. The uncertainty and tension that had consumed me over the past few days were suddenly replaced by a glimmer of hope and excitement.

"Really?" I whispered, my voice trembling slightly.

Luca nodded, his smile growing more confident and genuine. "Yes, really. I was just too afraid to admit it because of Adam and everything."

A wave of relief washed over me, and I felt tears of happiness forming in my eyes. It was a moment of clarity and honesty, a turning point in our relationship that had been a long time coming.

"I feel the same way, Luca," I admitted, my voice filled with sincerity and affection. "I've been so scared to admit my feelings, especially after lying about Jake. But the truth is, I have feelings for you, and I don't want to hide them anymore."

Luca's smile widened, and he reached out to take my hand, his touch sending shivers down my spine. "I'm glad we're finally being honest with each other, Y/N.” He paused for a moment, taking a deep breath as if gathering the courage to continue. "Y/N, I think I love you...?" he hesitated.

"Think?" I teased, trying to lighten the mood.

"Let's just say a ninety-nine percent chance," Luca clarified, his eyes searching mine for a reaction.

A smile spread across my face, my heart swelling with happiness. "I'll take it," I replied, my voice filled with warmth and affection.

His eyes lit up with relief and happiness as I responded. Luca pulled me into a gentle embrace, wrapping his arms around me as if to shield me from the world.

"I've been wanting to say that for so long, Y/N," he whispered, his voice soft and full of emotion.

I nestled my head against his chest, feeling the steady beat of his heart. "I've been feeling the same way, Luca. I just didn't know how to tell you."

He pulled back slightly to look into my eyes, his gaze filled with love and sincerity. "Well, now we don't have to hide our feelings anymore. I can't wait to see where this ninety-nine percent chance takes us."

I smiled up at him, feeling like the luckiest person in the world. "Me neither, Luca. Me neither."

Luca gently brushed a stray strand of hair behind my ear and leaned down to kiss my forehead tenderly. "I promise to always be honest with you, Y/N, and to cherish every moment we have together."

#luca fantilli #luca fantilli x reader #umich hockey #hockey #luca fantilli x y/n

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reasonsforhope · 2 years ago

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"If I wanted to convince you of the reality of human progress, of the fact that we as a species have advanced materially, morally, and politically over our time on this planet, I could quote you chapter and verse from a thick stack of development statistics.

I could tell you that a little more than 200 years ago, nearly half of all children born died before they reached their 15th birthday, and that today it’s less than 5 percent globally. I could tell you that in pre-industrial times, starvation was a constant specter and life expectancy was in the 30s at best. [Note: This is average life expectancy, old people did still exist in olden times] I could tell you that at the dawn of the 19th century, barely more than one person in 10 was literate, while today that ratio has been nearly reversed. I could tell you that today is, on average, the best time to be alive in human history.

But that doesn’t mean you’ll be convinced.

In one 2017 Pew poll, a plurality of Americans — people who, perhaps more than anywhere else, are heirs to the benefits of centuries of material and political progress — reported that life was better 50 years ago than it is today. A 2015 survey of thousands of adults in nine rich countries found that 10 percent or fewer believed that the world was getting better. On the internet, a strange nostalgia persists for the supposedly better times before industrialization, when ordinary people supposedly worked less and life was allegedly simpler and healthier. (They didn’t and it wasn’t.)

Looking backward, we imagine a halcyon past that never was; looking forward, it seems to many as if, in the words of young environmental activist Greta Thunberg, “the world is getting more and more grim every day.”

So it’s boom times for doom times. But the apocalyptic mindset that has gripped so many of us not only understates how far we’ve come, but how much further we can still go. The real story of progress today is its remarkable expansion to the rest of the world in recent decades. In 1950, life expectancy in Africa was just 40; today, it’s past 62. Meanwhile more than 1 billion people have moved out of extreme poverty since 1990 alone.

But there’s more to do — much more. That hundreds of millions of people still go without the benefit of electricity or live in states still racked by violence and injustice isn’t so much an indictment of progress as it is an indication that there is still more low-hanging fruit to harvest.

The world hasn’t become a better place for nearly everyone who lives on it because we wished it so. The astounding economic and technological progress made over the past 200 years has been the result of deliberate policies, a drive to invent and innovate, one advance building upon another. And as our material condition improved, so, for the most part, did our morals and politics — not as a side effect, but as a direct consequence. It’s simply easier to be good when the world isn’t zero-sum.

Which isn’t to say that the record of progress is one of unending wins. For every problem it solved — the lack of usable energy in the pre-fossil fuel days, for instance — it often created a new one, like climate change. But just as a primary way climate change is being addressed is through innovation that has drastically reduced the price of clean energy, so progress tends to be the best route to solving the problems that progress itself can create.

The biggest danger we face today, if we care about actually making the future a more perfect place, isn’t that industrial civilization will choke on its own exhaust or that democracy will crumble or that AI will rise up and overthrow us all. It’s that we will cease believing in the one force that raised humanity out of tens of thousands of years of general misery: the very idea of progress.

Changing Humanity's "Normal" Forever

Progress may be about where we’re going, but it’s impossible to understand without returning to where we’ve been. So let’s take a trip back to the foreign country that was the early years of the 19th century.

In 1820, according to data compiled by the historian Michail Moatsos, about three-quarters of the world’s population earned so little that they could not afford even a tiny living space, some heat and, hopefully, enough food to stave off malnutrition.

It was a state that we would now call “extreme poverty,” except that for most people back then, it wasn’t extreme — it was simply life.

What matters here for the story of progress isn’t the fact that the overwhelming majority of humankind lived in destitution. It’s that this was the norm, and had been the norm since essentially… forever. Poverty, illiteracy, premature death — these weren’t problems, as we would come to define them in our time. They were simply the background reality of being human, as largely unchangeable as birth and death itself...

Between 10,000 BCE and 1700, the average global population growth rate was just 0.04 percent per year. And that wasn’t because human beings weren’t having babies. They were simply dying, in great numbers: at birth, giving birth, in childhood from now-preventable diseases, and in young adulthood from now-preventable wars and violence.

It was only with the progress of industrialization that we broke out of [this long cycle], producing enough food to feed the mounting billions, enough scientific breakthroughs to conquer old killers like smallpox and the measles, and enough political advances to dwindle violent death.

Between 1800 and today, our numbers grew from around 1 billion to 8 billion. And that 8 billion aren’t just healthier, richer, and better educated. On average, they can expect to live more than twice as long. The writer Steven Johnson has called this achievement humanity’s “extra life” — but that extra isn’t just the decades that have been added to our lifespans. It’s the extra people that have been added to our numbers. I’m probably one of them, and you probably are too...

The progress we’ve earned has hardly been uninterrupted or perfectly distributed... [But] once we could prove in practice that the lot of humanity didn’t have to be hand-to-mouth existence, we could see that progress could continue to expand.

Current Progress "Flows Overwhelmingly" to the Developing World

The long twentieth century came late to the Global South, but it did get there. Between 1960 and today, India and China, together home to nearly one in every three people alive today, have seen life expectancy rise from 45 to 70 and 33 to 78, respectively. Per-capita GDP over those years rose some 2,600 percent for India and an astounding 13,400 percent for China, with the latter lifting an estimated 800 million people out of extreme poverty.

In the poorer countries of sub-Saharan Africa, progress has been slower and later, but shouldn’t be underestimated. When we see the drastic decline in child mortality — which has fallen since 1990 from 18.1 percent of all children in that region to 7.4 percent in 2021 — or the more than 20 million measles deaths that have been prevented since 2000 in Africa alone, this is progress continuing to happen now, with the benefits overwhelmingly flowing to the poorest among us.

Vanishing Autocracies

In 1800, according to Our World in Data, zero — none, nada, zip — people lived in what we would now classify as a liberal democracy. Just 22 million people — about 2 percent of the global population — lived in what the site classifies as “electoral autocracies,” meaning that what democracy they had was limited, and limited to a subset of the population.

One hundred years later, things weren’t much better — there were actual liberal democracies, but fewer than 1 percent of the world’s population lived in them...

Today just 2 billion people live in countries that are classified as closed autocracies — relatively few legal rights, no real electoral democracy — and most of them are in China...

Expanding Human Rights

All you have to do is roll the clock back a few decades to see the way that rights, on the whole, have been extended wider and wider: to LGBTQ citizens, to people of color, to women. The fundamental fact is that as much as the technological and economic world of 2023 would be unrecognizable to people in 1800, the same is true of the political world.

Nor can you disentangle that political progress from material progress. Take the gradual but definitive emancipation of women. That has been a hard-fought, ongoing battle, chiefly waged by women who saw the inherent unfairness of a male-dominated society.

But it was aided by the invention of labor-saving technologies in the home like washing machines and refrigerators that primarily gave time back to women and made it easier for them to move into the workforce.

These are all examples of the expansion of the circle of moral concern — the enlargement of who and what is considered worthy of respect and rights, from the foundation of the family or tribe all the way to humans around the world (and increasingly non-human animals as well). And it can’t be separated from the hard fact of material progress.

Leaving a Zero-Sum World Behind

The pre-industrial world was a zero-sum one... In a zero-sum world, you advance only at the expense of others, by taking from a set stock, not by adding, which is why wars of conquest between great powers were so common hundreds of years ago, or why homicide between neighbors was so much more frequent in the pre-industrial era.

We have obviously not eradicated violence, including by the state itself. But a society that can produce more of what it needs and wants is one that will be less inclined to fight over what it has, either with its neighbors or with itself. It’s not that the humans of 2023 are necessarily better, more moral, than their ancestors 200 or more years ago. It’s that war and violence cease to make economic sense...

Doomerism, at its heart, may be that exhaustion made manifest.

But just as we need continued advances in clean tech or biosecurity to protect ourselves from some of the existential threats we’ve inadvertently created, so do we need continued progress to address the problems that have been with us always: of want, of freedom, even of mortality. Nothing can dispel the terminal exhaustion that seems endemic in 2023 better than the idea that there is so much more left to do to lift millions out of poverty and misery while protecting the future — which is possible, thanks to the path of the progress we’ve made.

And we’ll know we’re successful if our descendants can one day look back on the present with the same mix of sympathy and relief with which we should look back on our past. How, they’ll wonder, did they ever live like that?"

-via Vox, 3/20/23

Note: I would seriously recommend reading the whole article--because as long as this post is, this is only about half of it! The article contains a lot more information about the hows and whys of human progress, and it also definitely made me cry the first time I read it.

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ghoulishlygrey · 4 months ago

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Ghosts / Chapter Three: Dancing

Chapter One / Chapter Two / Chapter Four

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

Arthur Morgan x fem!reader

Non-explicit but later chapters will be (eventual smut)

Read it on ao3

Enjoy!

Word count: 4812

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

As the storm rolled in, shaking the broken windows and banging on the flimsy door, you couldn’t help but feel… bored. It was so boring, just sitting here in a creaky chair, in silence while Arthur doodled in his journal across the table. He didn’t seem to care, didn’t seem to share the same boredom you were currently experiencing. You sigh, fingers picking at the skin on your thumb. He ignores you at first, so you sigh again, and he looks up at you.

“Whatchu huffing about over there?” He says, setting his pencil down and leaning back on his chair. It had been about thirty minutes since you’d been sitting here, since the storm started. You had nothing to do. At home, to while away the hours you’d play piano or paint entire scenes or still lifes. Here you had nothing, not even a book to keep you company, just a silent man and the butterflies in your stomach that accompanied that man. You hadn’t had the means or time when you were first “acquainted” to notice how handsome he was but now that you were looking at him, all focused on his drawing… he really was. He had strong features, dirty blonde boarding on brunette hair that swept over his ears. He had the whispering of oncoming stubble that’d he’d need to shave again soon if he wished to still be clean shaven, and his eyes were devastating. They were tired, yet determined and a shade of blue that could’ve made your knees buckle if you had a weaker resolve. And right now they were staring at you, waiting for an answer.

“I’m bored, obviously. If I had known we’d be sitting here forever I would’ve brought one of Mary-Beth’s books or something.” You say, crossing your arms and leaning back in your chair. This shack was modest, just a bed pushed into the corner, a dresser, tiny stove, and a small dining table; the table you were currently sitting at. You were about ninety-nine percent sure that this place was abandoned, the amount of undisturbed dust attested to that fact.

“You and her are close, are you?” He asks, closing his journal and peering over at you. You were curious as to what was in that journal, a curiosity you’d have to keep to yourself.

“How could you tell?” You ask.

“Other than the fact you’re wearing her clothes?” He chuckles, rubbing his chin, “Lucky guess.”

You glance down at your outfit, you had forgotten it was Mary-Beth’s. You had no idea what you were going to do after today, clothes-wise. You didn’t have that many options, seeing as you didn’t have any money. You could borrow clothes until you made enough money to buy your own, take out a loan from the camp (if they’d even allow that), or steal. Stealing clothes seemed like a hard enough task, something you weren’t sure you’d be able to pull off without getting caught.

“Lost in thought?” He asks after you don’t answer for a moment. You had trailed off in your thoughts, and didn’t notice you hadn’t replied to his observation. You nod, a little smile spreading across your lips.

“Yeah, I was just thinking how I don’t have anything else to wear. Just the outfit I arrived in, and to be frank, I wouldn’t mind if we burned that thing in a fire.” You laugh, thinking back to just how uncomfortable that thing was. “Pinched me something awful.”

Arthur just chuckles, nodding his head and agreeing with you. Then the room falls into silence once more and you’re left back in your boredom. Your eyes glance to his satchel, slumped in the corner. You wondered if he had anything good in there, anything you could pass the time with. Then suddenly, you were hit with an idea, what better way to pass the time than good ol’ trusty liquor.

“Hey Arthur,” You say, motioning to the bag on the floor, “You got any liquor in there?”

He follows your gaze to the bag then back to you.

“What’s it to you?” He asks, mirroring your posture and leaning back in his own chair.

“Let’s play a game.” You say, eyes twinkling as you look at him, a bit of mischief in your gaze. There was a drinking game you played with your brothers as a teenager, back when you were so excited to even get your hands on some alcohol. It was a simple game, just asking some questions or drinking if you didn’t want to answer, it was a great way to get to know someone and right now, you were curious to unfold the enigma of Arthur Morgan.

“A game? What game?” He asks, scoffing, but curious nonetheless.

“You just ask questions and the person can either drink or answer the question.” You’re smiling now, kicking your boots onto the table and giving him a cheeky look. “Come on, Arthur. It’ll be fun!”

He just stares at you for a moment, almost in disbelief before standing up and grabbing his satchel. You clap, celebrating your win and grinning like an idiot. “Hush, you.” He says, digging around in the bag before pulling out an opened whiskey. It’s about three quarters of the way full, plenty for you and Arthur. You quiet down, enjoying your victory in silence when he returns, setting the bottle on the table.

“I’ll go first, let you get a grasp of the game. I’ll start out simple.” You say, tapping your chin as you think.

“Hmmm… Okay, I’ve got one. Would you rather live on the beach or in the mountains?” You ask, taking the cap off the bottle in preparation for later.

“Never been to a beach.” Arthur says, leaning forward and resting his elbows on the table. “But the mountains ain’t a walk in the park. Few weeks ago we were stuck up there in a storm, fleeing from Blackwater. Think I’ve had my fair share of mountains so I’ll say the beach.”

You had heard about some drama in Blackwater involving a gang but didn’t realize that the very gang responsible was the very gang you were bunking with.

“You guys were responsible for Blackwater?” you ask, eyes wide as you fiddle with the bottle. “I had no idea.”

“Thought somebody, like one of the girls, would’ve told you.” He says.

“They were too excited to even meet me, let alone tell me the group’s backstory.” You chuckle, lifting the bottle to your lips and taking a premature sip.

“Hey now, shouldn’t that be against the rules?” He asks, snatching the bottle from your hands playfully.

“Didn’t think you’d be one to follow rules, outlaw.” You look at him slyly, that subtle tease making him smirk and nod his head in defeat.

“You got me.” Now it was his turn to take a drink, but his was much larger than yours.

“Hey! You drink it all, we ain't gonna have any left for the game!” You scold, scoffing and staring at him in disbelief.

“Alright alright, don’t hurt yourself now.” He sets the bottle back on the table, “Guess it’s my turn?”

“Yep, ask away.” You were excited but nervous. This was his excuse to know something about you, almost interviewing you for your role in the gang. He could ask you anything, and to make a good impression, you were going to answer as honestly as you could.

“Why do you want to be in a gang? Girl like you could do anything now that you’re free from your father.” He reaches into his pocket, retrieving a cigarette from its packaging before putting it between his lips and lighting it with a match.

“With what money?” You ask, putting it rather simply. You really couldn’t do anything BUT join the gang. If you had set off on your own you would’ve been dead in a week either from bad men, over exposure from having nowhere to stay, starvation, or some other fate.

“I don’t have a gun, a horse, a bedroll, a tent, food, water, or anything else that could help me. Just a tight outfit and god-awful corset.”

He nods, seemingly understanding what you were saying. “And your father wouldn’t have you?”

“If he did, he’d just ship me off to Canada again and make me a housewife. Pop out some kids and live everyday inside.” You shudder at just how close that reality was to happening. That train robbery was a blessing in disguise, not that you thought you’d ever end up here, playing truth or drink with an outlaw.

He doesn’t say anything, just looking at you, thinking. You’d do anything to know what was in this man's head, he was such a closed book, and boy, did you want to turn the pages.

“Alright, my turn again.” You hesitate, knowing this next question was a little personal.

“Do you have any family? Other than the gang I mean.” There’s a silence that hangs in the air, and he just looks at you. He looks like he’s wrestling with something by the way his eyes slide from yours and to the floor only to come back to you once again.

He puts his cigarette out on the table silently, before taking the bottle, and throwing it back, taking a large gulp of the brown liquor. You slump in your chair, worried you had taken it too far, you knew how tough families could be. But then he opens his mouth to speak.

“Mother died when I was young, don't remember her too well but I still have her picture. Daddy was an outlaw, arrested for larceny when I was eleven. They hanged him for that.” There was no great sadness when he talked about his parents, just a quiet sort of mourning that signaled he had accepted their fates long ago. It’s obvious why he joined the van der Linde gang, like you he had no other choice.

“I’m really sorry to hear that.” You state, watching him with sad eyes. “That must’ve been awful for a little boy.” You couldn’t imagine what else this man had been through, he carried baggage with him you couldn’t begin to speculate on. You wanted to know every corner of his lore, you couldn’t help but be morbidly curious.

“It is what it is.” He says, almost nonchalantly.

“Hell, I’ll drink to that.” You grab the bottle and take a swig, the liquor burns as it trickles down your throat and you make a face. Arthur chuckles, taking the bottle and drinking for himself.

“My turn.” He says, setting the bottle down and piercing you with his dark blue stare. He thought for a moment before he spoke. “You mentioned you have brothers, who’s your favorite and why?”

Dang it, this was a hard one. To be honest, you liked them all for different reasons. Richard was the kindest, Thomas was the smartest, John had the best sense of humor. You admired them all for different reasons and calling one of them your favorite felt like a disservice. So, you grabbed the bottle and drank.

“Really? That’s the question you drink on?” He just laughs, and you notice you’ve been making him laugh a lot lately, something that makes pride swell in your chest and your confidence bloom. He had the reputation of being the camp grump, but when it was just the two of you, he really seemed to unwind.

Maybe it was the alcohol getting to you, after all you had not eaten today, or maybe it was just because you were getting too comfortable but the next question seemed like it would make or break the conversation thus far, but you had the confidence to ask anyways.

“Do you have a girl?” You were playing with the bottle again, running it between your hands but you let it go, just in case he wanted to veto the question. But he doesn’t, which surprises you, you were sure he was going to close up at the question, tell you to buzz off and that it wasn’t your business.

“I did.” Is all he says, which, again, is more than what you expected. You weren’t going to pry further as obviously he didn’t want you to.

The two of you continue for a while, asking stupid questions, drinking the liquor until it was gone and then opening up a new bottle.

“This is the last one I have.” He says, handing you the bottle, “Better make it count.”

You were already pretty drunk from the first bottle, the room was spinning and you felt light-headed but you gratefully took it and popped the cork. You passed it back to Arthur after you took your sip and he drank his fill before he set it down on the table. You could tell he was getting drunk too, just by the way he got louder, his gaze became glassy and he was swaying in his seat. It was then you got the brilliant idea, you felt like dancing.

You get up from the table, almost stumbling over your own feet before turning to Arthur.

“And just what do you think you’re up to?” He asks, a bit of a slur to his words, but not bad enough to think he was blackout drunk.

“Dance with me.” You hold out a hand for him to take, but he doesn't; he just stares at you for a second before smiling.

“To what music?”

“We’ll make our own music.” You say, beckoning him to stand up, “Now come on! Or are you going to be the camp grump again?” You tease, placing your hands on your hips and giving him a look before extending your hand again.

He just sighs before taking it, hoisting himself up and standing next to you, unmoving.

“You do know how to dance, right?” You ask when he doesn’t make a move to get into position. You would have no problem teaching him sober, having been the belle of the ball a few times when your family was invited to rich soirees. But teaching him drunk was another thing entirely, you were just relying on muscle memory to help you out here, fully not expecting to do this consciously.

“‘Course I do.” He defends himself, gently taking your hand and holding it up before sliding a hand to your waist. You rest a hand on his shoulder and start humming a lively tune. The dance is bumpy, constantly stepping on each other's toes, just to laugh it off afterwards. You keep interrupting your song with giggles and he reciprocates with hearty laughs.

He spins you around before lowering you into a dip, you’re scared he might drop you but he doesn’t. He just pulls you up and resumes the dance, and you don’t miss the way his grip on your waist tightens. At some point or another, the two of you drifted closer and closer until your chest bumped his, your gaze flits up to his and the tune in your throat ceases. You don’t know what led up to you stopping or why the tension suddenly felt so thick you could cut it with a knife, it just did.

The liquor was making you bold, so bold you entertained the possibility of you standing on your tiptoes to press your lips against his. Initially you decide against it but when you catch his eyes drifting to your parted lips, something in your head tells you to go for it, so you do. You tilt your head upwards to catch his lips in a quick kiss before pulling away. He doesn’t say anything and that same confidence that led you to kiss him in the first place withers away, leaving you standing there struggling to find words.

“I’m sorry-” You start, letting go of his shoulder and hand and beginning to back away. “I wasn’t thinking, it was stupid, just forget it hap-” But he chases you, taking you by your waist again and pressing his lips to yours. It was electrifying as you melted into his touch, wrapping your arms around his shoulders and moving your mouth in tandem with his. It starts off gentle, just little pecks before you slide your tongue across the seam of his mouth and be grants you access until the kiss crescendos into drunken sloppiness that’s all teeth and tongue.

He backs you up against the table and hoists you onto it as your hands desperately grab onto his vest, undoing the buttons as he hikes up your skirt and slides a hand up your leg. It’s just then that the door swings open and an older man with a rifle on his back stands in the doorway.

“Damn kids!” He shouts, instantly getting both of your attention and Arthur reaching for his revolver. You notice he isn’t soaking wet like he should be, meaning the storm had likely passed at some point.

“We don’t want no trouble mister, we’ll get out of your hair now.” You don’t miss the way Arthur has his hand on his gun, ready to draw at any second. You also don’t miss the way the strangers eyes float to you and the smile that spreads on his chapped lips makes you want to gag.

“Well ain’t you a pretty thing?” He shifts the rifle into his hands, “Think I’ll have a turn now.”

Instantly Arthurs gun is in his hands, pointed at the stranger and firing. It was all so insanely quick you would’ve missed it if not for the loud gunshot that rang through the tiny shack. You flinch as you watch the man slump to the ground, the shot going directly through his head and painting the wall adjacent to him.

“Holy shit!” You curse, looking between Arthur and the corpse.

“Let’s get out of here.” He says, taking your hand and leading you outside. You had to step over the body on your way out, picking up your skirt so you didn’t get blood on Mary-Beth’s nice clothes. He grabs his horse’s reins and pulls her over. She had been standing under an extended part of the roof this whole time in order to stay out of the rain. He helps you up before climbing into the saddle himself and spurring his horse forwards and towards camp.

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

The ride back was quiet, almost awkwardly so. Neither of you seemed like talking about what had happened between the two of you. Not the kiss, not the murder, nothing. But then his hand comes to rest over yours that was resting on his middle and you felt calmer, knowing he didn’t regret it.

He gives it a quick squeeze before returning his hand to his reins and soon enough you’re back in camp. He rides up to the hitching station and slides off, offering you a hand so you could do the same. He really was quite the gentleman.

“I’ll take you into town tomorrow to buy some new clothes.” He says, casually. You’re taken aback by this because, again, you had no money.

“Wha- Arthur, I don’t have any money.” You state, matter-of-factly. He just shrugs. “Don’t worry about it.” And before you can say anything to question or protest, he walks away leaving you with a million questions. What did he mean, was he going to buy you clothes? Was the camp fund going to buy you clothes? Also what about that kiss? What did it mean? You may never know.

Later that night, you approach a campfire that Mary-Beth, Karen and Tilly are sitting around. By now you’re completely sober with a wicked hangover, and no closer to unraveling the mystery of that kiss as Arthur immediately slept off his drunkenness in his bed before heading out on a mission, giving you no time to approach and speak about it. Also, not talking to Dutch about your grade A shooting. You hoped that he’d get to that soon, the earlier you were trusted around here, the better. And if you were being honest with yourself? Did you want to talk about it? Were you ready for the potential awkwardness of that conversation? You didn’t know.

“Hello ladies.” You greet, sliding onto the log next to Mary-Beth.

“Hey,” Karen says your name, gaze following as you sat down. She was holding a bottle of beer and the sight of alcohol after today made you want to vomit. “How was shootin’?”

“Good.” You said, holding your hands to the fire in an effort to warm them, it got chilly at night and you weren’t about to ask Mary-Beth to lend you another item of clothing.

“Did’ja hit your target?” Tilly asks, putting down the pants she was mending so she could engage in conversation with you.

“I did, actually. Only missed once but I think I did enough.” You couldn’t hide your smile, you had a good time shooting today, it was something you enjoyed.

“Well, that’s good!” Mary-Beth says, hand coming to yours and giving it a little squeeze. “I hope you get what you want from it.”

“Thanks Mary-Beth, I hope so too.” You look up from the campfire and your eyes immediately lock onto Arthur’s as he walks towards the campfire you were currently sitting at. You straighten up, eyes never leaving his as he approaches. The other girls catch on and look up at Arthur. They all say their hellos and he gives a little wave before looking back at you.

“Can I speak to you for a moment?” He asks, hands holding his gun belt and face casual. He wasn’t showing an ounce of emotion, just a blank face as he beckoned you to stand and follow behind him. You couldn’t begin to guess what this was about. Was it about your shooting results, the kiss, or something else entirely?

“Dutch wants to speak to you, told him about today.” He says, leading you through camp until you were standing outside of his Dutch’s tent.

“Not all of today I hope.” You say, almost under your breath and you look at him with a smirk but he doesn’t reciprocate, he just looks at you with an unreadable expression. You clear your throat, standing up straight and avoiding eye contact with him.

You were just about to ask where Dutch was before his tent flap opened and he stepped out, he had a cigar between his lips. He looks between the two of you and gives Arthur a look, again, it was a look you couldn’t place. You wished so desperately to just see into these men’s heads. They were all mysteries, but none more mysterious than the one you were standing next to, the one you had kissed.

Dutch says your name, “I hear you did very well at your little shooting trial.” He takes the cigar from his mouth, turning his head to blow the smoke away from your face. It was hard to grasp that this was the infamous Dutch van der Linde, the famous outlaw known for the trail of bodies he left behind, was blowing smoke away from your face to be polite.

You smile at him, “I’m happy to hear that.”

“I bet.” He chuckles, and his eyes float back to Arthur. “Tomorrow, take her into town, buy her the essentials, a couple guns, her own clothes and so on. Use the camp fund if you have to.”

“Will do.” Arthur says, surprisingly not fighting having to run errands for you like he had before.

“Great. You’re dismissed.” He says before disappearing back into his tent, you turn to Arthur, who’s just looking at the ground.

“So,” You start but he cuts you off,

“I’ll get you in the morning, make sure to be ready.” And then he’s walking away, leaving you standing there with your mouth agape, the rest of your sentence dying on your tongue.

“Okaaayyyy…” You say to yourself, turning on your heel to join your lady friends again.

“Hey, Mary-Beth, do you mind if I keep this outfit for tomorrow? We’re heading into town to buy my own essentials.” You ask, sliding in next to her and leaning into her, and grabbing her hands.

“Of course! Going into town is fun, you’ll have a great time” She says, reciprocating.

“Thank you.” You say, giving her a genuine smile. Mary-Beth was shaping up to be your best friend in camp, someone you could trust and somebody to hang out with on your off moments. You were grateful for her, hell you were grateful for most of the ladies in this group for accepting you so fast.

“Well, I better get some sleep.” You stand up, waving to the girls before marching back towards the spare bedroll next to Mary-Beth’s. You grab the nightgown she’d been lending you and disappear behind the ammo wagon, it was far away enough that there was just enough privacy to change quickly and feel comfortable about it. At least that’s how it had been last night. Tonight, when you were about to pull your shift over your head, you heard footsteps approaching from the main camp. They scraped against the grass before stopping just around the corner of the wagon.

“You decent?” a voice asks, Arthur’s voice. You look down at your state of dress, your shift was a bit see through, but not enough to be concerning. You could just see the silhouette of your body underneath, not any of the details, plus you still had your bloomers on and were thoroughly covered.

“Yes.” You decide, waiting for him to round the corner. There’s a beat of silence before he does, quickly stepping into view and into the shadows of the wagon. You had guessed this was so nobody else saw him back here, a smart move. You yourself were not ready for the questions that would come if somebody saw him sneak his way to where you were changing.

“What can I do for you?” You ask, crossing your arms over your chest. You try not to notice the way his eyes dip down to the cleavage caused by action, as your shift was a tad low-cut. But just as fast as they’d looked down, they came back up to your face. He steps forward, at arm's length now as he clears his throat.

“We should probably talk about what happened today.” He says, lowly, almost inaudibly.

The sexual connection that was there was undeniable, it made you brash, made you walk right up to him and put your hands on his shoulders.

“What’s there to talk about?” You whisper, hands sliding from his shoulders to the sides of his neck. Your thumbs brush against his jaw. You knew the way he kissed you today couldn’t all have all been because of the liquor, you knew there had to be something else there; you had been thinking about it all day.

You know you’re right when his hands come to rest at your waist and a smirk spreads across your lips and you celebrate your victory by planting a small kiss to the corner of his mouth. When you pull away, he wastes no time dipping his head to capture your lips fully. You melt into his touch, pressing your body against his and moaning into his mouth. He swallows it down, bringing his hand from your waist to cradle the back of your head.

Before long he’s the one pulling away and returning his hands to his sides. You stare at him, waiting for him to say something, anything.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.” Is all he says before disappearing.

What? Was that all he had to say about everything that happened today? Really?

You put on your nightgown and head to your bedroll. You notice June wasn’t where you had last seen her, noticed Arthur wasn’t anywhere to be seen. You wondered where he could’ve possibly gone at this hour but the possibility of him just going for a ride to clear his head comes to you. You weren’t sure what he was wrestling with when it came to this, maybe one day you’d find out but for now, you were kept in the dark.

As you tuck in for the night, you can’t help to think about what came after this. Would you and Arthur continue this acquaintances with benefits thing? Or would he end it? You weren’t sure. All you knew was that he was the last thing on your mind when you went to sleep and the first thing you thought about when you woke up in the morning.

Were you in trouble? What did this all mean?

You weren’t sure, but something inside you told you that this was far from over.

─── ･｡ﾟ☆: .☽ . :☆ﾟ. ───

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#arthur morgan #arthur morgan x fem!reader #arthur morgan x female reader #red dead redemption 2 #rdr2 #rdr2 fanfic #rdr2 arthur #red dead redemption #dutch van der linde #red dead fanfiction #fanfic

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love-kurdt · 6 months ago

Text

Swooping, Sloping, Cursive Letters: 32

word count: 544

PLEASE READ THIS IS ME TRYING FIRST, AS THIS STORY RELIES HEAVILY UPON THE CONTEXT OF TIMT

April 7, 1990

Dear Will,

I hate everything about my life right now. I especially hate that you still have a fucking chokehold on me after you literally ruined my life two weeks ago. That phone call between us destroyed every single cell of hope I had left in my body… or so I thought. Because here I am, alone on my birthday, getting drunk in my dorm room and writing a letter to you. And I’m a hundred percent certain this time around that you’ll never read it, because in your words, I’ve done enough. Whatever the fuck that even means. What exactly have I done enough of, for you to cut me off forever? Did I love you too much? Have I cried too often for your personal preference? Have I groveled for longer than acceptable? Did I wait too long to call you? Just tell me what I did wrong, Will!

I’m listing all these things out, and all I’m seeing is myself trying to restore our friendship and you just… not giving a shit. I hate you. That’s a lie. I love you. And yet, even though you’re already highly aware of this fact, you still don’t care whether I live or die. If I were a cat, I’d spend all nine of my lives waiting for you. Alas, I am not a cat. I am a mere mortal, with only one life to live. And I don’t even have the will or the Will to live anymore.

My life wasn’t supposed to go like this. I’m just going through the motions, hoping that every tomorrow will be the day that I’ll look up from my crouched position within the caves beneath the Misty Mountains and see My Precious gleaming in a minuscule sliver of sunlight. I just realized I compared myself to Gollum. I mean… it’s kind of hilarious. If I’m Gollum, then you’re the One Ring.

The way I look currently makes Gollum appear to be the picture of health. I don’t sleep much anymore (unless I drink or smoke weed beforehand), so my under-eye bags are more like under-eye duffels. I don’t really eat much either, on account of being sick and hungover all the time, so I’ve lost a significant amount of weight. And somehow, despite all of my physical flaws, Elvis still likes to fuck me. Yeah… so that wasn’t a one-time thing. He and I have been having sex for months. I still try to picture you whenever I hook up with him, but it just ends up making me feel even more depressed.

I think the universe is out to end my life before it’s even begun. Whooo, this tequila is strong. Why is it that people under the influence always somehow end up thinking about the universe? It’s like drugs and alcohol serve as the wrecking ball that breaks the barrier between the material plane and the rest of existence. I’d love to see what you could paint with that concept in mind. I bet it would be absolutely beautiful. But if the universe is gonna end up being the one responsible for ending my life, then what the fuck does that make you and I? Hell if I know.

Love,

Mike

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msbigredmachine · 1 year ago

Text

TARGETS - 30 - Finishing Touches

Roman Reigns is an agent in the secret organization The Authority and one of the world’s deadliest assassins. When he crosses paths with a mysterious woman during an assignment, he makes a life-changing decision that switches his role from the hunter to the hunted. (AU Espionage Story)

TARGETS MASTERLIST

-------------------

Nine days had gone by since Jasmine and Roman left Rose’s house. Eleven days since Jasmine was tortured and Roman was shot in the shoulder by Baron Corbin. Somehow, they survived and Corbin did not. That had to mean something, that as long as they were alive and breathing, they still had a fighting chance. But though their wounds were healing, neither was sure they would ever be at a hundred percent again.

Jasmine's ordeal had taken a toll on her psyche. The first night, she'd woken up in a cold sweat, the feel of Baron's grimy hands on her still as suffocating now as it was then, the smell of her burning flesh entrapped in her nostrils. The second night, she had almost broken Roman's nose as he tried to shake her awake from her nightmare. Shaken and embarrassed, it took some convincing to the Samoan that she would be okay. As traumatic as it was for her and as harsh as it sounded, Jasmine knew she had to brush it off and concentrate on putting their plan to action. All of F.L.O.R.A. and the Authority were looking for them now, and they had missed the deadline for their Jamaica rendezvous with Rollins and Ambrose thanks to Corbin. The two men were now off the grid, most likely for their own safety. Roman did not blame them. The couple kept on the move, not staying at one particular place for too long, and they continued to strategize and stay in shape as best as they could, given the circumstances.

As the days got closer and closer to executing their final plan, Roman decided to treat his girlfriend to something nice. Since they couldn’t travel to any exotic destination at the moment, he brandished his considerable skills and was able to scam his way into obtaining a nice swanky suite for two days at the W Hotel, the very same hotel chain where they first spent an incredible night together all those months ago. It was a pleasant contrast to the dingy accommodation they had been inhabiting for the past week, and the huge smile on Jasmine’s face as she plopped down onto the soft, clean white sheets of the king bed like a little girl was the perfect reward for him.

Biting into a croissant from the vast breakfast tray from room service, Jasmine perused the contents of the carry-on Rose had given her. It contained two brand new passports; one for herself, named "Ameera Candice Johnson", and the other for her "husband" Roman, under the name "Afa Jonathan Johnson". She calculated a hundred thousand dollars in cash in four different currencies. Rose would have provided more, but F.L.O.R.A. had monitored each of their operatives' accounts ever since Jasmine turned rogue, to ensure that none of them were financing her. Jasmine's own accounts and credit cards had long since been frozen. The money was adequate for now, but she and Roman were going to need much more than this if they planned on disappearing forever.

And she knew just where they were going to get it.

She heard the bathroom door open, and then a whooshing sound from behind her. Instinctively, she twisted her upper body around, catching the incoming missile expertly with her right hand. She glanced down at the tube of toothpaste and rolled her eyes. "Really, Reigns?"

Her boyfriend stood by the bathroom door, a white towel hanging low on his hips. "Just testing your reflexes, my beautiful Nubian rose," he informed her.

"My reflexes are just fine, my handsome Samoan stallion."

Roman smirked. "Stallion, huh? Cuz you love ridin’ me?"

"Oh my god, don't start." She shook her head with a smile, getting up and approaching him. Giving his chest an affectionate pat, she took off her clothes, stepped into the walk-in shower and turned on the hot water.

The Plexiglas quickly grew foggy from the hot water, but Roman could still see the curvaceous outline of her silhouette. His breathing grew heavier as he watched her spread the lather over her naked body with her hands. He was aroused in seconds. He'd just showered but he didn't mind going back in for another. Quickly discarding his towel, he walked into the shower and shut the glass door behind him.

Standing behind her, his hands roamed her jagged skin, carefully tracing the scars Corbin had left all over her beautiful body. "Fuckin' piece of shit," he growled, "I should find him, wake his dead ass up and put another bullet in his head."

Jasmine found herself chuckling at that. "Down, boy. It's getting better, thanks to Rose’s lotion."

"You're still not sleeping well, though." Roman's tone was quiet but pointed, feeling her bristle at his words. "Baby girl, I know Corbin did a number on you..."

"Don't worry about me, my love. I'll be fine," Jasmine promised, turning her head to meet his eyes. "Let's just focus on tomorrow, and hope we live through it."

"We will. We have a good plan. A brilliant one, even."

"You're very confident," she smirked.

"I am. Because we're good. Very good. We make a great team, Jasmine."

Jasmine smiled. "We do. It’s like we’ve known each other forever."

“Like soulmates?” asked Roman.

There was something about that word, just the mere utterance of it, that seemed to unlock something, opening another chapter in their romance. Jasmine looked deep into Roman’s eyes and saw everything she needed to know.

“Just like soulmates,” she agreed with a soft smile. She felt his thumbs gently massage the base of her neck, and gradually relaxed as he methodically worked the tension out of her neck, shoulders and upper back. She closed her eyes, a soft contented sigh escaping her when Roman kissed the scar on her shoulder blade. He inched closer, his chest flush against her back, his hands slipping around to rest against the flat plane of her abdomen.

Jasmine trailed her hands along the contours of his muscular forearms, her fingers intertwining with his. With a soft moan, Roman dipped his head, his lips meeting the curve of her neck, his breath warm against her skin. His caresses soon found her breasts, and as he massaged them and rolled her nipples between his fingers, that familiar erotic feeling surged up inside them; the one that pushed out all other thoughts and focused on no one else but each other.

“I love you,” whispered Jasmine.

“I love you too, baby,” Roman replied, capturing her mouth with his when she lifted her head, his tongue sliding into her mouth to tangle with hers. She rotated her body around until she was facing him, her knees weakening as she took in his naked form and the hunger in his eyes. He gave her no breathing room as he backed her up against the shower wall with his mouth back over hers. She moaned in encouragement at his eagerness, feeling his desire, the tender urgency in every kiss and touch and caress – it had been a while since they last made love, and she would be lying if she said she didn't want him inside of her.

Their tongues clashed fervently, craving the taste of each other, the heat of their desire radiating through the small enclosure. Roman's long fingers threaded through Jasmine's wet hair and angled her head back to attack her neck with his lips, his hard body pressing against hers. She dragged her fingers down his muscled back, pulling him even closer, if that was possible. His low growl vibrated in his chest as he rolled his hips, making her moan as his erection rubbed against her lower belly. His hands gripped her ass cheeks, kneading and squeezing them between his rough palms as they grinded against each other.

“I love the way you feel beneath my hands, baby girl,” he whispered in that deep timbre of his that always made her melt inside. “I love the way your body reacts when I touch you and love on you. Like it knows it’s mine.”

“It’s yours. Baby I’m all yours,” she answered without hesitation.

Roman growled in appreciation and pressed open-mouthed kisses against her warm skin, his tongue rolling over as many goosebumps as possible. He licked his way down her body until he was on his knees. His hand then slipped down to palm her leg before hitching it over his shoulder, gripping her thigh to hold her steady as she found her balance.

“I got you. Relax for Daddy, baby,” he assured her, watching her stare down at him, licking her lips as she nodded. Nuzzling his face against her soft folds, he breathed her in, his brain filling up with the heady mix of shower gel and her natural scent that called out to him to be devoured. He was all too happy to oblige.

With the tip of his tongue, he flicked her clit, teasing the bundle of nerves, gripping her hips as she bucked against his face and tugged his hair hard. He hummed softly at the slight pain, swiping the flat of his tongue along her slit and groaning at the taste. So good, so rich. He licked her thoroughly, repeatedly, his thumb sliding in to play with her clit at the same time. Her voice went up several decibels in reaction, her fingers digging into his hair as he slurped her juices.

"Baby…shit," Jasmine groaned above him, "Fuck, Roman..."

Groaning back to her, he widened his mouth over her pussy for a slew of French kisses before letting his fingers take over, sliding his mouth back over her clit. Keeping her pinned against the wall, he proceeded to destroy her by suckling and tonguing the sensitive nub while pumping three fingers inside her. His already hard dick twitched at the sweet sounds of her pussy and her cries for him, echoing around the enclosure as he milked her nectar, drowning out the running water. Jasmine arched against the wall as she detonated, her inner muscles keeping his long, thick fingers in a death grip. That grip was broken as she broke, her body falling to pieces from the intense pleasure.

Roman gently set her leg back down and got to his feet. Jasmine collapsed in his huge arms, burying her face in his neck with a soft, satisfied moan as he pressed her back against the wall. “Jesus, Ro,” she gasped.

“I got you,” he whispered. He lifted her head up to kiss her, his tongue sliding indulgently against her own as soon as she opened her mouth for him.

"Mmmm, I taste good," she panted, licking her lips with a grin.

“You always do,” he responded, placing his mouth back over hers to taste her some more. Her wet body stuck to his, and his dick stirred again. Feeling him throb between them, she wasted no time reaching down and curling her fingers around the turgid length, rubbing and tugging it, biting her lip as she met his heated stare.

"I want it deep in me, Daddy, give it to me." She spoke in that pleading, breathy tone he could never resist. Throwing the shower door open, he pulled her behind him, both still dripping wet as they stumbled out of the bathroom. Upon reaching the bed, Jasmine sat Roman down and stood between his spread thighs. Her hungry stare locked with his as he wrapped his fingers around his cock and slowly massaged it.

“Be a good girl and come suck Daddy dick,” he drawled, his hand sliding up and down the thick, delectable length. Fuck, he looked so enticing laying down like that. Like the good girl that she was, she sank down to her knees, her hand closing around his dick, and she slashed her tongue over the swollen head. Roman watched her intently as she sucked him, feeling his knees weaken as she sank him further into the inviting warmth of her mouth. Her soft moans were everything, even as she took him all in, making gulping sounds around his cock that never failed to send shivers down his spine. His hand cupped the back of her head, letting out a moan of his own as she grabbed his balls, tugging them in tandem with her sucking.

His groans of pleasure and his dark intense eyes caused a flood in her loins. Completely turned on, she gobbled up his dick, making him moan louder as she swallowed him all up. He caressed her head, lifting his hips up, needing to be deeper somehow. She leaned forwards, her arms stretched over the length of his muscled thighs to keep him still. With her palms splayed over his crunching abs, she proceeded to deep-throat him, her mouth meeting his pelvis, holding it there to suckle the base of his dick before dragging the tightness of her lips back up to the tip. Rinse and repeat.

“Baby girl, you gon' make me come,” Roman soon grunted, his deep voice shaken as he gripped her hair. She hummed her permission, the vibrations around his dick rippling through his big frame and tightening his balls. His eyes rolled in the back of his head. “Shit, I’m ‘bout to come for you, baby. Open your mouth.”

Jasmine obeyed, wincing a little from his steely grip holding her in place. She didn’t mind too much; the best reward was watching him jerk himself frantically in her face, his own twisting with painful pleasure as he burst all over her tongue and partly on her chin. He groaned again when she wrapped her lips back around him and sucked hard, drinking down his cum like it was her favorite beverage. When she released him, he prayed he had some left in him as he was far from done with her. He used his thumb to clean his mess off her face and stuck the digit inside her mouth, gasping as she licked it clean, her eyes on him the entire time.

“God you’re so sexy, my little fuckin’ slut. C'mere,” he praised her, pulling her into the bed and on top of him for a deep kiss full of tongue. Jasmine rocked against him, her wetness brushing ominously against the tip of his dick. Thanks to Corbin's act of savagery, she was no longer protected and he himself didn’t have any condoms. But just as quickly as the reminder appeared, he shooed it away. They could most likely be dead before tomorrow ended. Protection was the least of their worries. He wanted to fill her up with everything he had. Tonight had to be memorable.

“Assume position, baby,” he commanded, sitting up on his knees and maneuvering behind her.

“Yes Daddy.” She wasted little time, turning around, spreading her legs apart, teasing him with a quick twerk of her ass cheeks and earning a smack on her butt. He wasted no time either, sliding right into her, both of them moaning as he met little resistance. His hands massaged her ass as he pulled out then pushed back in, working his way into her with slow, gentle thrusts all the way to her hilt. He was so conversant with her pussy; knowing exactly where to position that dick, how to stroke the most sensitive spot inside her that maximized her pleasure; her wetness was already seeping down her thighs and onto the bed.

“Mmm, look how wet you are. You drippin’ for me, babe,” Roman smirked, watching with fascination as his dick disappeared inside her warm wetness. “That’s how you take Daddy’s dick, lemme bust that phat pussy open, baby.”

“Oooh fuck, Roman, that feels…”

“Shit feel good, yeah babe?”

Temporarily robbed of all ability to speak, Jasmine could only moan out the rest of her thoughts, delirious from the feel of his heavy balls slapping her clit, his thighs bumping against hers from behind, and best of all, his big ass dick stretching her open. “Yes, Daddy, oh my god,” she whined, tears filling her eyes. He felt incredible, so sinfully good. How had she ever lived without him?

His fist was in her hair now, bringing her head up off the bed as he thrust harder. His other hand played with her breast from behind and tweaked the bud of her nipple, making him moan as her pussy contracted around him. He leaned down to nuzzle her throat, his lips ghosting over her jawline until she turned her face to him and let him claim her mouth with his.

After a few minutes of taking her in this position, he pulled out and flipped her onto her back. Climbing on top of her, he patted his girthy dick against her softened folds before pushing back inside. His long, damp locks cascaded down his strong shoulders, framing his gorgeous features. Her hands reached up to caress his face, then gripped the back of his neck to pull his mouth to hers. He hitched her left leg under the crook of his arm and then the right, opening her up for him to pound her out. Her back arched with a moan, her pussy tightening around his thick length as he plunged deep into her over and over. Moving her legs up onto his shoulders, he went to town, feeding her with long, lavish strokes that found every sweet spot she owned. He was on a mission, almost obsessed with his need to pleasure her, to make her feel things she’d never felt before, things he'd been feeling for her since the very beginning of their relationship.

“You feel fuckin’ amazing, Jasmine.” His voice was so deep and rough in her ear and dripped with pure lust. It made the hair on the back of her neck stand up and goosebumps sprout all over her heated skin. She didn’t know where to put her hands, switching from gripping the bed sheets to grabbing his shoulders before settling on his broad back. Her moans devolved into soft sobs as he kept up the dizzying onslaught. He brought his face closer to hers and kissed her deeply, his tongue exploring the warmth of her mouth.

“I love you so much,” he whispered.

“I love you, too,” she said, her jaw dropping as her eyes flickered to the spot where their bodies connected, watching his dick drill and grind into her like he was searching for oil. “Oh my god, Daddy, you’re fuckin' the shit outta me…”

“I keep telling you this pussy good, babe,” Roman said, licking the seam of her lips. “Wet and tight as fuck…you make me wanna come all up in it.”

She couldn’t bring herself to respond, not with the way he was holding her down to the bed and winding his hips, making his dick massage her spot. Her pussy rippled around him yet again and she panted heavily, her toes curling behind his head as she whined his name. Hearing his name pour from her lips and the way she moaned and cried and begged snapped something deep within Roman. He pounded her pussy harder, gazing at her with bright, lust-filled eyes, “I can tell you’re close, baby. Let it go. Come again for me,” he cajoled her.

On command, her orgasm washed over her. She squeezed her eyes shut as she screamed, her body convulsing beneath him from the barrage of pleasure. Ecstatic. Overwhelming. All of that and more.

Roman pulled out of her and looked on, proud of his handiwork as he watched his lover squirm and gasp beneath him, squeezing her thighs together as pleasure ravaged her entire being. Opening her legs wide again, he loomed over her, guiding his dick back inside her and pushing home. He had all the pleasure she could ever want, and he was going to give it all to her. As her back arched off the bed, he seized the chance to wrap his arms around her and hoist her upright so she was on top of him.

“Come on, ride your Samoan stallion,” he instructed, smacking her backside in encouragement.

Recovering from her shudders, Jasmine steadied herself on top of him. With her knees up, she rested her hands on his abs and began to fuck him, dragging that pussy back and forth on his dick. She leaned down and brushed their mouths together, then sat back up to ride him a little harder. It was her turn to hold him down to the bed as her wet pussy slid up and down his cock, engulfing his length with the tightness of her walls. Looking up at her, eyes dilated, deep caramel skin glistening with sweat, full breasts bouncing and her lips parted in exertion, Roman nearly lost it right then. She had him growling and panting as she dropped down on his cock again and again and again, taking him deep. He ran his hand up her stomach and between her breasts until they closed around her throat, squeezing just enough to make her audibly bite back a moan. With his other hand, he held onto her waist, planted his feet on the bed, and raised his hips to push his dick up against her g-spot at the perfect angle to make her shiver against him.

"Unnnnhhhh..." she groaned, her thighs shaking and quaking at his sides.

"Mm-hmm, I know that's the spot right there, sweetheart. You gon' come for me. Nut on Daddy's cock, baby girl, give it to me," he whispered, grinding up into her, tightening his grasp around her throat. He was slipping inside her far too easily, yet she was still so tight. He moaned as on cue, she clenched around him, her strangled cry vibrating through them both as she gushed like a fountain all over his groin.

"Fuuuck..." Jasmine's head rocked backwards as her body shook, whimpering, her breathing raspy. The climax was so powerful that she couldn't think straight. Roman moaned and thrust upwards into her, faster, harder, drowning in the wet squelching of her tight pussy, increasing his pleasure and hers. His breaths came in ragged bursts and his muscles tensed, his toes curling as he tumbled into his own release. He emptied himself inside her, his own body trembling as wave after wave of pleasure pulsed through every nerve ending of his.

He barely felt her soft kiss on his cheek afterwards, barely felt her hand steer his face to meet her mouth, their lips and tongues sweeping together in the tastiest, most sensual of kisses. As they moaned into each other’s mouths, his senses came alive again, luxuriating in their post-coital embrace. He was almost disappointed when she finally dismounted him, and he shuddered as her skin smoothed lazily over his, the memory of being inside her setting his skin afire. Her beautiful face was flushed with satisfaction as she stared down at her lover.

"Damn, baby, fuck,” she moaned, smoothing out her hair sticking to her sweaty forehead. Roman watched her with mischief in his eyes.

“You good, baby girl?" he teased. "Didn't wear you out, did I?"

"Pfft. You know I handled that good dick, Daddy," she replied, her brown eyes still cloudy in the afterglow. She snuggled closer to him, her arm slung over his waist. "This is the real reason I ain’t never letting you go. You put it down on me so good, babe. Imma glue my pussy to your cock at this point.”

They both burst out laughing at the weird imagery before falling into a comfortable silence. When Roman spoke again, his tone was more serious. "Honestly, I can’t wait for all this running and hiding to be over," he said.

"It will be. Soon,” Jasmine promised.

Roman reached up to caress her face, gazing intently at her. "You sound so sure."

The former F.L.O.R.A agent bit her lip and nodded slowly. "We will. We’ll make it out of this. I trust you and I trust our abilities together. But for now...we need to get some sleep.”

“Do we?”

Raising her eyebrows, she watched his hand close over her breast, kneading the round soft flesh. The lazy flicks of his fingers over her peaked, sensitive nipple made her gasp. “Ro…”

"Baby, we could be dead by tomorrow," he said, his voice deep and serious as he looked into her eyes. "Until then, I wanna spend every waking second in your arms, to be buried inside you for as long as I can until we get there. I hope you don't mind."

Jasmine felt an overwhelming surge of love and heartache at his words as she realized that indeed, this could be the last time they would be together like this. "I guess not," she finally succumbed, looking on as he rolled back on top of her, his mouth tugging her nipples in a string of wet, sloppy kisses that had her pussy aching again. At his hungry expression, she swallowed hard, growing weak for him as she felt his hardness rub against the mound of her pussy.

Pulling her thigh over his waist, he kissed her lips, slipping his tongue inside her mouth as he massaged his cock between their bodies. "I love you, Jasmine. I’ll still love you long after I’m gone," he declared, his voice heavy with emotion.

Jasmine squeezed her eyes shut to keep the tears at bay. "I love you, Roman. I love you until my last breath. I will love you even more after that," she whispered. She returned his tender kiss, feeling him grip the back of her thigh, lifting her body against him as he sank back into her warm, inviting depths…

-----------------

She sat up in bed as she watched him sleep. With tears in her eyes, she watched the way his chest rose and fell, his breathing deep and even. The sheets were draped over his hip, right below the V-shaped contour on his hip bone. His tousled hair swept over his face, and she gently raked it back, letting her fingers graze his chiseled cheek. Staring at him for one moment longer, she then shut her eyes, inhaled deeply, and chased all her emotions back into the recesses of her mind, allowing the calm ruthlessness she used to be known for to take over her entire being once again. Her features were hardened, passive, as she got up from the bed, limped over to the ceiling to floor window and made the call she'd been waiting to make since leaving Rose behind.

A female voice answered the other end of the line. "Identify."

"Four, one, three, six, eight, five, six," Jasmine answered, walking over to stand next to the glass door leading to the balcony.

A tense pause followed, then, "Your identification has been expunged from our records."

They'd erased her already. She expected that. "I have a package for the boss. For both of them. It's something they want. Urgently."

The female voice went quiet again. Several seconds passed before she spoke again. "Where would you like to make your delivery?"

"Somewhere public, covered. No clean shots."

"There may be no guarantee to that."

"I don't give a fuck, Petunia. Yeah, I know it's you. You better guarantee it, or I'll hang up and this conversation never happened." The tone of Jasmine's voice was hard, menacing. "Then you'll never see me or him again, and you know I can make that happen."

Once more, the other end of the line was silent, contemplative. "Where do you have in mind?"

She gave the coordinates and ended the call. She cast a glance towards the bed again. Roman was still asleep. She looked back out into the horizon, arms crossed, eyes narrowed in thought. The sun was rising, bleeding red. The significance was not lost on her.

------------------

We're getting closer to the end.

Credit to the owners of the gifs.

#roman reigns #wwe #roman reigns fanfiction #roman reigns smut #roman reigns fanfic #smackdown #the bloodline #roman reigns x oc #the tribal chief

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maccreadysbaby · 11 months ago

Text

A Hundred Ways to Become a Wayne

batfamily + oc insert

tw: mentions of death/su**ide

wanna read more? here’s the table of contents!

want to read the first fic in the hundred days series so you understand what’s going on here? here it is!

this took forever but i’m getting back in the groove! I got a little ahead of myself so I had to restart my whole timeline so it made sense. also yes asten is really determined to do this, you’ll learn why later

part sixteen

❝ WITHOUT A TRACE ❞

SATURDAY — AUGUST 8 — 10:04PM

SURPRISINGLY TO NO ONE, SLEEP WAS AVOIDED LIKE THE BLACK PLAGUE THAT NIGHT. Bentley, Nico, and Asten took to conversing quietly instead, all spread out on various parts of Bentley’s king sized bed. Nico was laying on his back across the foot of the mattress, bickering with Asten a little, but staring at the ceiling, mostly. He’d been jumping at shadows and flinching at the faintest of sounds for hours now. Bentley wasn’t even sure he’d seen him smile since they got to the Manor. Asten was posted up near the left edge of the bed, scouring the internet on Tim’s old laptop with a big bag of chips Jason had insisted they take up with them. He, as opposed to Nico, was taking their terrible circumstances in his stride, acting completely normal. Bentley was against the headboard, fiddling with his phone, trying his best not to be awkward.

Before they’d come up to Bentley’s bedroom, they’d been cooped up in the den, watching random movies on a quiet volume with Dick and Jason for company. It was the first time Bentley had seen Dick out of the hospital bed. Outwardly, he was just Dick Grayson. Charming, outgoing, fun-loving and even able to put Bentley’s jittery friends at ease; but Bentley could see the glimmer in his eyes that was dimmer than usual, the brief moments that he took to breathe and gather himself before he put the never-ending smile back on.

Jason had to have been seeing it, too. He was off to the side reading a book, but Bentley saw him react to things ever so slightly, like his finger twitching the slightest bit when Dick would shift uncomfortably, or the way his eyes flicked up for a split second when Asten’s Crime Alley drawl made a unmistakable appearance.

After they successfully spent nine solid hours in the den, and skipped lunch, Dick practically begged them to eat something. (Bentley realized just then that he and Asten hadn’t eaten at all that day.) Dinner was quiet.

Bruce had let them know Damian had gone to a friend’s house — a family called the Kents — and Bentley was ninety-nine percent sure it was because of him, Asten, and Nico. Why else would Damian spontaneously up and leave? Duke was working on a school project at a classmate’s, Steph was swamped with college, Babs was staying late at the library, Tim was working over (which really meant he was in the cave.), and Cass was… well… doing whatever Cass did. (No one could really keep tabs on her, could they?) Bentley assumed it had to do with her upcoming dance recital next week.

Bentley didn’t mind. The meal was quick and quiet, and Alfred made some really good pasta stuff, that was so good Asten got a second helping. (Which Bentley considered really good, because he was Brazilian and Brazilians were very good cooks.)

And that pretty much led to now, ten at night, sitting in Bentley’s bedroom that was pitch silent apart from Asten’s occasional crunching.

Bentley had exhausted all the games on his phone throughout the day, so now he was just kind of playing with his phone case. Nico’s phone kept going off repeatedly. (Bruce had called his parents to let them know what was going on, and they were coming back early, but their plane didn’t leave until morning so Nico had to stay with the Waynes until they got home.) Asten had said he called his uncle, but Bentley didn’t actually think so — he’d been near the bathroom door the whole time and never heard him say anything. But maybe he texted him. Either way, Asten was staying the night again, too. (As if Bruce would even consider letting him go home alone — He’d been checking on them nonstop, once every fifteen minutes at least. No one would know he was the calm and collected Batman based on the way he acted with his kids. Which was probably a good thing.)

“Bentley?”

It was the first time he’d heard Nico’s voice in quite a while, so both he and Asten perked up, glancing over at the blonde. His ocean blue eyes were locked on the ceiling. He was tugging on the strings of his light gray hoodie in a repetitive, rhythmic pattern, staring at nothing but deep in thought.

“Yeah?” Bentley questioned, picking at the edge of his clear phone case.

“What was your dream like? About her?”

Bentley blinked. They hadn’t talked about the Secret Keeper since they got home, and he really hadn’t expected Nico to be the one to bring it up. He tapped on his phone lightly, exhaling.

“Uh… well… it was really realistic,” Was how he started, gaze focusing on the dark comforter he had over his legs. “I thought I was awake, and I started hearing her. Talking to me.”

He tried to hide the little shiver that shook him when he imagined the warped, strange mixture of her voice and Damian’s, but he wasn’t sure he hid it very well. “I tried to run but she was everywhere, taking peoples faces, their voices, just for me to look up and realize it was her and not them. I...” He looked down a bit farther. “I threw up when I finally woke up.”

Nico glanced over at him, blue eyes bouncing across his face for a few seconds. “Mine was really realistic, too. I woke up when my baby sister was crying, and I went to get her, but when I opened her bedroom door it was…” He trailed off, focusing back on the ceiling. “She, uh… started chasing me around my house. And none of the doors went to the right rooms, everywhere was a dead end, and I couldn’t find my parents or my sister, and I…”

Bentley glanced over at him, watching him blink the tiniest hint of glassy-ness out of his eyes. “Don’t be embarrassed,” Nico finally continued. “I threw up, too. Like four times. It always happens when I get really scared.”

A moment of silence passed.

“Was yours weird like that, Asten?” He questioned, glancing over at him.

Asten shrugged, not looking up from the screen that was lighting up his face and hair. “It… uh…”

Bentley watched his green irises move from the screen, to the keyboard, down to his lap, bouncing around there for a few moments. “I don’t… really want to talk about it.”

Nico blinked, looking back at the ceiling. “…Sorry.”

“S’fine,”

The room fell quiet, and Bentley kept fiddling with his phone. Maybe Asten’s dream had something to do with his parents or Brazil — that would make sense why he didn’t want to talk about it. Or maybe he was just terrified and didn’t want to think about it. Justifiably.

Bentley breathed in and out. “How’s your research going?” He said after a few moments, glancing over at Asten.

The blue-haired-boy shrugged. “I’ve pretty much dead-ended on my missing persons list. It totals up to forty-nine in the past four months, in and around Gotham. A lot of them are already… dead.”

Asten picked up the laptop and moved next to Bentley, adjusting the screen so he could see it. He had a spreadsheet open with a list of names and links to the articles where he’d found them. The whole thing looked freakishly similar to Tim’s — Asten wasn’t kidding around with his research, apparently.

“Research for what?” Nico questioned, sitting up on his elbows to gaze at them.

“I’m making a list of all the potential Secret Keeper targets. Trying to find something to go off of. To find her boss,” Asten explained, nonchalantly.

Nico wasted no time sitting up with a high-pitched: “To find her what?!”

Asten shrugged. “I dunno! Her boss, her leader, her dad, whoever branded her head.”

“Branded her head?”

“Yes, branded her head,” Asten clarified with a sigh. Nico pushed himself upright and shimmied up to the headboard, on the other side of Asten to look at the computer.

“Why in the world are you trying to find her boss?” He murmured, scanning the spreadsheet quickly.

“Because I want to destroy her,” Asten said, with a completely blank, serious expression on his face. Nico stared at him for a solid ten seconds before he frowned.

“What’re you gonna do? She’s killed people!”

Asten scoffed. “I’m going to make her life a living hell, thank you very much. Bentley said he’s in.”

Nico’s panicky blue eyes flicked over to Bentley. “For real?”

He shrugged lightly. Chasing down murdery metahuman supervillains wasn’t exactly his idea of fun, but if it would convince Damian he deserved to live with them, he’d do that five times over. After all, it’s what his whole family did, every single night.

“Yeah,” He muttered quietly.

“If they harass you, harass them back,” Asten chimed, like it was some sort of nursery rhyme he learned when he was little. Nico gaped at him. “Fight fire with fire, they hit you, you hit them harder, all that jazz.”

“That’s illegal and immoral,” Nico murmured. “And I’m pretty sure fire plus fire just equals more fire.”

Bentley glanced up at Asten, who snickered: “Nothings illegal if you don’t get caught!”

Nico blinked a few times, in silence. “No,” He deadpanned. “How are her supposed victims going to help you find her boss, anyway?”

Asten shrugged. “I’m not actually sure yet. Just working with what I’ve got. Which isn’t much.”

None of them said anything for a solid ten seconds, all just glancing between each other and the computer.

“You guys can help me, actually. I’m trying to find anything besides being missing or dead that might link all these people together. If you want to see what you can find on some of them, that would be very helpful,” Asten explained.

“Helpful in finding a boss that might not even exist, of a lady who can kill you from four states away, that’s been personally attacking us. Sounds safe to me,” Nico muttered, and Asten elbowed him with a pointed glare.

“Shut up,”

“Why are you so obsessed with destroying her? Gotham has police and superheroes for that,” Nico continued.

Asten stared at the screen in silence for a moment, something grim swirling in the back of his eyes before he pushed it away with a sharp inhale. “Because she’s been stalking us like a freaking psycho. If she’s gonna mess with us, she’s gonna know who she’s messing with.”

Bentley blinked. “If she can read our minds, I guess she already does.”

Asten glanced over at him for a moment, their eyes locking for a solid five seconds before he looked away again.

“True,”

“You think she can just always read our minds? Whenever she wants?” Nico interjected, glancing between them worriedly. “Because I don’t think a supervillain that knows we’re trying to catch them is going to be very easy to catch. Not to mention she’ll probably kill us.”

Asten shrugged. “I mean, if she can, she already knows. There’s no point in stopping now.”

“Uh, yeah, there is. It’s called not dying,” Nico sassed.

“Would you just help me?” Asten finally muttered, gesturing to the computer. “Just pick anyone on the list and see what you can find. It’d take me forever to do all these.”

Bentley obeyed, turning his phone the right way and choosing a name from the very top of the list: Titus Lancaster.

He navigated to the internet and typed the name in, and immediately, several different results popped up.

The first one was on a website called Gotham’s Coldest Cases, and when he clicked on it, a picture of a boy with shiny, grayish-brown eyes was the first thing he saw. He was holding a guitar and sitting on the floor in front of a distant Christmas tree, wearing a red hoodie and gray sweatpants, smiling brightly up at the camera with dimples the size of craters. There was a red and black beanie pulled over his head, his deep brown hair only peeking out slightly from the front and back.

The headline beneath it was: New Jersey Couple Awakes to their Twelve Year Old Son Gone Without a Trace.

Bentley continued to scroll, watching the body of the article appear as he did.

Isabelle and Jonathan Lancaster awoke the morning of May 6 like it was any other day… little did they know, it wasn’t. When Isabelle Lancaster went to wake up her pre-teen son for school, he wasn’t there.

‘There was nothing in his room or in the rest of the house that would suggest he ran away. Even his cellphone was still charging on his nightstand.’ Says Eugenia Carlomile, head detective on the case. ‘No signs of forced entry or forced exit, no sightings of him or any suspicious persons anywhere outside of their house. We’re waiting for further evidence to continue our search.’

Titus Lancaster was last seen on May 5, when he and his parents parted ways for bed around 10:45pm. He was reportedly wearing a black hoodie with his last name and the number 16 on the back, and the Gotham City Middle School basketball logo on the front, with light gray sweatpants and a black and red beanie on his head.

As of today, July 17, there are still no sightings of Titus. His family is holding an empty, closed casket funeral that is open to the public for anyone who wishes to grieve with them on July 27.

If you have seen or believe you have seen Titus Lancaster, or have heard any additional information regarding his disappearance, please contact the Gotham City Police Department at (856)-916-GCPD.

Bentley scrolled back to the top and saved the website to his favorites folder, before tapping his way back to the initial search results.

The second website that came up was Gotham News Network (GNN). When he opened it, there was a button at the top that said About the Disappearance of Titus Lancaster, but below that stood the large headline: Isabelle and Jonathan Lancaster Found Dead.

He took a deep breath, in and out, then scrolled down.

Isabelle and Jonathan Lancaster were found dead in their garage due to asphyxiation on July 28, caused by the trapped fumes of two running vehicles. Detective Eugenia Carlomile suggests this was a direct response to their missing twelve-year-old son, Titus Lancaster’s closed casket funeral the day before.

Bentley opted out of reading the rest of the article, saving it to his file with the other instead.

He couldn’t even imagine going missing, only to come back and learn your parents were dead.

The rest of the articles were repeats of those two, the only other relevant website being one called Gotham Areopagus. Bentley clicked on it, but it just ended up being a congratulations on their website for a group graduating from a children’s physics course there early in the year. Titus was among the list of names.

“I didn’t find anything about Titus, other than what happened to him and his parents,” Bentley said quietly, glancing over at Asten. “And that he took some class at a place called the… Areopagus?”

Asten nodded lightly, typing something next to Titus’s name. “It’s some rich kid's extracurricular class thing. I think people go there to just… take more classes? Nico’s been there.”

Bentley glanced over at the blonde, who shrugged. “It’s like, hands on STEM class stuff. I only went to a birthday party there, but there are year-long courses and stuff you can take.”

Bentley nodded lightly. He wasn’t going to ask what STEM meant.

“I’m surprised you didn’t know about it, nosebleed,” Asten taunted, nudging Bentley with his elbow. “Y’know, being the kid of the richest man, like, ever, and everything.”

Bentley shrugged. “I’m not from here, remember? I’m from Drew.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Asten continued. “You can look up someone else, then. It’s fine if you can’t find much.”

Bentley moved onto another random name, in the middle of the list: Davis Henderson.

Why did he recognize that name?

He typed it into his browser, scanning the results that popped up. The first one was on a news site called Right Now New Jersey, and when he clicked on it, the headline read: New Jersey College Student Assaulted at Work.

When he opened it, a photograph of an eerily familiar, blonde-haired-green-eyed guy came up. He was wearing a blue button up and a little waist apron, with a notepad and pen in his hands, smiling down at the camera. Behind him was a bar.

The bar Bentley went into when he was running from his father last year. It was that Davis, the waiter that tried to keep Bentley away from his father’s men, to protect him, only to get the butt of a pistol to his head.

21-year-old Davis Henderson was assaulted by an unknown assailant in the back room of the bar he works at. He was found unconscious with a blow to the head by coworker, Madison Langford, who called the police. ‘All I saw was blood, a lot of it, and I immediately called the cops,’ Said Langford, Henderson’s coworker in training. ‘I was so afraid he might’ve been dead.’

Henderson woke up confused and unable to give the police any description of his assailant or the incident in question. The camera system in the bar seemed to have been tampered with, as the exact time of the assault was cut out of the footage. More on this story as it develops.

Bentley quickly clicked off of that article. He could still remember the way the gun cracked as it collided with the waiter’s head. The way he dropped like a rag doll. The fact that it was all his fault.

He silently scrolled down to the next article instead, on the same website as Titus’s: Gotham’s Coldest Cases. The headline was: Star Princeton University Student Missing?

He opened it up and scrolled past the exact picture of Davis that was on the other website.

21-year-old Princeton University student Davis Henderson was declared missing on August 2nd, after not showing up to work or classes for 24 hours.

He was last seen on surveillance walking between his home and work on August 1st at approximately 3:27am on 9th street, near Whitehouse Library and The Gotham Areopagus. He was wearing a blue button-up, black slacks, and black tennis-shoes. He didn’t make contact with anyone on or around the time of his disappearance, and there is no surveillance footage of him returning to his apartment complex that night or the following 48 hours.

‘I assumed he was sick when he didn’t come to class,’ Said Ethan Hunt, Davis’s classmate at Princeton University. ‘But he didn’t respond all day. I drove all the way to his apartment complex in Gotham, to make sure he hadn’t fallen seriously ill, but it was still locked and he wasn’t home.’

If you have seen or believe you have seen Davis Henderson, or have heard any additional information regarding his disappearance, please contact the Gotham City Police Department at (856)-916-GCPD.

Bentley sighed lightly and closed the website. Davis was so nice to him, and now he was… gone. Disappeared off the street.

And wasn’t Whitehouse Library the same place where The Secret Keeper chased Asten?

When he went through more of the search results, they were just repeats of those two stories, plus a few social media posts where Davis was tagged. Bentley scoured four different accounts of his, even going back as far as when he was a young teenager, but there was nothing that aided his search or seemed suspicious in the slightest.

Bentley sighed heavily, glancing at the list Asten had made. “This guy was last seen in the same area where the Secret Keeper chased you.”

Asten glanced over at him, then at his phone. “Who?”

“Davis Henderson,” Bentley stated, and Asten nodded, finding Davis’s column and typing a few things next to his name.

“I’m not finding anything on this Olivia girl but her dream and the reports of her going missing,” Nico stated. “She saw the Secret Keeper in her yard.”

“That’s fine,” Asten muttered.

Well, three down. Forty-six to go.

—

dedicated to @sassenashsworld 💚

—

tag list! (If you want me to remove or add you, ask in comments!)

@fleur-alise @sarcopterygiian @cademygod

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saebaragi · 2 years ago

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i miss nine percent.

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crazychaoticizzy · 2 years ago

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Quiet Melodies

Dancing in the living room with your beloved husband.

ERWIN X READER

CONTENT: domestic married life fluff

WORD COUNT: 532

masterlist

AOT masterlist

You and Erwin owned an old record player, a gift your grandmother gave the two of you when you got married. She gave it to you hoping it would get more use, since she never got the chance to play it when her husband died soon after your mother was born. She hoped you and Erwin would use it for it’s intended purpose.

It was one of the last things of hers you had, along with the simple ring on your finger. You treasured both items and held them close to your heart, especially since both objects were tangible evidence of your love for Commander Erwin Smith.

Unfortunately, your grandmother”s wish of the record player being used more was never fulfilled. With Erwin being gone more often than not for extended periods of time, you were left alone in a quiet house. Sure, you sometimes played a record and let the quiet melody drift throughout the house, but it’s not what your grandmother wanted. She wanted for you and Erwin to dance together. She wanted for you and Erwin to clean the house to the soft instrumentals, maybe she even wanted you to use it during more intimate times.

But no, the record player stayed silent ninety-nine percent of the time, collecting dust on its shelf.

On the rare occasion that Erwin was home for more than one day, on the occasions that you had the time, the two of you used it for its intended purpose.

He would initiate it, wordlessly grabbing a record from its slip and putting it on the player. Then he’d turn around, and whether you were sitting or standing he would bow to you before holding put a hand and asking for a dance.

You happily took his hand every time, and it didn’t long for the two of you to be smiling like idiots, so obviously in love.

You would sway to the beat, sometimes in silence, but more often talking about trivial matters.

Erwin never wanted to bring his work back home, he didn’t like talking about the impending doom of the titans. He didn’t want to worry you even more, so he very rarely talked about it when he was in your presence. He only spoke of it when new discoveries were found, when humanity took little footsteps in reclaiming what was once theirs.

You would always listen so intently, nodding along and asking the occasional question to let him know you were listening.

Sometimes the two of you entertain the thought of children, and you always have a thoughtful discussion.

But most of the time, quiet I love yous are exchanged, and even more promises are made. Sometimes the two of you promise to keep loving each other forever, to always be there for one another and be present in some way, shape or form.

Erwin Smith loves you with all his heart, and you love Erwin Smith with all of yours. And there has never been a moment in time where you felt prouder to be his wife—his chosen one, his life, a Smith—than when the two of you danced in your living room to quiet melodies.

#attack on titan x you #attack on titan #attack on titan x reader #erwin smith #erwin smith x reader #erwin smith x you #shingeki no kyoujin erwin #shingeki no kyoujin #shingeki no kyoujin x reader #erwin x you #erwin x reader #domestic fluff #izzy’s imagines ❀

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disappearinginq · 8 months ago

Note

Fic Writer asks: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 12 and 25?

the last sentence you wrote Technically, 3 sentences, because they don't make a lot of sense without context: “You moved the fucking river!” Jamie shouted, grabbing John by the front of his jacket and shoving him against the wall. “You moved the river - this is your fault! What the fuck is the matter with you - don’t you ever think more than three seconds in front of you?! You could’ve killed him, he almost died, he still could - because you never fucking think.”

2. a character whose POV you’re currently exploring Ugghhh....a lot? Currently tooling around with my own characters, but in fandom - Bobby Nash, Will Trent, Jamie and Kayce Dutton, and Charlie Hudson (only the most recently opened documents)

3. how do you feel about your current wip?

Which one? I tend to work on so many because one or more will just wind up irritating me with something or another, I'll get stuck, and rather than not write anything at all, I'll just start something new. Right now though - irritated at all of them because THEY WILL NOT WRITE THEMSELVES AND THAT IS TERRIBLY RUDE.

4. a story idea you haven’t written yet Given I literally just mentioned as mostly a fever dream to @amandagaelic - a modern crossover between Yellowstone, Bonanza, and Big Valley, because I love westerns in almost every shape and form, and I think it would be funny as fuck if Victoria Barkley slapped the shit out of John Dutton for how he treats his children, and Adam, Jamie, and Jarrod would hit it off well being The Brains of the Operations, and I think The Spicy Younger Siblings Heath, Little Joe, and Kayce would be hilarious. And probably dangerous. But mostly funny.

5. first sentence of the fifth paragraph of an unpublished WIP Some of these are just hilarious out of context:

"One hundred percent real birds." - 9-1-1 Bobby and Buck Mistaken for Related fic

“You know, that game for kids - you get your own whiteboard and you have to draw pictures that will make your teammate guess the clue you have.” - Will Trent fic dealing with aphasia

They were used to close quarters, working and living with one another day in and day out, 365 days of the year, but there was a difference when you were cold, wet, and miserable. - Yellowstone fic where Kayce is caught in a flash flood

“Would you like it in Spanish? No. How about German? Nein. French? Non. It’s not happening. It can’t be done. Do you have any idea how many people have died trying to do it?” - Next chapter of Consequences for Deception

12. a trope you’re really into right now

I was actually discussing this again with @amandagaelic - a trope that I seem to use a lot is problems with communications. Either a character can't talk, won't talk, shouldn't talk - but I seem to like forcing them into other ways of communicating rather than just spoken.

The other trope is "I'm so fucking mad at source material because this could be brilliant BUT YOU RUINED IT AND NOW I HAVE TO FIX IT". :-D I think most hurt/comfort/whump writers have a really specific trope they like, like above all others, but I really like them all. Or, one where it's Found Family not Romantic Interest that is the one that helps them out.

25. Besides writing, what are your other hobbies?

Oof. I actually rehomed my horses, so that's one hobby down. Photography, cooking, gardening, and crocheting. Tried the knitting thing, and no me gusta. It takes forever even if I like the end product a smidge more. Gardening - every time I'm left alone, I wind up with a new garden. And I always have something poisonous growing in them. I have like...nine aconite/monkshood plants that grow almost six feet tall, henbane, foxglove, poppies, datura, etc. I don't like people picking my flowers. Photography - we have a running joke about. My sister goes on vacation with me and comes back with 900 photos. I come back with 5000+ and that's not even a joke. Cooking - not to be compared to baking - I love because food is delicious, and I like trying new things all the time.

#asks answered #games we play #every time I think I'm going to be early #I think I'll check tumblr #and then well #you see what happens #writing asks

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deadqueenz · 1 year ago

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Eddie Gluskin x Female Reader: My Everything

Part Four: The Secrets Withheld

It was a cloudy morning, no weather report mentioned rain or the chance of the sun shining other than today would be one-hundred percent cloudy. You didn't mind, not one bit. After all, you had something far more important to focus on.

You found his name, Eddie Gluskin. You knew what he did for a living which was painfully obvious, a tailor. You knew his weekly schedule, everything he did from Sunday To Saturday. And you were goddamn proud of it.

It's official, you two are definitely meant to be. And no one would get in your way. You'll get rid of them, before they could try anything. Now, today was the big day, you were going to go into the shop for the first time! Your hands trembled as you picked up your keys, taking one last glance at yourself in the mirror.

Everything was perfect, from your feet and up. It screamed you. You walk out the front door, starting your trek back to the shop, not many people were out today, which was even better news, meaning perhaps no one would be going into the Tailor shop.

Soon you stopped in front of the shop again, your heart pounding in your chest. You look into the shop, spotting the mannequins in the dark windows, but the lights inside the shop were off. You check the time, 9:15 A.M.. He usually opens a little before nine, why was the Tailor shop dark?

It didn't make sense, you know for certain he should've been here. You watched him for days, you know his schedule! Where is he!? Just as you were slowly starting to panic, you hear footsteps looking to the right to see Eddie Gluskin walking towards you with a smile on his face.

You found yourself unable to look away from his tall frame, his black hair neat as always, dark blue vest buttoned all the way and his white dress shirt had it sleeves cuffed a little ways above his wrists.

He walks closer to his shop, long strides slowly coming to a stop when he sees you standing there watching him in what seemed like awe. He smiles, and your heart flutters at the sight. If only you could get a picture, no video of his smile.

Of course this wasn't the first time you seen Eddie smiled, but this time it was directed at you, for you and only you. How could you not want to capture it and keep it forever? "Can I help you, Darling?" He asks with a small tilt of his head, you swallow hard, mouth becoming dry, tongue stuck to the roof of your damned mouth.

You had to say something, but you couldn't! How you wanted to pour your heart out, you practiced what to say when you came here today, so many times that you were saying it to Eddie Gluskin in your dreams, in your fantasies. And yet, here you were, speechless.

Your wanted to run away in shame and embarrassment, but your legs wouldn't listen to you. Eddie only chuckles, making your breath catch in your throat as he moves closer to his shop door and unlocks it, he opens it and with that killer smile of his, he waits for you to step inside.

You clutch your purse tightly in your hands, moving inside and nearly swoon at your progress. You made it inside the shop, you talked to him, you didn't run away, and he didn't call you weird or say you were creeping him out! Major progress!

"Give me one second Darling, why don't you have a seat, and I'll be right back."

As he walks past you, he motions with his hand towards a small seating area with a round coffee table with a few books on top of it. You slowly make your way over, sitting down on the small sofa and pick up one of the books, slowly going through it.

Sketches and designs of different women in different wedding dresses, some with veils of different styles and sizes and some without them. The dresses were different styles but they all had one thing in common, they were long, you couldn't see the women in the sketches feet or their shoes. None of the dresses were short above the ankles nor knees, nor showed any cleavage.

Some dresses stop at the collarbone, some were stopped at the throat. Some dresses were old fashioned while some were modernized but still not showing the shoes they wore. You felt a pang of jealousy in your chest, these women....they were beautiful, your jaw twitches.

He must've drawn these from the women who came into the shop. Leaving them out for anyone who came looking for dresses, how you wanted to burn the damned thing, you didn't like that Eddie saw and sketched these women, how he must've took hours and they were eating up his attentive gaze the entire time.

You could certainly do better than them, no contest. You slam the book close, tossing it onto the table just as Eddie walks back into the room. "Apologies my dear, I wasn't expecting customers today." He smiles walking over to you, perfect that means you had him to yourself with no annoying distractions.

"Ah, I can come back another time...."

You trail off getting to your feet, only for Eddie to stop you with a raise of his hand. "There's no need, you're here now." He smiles, looking down at the sketchbook and fixes it to the neat way it was before. "Have you found something you liked, Darling?" He asks lifting his blue eyes to you and you hold back on scoffing in disgust.

"I prefer something more physical, something I could feel and touch. Just because something looks right, doesn't mean it is right."

Your tone was blunt, Eddie raising his eyebrows in curiosity before chuckling softly. "Yes, you're right darling, my apologies." He gets to his feet, motioning for you to follow him as the two of you walked through his shop, you telling him what type of wedding dress you were looking for as Eddie listens intensely.

Any other person would've asked him why wasn't he writing anything down, but you knew he was taking in every tiny detail of your words, and also planning to add some details here and there on his own. You've heard the soon-to-be brides asking for this, that and a third and Eddie Gluskin gave them exactly that...but with an extra touch.

Neither of them complained, all left extremely satisfied with a skip in their step and smiles on their faces. Now, the big question was, how would he satisfy you? You made it this far by practicing, you knew he wouldn't have customers today, it was usually a slow weekday where he rarely get customers, rarely but often times than not, he wouldn't get customers and would busy himself with fixing clothes that were brought, but it seems like even he didn't have that to do today.

How fortunate can you get?

How should you act now? You don't wanna be blunt and cold with your lover, no, no, no! You don't want him to run off, but you didn't want to be all, damsel in distress either. So how about somewhere in the middle? You smirk noticing a closed cardboard box out of the way on the floor, if you time it just right...

"Ah, and perhaps if it's not to much troub-"

You turn your head, snapping your fingers as if the thought just came to you and reach into your purse as you talk when you nearly trip and fall over the box. Eddie quickly reaches out, grabbing you firmly by the waist and pulls you tight against his body, your legs tremble and it took all of your will and then some not to fall apart then and there.

Eddie Gluskin was touching you, this is not a drill, don't moan, don't panic, don't faint. Your heart beats rapidly, your breathing becomes slightly heavier, you turn your head, looking down at the box and perfect your feign gasp of shock when you see you knocked over a naked mannequin as well.

"Oh no, oh no, no, no."

You say it low under your breath, a little bit louder enough for Eddie to hear as he asses the damage. Nothing was broken, but what about you? "Are you alright, Darling?" He asks looking down at you, but your face was turned away to look at the box and fallen mannequin.

He fails to notice the way you bit your lip, trying your best to hold back a moan as he spoke. He called you Darling, his arm was firmly around his waist, holding you tightly against his muscular body, you could smell his cologne, now you know which one to buy and spray on your pillow each night.

This was the best moment of your life, you could die in this moment as long as Eddie went first so he wouldn't be alone, besides no other bitch can have him. Only you, because he was for you, and you only.

"Yes, I'm sorry. I...."

You trail off, turning your head to him to answer him but turn to look back at the box and fallen mannequin, Eddie notices and chuckles deeply. "It's alright Darling, nothing is broken." He spoke in a husky whisper, heat pools in your very center, as your mouth goes dry.

You turn your head to look up at him, noticing his blue eyes were focused on the mannequin, was it wrong to feel jealousy over a mannequin? "Ah..." You start to shift in his arms, his eyes widening slightly and he blinks once, turning his attention back on you with a charismatic smile.

"Apologies Darling, forgive me."

He removed his arm from around you, once he made sure you were okay and not injured in any way before leading you back towards the main area of his shop. He promises to have some sketches drawn out for you to look at in a few days and you agreed, planning to come back then.

With his usual gentleman and charismatic smile, he sees you off personally, wishing you a peaceful and wonderful afternoon. Unbeknownst to you, he watches you until you disappear around the corner, before walking back into his shop.

He smiles remembering how you were pressed up against his body, how your heart raced in your chest, you wouldn't look up at him, your head always turned away, poor thing you were embarrassed weren't you? Who ever you get married to, he hoped they would treat you well.

What was the saying? Always the bridesmaid never the bride? Well, Eddie Gluskin was always the Tailor, never the groom. He seen so many women talking about their husbands, most had happy endings some didn't.

The ones that didn't would come back bringing their wedding dresses with them, and ask him to turn it into a formal outfit for them to wear, or gave the wedding dress back to him for him to deal with however Eddie deemed fit. He silently wondered what your fate would be, but also his own, would he ever be happy? Would he ever fall in love? Would any woman love him the way he loved them?

He just wanted a wife, a woman he could love and cherish, to be a wonderful husband, to be a father, a father he never had and....and....Was that so wrong? Not wanting to deal with more customers, he locks the door and turn off the lights, disappearing into the back and underneath the floor, going into the secret basement.

No one knew he had one, unless you knew how and where to look. There before him, was his last ex-girlfriend wearing a white wedding dress, that he made for their future together as she laid on her back, eyes closed for all eternity.

"Hello Darling." He whispers walking towards her and placing a hand on her cold stiff one, it was truly unfortunate that she decided to become a foul whore and cheat on him behind his back, and unfortunate for her to run straight to him after hearing that she was a suspect for the murder of the man she cheated on him with.

She begged Eddie to say she was with him (even though she wasn't) if the cops ever showed up to interrogate him. He promised he would, a lie of course, before hitting her over the head killing her instantly. It was while he was cleaning up the mess he saw the sonogram with her and the man she was cheating with name on it.

Did Eddie feel bad? No. And still to the present day, he did not. Whoever murdered the man before him, he silently thank them because if he would've gotten his hands on him....No, no, let's not think of the past. Focus on the present and future, for now....He would keep her down here for a little longer, before taking her body somewhere and dumping it.

For now, let police think she's on the run, give them a wild goose chase. With a smile, Eddie turns and walks out the basement leaving the corpse of his could've been bride alone in the darkness.

#outlast #whistle blower #eddie gluskin #outlast eddie #the groom

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5ft2sunflower · 2 years ago

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TikTok Is Obsessed With Water. Experts Are Concerned

Welcome to WaterTok, where the ice is loud, the vibes relentlessly positive, and the beverages zero-calorie

BY EJ DICKSON | APRIL 14, 2023 | Article Link

“I’m on my second water of the day and it is 11:55, so I am cruisin’ with the water goals today!” Tonya Spanglo cheerily announces in her TikTok video. She bounds over to her “water bar,” a collection of sundry Skinny Mix syrups on a Lazy Susan. Cotton candy flavor? Nope. Dragon fruit acai? Nah, not today. She settles on coconut, mixed with a packet of pineapple flavoring, because, as she trumpets, “Mama’s trying to have a pina colada!” She breaks out her peach-colored, 40 oz. Simple Modern cup, twirls around her straw, and takes a sip before breaking out into Rupert Holmes’ “Escape (The Pina Colada Song).”

Welcome to WaterTok, where the ice is loud, the vibes relentlessly positive, and the beverages zero-calorie. The hashtag, which has about 94.1 million views, features a panoply of upbeat, mostly white women in athleisure with charming Southern accents, showing off their recipes for flavored water in their giant metal Stanley cups. There is peach-ring flavored water. There is Dole Whip-flavored water. There is even banana-split-flavored water, and, perhaps most infamously, birthday cake.

With her messy bun, Oklahoman twang, and relentlessly upbeat manner, Spanglo, who goes by @takingmylifebackat42 on TikTok, is the undisputed champion of the genre, posting her first concoction — a coconut-and-pineapple-flavored beverage mixed with Sonic’s ocean water packet, which she dubs “mermaid water” — in June 2022. “I have been dubbed the queen of WaterTok,” she tells Rolling Stone, as her four-year-old granddaughter plays in the background (later, she will request a sip of water, though Spanglo will inform me that it is plain). Through posting her water recipes on TikTok, she’s garnered more than 700,000 followers, as well as an affiliate partnership with Skinny Mixes, from which she says she gains a 10 percent sales commission with her videos. (A rep for Skinny Mixes confirmed to Rolling Stone that following Spanglo’s mermaid water video, Mermaid sold out a record seven times.)

Editor’s picks

Like many other food trends on TikTok, #WaterTok could be seen as relatively innocuous, if not a little silly; many commenters have pointed out that flavored water is essentially juice, or that using artificial sweetener-laden Skinny syrup is not exactly healthy. Others have noted that WaterTok skews heavily white, female, and Southern (a critique that Spanglo, who is all three, dismisses: “Maybe I need to do more research, [but] I do not know where that came from,” she says).

Meagan Anderson, an over-40 lifestyle influencer from Texas who has made her own #WaterTok videos involving collagen, acknowledges that even she was wary when she first saw the trend: “Water seems so simple. And flavored packets have been around forever. It’s basically the same thing as Kool-Aid to someone my age,” she tells Rolling Stone. “It was funny — the younger generation was basically making Kool-Aid come back again, kinda like skinny jeans or parachute pants.”

Yet watching content creators on TikTok playing alchemist with various flavored packets and syrups is admittedly hypnotizing, even if it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why. Some experts, however, have genuine concerns about the trend, pointing out that because many of the videos are targeted toward weight loss, the videos could be harmful to those struggling with disordered eating habits.

WaterTok “has the element of danger because it is a classic eating disorderbehavior that happens,” says Jillian Lampert, chief strategy officer for the Emily Program and Veritas Collaborative, which offers comprehensive eating-disorder treatment programs in nine states. “In their fear and anxiety about eating and weight, they try to minimize the calories that come in.” Lampert refers to the practice of filling up on fluids as a means of ignoring hunger cues as “long-term, old-school eating disorder behavior.”

To be fair, not every WaterTok video is hashtagged #weightloss, and the trend is not overtly coded as a weight-loss method. Yet its origins are indeed rooted in weight loss, at least according to Spanglo, who is not the original progenitor of the trend but has certainly done more than anyone else to popularize it. Spanglo tells Rolling Stone she began drinking flavored water as a way to meet her water goals after having gastric sleeve surgery three years ago, with her doctor recommending she drink at least 64 ounces per day to aid in her recovery. She says drinking plain water made her literally ill: “It would make me so full I would puke. You feel like something is erupting in your esophagus,” she says. She had already been using Skinny syrups to flavor her coffee, so she decided to try using them to flavor her water; following her surgery, she has lost more than 220 pounds, she says.

Spanglo says she started posting her water recipes on TikTok last year, with her mermaid water and her “unicorn” water — a mix of a pink Starbursts packet and Skinny syrup’s blue raspberry frosting flavor — racking up millions of views. Along with her general weight-loss content, she now posts water recipes almost every day, most of which get hundreds of thousands of views; after featuring her new clear cup (“so people can see all the colors”) in a recent video, the cup sold out on Amazon within two hours of the video going live.

Though Spanglo says her followers range widely in terms of demographics, she estimates that about 60 percent are gastric bypass patients like her who are trying to meet their water goals. “We have built this weight-loss community and we are all getting healthier and happier together,” she says.

Lampert, however, has concerns about WaterTok, particularly since much of the content is marketed with the hashtag #weightloss. Though, she says, it will likely prove harmless for the majority of those who encounter it, for people who are vulnerable to developing disordered eating habits, “it can very easily be a way for people to feel like they are ingesting food and adequate nourishment when they are not,” she admits.

In addition to the fact that many people with eating disorders drink excessive amounts of water to drown out hunger cues, there are also significant healthissues associated with overconsumption of water, says Wendy Oliver-Pyatt, the CEO and chief medical officer of Within Health, a remote treatment program for people with eating disorders. She cites hyponatremia, a condition that causes low levels of sodium in the body and can potentially lead to cardiac effects, as one potential complication.

“Anything that is egging us on to drink water to lose weight has the potential to take us out of being balanced and thoughtful in our pursuit of health, to doing things that become dangerous,” she says. Though there is a clear distinction between trying to stay well-hydrated (the standard rule of thumb for adults is about 64 fluid ounces, or eight cups, per day) and overconsumption of water to the point of risking one’s health, Oliver-Pyatt cautions that using water as a weight-loss tool makes it easier for people to lose sight of that distinction. “If you’re drinking water to lose weight, Houston, we have a problem,” she says.

That concern is exacerbated by the nature of TikTok’s algorithm, which recommends content to users that they are more likely to engage with, regardless of whether they’re actively searching for it. Due to its algorithm and its relatively young user base, TikTok has come under scrutiny from eating disorder specialists, who have argued that the platform prioritizes potentially harmful content in the form of weight-loss ads and potentially triggering “What I Eat In a Day”-type videos.

In response to this criticism, TikTok issued a policy limiting weight-loss product ads for those under 18, and it has also added a disclaimer to weight-loss searches on the app. When asked for comment, a spokesperson for TikTok noted #WaterTok does not appear to be violative of any of its policies, stating, “content that promotes, normalizes, or glorifies disordered eating is prohibited on TikTok and we remove content that violates those guidelines.”

Nonetheless, despite these safeguards, Lampert says the prospect of falling down a weight-loss-content rabbit hole on an app like TikTok can be dangerous for those struggling with disordered eating.

“From a client perspective, we hear so much [about TikTok], regularly, with clients under 40,” she says. “The story used to be, ‘I heard about this diet from a friend and then before I knew it I was out of control.’ Now, all of the stories start with, ‘I was online and I saw this thing and I got sucked into it, and even when I tried to change my content I couldn’t, and my whole feed was around diet and weight loss.’ That’s really striking to me as a clinician.”

When asked about whether her WaterTok videos promote disordered eating, Spanglo says she never advocates for flavored water as a meal replacement (though she does make videos promoting protein shakes for this purpose), and that she notes in most of her videos and Lives that she is not a trained dietitian or nutritionist. “I’m not telling you what’ll work for you. I’m saying what worked for me,” she says. Anderson says that she is “12,000 percent against” using flavored water as a “cheat or hack”: “I am anti-diet and anti-skipping calories. I am pro giving your body things it needs,” she says. “This does not add to your nutritional needs. It’s just elevating your water.”

Yet with WaterTok booming and receiving media coverage around the world — Spanglo says that within the past 48 hours alone, she received requests from Katie Couric, the Drew Barrymore show, and the New York Post to talk about her videos — it’s easy to see how that message could potentially get lost in a sea of general diet and weight-loss content promoted as wellness.

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“It will help some people because they’ll drink more water,” says Lampert. “But some people will think that drinking birthday-cake-flavored water is the same as eating birthday cake. And it’s not.”

Update 1:40 p.m., 4/14/23: This story has been updated to include comment from a TikTok spokesperson.

#TikTok #WaterTok #Flavored water #Jillian Lampert #Tonya Spanglo #Lifestyle influencer

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