#not good or anything but at least they seem to be there like they come into sight you think about them and develop them more

[slater-baby]

Money Shot

Simon "Ghost" Riley x f!Reader

Tags - Squirting, voyeurism, toys, mentions of breeding

-

“Simon?” Price calls from the head of the boardroom, arms crossed in deep contemplation, “What do you think? Is it feasible?”

“Feasible? Sure,” He glances at the tactical plan with a minute shake of his head, “Advisable? Not so much. I mean, that structure is...what? Three, four meters? Unless the drop point is on the fuckin' roof, there’s no way the cunts won’t see us coming.”

“Hm,” Price grunts, running a hand through his beard. Around the boardroom, various members of the congregation shift in their seats.

“What about…” Gaz begins, and then, Simon hears it.

BZZ.

“Goddamnit,” he whispers beneath his breath, leaning forward in his chair to pull his phone out of his pocket. Just recently, he’d installed a set of cameras about the house and porch.

‘Just for extra security, love,’ he’d told you. Since you moved in with him—and what with your name now written into his will—his time away on deployment and in the office had become…a liability, to say the least. 

On a good day, Simon didn’t like to leave you by yourself. But for extended periods of time? When he couldn’t so much as pick up the phone to send you a text?

His fried nerves had all but demanded it. The cameras were his only failsafe. His only means of connecting with you, even when you were oblivious to it. In his mind, when he was deployed to some desolate war zone, slumming it in drafty safehouses, sustaining himself on MREs and cigarettes, then just seeing you quiet and content in your usual place on the sofa, flipping through a book or doing a face mask, would be enough to tide him over. 

Though, he’d failed to consider just how goddamn annoying the notifications would soon become.

Hurriedly, he glances at his phone under the table, halfheartedly listening to the meeting.

‘MASTER BEDROOM - MOVEMENT DETECTED,’ his phone so helpfully supplies him.

He scowls.

Movement detected. Yeah, right. Just like the other twenty times it’d told him that in the past hour alone. He digs his index finger into the ringer switch, but just at that moment, another notification comes.

And with it, another…And another…And another….

‘MOVEMENT DETECTED’

‘MOVEMENT DETECTED’

‘MOVEMENT DETECTED,’ it says to him yet again, as if he were an idiot too dull to even read.

“MOVEMENT DETECTED!! INTRUDER ALERT!!!” It seems to screech, “GRAB YOUR GUN, SOLDIER, THE DAY ISN’T OVER YET!!’

Annoyance climbing by the minute, Simon hurriedly flicks through his apps, all too eager to return to the meeting at hand. Within seconds, he’s staring at the grey display of your sparsely lit living room.

If anything, it’s a bit messy, but hardly remarkable. The TV is on, some soapy romance show still rolling in the background. There’s a pillow on the floor. The cat is lounging in a flickering patch of dying sunlight. Nothing out of the ordinary. 

He switches to the kitchen. Nothing but the hum of the old fridge greets him. And in the dining room, it’s a similar story. So, attention wavering with every word that Kyle speaks, he angrily flicks through the porch cameras and straight to the master bedroom. 

And that’s when he hears it.

The smallest, weakest little voice…

“God, Simon…”

At the sound—barely audible over the noise of Price’s lecture—his heart rate spikes.

Physically, he can feel his blood rushing, nerves shredding themselves to pieces as he hurriedly presses the rotate button on screen. Slowly—almost as if to taunt him—the janky camera begins to turn. And with every second longer he has to wait, darker possibilities begin to flood his synapses.

You’d fainted.

You’d fallen.

You’d broken a bone.

Or, perhaps the very worst, he’d find someone else standing over you.The exact reason he’d installed the cameras in the first place.

He waits with bated breath, practically unblinking, until he finds the source of the movement. The blankets atop the bed jostle, and he breathes a sigh of relief when he sees your familiar form swathed in pillows and fluff. Safe, warm, and most importantly, alone.

“Simon…” you say again—voice strained. Almost as if you were…crying?

Again, he glances at Price. The man is distracted, going on about the MTC once more. Surreptitiously, Simon looks back down at his phone, confused.

Were you sick? Laid up in bed with a fever?

No, somehow that didn’t feel like the right description. Last month, when you’d caught the flu, you could hardly stand to sit still. Simon practically had to chain you to the bed just to force you to get some decent rest.

Then, what could it be?

Did you miss him, perhaps?

At the thought, his chest warms. In all his years of service, Simon never had someone to miss him. He had his friends, sure, but they were his home away from home, the family he’d never known he’d find. Off service, however, before he’d met you, home wasn’t warmth. It wasn’t happiness. It wasn’t dear to his heart. Hell, it was little more than a house, with a sofa and television. 

But when you came along….

You, with your shining eyes, witty jokes, and unending support…

He’d never known that the most precious gift a man could receive is someone to come home to at night and to miss him when he leaves in the morning.

Fondly, he looks at his phone screen, hardly listening to the meeting at hand.

Within your cradle of old blankets and sheets, you shift, a whimper escaping your mouth. It echoes in the grainy speakers of his phone, and he hardly even thinks to lower the volume…

That is, until you move again, and the blankets fall down.

One of your arms pushes the blankets down, and suddenly, Simon has an eyeful of your bare tits. Naked, shining with sweat, and nipples raw from being tweaked.

Instantly, his eyes go wide, and he jolts forward to hide his phone in the shadow of the conference table. 

Not crying. Definitely not crying, his brain rambles, watching as the curve of your breasts squish into the mattress as you twist beneath the sheets. The flimsy fabric, threadbare after so many long nights together, wraps around your legs like a vice. 

And that is exactly when he sees it.

Your back arches way from the mattress and your entire body thrums with electricity, hips moving fast and hard, every roll just as desperate and jagged as when you slide into his lap during movie nights, unbuckling his belt before he can even think to open his mouth.

“Fuck!” You nearly scream—and Simon literally flinches, hurriedly whipping his head around to look at the other men.

“Simon?” Price suddenly questions, “You alright? Was that your phone again?”

“Um,” he begins tactfully, clearing his throat, “Yeah—just m’girlfriend walkin’ in front o’ the camera again.”

“Oh,” Price nods, “She doing alright? Haven’t seen ‘er recently.”

“Yeah—she’s…” he huffs, blindly rapidly down at his phone where you writhe against the sheets, fingers thrusting between your thighs.

“She’s doing…great,” he manages, swallowing thickly when you reach a hand up to squeeze your bouncing tits.

“Well, give ‘er my regards next time you talk to to ‘er.”

“‘Course, sir.”

“Now, back to what I was saying about the perimeter…”

With that, Simon holds his breath for a few torturous minutes. However, when the other men continue on as if nothing had ever happened, he surreptitiously leans back in his chair…and looks down at the phone again.

His hearing fades to nothing but a distant buzz, pulse racing in his chest, like his heart might explode at any moment. And even though he’s muted the volume, he swears he can hear your moans ringing in his ears, vibrating in his very bones.

In the black and white video, you throw your head back against the pillows, hips jumping so hard the flimsy sheet falls down to your ankles. And soon enough, he can see every part of you. The softness of your heaving stomach, the sweat against your cheeks, the delicate shine of slick between your sweet folds…

Your entire body tenses, and undoubtedly you cry out again. He already knows what you’re saying, even if it’s all but silent in his hands.

His name.

You’re there, needy and alone, a wet spot between your legs on the sheets, shouting his name like there was any hope of him actually hearing it—as if there was any hope of him finding you,  filling you up, and giving you what you truly need. 

At that thought, pride wells up in his veins, hot and bubbling. And before he knows it, his blood is rushing south at an alarming rate.

“Please,” he can imagine you begging him, “Please….Please, Simon, just a little. Just the tip…”

You’d say it with heat in your cheeks and a pout on your lips, wrapping a shaky hand around his hip so that he couldn’t pull back, so that he couldn’t tease you any longer. You’d whine and whimper, tears gathering in your eyes, as you weakly pulled him forward, just enough to wrap one of those precious hands around his leaking cock.

You’d guide him forward like that—in a way he couldn’t deny—and you’d sit there, batting your eyelashes, sliding your wet cunt over the tip of his condom-covered dick, like that might tempt him just enough to take it off…to fuck you full and hard, until he was leaking out of your fluttering pussy and into your ruined panties.

He bites his lip.

You’d begged him before. On your knees, kissing the head of his cock. On your stomach, pushing your ass up against his hips. With your face buried in the pillows, nearly sobbing for it.

“Just once, Simon. Please—I promise. Just a little bit. Just the tip,” you said every time—as if those words made the act any better.

And, god, Simon wanted it. He wanted it so, so badly. To feel the warmth of your body, the heat of your bare skin against his own…to feel your pulse thumping between your legs as he fucked his cum right into the seat of your very womb.

So far, you hadn’t manage to take him raw just yet. If not because he had the patience of a Saint, then for the fact that your doctor kept rescheduling your birth control appointment.

Yet, looking at you now…

He breathes in low and deep, watching as your legs shake, toes curling.

The sheets fall off the bed.

And with another cry, you pull the dripping dildo from between your legs, curling your thighs together in absolute ecstasy.

Jaded, he looks at the damned toy. A cheap replica of his own cock. You’d given him a mould on Valentine’s Day—mostly as a joke…until next deployment came around, and you all but begged him to do it.

He still remembers how ridiculous it felt, looking down at your satisfied smile while you licked him clean afterwards, merely as a ‘thank you’ for all his hard work.

Beneath the shadow of your dangling calves, he can see the promise of your dripping cunt tucked between your sweet thighs. Desperate, wet, and wanting…

He scowls.

Pills, doctors, and implants be damned. If Simon had it his way, you’d be filled and sated, womb swollen with his seed, evidence of all the love he had yet to give you. It’s a tempting thought—one that nearly drags him into his mind once and for all.

However, a sudden movement on the camera catches his attention.

The toy is still in your hand. Strings of slick drip off of it and onto the flat of your thigh. With your other hand, you spread your abused folds, barely able to pull them back with how wet you’ve become. Impatiently, slide two of your trembling fingers into yourself, head tossing against the pillows.

“Please,” he swears he can hear it, “Please, please, please—”

You thrust into yourself ruthlessly, flecks of slick flying just at the movement. God, the sound of it must be nothing short of obscene. He can only imagine.

Your offhand tightens around the shaft of the dildo, and this time, when you tense up, the movement is so utterly enrapturing he swears he can see drops of saliva spill over your lips. You yank your hand out of yourself. Your stomach flexes. You yell into the bare room.

And that—that is when he sees it.

Suddenly, a rush of slick squirts out of your cunt and onto the bed, hips flinching as you soak through the sheets beneath your ass. Fuck, even through the horrible quality of the film, he swears he can see the walls of your pussy clenching, opening up around every wash of rushing liquid.

It splatters over your thighs, makes your toes curl into the sheets. The fabric sticks to your skin as you continue to ride out the waves of your orgasm, and when you reach a hand down to rub over your swollen clit, little spurts of it squirt over your naked body in time with every press of your fingers.

Before he even knows it—before he can feel ashamed for it—he’s rock hard against the fly of his jeans, cock pulsing beneath the fabric as he watches you lay panting and flushed in a puddle of your own cum. 

“Yes,” he sees your mouth move, cunt still dribbling onto the bedsheets, “God, yes…”

Hands positively shaking, you lift the toy again, clumsily rubbing your ruined pussy over its shining length.

And, god, he’s helpless to imagine himself in its place. Helpless but to imagine himself between your legs, covered down to his knees in your shining spend. Fuck, it’s intoxicating, and it hits him harder than any drug he possibly could have taken.

Listlessly, he looks at your beautiful face through the film grain…

“Simon,” you whisper to yourself, lazily rubbing your cunt against head of that stupid toy, “Simon…”

Easily, he gets lost in it. 

Lost in the sound of your voice saying his name.

Lost in the heat of your expression.

Lost in the need he feels welling up inside of himself…

Lost in the feeling of his hand palming over himself, hidden by the shadows of the looming conference table.

“Simon?”

The sound of his name—and in the voice of a man no less—makes him jump in his seat. On reflex, he closes his phone.

“What?” He answers cluelessly, slapping his hands down on the surface of the table, like he hadn’t just been thrusting into his own hand mere seconds before.

“I asked you what you thought about it,” Price jammers on, oblivious.

“About what?” he says.

At that, Price raises an eyebrow.

“About the risk assessment results. Y’know…what we’ve been talking about for the last five minutes.”

“Risk assessment,” he uselessly repeats, “Yeah. Well, I…”

Price scrunches his face, glancing between his asinine powerpoint and Simon’s covered face.

“Have you been listening?” He huffs, sounding bored.

“Of course,” he clears his throat, hurriedly absorbing the information on screen, “It’s just—I had a question about that. Must’ve left me for a second there…”

“Uh-uh,” Price glances at his wrist watch.

Simon swallows, cock pulsing rapidly in his pants. He scoots his chair in closer to the table.

“If we go in via the rear entrance, then—then I think would should recruit at least one more person for overwatch. Y’know…At the height of the lower wall, I think it might be possible to put a man on the roof. As—as contingency.”

“Sounds fine to me. You think they’d have a decent shot?”

“Well…” he blinks emptily, “At that angle, I think that...”

The clock continues to tick.

Soap yawns at the other side of the table.

Price looks as if he’d rather be anywhere else than here.

And Simon…

God, his mind is still stuttering, heart racing with adrenaline.

Distracted, he’s stuck on where his phone lies innocently atop the table…and what he knows is happening just beneath the cover of its black screen.

[corkinavoid]

Thank you, @aceinacorner, for this gem:

You are the inspiration for

DPxDC Ring of Rage? More Like Ring of Engage [pt. 3]

[<- part 2]

Duke narrows his eyes.

He swears Tim was not in the Cave just five seconds ago, and yet, in the brief moment when Duke wasn't looking, he just materialized out of motherfucking aether. Smelling like Chinese food and holding a chicken skewer that looks so good that Duke's mouth waters.

"Can I have a piece?" He asks, the divine smell of food overriding the urge to ask 'where did you get it' or 'how did you get here'.

Tim nods, smiles, and hands Duke the whole skewer before going for the elevator.

Is it Duke's hallucination, or is he really humming something as he goes?.. Actually, that doesn't matter. The chicken tastes even better than it smells, and Duke is perfectly willing to keep his mouth shut in exchange for food.

You don't talk with your mouth full, after all.

~☆~

Cass watches Tim over the table. She hasn't heard him coming into the dinner room - no steps in the hall, no rustle of clothing or breathing. It's like the boy has somehow appeared right in front of the door out of nowhere before entering.

What's more, he seems obviously not hungry, picking at his food with an absent, if a bit dreamy, expression. Granted, Tim always picks at his food, but Cass can see the difference between 'Tim's mind is busy with a new case and therefore too distracted to eat' and 'Tim already had dinner elsewhere and is too full to eat now'.

The bags under his eyes are also not as dark as they usually are. Come to think of it, Cass hasn't seen him in a bad mood for a few weeks now, which shouldn't really be that strange, but it's Tim. The smallest of inconveniences can put him in a bad mood.

Tim notices her looking and raises an eyebrow.

Cass blinks and goes back to her plate. Whatever is keeping her brother happy, it deserves her full approval.

~☆~

Jason is... not so sure as to what is happening.

He did notice that Tim was really chill lately, but this is going a bit overboard.

"Did you spike it with arsenic, Replacement?" He asks, suspiciously looking the offered cup of coffee over without taking it. Tim - surprisingly, actually - doesn't react to the nickname in the slightest, instead giving Jason a deadpan look. Then, he brings the cup up to his mouth, takes a sip, and hands it back again.

Okay, well, that proves no arsenic, at least. It's still very weird. Tim doesn't just buy coffee for people, and he especially doesn't buy coffee for Jason.

"Am I going to owe you something for it, or what?" He asks, slowly reaching for the cup. Tim sighs.

"No. It's just a drink - my boyfriend loves it, and I think you'd like it as well," he explains with a shrug, and Jason is honestly too befuddled to ask about anything. Including the boyfriend part.

No, but since when does Timbers have a boyfriend? He sure hadn't mentioned anything about it to any of the others.

The drink turns out to be not coffee but something else, tangy and thick, and when Jason takes the lid off, it's green like Mountain Dew.

It does taste great, though, and later Jason considers asking Tim for another one. He hadn't had anything better in ages.

~☆~

Damian strikes through the last one of the training holograms, breathing heavily. And yet, just as the 'simulation complete' message pops up in the air, he hears a step behind him.

He turns around faster than a lightning, and-

Finds Timothy's neck at the tip of his katana, with his hands up in surrender.

"What are you doing here?" Damian sneers, lowering his weapon, and Tim swallows. Not because of surprise or fear, though, he clearly had some half chewed up food in his mouth.

"Inaccurate drop off," he says, looking Damian straight in the eyes, "I was aiming for the main floor."

He smells of Indian food and spices, and Damian almost sneezes.

"What do you mean 'aiming'?" He demands, but Drake just waves him off, heading towards the elevator up.

"No worries, I'll do better next time," he shoots a smile over his shoulder, "See you on patrol!" And with that, the elevator doors close after him, leaving Damian alone.

Drake has always been strange, but this is too much even for him.

Not that it's Damian's business. He huffs and starts the simulation over again.

~☆~

If Dick didn't witness it with his own two eyes, he would have never believed it. Alas, he did, and even though the swirling green vortex has already disappeared like it was never there, Tim, whom the strange portal just spat out on the floor of the Cave, is still here.

"What the fuck was that?" He nearly yells, and Tim looks up, a face of perfect innocence.

"What was what?" He returns the question, and Dick can't find the words to explain, so he just wildly gestures to the place where the portal has been less than five seconds ago. Tim blinks, "Oh, that. That was my date."

Dick chokes on his breath.

"Your date?" He parrots, hoarse and breathless, and Tim nods, like there's not a single thing wrong with anything that has just happened. "Since when do you go on dates? Wait, I thought you were engaged, you said it was cheating to date anyone else, even if you didn't know the spouse, you said-" he cuts himself off, feeling his own face slowly falling and his stomach sinking down in horror. "No. No, don't tell me."

But the shit-eating grin on Tim's face is already proof enough.

Dick clears his throat. Takes a deep breath.

Seeing that Tim is still in one piece, and, well, that he did just casually come out of a magic portal in the middle of the Cave, it's probably safe to say that it's not the first time.

And, judging by the mirth in Tim's grin, it's also safe to say he's been rather enjoying it.

Dick releases one long, loud breath and forces a smile on his face as well.

"So, how is it?" He asks, trying in vain to sound light-hearted, not suspicious. Tim's smile gets wider, and there's a glint of excitement in his eyes now, which Dick considers a good thing, all in all.

"Oh, I thought you'd never ask."

~☆~

Bonus Scene (that somehow turned out longer than I planned)

~☆~

"Where's Tim?" Bruce asks when all the rest of his kids are already seated around the table for breakfast.

"At Danny's, probably," Steph shrugs before digging into the waffles on her plate. Bruce frowns.

"Danny's?" He asks. He hasn't heard that name before. Is that a friend of Tim's?

"Drake's paramour," Damian clarifies, not bothering to look up from his own food, and Bruce's mind comes to a screeching halt. He blinks stupidly, looking around the table and sincerely hoping it is some sort of a prank, but Cass smiles and nods, and Dick has an expression of pure exhaustion on his face, and Duke is huffing a snort of laughter at him for it.

"Since when-" Bruce starts, but he is suddenly cut off by a glowing circle that appears just a few feet away from them all.

It grows quickly, morphing into a vortex, a green and ominous tear in reality big enough for a person to walk through, hanging in the air a few inches over the ground. The space around it feels staticky somehow, and the color is too bright to look at directly, and it definitely doesn't belong to their dining room. But before Bruce is able to say another word or do anything at all, Tim steps out of it, his hair and clothes ruffled.

"Oh, fuck," he mutters upon seeing them all, and turns around, sticking his head into the vortex just as it starts to close. The vortex pauses.

Bruce is almost too stunned to move.

His kids don't share the sentiment, though, most of them not paying the portal any attention at all. Bruce would have reprimanded them for the poor awareness of their surroundings if he didn't notice how Damian simply glanced up at it before going back to his food.

They saw the portal. They just didn't deem it dangerous. For some reason.

Tim's face comes back out, and he turns to Bruce. His expression looks different than before: a bit smug, a little mischievous, and just a tad bit nervous.

Then, another head pops up through the surface of the portal. A boy - or at least they look like a boy - with snow white hair that floats in the air and bright, almost neon blue eyes. His skin is far too pale for him to be human, and- he has freckles that look like constellations.

For some reason, that's the part that makes Bruce finally resign to the fact that this is just how his life is. With breakfasts interrupted by green portals and otherworldly boyfriends - because who else might it be, really - before he even had his morning coffee.

"Hi!" Said otherworldly boyfriend grins and waves his hand. "I'm Danny, Tim's fiance," he introduces himself, and Bruce conjures the last scraps of his scattered mind to smile and nod back.

"Good morning, Danny. I'm Bruce." He has no idea what else to say; it seems like a bit late for shovel talk, but a bit early for welcoming speech.

"Would Young Master Danny care to join us for breakfast?" Alfred's calm, but still slightly amused voice comes from the door. Bruce turns to look at the butler with a sense of exasperation - is he really the last one to learn anything in this house? - but the man seems... well, not surprised, at least not on the surface. But his grip on the pitcher of orange juice is just a little too tense for him to have been in the know all along.

Danny turns to him and smiles nicely - his teeth are also way too sharp for a human - before shaking his head, "No, sorry, I was just dropping Tim off."

"For God's sake," Tim rolls his eyes, "Just put on some pants and come out, I refuse to suffer through this alone."

Dick chokes on his toast. Steph gasps, her eyes snapping between Tim and Danny in delight. Cass snorts and kicks her under the table. Damian groans.

"Spare me from the details of your personal life, Drake. Need I remind you that I am thirteen," he narrows his eyes.

The constellations on Danny's cheeks shine just a bit brighter, and Bruce has no idea what that is supposed to mean, but his guess is along the lines of embarrassment. Especially when the boy completes it with rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

"You mean to tell me that, at thirteen years old, you don't know what sex is?" Tim deadpans, running a hand through his hair in a useless effort to smooth it and taking his seat at the table. Dick's coughing fit comes back with renewed force.

"We didn't-" Danny starts, still kind of hovering midway through the portal, but Damian pays him little attention.

"I do. Yet, I prefer my mind free of the knowledge when it applies to you."

"I want all the details, though," Steph pipes up, looking at Danny from her seat, "Can you, like, sprout tentacles or something, because I know for a fact Tim likes that kind of-"

"Steph!" Tim yells at her, face red, and then turns to Danny, who suddenly has a very interested, if a bit mischievous, look on his face, "Don't you dare."

"Yeah, okay," Danny snorts and disappears back in the portal. Bruce half-expects it to close after him, but the vortex stays.

Which probably means the boy - the King of Infinite Realms, Keeper of Unseen Worlds, Eyes of the Universe - is going to be right back.

After he puts on some pants, supposedly.

Bruce watches Tim rub his face in frustration while Steph giggles and elbows him in the side, and sighs. This is so not how he expected this morning to be.

[pricegouge]

price x pregnant!f!reader meetcute drabble i whipped up on my lunch dedicated entirely to the girl at work who's too heavily pregnant to fit her scrubs rn. john price would love you, girl, keep your chin up

The worst part wasn't actually the discomfort of the papery material, nor the cheap elastic waistline which dug into your plush sides and itched like a sonofabitch. It wasn't even the embarrassment of having to track down your lead at the start of your shift and shamefacedly admit that you could no longer fit into your designated scrub pants and ask if he could maybe please find some spares somewhere? (He couldn't, because apparently no one on the team before you had ever fallen ill with a baby in the belly or even just gained a little weight.)

No, the worst part was the noise.

It hadn't been something you'd even considered until you were already barging into your first patient's room, swishing away with each step. Mr. Jeffreys had grumbled in his sleep, eye peeking open just as you'd leaned over him to start your morning check. Enough ruckus, woman. You'd thought he was just being irritable, a common enough occurrence, but then it happened again and again, each new room bringing another grumpy occupant, displeased about being woken up so far ahead of breakfast. Still, you almost preferred that to the early risers, the old biddies who would turn to greet you, already alert, take one look at you with your swollen belly overhanging the thin paper pants they'd made you wear over your reliable leggings, and start cackling loud enough to draw attention from the other orderlies. 

You weren't the first pregnant woman to outgrow her pants, but you were perhaps among the first to have done so in a professional setting. 

At least it got easier the more the day dragged on, quippy remarks coming more naturally to you the more you had them levelled at you in kind. You'd even let a little boy doodle on your shin, an attempt to keep his mind of his mother groaning in pain, attempting to work through a kidney stone. You're fairly sure you're rocking an Incredible Hulk there now, but it was a bit hard to tell with the way the magic markers had bled across the tyvek weave. 

"Missed your calling." 

You frown down at the man before you, thick brows only slightly pinched despite the way you knew his shoulder must be killing him. GSW. Didn't get many of them 'round here, but you'd seen enough hunting accidents to figure out the good stuff didn't always cut it. And this didn't seem like your average misfire, or pulled-shot graze. He'd been the talk of the nurses station when the call had come through to prep for him, bullet taken straight on, center mass. He wasn't from here, didn't seem to know anyone from here. No one believed it was a simple hunting accident, but the authorities had come and gone, sent skittering by a rather severe woman yielding a badge no one had gotten a good look at. No arrests, minimal testimonies. Rumors had sprouted roots, grew too tall too quickly to be believable. You'd heard everything from a jilted lover to some sort of military coup, but you hadn't placed much stock in anything other than the three letters which had remained unchanged on his chart since the moment he'd been admitted, and then later the surgeon's notes.

GSW. Successful operation.

That had only been two days ago. You'd been in his room once before, set about the same task. He'd been fast asleep, the handsome man who's been visiting offering charming but ultimately short conversation. It hadn't bothered you as you'd been in a rush, and you'd known full well the stress loved ones usually felt, trying to ensure the best possible rest for their injured loved ones. 

He had no guard dog today, no one to send you packing when your putzing made too much noise. And now you've woken him, poor man.

"Pardon?" 

Blue eyes blink open, cloudy with pain and the influence of strong meds but surprisingly alert. They flick down to your leg, shoulders tensing a bit as he lifts his head to see properly. "Pretty tree you've made there." 

You can't help but laugh. "Seems I'm right where I should be, then, seeing as that's supposed to be the Hulk. I think," you add once you've earned a smirk.

"Can't even remember what it is you've drawn? You the reason I can't find a comfortable position? Been stealing my morphine?"

"I wish," you sigh, pat your belly dramatically. "But they say it's bad for baby."

His brows lift into his hairline, pain momentarily forgotten as he looks you over again, as if seeing you for the first time. You realize pretty quickly that he's one of those people, the crinkling around his eyes revealing him as the type. It's one of the weirdest parts of being pregnant, the strangers who look at you with awe, as if you've hung the moon. You try not to think too much of it, don't like imagining couples who've tried for years when all you've managed to do was slip up your birth control one time, like a fool. This man isn't wearing a ring, but that doesn't mean much. Most women who carry on after you are single, too. At least he's not trying to touch your belly.

"Is that why you're half way to a paper gown? Come wandering from maternity?"

"Har, har," you deadpan, waving your stethoscope at him although you know full well he's seen it - hard to miss, resting atop your swollen tits. "No, I've simply grown too fat for my scrubs. And I think my lead's having too much fun embarrassing me about it."

He frowns, somehow vaguely patronizing even while heavily medicated. "No spares for someone in your condition?"

"Nope! Apparently I'm lucky enough to be the only fertile little heifer ever on the team," you snark, and then squint at his monitor when his pulse spikes unexpectedly. 

"Sorry," he mumbles - odd - and when you check, you notice some color to his ears. He clears his throat to distract you from fretting, though the softness is gone from his eyes again, replaced by an implacable type of tension. "Perhaps they're simply not used to expectant mothers working so late into their term?" 

Ah. At last, the well-meaning concern. It grates at you worse than usual, the ease and simplicity (albeit annoyance) of your silly morning falling apart in seconds. Perhaps it's that, the whiplash, that has you huffing irritably, mood plummeting. "Well. Someone's got a pay my bills," you gripe, snapping the claw of his clipboard just to work out some aggression. Maybe it's the hormones.

There's a huff of breath, almost as animated as yours. When you look to make sure he's not aspirating or something, your new friend's absurd mustache is twitching. "Well. That's what Mr. Pretty Nurse is for, no?" 

The phrasing makes you smile, hands gentling as you busy yourself with his monitor. This is familiar ground, at least, a path well-tread which you'd like navigating with a conversational partner who would call you Ms. Pretty Nurse. "Sure," you concede, tapping away at his station to check the trend of his vitals. Steady, even. All night. Like he was practiced at taking bullets. "You ever see him, you tell him he owes me a back log of bills, alright?" In truth, your 'mister' never was a mister, just some guy you'd been trying to blow off steam with. He'd cut and run the second you'd brought up the pregnancy, but you'd decided to keep it after some thought and had never followed up with him, deciding it ultimately was no longer his concern. You harbored no ill will, really, but the dead beat dad was a common schtick, an easy conversational piece when simply shooting the shit with talkative patients. If the worst part about pregnancy was the noisy pants (and the morning sickness, and the belly hair, and the leaky nipples and the -) then the best part was surely the built-in small talk.

"Be sure to let him know," chops murmurs, voice tight. You check his file again, correct your mental dub with his real name, John Price. Traditional, like the neat beard hiding the growing color in his cheeks. When he speaks again, his voice is slightly rougher. "Who did that, then?" 

You think he's pointing to your belly, far too forward, but when you check you see his finger aims lower, towards the art that started this conversation. "Kid over in pre-op. Was upset watching his mom writhing around. Passing a stone," you supply with an exaggerated whisper, as if telling him some scandalous secret.

John grins, soft again. "You'll be good at it, then."

"Pardon?" you ask absently, watching as his heartbeat seems to flutter weakly. 

"Said 'too round for scrubs,'" he chuckles. "Good job, mama."

You scoff, scandalized, but when you turn to him you find he's got that far off look in his eye, a sharp contrast to the lucidity of his speech. That does it. You tut, leaning over him to check his forehead with the back of your hand. And outdated practice, sure, but still useful in a pinch. He doesn't feel overly warm, but his focus has slipped back into that slight haziness, blissed out and vaguely absent, staring a good half a foot below your eyes.

"Mr. Price -," you start but he interjects.

"Just John, love."

"Sure. John. Are you feeling okay?" 

Eyes crinkling again, he gives you an unbearably soft smile, at odds with everything you've managed to glean from his chart. "Never better, doll."

banner by @/cafekitsune

[miedei]

terrible profilers

(aka the team meets early seasons!spence's not-so-secret girlfriend)

a/n: this came to me in my dream last night and i cannot get over it, pls send asks/requests and tell me what you thought!

cw: reader has she/her pronouns, the team is nosy, my niche personal headcanons of how i think spencer would text, probably more tech inaccuracies

wc: 3.5k

part one

(reblogs are the only way to promote fics on tumblr! please reblog if you enjoyed it :) )

mlist

The moment Spencer walks into the bullpen, he knows something’s up. Garcia never replied to the text he’d sent on Friday night, and he’d hoped she was just busy on their first weekend off in a while, but it’s clear there’s more. Clutching the strap of his satchel, he walks to his desk, observing the strange tension blanketing the room. For one, Hotch and Gideon are in the bullpen, standing in the corner speaking in hushed tones. Weird. They usually go to one of their offices to talk, and either way, they usually are stuck in their offices until lunchtime when they don’t have cases. Another thing. JJ and Penelope are standing around Elle’s desk, which isn’t out of the ordinary, but they’ve swivelled around to stare at Spencer like he’s an alien (which they do on occasion, but Spencer is pretty sure he hasn’t been strange yet. He just walked in!). Derek is sitting on Elle’s desk, leaning over to huddle with the three girls, but he’s frozen with his mouth open, like he just shut up for some reason.

“Uh… Good morning.” Spencer furrows his brows, but tries to shrug it off, more interested in the smell of coffee emanating from the kitchenette. Setting down his bag, he quickly busies himself with pouring his signature overly-sweet (according to you) coffee.

It’s like his movements snap a thread that has been holding his colleagues together, and they suddenly start bustling around the bullpen again. Derek sidles up beside him as he’s stirring in sugar, and Spencer braces himself for some Morgan-esque prod. But what he says has Spencer confused.

“Kid. You know you can tell me anything, right?”

Ok, something is going on. Spencer has worked with Derek since he was 22, and they’ve fallen into a very comfortable dynamic ever since. But neither of them have ever felt the need to reassure the other of their closeness.

“What’s up, Morgan? No jabs today?”

Derek stiffens, like he’s been caught in a lie, and scrambles to reply.

“Well… We- Um, Garcia worried about you on Friday. What was up with you leaving so suddenly?”

Spencer has to bite back a smile, memories of you, coming to ‘O Keefe’s just to see him, flooding into his mind. But he answers as smoothly as possible, still turned away from Derek as he elaborates.

“Oh, I felt a bit sick. I think it’s going back and forth from the more arid parts of the country that did it. Did you know, travelling between warmer and colder climates makes you more susceptible to contracting viruses because it strains your immune and musculoskeletal systems, causing the feedback loop of homeostasis to-” Derek puts a hand on his arm, and Spencer quiets.

“Okay, okay, pretty boy, I get it.”

With that, he walks off, and Spencer is left at the kitchenette, stirring his coffee, confused. It’s not like it was a lie, he was feeling a bit nauseous in the bar, so you insisted that you go home. He recovered that same night over a cup of tea, Metropolis on the television, and you cuddled up on the couch next to him.

When he walks back to his desk, mug in hand, he calls out to JJ, still standing by Elle’s desk.

“JJ, no cases today? …JJ?” The blonde is looking at him, but his words seem to fly right over her head, until Elle pokes her shoulder.

“Oh! No, the cases I’m being called about are still pending, we’re probably not leaving on anything until tomorrow.” Spencer smiles softly, glad to have at least one more night sleeping at home this week. Because of his reverie, he doesn’t notice the way JJ, Penelope and Elle are staring at him, befuddled expressions on their faces.

The day continues to be a little weird, much to Spencer’s chagrin. Around 1pm, Gideon emerges from his office again. This, already, is out of the blue. Gideon only leaves his office an average of 3.78 times a day, mainly to go to Hotch’s office, or to go home. This time, however, Gideon marches to Spencer’s desk.

Gideon comes to a stop next to Spencer’s desk chair, and it’s all he can do to muster a blank face and look into his mentor’s eyes.

“Hey, Gideon. What’s… What’s going on?”

The older man sighs wearily, looking down his nose at Spencer, looking uncannily like Spencer’s highschool Calculus teacher when she got irritated at him for being a ‘13 year old know-it-all’.

“Reid. You weren’t sick on Friday, were you?” What is happening? Spencer doesn’t lie, he’s never told Gideon something untrue, so this is incredibly out of the blue.

“Huh? No, what’s wrong? I felt nauseous, which could’ve been a symptom for an inner ear problem, inflammatory bowel disease, gastroenteritis…” Spencer continues to rattle off a list of things he could have had, not noticing the uncharacteristically soft, paternal gaze that Gideon has trained on him.

“...and even a brain tumour, but it was probably because I drank more than I usually do. Why do you think that’s not true?” Spencer finishes his little speech, looking up at Gideon with a confused expression. There’s nothing else the older man can do but sigh, patting his shoulder softly.

“Okay, Reid. Glad you’re feeling better now.” With that, the experienced profiler walks away, not bothering to reply to Spencer’s continued questioning:

“Gideon! What’s wrong? Why are you-” Gideon’s office door slams shut.

Unfortunately, Spencer cannot ignore the rest of the signs, spending the rest of the day in a state of coiled anxiety. Something is going on, but he can’t get anyone to tell him.

Derek and Elle are constantly glancing over at him, unreadable expressions on their faces. Penelope keeps finding excuses to go to Spencer’s desk, and even if Spencer wasn’t a profiler, he’d be able to see the words bubbling up in her throat, but she never says anything.

JJ doesn’t come talk to him at all, which is strange. Instead, she shoots him knowing looks whenever she’s in the bullpen, sending Spencer into a spiral every time she doesn’t say anything about why they’re all acting weird.

He’s even caught Hotch and Gideon peeking through the blinds over their office windows to look at Spencer, with the analytical looks they get when they’re observing a crime scene on their faces. It’s driving Spencer crazy, and he has to tell someone.

You’re leaving your desk at the university when your phone buzzes.

SPENCE <3: Hi. I looked normal when I left the house, right?

Your brow furrows at the text. Normally Spencer isn’t a fan of texting while he’s at work, and you’d told him multiple times how handsome he looked when he left the apartment this morning. He’s wearing his striped white button down and the purple tie you bought him for his birthday last year, he looks pretty. And you made sure to tell him so.

YOU: hi <3

YOU: no spence you look pretty i told you this morning didnt i?

SPENCE <3: You did, thank you. Everyone’s acting weird at work, and I can’t think of what it could be.

YOU: maybe its something with a case?

SPENCE <3: They would tell me if it was that, right?

YOU: ur right

YOU: if you cant think of it with that big beautiful brain its probably something to do with them

There’s a solid minute of silence before he texts you back, and you grin to yourself as you walk through the halls. You can see the flush growing over his face in your mind’s eye, the way he does every time you pay him a cheesy compliment.

SPENCE <3: I guess so. They won’t tell me anything about it, which is strange.

You frown a little, imagining his frustration at being out of the loop. Spencer has expressed his love for his coworkers to you many times, but he’s also told you about his struggles feeling like the ‘baby’ of the office, and the way it makes him feel isolated at times. Racking your brain to think of a way to cheer him up, you check the time on your watch (the twin of which is settled on Spencer’s wrist).

YOU: its nearly 6

YOU: if i leave my building now i can make it to your office in 30mins

YOU: i can pick you up and we could get thai for dinner

YOU: ?

The reply is instantaneous, and you smile, looking forward to seeing him earlier than you’d expected today.

SPENCE <3: That sounds great. I’m finishing up here but text me when you’re in the lobby and I’ll come down.

SPENCE <3: I need to go, I’ve been texting you from the bathroom.

SPENCE <3: See you soon :-)

The last half hour of Spencer’s workday flies by, unlike the way the clock had crawled previously. He finishes up the consults he was working on for the day, and begins packing up the moment the clock hits 18:27.

Derek and Elle are still sneaking glances at him, but Spencer couldn’t care less at this point. As he closes the flap of his satchel, his phone buzzes in his breast pocket. He can’t help but whip out his phone immediately, missing the bewildered looks that pass between his fellow profilers as he smiles down at the screen.

Y/N L/N: in the lobby now! i forgot how fancy it is here i feel underdressed

He doesn’t bother replying, instead opting to leave the bullpen through the glass doors, nodding at Derek and Elle, and pressing the elevator button immediately. He’s so engrossed in his thoughts as he stares at the closed doors, that he realises far too late what’s happening behind him.

He can hear the sounds of shuffling feet, a squeak of surprise (Penelope), hissed insult (Elle to Derek), and a firm clearing of a throat. Hotch. After sighing petulantly, Spencer turns on his heels to find the entire BAU team standing there, faces just as confusing as they’ve been all day.

“I’d ask you what’s wrong, but none of you gave me an answer the last 23 times I asked, so.”

There’s a beat of silence, before Hotch, of all people, says, “Reid, we need to… ask you something. About last Friday.” That’s strange. Spencer cocks his head in confusion.

“What about it? I already told Morgan and Gideon, I was feeling sick, but it turns out it was just that I’d just drank more than I was used to.”

Penelope looks like she’s about to burst, and finally, she blurts it out, voice slightly shrill. “Reid! Who is she?”

“Who is who?”

Derek butts in, a hand on Penelope’s shoulder. “Kid, that girl. The girl you were… close to, on Friday. At the bar?” Oh. That’s what they’re talking about?

“That was Y/N. My girlfriend. Are you mad I didn’t introduce you guys? I thought you were all busy.”

Spencer sees six sets of jaws drop. There’s more silence, before JJ croaks out, “Girlfriend?”

It’s a bit of a sight, to be honest. Penelope has clutched on to Derek, and Derek on to Elle. JJ is gobsmacked, eyes bulging out of their sockets. Even Hotch and Gideon look the most shocked Spencer has ever seen them. But why?

“Uh, yeah. She came to see me because we’d had plans before we decided to go out. Then when she found out I felt sick we went home.”

Gideon looks a little green, and when no one makes a sound, Hotch speaks, his normally stoic voice coming out a little shaky. “Reid, we didn't- We didn’t know you were seeing anybody.”

What? Now they’re being even weirder. Spencer can hear the elevator doors open behind him, but he doesn’t bother. This is something he has to get to the bottom of.

“How did you not know? I’m sure I’ve mentioned having plans with her multiple times. Elle, I told you about the time I went to the movies in New York with her, when we were on that case.” Elle looks more shocked, if that’s possible, but doesn’t say a word.

“Garcia, I asked you to help me find florists that have Gibraltar campions in Vegas that one time.” Penelope jolts, muttering under her breath about ‘idiot geniuses and their mothers’.

“Gideon, I asked you for advice on how to ask her out!” Gideon stiffens, remembering the time Spencer had asked him about his ex-wife. Was that Spencer asking for advice?

“I ran into you, JJ and Morgan, when I was with her, don’t you remember? She was in the aisle over” Derek distinctly remembers a time at the bookstore, they’d seen Spencer, but not noticed anyone with him. JJ shamefully recalls being too busy making fun of Spencer’s heart-studded tie to look around.

“Hotch, I told you about her! When I added her to my emergency contacts?” At this, Hotch pales. A year ago, Spencer had come to him with a request to change his 1st emergency contact from his mother to a Y/N L/N. How he never registered that this was a girlfriend, Hotch would never know, but he stares fixedly at his shoes as he contemplates quitting his job as a profiler.

Spencer looks at them, mystified. How did they not know? It’s not like he was ever hiding you! Of course, Spencer wanted to keep you to himself, so he didn’t talk about you that much, but they were profilers. He assumed they’d known, and just didn't want to embarrass him.

His phone buzzes twice, and he pulls it out to see another text from you.

Y/N L/N: spence are you coming

Y/N L/N: a guy in a suit is eyeing me weird he knows i dont belong come save me

A happy sigh leaves him, before he remembers the people standing in front of him, still gobsmacked. He scrubs a hand down his face wearily, and mutters slowly, as if he’s not sure if he wants to do this.

“She’s downstairs right now, we were going to take the metro home together. Do you… Do you guys want to meet her?” Penelope brightens up, and the rest of the team seem in higher spirits, despite their continued disappointment in themselves. Warily, Spencer opens the elevator door with a press of a button, and they all file in obediently.

“Please don’t be weird.”

“My good doctor, I would never!” He eyes Garcia with a fearful expression, but presses the ground floor button anyway. As the doors close, a strangled shout leaves JJ’s mouth.

“Wait, you live together?”

You are sitting on a bench inside the FBI Headquarters. No matter how many times you drop Spencer off or pick him up, this will always be surreal to you. And, right now, it’s not just surreal, it’s a little scary.

A real Danny Ocean type guy is sitting on a bench across the room, talking on the phone and eyeing you. Clearly, you don’t exactly look like an agent, you know that. Dressed in the uniform of a PhD student, jeans and an oversized Doctor Who t-shirt (Spencer’s), you know that you look out of place.

You’re just hoping Spencer walks out of the elevator before you get escorted out on suspicions that you’re a spy or something.

Like some deity has heard your words, you look up at the ding of the elevator to see Spencer… and a whole gaggle of people behind him, slapping at his shoulders and barraging him with questions. He looks harried, a line between his pretty eyes.

The line disappears, though, when he locks eyes with you. His eyes light up, and his steps grow in length, before he's left his entourage behind, at least for a couple of seconds.

He uses this time to explain to you: “Hi hello I'm so glad you're here and I need to tell you something-” As if on instinct, your hands come up to rest on his upper arms, thumbs moving in circles soothingly as he continues to ramble.

“-and well, they didn't know about you somehow? Which is crazy to me because you know I don't hide you so I don't know where they got that from but either way they were acting crazy, so I suggested they come meet you, and…” The group of people you now recognize to be the BAU have caught up to him, eyes darting between your face and Spencer's. His shoulders slump, and the agitated look returns, if a little less intense.

“Well, here they are.” He motions to the group behind him. “These are my coworkers, Jennifer Jareau, Elle Greenaway, Penelope Garcia, Aaron Hotchner, Jason Gideon, and Derek Morgan. Guys, this is my girlfriend, Y/N.”

Rising on your toes to see over his shoulder, you wave with a smile, eyes zeroing in on Penelope Garcia, who looks like she's vibrating from excitement, shouldering past Spencer to hold both of your hands.

“Hi! It's so good to meet you! I'd say I've heard a lot about you, but you know that's a lie, we didn't realize you existed until 10 minutes ago, but oh my god! You're here! You're so pretty- Spencer, she's so pretty!” She's practically bouncing up and down, causing Spencer to laugh sheepishly.

“Yeah, Garcia, I know that.” The next few minutes are a barrage of introductions and handshakes, all so brief that you can only get quick first impressions of them all.

Penelope is incredibly kind, not letting go of your hands until Spencer pries her off of you, telling you that you have to come out on girl's night with us, exactly like Spencer described her.

Elle is nearly intimidatingly cool, giving you a handshake and a smile, mentioning that she likes your eyeliner.

Aaron (Hotch? You're not sure how to refer to him) is nowhere near as stoic and intimidating as Spencer makes him out to be, breaking into a smile as he introduces himself, and grinning even wider when you congratulate him and his wife on their newborn child.

JJ is the sweetest. You've heard a lot about Spencer's best friend, and she lives up to expectations, squeezing you into a chaste hug with warm words.

Gideon is a little terrifying. He gives you a handshake, quirking the side of his lips in what you assume to be a smile, but saying very little beyond an introduction. You know how highly Spencer thinks of him, and hope he will warm up to you (Spencer is over the moon that he smiled, and tells you Gideon loved you later that night).

Derek is exactly how you expected him to be. Somehow, he makes you feel wholly comfortable after a single comment, and promises to regale you with all the Spencer stories you'd want (you see him punch Spencer in the arm, grinning and saying he approved).

Spencer pulls you away from them as quick as he can, citing your dinner plans as an excuse. He slings an arm around your waist, leading you out the door as you wave over your shoulder.

“It was great to meet you guys! We should go out to dinner or something!” You hear mixed shouts of agreement from behind you, before the doors shut and it's just you and Spencer, on the sidewalk outside the building.

It's butterfly-inducing, the way you can see the tension leave his shoulders when he turns to look down at you, brown eyes shining.

“I'm sorry that was so last-minute, I know they can be… a lot.” You giggle at the weariness in his tone, resting your forearms on his shoulders.

“They were really nice, Spence. I'm glad to finally meet them. They didn't know who I was?” He sighs, hands tightening slightly on your waist.

“I don't know what goes on with them half the time. I've told them things about you so many times, but they were just being dense, I suppose. They saw us on Friday, at ‘O Keefe’s, and they had no idea I was seeing someone!” He bends to rest his forehead in the crook of your neck with a sigh. As if on instinct, your hands come up to play with his hair.

“I guess they would have found it a little strange that you acted like nothing had changed, huh? Is that why they were being weird today?” He grumbles unintelligible words into your skin, before raising his head to look at you.

“I guess… You know I wasn't hiding you, right? I really thought they knew about you,” The earnestness on his face makes you want to implode, his thumbs rubbing minutely on your waist. Speaking would pop the bubble you've found yourselves in, so you find the best next option for you to show him your assertion.

Your hands roam up his neck to cup either side of his jaw, and slow, slow, slowly, you rise to your toes and kiss him.

Suddenly, Spencer's not worried anymore.

[slashmagpie]

Break Like an Artist

My fic for @hermitadaymay's Solstice Social Collaborative Fanwork Event! I was paired up with the wonderful @eydilily to create something spooky, dramatic and contemplative featuring Gem and Pearl, and it's been an absolute blast putting this together. Please go check out Eydi's art for this AU, it's absolutely gorgeous. CWs: description of a corpse, dismemberment, loss of awareness, fire/flooding/destruction, and depiction of a panic attack. Wordcount: 5.8k

There is a plague sweeping Pearl's hometown.

One by one, she watches as her friends fall to the infection, the colour and life drained out of them and leaving hollow, apathetic husks behind. Even with the devastating loss of her friends, her village, and her regular life, the worst part of this situation is not the infection.

It's that Pearl knows that Gem is the one spreading it.

[Read on AO3]

It’s a grey day in the fishing village that Pearl calls her home. Not that it’s ever not a grey day, at least not anymore. She stares out of her window at the thick encompassing fog that’s claimed the bay, at the desaturated buildings that dot the shore, and she twirls her paintbrush in her fingers. 

The canvas is blank, of course. She doesn’t remember the last time she sat down to paint and didn’t end up with a blank canvas. It must have been—months ago, at least. Back when the last monster from the depths had attacked, and not a single person had had the heart to fight back. When Tango’s house had been shattered in two, and Tango with it.

(He seems to be dealing well with the loss of his arm, at least. Or, as well as you can deal with anything, when the only things inside of you are all-consuming numbness and apathy. Pearl feels it in her chest, the yawning emptiness, and thinks that if she were to lose her arm right here and now, she also wouldn’t be able to summon the energy to care.)

She’d painted after that, though. She remembers it vividly, waking from a nightmare and running to her studio to capture lashing tentacles and inky waters and splatters of crimson blood. It’s a frenzied piece, a disturbing piece, and the moment she’d finished it she’d been filled with so much dread that she’d turned it around to face the wall and refused to look at it since.

The dread’s gone now. Along with the anxiety, and the uncertainty, and the fear. It’s all gone, and Pearl’s left sitting here, paints drying on the palette as she stares at an empty canvas.

Across the house, she hears her front door swing open and closed. A familiar voice shouts, “Pearl? Pearl, where are you?”

“Studio,” Pearl calls back, her voice flat. She continues to twirl the paintbrush as she waits for Gem to trek her way across the house to find her.

“Studio,” Gem echoes as she pushes open the door. “Oh, Pearl, are you painting again? Oh, I’m so happy for—oh.” The joy in her voice vanishes as she takes in Pearl, sitting on her stool, paintbrush raised and canvas empty. “Oh, Pearl…” 

Sympathy. Pity. Concern. Pearl can pick apart the emotions in Gem’s voice, even if she can’t feel them herself. She stares back blankly, because she can’t find it in herself to care about either aspect of the situation, whether it be her own inability to paint or the way that Gem’s looking at her like she’s a wounded animal.

“Come on,” Gem says softly, crossing the room and gently prying the brush from Pearl’s fingers. Pearl lets her. She’s not really painting, anyway. “Let’s get you to bed, shall we? A nap will do you some good.”

Pearl lets Gem help her up, lets Gem allow Pearl to lean on her for support as they make their way back to Pearl’s bedroom. It’s not like Pearl has any difficulty walking. She’s not sick, she’s not injured, she’s just…

Cold. Empty. Not quite lifeless, not in the way Mumbo had been when she’d last seen him, skin and eyes and hair all the same shade of grey-white-nothingness as he’d stared into the distance, completely unresponsive. Listless, maybe, is the better word. She’s halfway to a fate worse than death and she cannot find it in her to care at all.

She feels colder where Gem touches her. She looks down, and she’s not sure if it’s her eyes playing tricks on her, or if her skin is more desaturated where it brushes against Gem’s. She lets Gem help her into bed, lets Gem fluff the pillows and fuss around her, lets Gem sit next to her as she hands Pearl a bowl of soup (“Your favourite!”) and watches her to make sure she eats.

If Pearl were more herself, she would care about what Gem’s doing to her. Care enough to stop it, maybe. Care enough to—no, not to confront her. Every time she’d tried, the words had gotten stuck in her throat. Because she’s known for a long time who’s been behind all of this, behind the corruption leeching all colour from their village, their home, their friends—

And she’d never said anything. Too worried about Gem’s feelings. Too worried about their friendship.

…Pearl realises, as Gem goes to take the empty bowl and brushes her hands against Pearl’s, that she’s not worried anymore.

She waits quietly as Gem washes the bowl in her kitchen, chattering to fill the silence as she does, updating Pearl on their friends’ conditions. Her tone is bright and optimistic, even as her words are dour. Scar seems to be doing the same. Grian’s getting worse. Joel’s down to communicating only in broken phrases—but he should be fine. It definitely won’t be like Mumbo, or Cub, or…

Gem returns to Pearl’s room, regarding her for a long moment before bending down to give her a hug. “Get better soon, okay?” she says into Pearl’s ear. “It’s not the same doing my rounds without you.”

Pearl knows that she’s not getting better. So does Gem, so Pearl doesn’t bother pointing it out. She just nods, lets Gem withdraw, lets Gem run one last hand through her hair.

“You should rest, Pearl,” Gem says, stepping away from Pearl’s bedside. “I’m going to go check on Impy now—”

Pearl’s moving before she’s even properly registered it, grabbing onto Gem’s wrist with force, holding her in place. Gem freezes. Pearl looks up at her through strands of greasy, greying hair.

“Gem,” she says, and it’s the first thing she’s said in days, and her voice is hoarse and her throat sore from the strain.

“...Pearl?” Gem replies, and she sounds almost scared.

“Gem,” Pearl repeats, getting used to the sound of her own voice in her mouth again. “I know.”

Gem laughs. It’s a nervous, tittering sound, the laugh Pearl remembers from when they’d gotten into trouble together as kids. “Know what?” she asks, voice strained. 

“That it’s you,” Pearl says flatly. 

Gem stares at her.

Pearl stares back.

Gem swallows. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she says. “Pearl—”

“I know you’re the one doing this to us,” Pearl says, more specific this time, choosing her words carefully, and Gem—

Gem tries to pull away.

Pearl tightens her grip. 

“Pearl,” Gem whines, eyes wide, tugging. “Let me go—”

“Why?” Pearl croaks, and Gem snaps her mouth shut.

---

Pearl’s in the midst of mixing a particularly tricky shade of green when there’s a loud, frantic knock on her front door. She sighs, setting down her brush to rest, and gets to her feet. “I’m coming, I’m coming, hold on!” she calls as the knocks continue, echoing through the house.

She pulls the door open and Tango’s there, a nervous ball of energy, just about ready to bolt. “Pearl!” he calls. “Pearl, come on, we gotta go—” 

He grabs her by the arm and drags her off. Pearl just barely manages to close her front door behind her.

“Wha—? Where are we going? What’s going on?”

“Something washed up on shore,” Tango explains. “The whole town’s there, c’mon.”

Accepting that she’s not going to get an explanation out of him, and now deeply curious about this something, she lets Tango lead her down to the shore by the lighthouse. Sure enough, the whole town is there, a chattering crowd gathered around a spot on the shore that Pearl can’t quite see. Impulse is standing on the edge of the crowd and catches sight of them, raising his arm in a wave. Tango makes a beeline towards him, ducking under the crowd, and Pearl follows behind, apologising to False and Keralis as she bumps into them.

“Did you decide what to do with it yet?” Tango asks as he comes to a halt and finally lets Pearl go.

Impulse shakes his head. “We’ve decided it’s Gem’s call,” he says. “After all, she’s the—”

He doesn’t finish his sentence as the crowd suddenly goes silent and parts for Gem, her hair wild and eyes wide behind her thick-rimmed glasses. She’s got her lab coat pulled on over her day clothes, clearly not prepared for this in the slightest. She reaches the front of the crowd and stops dead still, staring at the thing that has washed up on the shore.

Pearl follows her friend’s gaze, and sees it for the first time.

It’s a body. Of course it is. A corpse, taken by the sea and ravaged by the waves and washed ashore by the brutal bay currents. The body’s clothes are torn and sodden, the skin beneath so pale that it could practically be paper. Pearl is stricken, for a moment, with the mental image of her taking a brush to this canvas, filling it back in with colour, painting contours back into its skin, breathing life back into the body.

She shakes her head violently, banishing the thought. Where did that come from? This isn’t a canvas, it’s—

It’s a person. A person who was alive, and is now dead, washed up on the beach like a dead whale and just as much of a spectacle. His eyes are open but rolled back, only the whites showing, and his hair is white too, just as pale as his skin. It stands as sharp contrast against the dark fabric of his torn clothes, a mask wrapped around the bottom half of his face.

Pearl swallows hard and averts her gaze back to Gem, who looks just as disturbed by the body as Pearl feels. It takes Gem longer to pull her eyes away, to glance around the crowd. “I’ll—I’ll take it back to my lab,” she says. “Investigate, and—and give him a proper burial.”

The words reassure the crowd, a low chatter beginning up again. 

“Skizz, will you help me carry him?” Gem calls.

Skizz does, stepping forward from the crowd and helping Gem maneuver the bloated corpse. Pearl finds herself looking at it again, noticing dark striations in the skin, caught in glimpses between the tears in the clothing as it’s moved. 

She shakes her head again, forces herself to look away as the body is carried out and the crowd disperses. The image of the body lingers in her mind. Something settles uncomfortably in her stomach, and she wishes that she’d never opened the door.

---

Things go back to normal after that. Or, well, as normal as they get in the village, at least. False monitors the currents and warns of any incoming floods or monster attacks. Impulse and Tango work maintenance on the fishing boats that Grian and Skizz and Keralis take out into the bay. Mumbo runs the fish market. Cub and Scar come and go along the trading routes. Joel maintains security, or at least the illusion of it.

Gem hides away in her lab running experiments she never explains, and Pearl paints.

She tries to return to her usual fare, brightly-coloured landscapes with fantastical features, but something about her paintings rings hollow when she looks at them. She decides she needs a change, to switch things up and just relax, so she pulls out her paints and a blank canvas and begins with no intentions. Her movements are fluid and free and thoughtless and she falls into a flow state that lasts hours, until she blinks her eyes and awakes to find a portrait before her, a colourless face in full saturation.

The corpse’s visage, so alive she can’t believe it’s not breathing, stares back at her from her easel, and Pearl flinches like she’s been burned.

She hides that painting away, face turned towards the wall, and returns to painting landscapes. They come easier now, and for a time Pearl feels normal, as long as she ignores the canvas in the corner.

It’s Impulse who notices that there’s something wrong first. It’s not surprising that he’d be the first to pick up on it, really. Skizz is his best friend, after all. Of course he’d notice when Skizz stopped laughing, stopped joking, stopped drumming out tunes with his fingers on the side of his boat. And when Pearl sees him, she notices changes too—his skin paler, like he’s spent several weeks locked inside a basement instead of out in the summer sun, his eyes no longer their regular bright blue.

“Hey, Skizzly,” she greets brightly, trying to play at normal, throwing him a bone to grab onto.

Skizz just glances at her before responding with a flat, “Oh, hey Pearl.”

Pearl’s smile falters. “How are you feeling? Impulse told me you’re a little under the weather.”

Skizz shrugs. “Fine, I guess. Did you need something?”

Pearl swallows, something cold sinking in her guts. “No, no, just checking in on you.”

“Gem already checked on me,” Skizz says. “She said I’m not sick.”

“Gem’s not that type of doctor,” Pearl reminds him with a weak smile.

Skizz shrugs again. “She’s the only doctor we’ve got.”

Pearl tries her best not to let that unsettle her.

---

It’s not just Skizz.

It starts with him, but it doesn’t end there. Keralis is next, and then Grian. Mumbo gets sickest the quickest, going from his anxious, affable self to a nearly-unresponsive husk within a week. That scares them all, because even Skizz is still responding when spoken to, still moving when instructed to, even after nearly a month of being infected with… whatever it is that’s going around.

False gets sick without anyone noticing, sequestered away in her lighthouse until she comes into town for groceries looking like a photograph that’s been left in the sun for too long, and that’s when people really start to panic.

And that’s when Gem declares, with all the authority that being a doctor of anthropology afforded her in a tiny town with no real doctor, that she’s putting everyone into quarantine until they can determine the source of the illness. 

“I’m not sick,” Pearl tells Gem when her friend knocks on her door, dressed in full lab gear, her hair out of its usual ponytail and falling forward around her face. She’s pretty sure she isn’t, at least, having hyper-analysed the shade of blue in her eyes in the mirror every morning for the past month. 

“I know,” Gem says. “I want to—I need to—can I come in?”

“Yeah,” Pearl says, stepping aside. “Of course.”

Gem enters, heading down the stairs into Pearl’s living space and staring at the paintings on the wall. Pearl watches her for a moment before stepping closer, resting a reassuring hand on her friend’s shoulder.

“What’s eating you?” she asks.

Gem snorts out a laugh at that. “I’m not a real doctor, Pearl,” she says.

“I know that.”

“They all need me to be a real doctor for them. I—” She breaks off, runs an anxious hand through her hair. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I need help.”

Pearl raises her eyebrows. “I don’t know how I can help,” she says. “I’m even less of a doctor than you are.”

“I know,” Gem says. “But you’re my friend, and I trust you, and I need—please?”

She stares at Pearl, bright green eyes magnified through thick glasses lenses. Pearl has never been able to say no to those eyes.

“Okay,” she agrees, letting out an uncertain breath. “Okay. What do you need me to do, Dr. Tay?”

Gem laughs again, high-pitched and anxious, and Pearl feels hot and cold all at once.

---

They do house calls. Once a day, Gem and Pearl, and sometimes Impulse, will make a round of the village, checking in on everyone. Gem brings some of her lab equipment and a notebook, where she scribbles down all the readings she takes from her instruments and any observations she makes. After the first week or so, Pearl also takes to bringing a sketchbook and a small travel painting kit, attempting to record the desaturation rate in her friends’ colours. 

It doesn’t matter which way they look at it—the situation is bad, and rapidly getting worse. Most of the town is infected now, and Skizz is approaching Mumbo’s level of deterioration. Cub fell ill two weeks ago, and Tango—

Well, he’s not quite grey yet, but he looks washed out where he sits at his table, especially next to Gem, all bright copper and ocean blue and forest green. His voice is flat, all of the emotion in it gone, and while he responds in full sentences to Gem’s questions as Pearl attempts to capture the moulded-straw colour of his hair, none of his words sound like him. 

Gem wraps up her check-in, and Pearl follows her out, paints packed away in her bag and sketchbook held carefully so as not to smudge the paint. Impulse is waiting for them outside, staring out into the bay, where a low-lying fog has been hanging for days. 

He glances over at them, voice shaking as he asks, “How is he?”

Gem hesitates. “About the same?” she offers. 

Pearl shakes her head. “Worse,” she says, offering her sketchbook to Impulse, pointing out the differences in values between the colours she’d sampled from Tango two days ago to the ones she’d taken today. 

Impulse’s hands are trembling as he hands the sketchbook back to her. “What do we do?” he asks. “They just keep getting worse—Gem, what do we do?”

Gem’s eyes are fixed somewhere out at sea. Her expression is so scarily blank that Pearl would worry she was infected if not for how bright and vibrant she looks against the backdrop of the village. (Are the houses getting greyer? Surely not—surely it’s just the fog, and the fact that the sky has been overcast for a fortnight now—surely—)

“We look after them best we can,” Gem says. “I’m trying—every night I’m working on a cure.”

“And do you think it’ll work?” Impulse pushes.

“I have to,” Gem replies. “It has to.” 

Pearl swallows, and does not voice what all three of them are thinking: what if it doesn’t?

---

Impulse turns up one morning a shade dimmer than he had been the day before. Pearl notices immediately, her stomach lurching at the sight of him. He offers her a smile that’s smaller than his usual ones, a greeting that’s a little flatter than it would usually be. Pearl’s not sure if Gem even notices.

But Pearl notices, and her eyes sting, and she throws herself at him in a way that catches all three of them off-guard.

“Uh, Pearl?” Impulse says, stiff and uncomfortable beneath her. “You okay?”

“I’m sorry,” Pearl mumbles against his ear.

“Pearl?” There’s a peak of distress in his voice but it’s not enough. Gem hears it, too.

“Oh no,” she breathes.

“Okay, guys, seriously,” Impulse says, pushing Pearl away. “What’s going on?”

They just stare at him.

Realisation dawns across Impulse’s face. “No.” 

“Maybe…” Gem sucks in a breath. She reaches out to take his hand and squeezes it. “Maybe you should go home, Impy. Get some rest.”

“I’m fine,” Impulse protests. “I’m…” His protest crumbles under their gazes. He slumps, and Pearl knows that he would normally never crumble like that. He’d protest and fight back and keep working until he passed out on the docks and had to be carried back to bed.

“C’mon,” she says softly. “I’ll help you home.”

Impulse doesn’t protest that either. He knows, as well as the two of them do, how this ends. He knows that there’s no fighting this.

Pearl, very valiantly, does not cry about it.

---

With everyone except the two of them infected, Pearl manages to convince Gem to split the rounds, with her taking half of the houses, and Gem taking the other half, swapping halves every couple of days. Gem is reluctant, but she has no good argument against Pearl’s that this is more practical, and so she agrees.

And that’s when Pearl notices.

She thinks she’s imagining it at first, but the colour swatches in her sketchbook back up her suspicions, damning evidence she can’t ignore.

When she visits her rounds, she finds that the people she’s visiting appear to have stabilised, at least for a couple days, no greyer today than they were when she saw them the day before. And then she swaps with Gem, and notices that Gem’s half of the rotation are far paler, far less responsive, than they had been the last time Pearl had seen them. They stabilise for a couple days, and then they switch, and Pearl’s original rotation have deteriorated massively in the several days since. 

There’s really only one conclusion she can draw from that, and she doesn’t want to draw it. She doesn’t want to believe that the one responsible for this is—

The fog is a permanent fixture of the village now, blanketing the bay in a thick blanket of quiet. Pearl finds it hard to sleep, even the familiar sound of waves muffled by the mist. Kept awake into the early hours of the morning, she finds herself in the studio, a brush in hand, letting the paint take her where it will.

And where it takes her is familiar: the village, desaturated and coated in fog, dark looming shapes in the mist beyond, rising out of the ocean. And there, in the midst of the painting, a bright spot in all the gloom, is Gem, so vibrant she practically lifts off the page.

Pearl stares at it for a long, long time, and then places it face against the wall and tries her best to forget about it.

---

In all the dread, they’d forgotten something important.

The sea isn’t safe. It never has been. Growing up in the bay you learn how to weather the storms, to predict the tides, to flee from floods. You learn how to build barriers, and you learn how to rebuild once the ocean drags them down. 

Pearl knows that her village can handle the sea: she’s seen them do it time and time again over the years. Together, they move as a well-oiled machine, responding to threats from the depths with weathered ease. That’s why she doesn’t expect it, she thinks. 

There’s never been a monster attack that False didn’t warn them about.

But False isn’t capable of doing much of anything at the moment.

And so when the tentacles rise from the waves, there isn’t a warning.

Just a deafening krk-crash that wakes Pearl from a dead sleep with a bolt of adrenaline that’s nearly nauseating. She scrambles from her blankets, still in her pajamas, and rushes up the stairs to throw on her boots. It’s edging towards winter now, the weather much milder than the summer months, and though it’s not cold by any stretch of the imagination the chill of the air still makes her shiver. She grits her teeth, racing from her front door to the village proper, and there—

There’s a sea monster, dark purple tentacles reaching out to the shore, destroying everything in its wake. The fish market is half gone, and it’s awful, but it’s a relief, in a way, because nobody lives there.

“Gem!” Pearl screams into the night.

“Pearl!” she hears echo back, followed by distant footsteps, growing ever-closer. 

Gem’s face is flushed, her hair wild, her eyes wide. She’s also in her pyjamas, her lab coat that’s been ever-present for months now gone, and Pearl finds her eyes drawn to dark striations in her skin. They look like—

“Pearl,” Gem says again. “We need to get everyone out, away from the shore, up to the research centre—”

Pearl nods. “Got it,” she says. She points towards the docks and says, “I’ll head over there.”

Gem nods. “Be safe,” she says, and then she’s off again, pelting in the direction of the lighthouse.

Pearl doesn’t bother knocking as she throws Impulse’s door open. He’s still lucid enough that he’s been startled awake by the noise, though it hasn’t driven him to do much more than put his shoes on and stare out of the window at the dark shapes rearing up out of the fog.

“Impulse!” Pearl cries.

“Pearl?” Impulse says, glancing at her with dull eyes.

“We need to get people out,” she says.

There’s an extended pause, then, “Okay.”

“Can you get Skizz?” she asks. “Tango, too, maybe? I need to go to the beach, help everyone down there.”

Another extended pause, then a nod. “I can do that,” Impulse says. He moves too slowly, not driven by the same panic flooding Pearl’s veins, but it’s good enough. It has to be. Pearl doesn’t have time to consider the alternative.

She goes racing off for the beach. She throws open Keralis’ door first, relieved that he is, at least, wearing underwear when she drags him from his bed and into the night. She leaves him there while she grabs Grian from his hut, and then takes them both by the wrists, pulling them along behind her while she races for the cliffside.

It feels like hours that she races back and forth, grabbing her friends from their homes and dragging them in various states of comprehension to the safety of the cliff before running back into the danger zone. Grian’s hut is gone, and so is a large portion of the road. The tentacles have taken a chunk out of the farms further up the coast. Gem’s been taking the people she rescues a different route up to the research facility, the path that Pearl’s taking cut off to her by debris.

Once she’s got everyone on her side of town, she collapses panting on the grass, her lungs aching with the strain. There’s a fire somewhere down on the shore, someone’s lantern knocked astray by swinging tentacles. Her eyes burn just from looking at it.

A voice says, “I got him.”

Pearl looks up.

It’s Impulse, manhandling a colourless, greyscale Skizz.

Pearl goes cold.

“Where’s Tango?” she asks.

Impulse blinks. Slowly. Too slowly.

“Oh,” he says. “I’ll go get him.”

Pearl shakes her head, rocketed up to her feet by panic once again. “No, I’ll go,” she gasps. “You stay here.”

And then she’s off running again, beelining for Tango’s house, praying to any higher power that will listen that she’s not too late. Her lungs ache. Her legs burn. She can’t quite catch her breath. She’s shaking.

And then she’s knocking down Tango’s door, grabbing him from his bed against the far wall, dragging him away—

The roof coming down sounds like thunder, like the sky split open and gutted for parts. Pearl goes down hard, stars bursting behind her eyes, her breath coming out empty and then as a whine. She blinks, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dark, for her ears to stop ringing, and that’s when she hears it.

It’s—not a scream. More of a whimper, or a wail, stretched out and awful and pained and punctuated by short, desperate gasps. It goes straight to her stomach, straight to making her sick, and she doesn’t want to look. Doesn’t want to move.

But, god, she has to, doesn’t she?

She wiggles her fingers, her toes, and lets out a deep groan as she pushes herself up onto her hands and knees. The world has narrowed in on itself, the open air of Tango’s house reduced to a crawlspace, and she shuffles down it, rubble and debris tearing her skin open and leaving bloody red marks on desaturated wood. It is a far cry from the blood she finds, practically brown with how much colour has been leeched from it. 

“Oh, my god,” she chokes. “Tango…”

Tango just moans in response. She can’t tell if he’s pale from blood loss or pale from the infection, but either way it has the effect of making him look half dead. He’s half buried beneath the rubble, body jerking with what she can only assume is pain, barely felt beneath the weight of numb apathy.

“I gotta get you out of here.” The words taste acrid against her tongue. Or maybe that’s the smoke. She can’t tell. “I’ve got you.” She grabs Tango by his good arm and grimaces. “It’s gonna be okay.”

It’s not a reassurance for him. Not really. Pearl’s familiar enough with his condition by now to know that he can’t really care about being okay at this point.

It’s more for her as she does her best to get leverage in the small space and pulls. 

When Tango screams, she knows it’s completely involuntary, an animal howl of agony that stops her short. Pearl gasps, tears on her cheeks, head spinning. “Please, no,” she begs, and she doesn’t know if she’s talking to him or the higher power that’s been ignoring her for weeks. “No, no, I gotta—I—”

“Pearl?”

“Gem!” Pearl cries. “Gem, please, I need—it’s Tango—he’s—”

“I’ve got you,” says Gem’s voice, familiar and close as footsteps pound across rubble. There’s a series of grunts and clunks as rubble shifts, and then there’s light pouring into the crawlspace, which is no longer so much of a crawlspace. Gem stares at the two of them, Pearl in tears on her knees and Tango half buried and lying in his own dull blood. 

“Okay,” she gasps out, and she sounds terrified. “Okay,” she repeats, steadier this time. 

Pearl wants to be relieved, but she’s just on the other side of hysterical. Gem’s holding an axe, which she must have used to clear the rubble, and she steps forward with it held between white knuckles.

“Hold him still,” she tells Pearl.

Pearl swallows. “Gem?” she whispers.

“Please.”

Gem glances down at Pearl, and god, she never has been able to say no to that, has she?

She shuffles forward, puts her weight against Tango, holds him still. Squeezes her eyes shut.

It doesn’t make it any better.

It doesn’t stop her from hearing the sick crunch of the axe cutting through bone or the blood-curdling scream Tango lets out.

It doesn’t stop her from feeling the sudden lack of resistance as she pulls Tango’s bleeding body away from the rubble, leaving his arm behind.

---

Pearl manages to hold it together until they’re able to get Tango safe and stable. Once the wound has been cauterised and disinfected and bandaged, and he’s left sitting with a mostly-unresponsive Skizz and an Impulse who’s just aware enough to be awkward about how little he feels for his friend, she walks away from the town’s refugees on the hillside until she can no longer hear them, and they can no longer hear her. She stands for a moment, surveying the damage below, the sun rising over the sea and the flooded streets and destroyed buildings, and she sucks in a breath that knocks her to her knees.

The panic attack comes in quick half-breaths and waterlogged wails, her hands gripping at her hair and pulling it hard enough to hurt. The world blurs around her as she chokes on saltwater and bile, her ears ringing with screams and funeral bells. When the hands settle on her shoulders she barely feels them—only feels them when they rise to her wrists and untangle her fingers from her hair.

“—earl? Pearl. Look at me. Come on, I know you can do it.”

“Ge-em,” Pearl chokes out. “I can’t—I—”

“I’ve got you,” Gem soothes. She takes Pearl’s hands in hers, squeezes them tight, real and grounding. “See, come on, that’s it. Breathe with me.”

Pearl blinks tears from her eyes as she tries to time her breathing to Gem’s. She’s not very good at it, her heart too quick and Gem’s too slow, but it helps, dragging her down from the high of panic. 

“That’s it,” Gem breathes. She lets go of Pearl’s hand, reaching up to push the hair out of Pearl’s face, cupping her cheeks in her palms. “See? Nice and calm. Everything’s fine, see?”

“Yeah,” Pearl agrees, and the words feel hollow. Her panic feels hollow, somewhere above her body, her soul sunken to somewhere below her knees. She sucks in a breath, lets Gem wipe tears from her eyes with her thumbs.

Gem is so bright. A searchlight in a storm, a ray of rising sun through the dark. The world seems to grey around her. 

Pearl reaches out, splaying her hand against Gem’s cheek, a clumsy echo of Gem’s own reassuring, grounding touch. Gem is still so bright, vivid enough that Pearl doesn’t think any paint could capture it. 

And Pearl, held in comparison, is grey and dull. A shade, drained of life.

She swallows. Lets out a shaking breath. Looks up into Gem’s green eyes, sees the fear and regret in them, and can barely summon her own panic or hurt in return.

“Oh,” she says, and the word falls like a stone, plunging into the depths.

---

Pearl lets out a breath. “It was the body, wasn’t it?” she asks, loosening her grip. “The one that washed up. It did something to you.”

Gem swallows. She pulls away, holding onto her own wrist where Pearl had dropped it, clutching it to her chest. “I’m so hungry, Pearl,” she whispers. “I fade so fast now. I need… I need…”

“You’re going to kill us.” Gem flinches at the words. “You know that, don’t you, Gem? You’re going to kill us. You are killing us.”

“I just need your colours,” Gem replies, a whine in her voice. “I just…”

“What happens when we’re gone, Gem? What happens when you’ve taken all the colours? What happens then?”

Gem stares at her. There are tears in her eyes. They don’t quite fall, but Pearl can feel them drip into her hollow heart. There’s an ocean between them now and Pearl doesn’t have the wits to cross it. She doesn’t care enough to cross it, and she doesn’t feel enough to care about that. 

“I have to go and check on Impy,” Gem repeats, her voice thick. “I’ll see you later, Pearl.”

“You won’t,” Pearl calls after her as Gem hurries for the door.

Gem doesn’t reply, just slamming the door shut in response.

Pearl sits in bed for a long time, staring at the wall with hazy vision. Her thoughts are muffled under the thick fog that chokes the village, and so when she finally stands, she’s not entirely sure why. She lets her body carry her back to her studio, picks up a canvas from against the wall, and places it on her easel. She sits down in front of it and stares.

Gem’s face stares back at her, the only alive thing in a dead and colourless world.

[mariasont]

EEEEK your post prison fic for spencer is fREAking me out!!! could you maybe do one where spencer is now teasing the reader a bit? maybe he's giving her extra praise and she freaks (what would i do if he called me a good girl? 😩) (this is very indulgent to my praise kink i'm so so sorry 🧎🏻‍♀️‍➡️) tytyty!! i adore love and cherish you and your work 💕

I Aim To Please - S.R

a/n: shewwwwww to be complimented by post prison spencer fucking reid. im drooling!!!! but anyway babes i adore & love YOU!!!! so thank u so so sooo much for requesting 💖💖

masterlist

pairings: spencer reid x shy!media-liaison!reader

warnings: spencer being hot, reader being shy girl, spencer being a little shit who loves to tease

wc: 1.5k

There were a few basic rules you had established from working at BAU. First, avoid Rossi at all costs until he’s had at least two cups of coffee. Second, never attempt to outwit Emily; she’ll see right through you and crush your argument every single time. And third—perhaps the most crucial—do everything in your power to maintain your freaking composure around Dr. Reid.

That last one, however, was proving to be a monumental challenge. It wasn’t just the way he spoke, his brain firing off at a speed only he could keep up with. It wasn’t even the way he seemed oblivious to how endearing those very quirks were. No, it was the fact that the simple act of him breathing in your direction had you scrambling to hold yourself together. And honestly you were failing miserably.

Which is why you spent most of your time holed up in your office. It wasn’t much—just a desk, a slightly uncomfortable chair, and a perpetually growing stack of case files that seemed determined to bury you. But it offered privacy, and that was enough. Here you could breathe, decompress, and occasionally allow yourself to daydream about a certain genius profiler without the risk of public humiliation.

The bullpen was proving to be too chaotic, too close to him. Your office gave you distance, a buffer. But, as you had come to learn, hiding only worked when he didn’t decide to seek you out. And Spencer Reid had a knack for finding you when you least expected it.

"Hey."

You jumped slightly, nearly fumbling the stack of press notes you’d been carefully organizing.

Turning toward the door, you found Spencer leaning casually against the frame, a file tucked under one arm and a distracted sort of smile on his face. His tie was slightly loosened, his sleeves rolled up just enough to expose his forearms, and—just like that—your brain completely short-circuited.

"Hi," you said, trying not to sound too startled. "Do you, um, need something?"

"Yeah." He further into the room, lifting the file in explanation. "I was looking at the local coverage of our case, and I noticed a couple discrepancies in the timeline published."

"Oh,” you said softly, quickly shuffling the press notes into a messy pile and pushing them to the side. "Well, um, sometimes reporters try to fill gaps when they don't the facts. It's... frustrating, but it happens."

You glanced up at him briefly, but that look of his made your cheeks warm. Your fingers twisted together in your lap as you tried to focus on anything other than how ridiculously self-conscious you suddenly felt.

"That makes sense. I figured you'd know."

Instead of lingering in the doorway or leaving like you assumed he would, Spencer, casually grabbed the chair across from your desk. He spun it around in one fluid motion and sat it backwards, draping his arms on the backrest with an ease that felt strangely familiar—like you had been friends or colleagues for years instead of just a few months.

"I'll reach out to them about fixing the timeline," you said, your hand instinctively moving a stray strand of hair behind your ear. You clasped your hands together to still them, offering a small, nervous smile. "It shouldn't be too hard to correct."

"Thanks," he said. "That'll probably save from giving another long-winded lecture on factual reporting."

You gave a quiet laugh, grateful for the distraction from your tasks, though you weren’t entirely sure how you felt about the company. Not that you didn’t enjoy his company—there was plenty to enjoy, more than you cared to admit. If you could manage to function like a normal human being around him, you might even look forward to moments like this.

But then he tilted his head slightly, his eyes studying you as if he were unraveling some kind of puzzle and for one terrifying second, you were convinced he could hear every single thought racing through your mind.

"So," he began, "how are you liking it here so far? The job, I mean. Is it what you expected?"

You blinked, caught off guard by the sudden shift in conversation. "Oh, um... yeah. It's been great so far. Busy, but... I like it."

"That's good," he said, nodding. "I know it’s not exactly the most predictable job. Some people don't expect it to be so... chaotic."

"Well," you said, fidgeting slightly with your pen. "I knew what I was signing up for. Or, at least I thought I did. It's a lot, but it's rewarding."

"That's a good attitude to have," he said, a small smile tugging at his lips. "Honestly, you're doing a great job. I don't know how you manage to keep everything straight."

Your heart leaped, thudding in your chest as warmth flooded your face. You weren’t used to hearing compliments, especially from someone like him. You wanted to savor the moment, to bottle up the way his words made you feel, but your nerves refused to let you fully enjoy it.

"I'm just, um, organized I guess,” you stammered, your hand flying up to rub at the back of your neck.

"More than just organized," he replied easily, completely unaware of how his words were affecting you. "You've got half the team wrapped around your finger already. Even Rossi listen when you talk. That's impressive."

Your face burned. "I think that's more about respect for the job than me."

Spencer shrugged lightly, as he was watching you, like he didn't quite believe you. "Maybe. Or maybe you're just better at this than you give yourself credit for."

You let out a nervous chuckle, fingers twitching as you fiddled with the corner of the paper in front of you.

"I don't... I don't know about that."

He tilted his head, again, his brow quirking. "Do you know how to take a compliment?"

"Of course I do." You were sure your voice lacked the conviction needed.

He smirked, leaning forward over the chair. "Doesn't seem like it."

You opened your mouth to respond, but the words stuck in your throat, tangled in the frantic web that was your thoughts around this infuriating man.

"Well, uh, you’ve only done it twice, so I don’t think that’s enough for you to judge."

His grin widened. "Oh? So you’re saying I should try again? For research purposes?"

Your eyes widened, and you blinked rapidly as if to process his words, your hands shooting up as if to physically block the implication. "I—uh—no, that's not what I meant.”

"No, no," he said, sitting up straighter and waiving off your flustered attempt to deflect. "I aim to please. If more compliments are what you’re after, I’ve got plenty.”

"Please, no."

"You're incredibly efficient. Seriously, I think you've managed to anticipate what the team needs before we even know we need it. And your ability to keep your cool under pressure? That's impressive. I mean, do you even get stressed? Because if you do, you hide it really well."

"Dr. Reid—," you squeaked, covering your face with your hands as if that could somehow shield you from the onslaught of praise.

"And," he continued, clearly now enjoying himself. "You're probably the most patient person, I've ever met. Which is something, considering you work with people who constantly interrupt and derail your perfectly planned press briefings."

Your stomach flipped, and you felt a flush of heat that had nothing to do with embarrassment pooling in your chest. As much as you wanted to sink to the floor, the way he looked at you sent every nerve in your body spiraling. Each word felt like it was tailored to you, peeling back the very thin veneer of control you’d desperately tried to maintain over the massive crush you found yourself drowning in.

Your head dropped to the desk with a soft thunk, muffling your groan. "Okay, okay, I get it."

He leaned forward just slightly, resting his chin on his arms atop the chair. "Now what do you say?"

"Thank you."

He smirked widened. "See? That wasn't so hard was it?"

Your cheeks burned even hotter, and you averted your eyes, trying to hide the nervous smile tugging at your lips. "You didn't have to go on and on..."

"Oh, but I did." He was still grinning. "You deserved it."

You risked a glance back at him, losing your cool by the second. That only made your face heat up more. "You're impossible."

"And yet, you haven't kicked me out of your office."

"That's only because I didn’t think it would work."

"Well," he said, turning towards the door. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you didn't mind the compliments."

You opened your mouth to protest but no words came out. Instead, you watched helplessly as he shot you one last smile before disappearing into the hallway.

When the door finally clicked shut behind him, you let out a shaky breath and drop your head back onto the desk.

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[cherienymphe]

Suburbia X

Peter Parker x Reader

Warnings: mentions of NON-CON, DUB-CON, blackmail, voyeurism, stalking, breeding kink, eventual violence, age gap, brief side of Bucky x reader, babysitter!Peter, mommy!reader

➥ banner by @maysdigitalarts | divider by @silkholland

➥ series masterlist

~

“Thanks for coming.”

That was what you finally said to Peter after you both had been sitting on your couch for what felt like hours. In truth, it was only about ten minutes, but the silence was so tense and heavy—and you were so nervous and terrified of the young man in front of you—that the time didn’t pass normally in your mind.

Peter wasn’t wearing his glasses today, and without them he looked beyond only twenty-three. Or maybe that was all in your head. Maybe the reveal of his true character and nature made him seem so much more intimidating…and in turn, older. His dark curls framed his face as he gazed at you, patiently waiting for you to say what he was no doubt eagerly waiting to hear.

“Well…” he ran his eyes over your face. “Over the phone I asked if this was about our talk, and you said sort of, so naturally I became curious.”

You nodded at that, glancing away from him and taking in the silence of your house. Your girls were asleep, and you envied them in this moment. You envied their innocence and their complete ignorance of what was going on around them and their own part in it. You would never in a million years tell them what you were about to put yourself through just to protect them and their quality of life, but you hoped they’d grow up to understand the lengths you would go to for them.

You swiped your tongue between your lips.

“I wanted to tell you face to face that you were right,” you finally said, looking at him.

Peter’s face was hard to read, but there was a noticeable glint in his dark eyes that made your heart stutter. He didn’t take his eyes off of you as he straightened, and it made him appear taller. You felt so small and insignificant beneath his gaze, and you desperately tried to remember what you were doing and why you were doing it. Peter had seamlessly shifted the power dynamic—and in the worst way possible—and you desperately needed to have the upperhand again.

“When I chose to be a single mom…I did it with no regrets and because it was genuinely what I wanted.”

Peter leaned in a bit, and you spoke up.

“...and so…determined to prove something, I think that I never even really considered the possibility of more. Of more helping hands, of more comforting figures in their lives, of more…love that could be given to my girls,” you continued, looking between his eyes. “...and me.”

Peter wasn’t saying anything, and you felt a stab of panic, wondering if he saw through you.

“You were right. You are so good to them…and me, and it’s terrifying not only because it’s new but also because it’s you.”

You abruptly stood, turning away from him.

“You’re so much younger and I hired you and Peter, you have to understand,” your voice cracked as you stared at the wall. “You have to understand how I’m feeling because this makes me look and feel like some predator, like-.”

You cut yourself off when familiar hands took your arms, forcing you to face him, and you watched the way Peter’s expression softened with one look at your face.

“I know that I said some unkind things, but this situation is very tricky and scary and has the potential to really change my life in a way that can’t be undone or at the very least not for years and years to come-.”

“I know that,” he whispered, finally speaking again. “Trust me, I understand-.”

“You say that, but if this doesn’t work out, you're not the one who’s going to have to deal with the fallout. Do you truly understand how people will see me? It doesn’t matter that this was reciprocated. Cougar will be one of the nicer words I’ll be referred to as…”

Your words died in your throat as Peter gently shushed you, one hand coming up to graze your now tearful cheek. The way he looked at you told you that he believed everything you were saying, but you couldn’t be sure. He leaned in a tad, and on instinct, you turned your face away. Your gaze lowered to focus on the floor, and you felt Peter’s breath on your face as he sighed.

“No. You’re not the kind of woman to just jump into something like this, and I should have known that,” he whispered, more to himself than you. “I should’ve known that you would panic and freak out and follow your initial instinct of rejecting this in every way you can.”

The younger man rubbed your arms, hands gently sliding up and down over the fabric of your sleeves, and you shuddered.

“You’re smart about things, and it’s why I love you,” he murmured, making your stomach churn. “I should have thought about that, gone about this differently.”

You finally met his gaze, and your heart dropped to your stomach at the way he looked at you. It reminded you of that night—or what you could remember from it, anyway—and the morning after and the day at the restaurant. One of his hands tightened on your arm, and you swallowed at the position you put yourself in.

“...but you don’t understand what you do to me,” Peter chuckled.

It was light, and his teeth winked at you, and his eyes gleamed in a way that terrified you. It didn’t matter what you believed because Peter believed he was in love with you and was the one for you and was the best father for your girls. His mind was made up, and you felt that you should’ve accepted as such when he went through such great lengths to back you into a corner.

He handled this whole ordeal like a man with nothing to lose, and you supposed that in a way, that was true. In this scenario, you were the one with way more to lose. If this ever got out, you would be the villain in this story, and it was something that Peter had so eloquently thrown in your face.

“I don’t think I can say I regret confronting you like I did at the restaurant,” he confessed, his thumb brushing along your lip. “...but believe it or not, I didn’t take pleasure in putting things into perspective for you like that.”

So that was what he was calling it.

“I don’t take pleasure in hurting you in any way, even if it is only making you uncomfortable for a short while, but I needed to make you understand. Understand what you mean to me and what I would do to have you.”

When his lips gently brushed along yours, you let him kiss you.

“You don’t even know the things I would do for you—the things I have done for you,” he whispered into the kiss, and you couldn’t stop your form from trembling.

Peter noticed, and he made a humming noise.

“There are a lot of things for you to fear in this world, but now that we see eye to eye, I’ll never be one of them.”

You felt tears kiss your eyes as he tried to kiss you again, but spoke, effectively halting his movements.

“It’s not you I’m afraid of, Peter.”

A lie.

He seemed to understand what you were getting at, and he chuckled again. The dark-haired man pulled back some to gaze at you like you were so silly, and you hated how boyish that smile made him.

“You’re it for me, Y/N. Don’t you get that? Hmm?”

He held your gaze with his own dark one.

“Whatever comes of this, you’ll never have to doubt my loyalty. I’m going to be by your side when things inevitably progress into something more public, and I will make sure that whatever those…” he took a deep breath, lip curling over his teeth. “...women put you through, it will be worth it.”

His brows drew together as he fought to make you believe his words.

“I swear to you, now that it won’t hold a candle to coming home to me everyday. I’m going to make you so happy that whatever they have to say won’t mean a thing to you.”

Peter kissed you again then, deeply inhaling.

“I’m not going anywhere…”

You knew that those words—if nothing else—were true, and that was what you hated.

You stood with your arms around yourself as you watched Peter bring a suitcase into the house. You had prepared yourself for this, anticipating by all of his actions so far that Peter was not one to take things slow. Or at least, he didn’t want to take things slowly with you. Besides, if you were going to get your hands on every copy of that tape he possibly had, then you needed to be up under each other’s noses.

You needed him to be comfortable enough to bring his things—his laptop—into your house and not spare your proximity a second thought. When he caught your eye, you gave him a gentle smile, and while he was slow to return it, he eventually did. You took your time in nearing him.

“I know how nervous this makes you,” he told you, and he reached for your face. “It’s okay. We’ll be discreet for a while, and I’ll gradually make myself at home, and when the time is right…”

He trailed off, a secretive smile dancing on his lips at the thought of going public with you one day.

“Thank you,” you finally replied. “You don’t even understand how much that puts me at ease, Peter. Especially since I know how difficult this is for you.”

The look he gave you encouraged you to elaborate, and so you did.

“While I might not completely understand it just yet, you do love me, and it can’t be easy hiding a relationship with someone you care about so much.”

You noticed the way his face fell a bit at that, and you reached out to rest your hand on his arm.

“I don’t doubt that you want to navigate like any other couple in the world, but you’re being considerate of me and how this will affect me, and it means a lot.”

You stepped closer, and you watched Peter’s eyes drink in the action.

“You’re so good to me,” you whispered to him.

At that, he didn’t take his eyes off of you, and you played with the fabric of his sweater.

“...and I’m sorry that I let my fear and panic prevent me from seeing that before.”

You watched him take a deep breath, dark eyes still trained on you.

“It’s okay,” he quietly told you. “I forgive you for that, you don’t have to…”

He shook his head.

“Don’t apologize for it.”

You took his hand, and Peter was eager in threading his fingers through yours. He pulled you along up the stairs to unpack, and you told yourself that smiling in his face and kissing him with your eyes closed and telling him what he wanted to hear was the easy part. As you walked down the hall—Peter taking the lead—you reminded yourself that the hard part was only just beginning. 

The real challenge would come in cohabitating with him like he was someone you cared about. The truly hard part of all this would come when he wanted to shower together and wrap his arms around you in bed and pull you against him like you were any average couple in love. 

When he wanted to have sex with you.

This would go beyond just acting, but you would have to fully embody someone else—someone who cared about this man almost as much as he cared about you but was simply hesitant and nervous. You would have to take on an entirely new persona, and to make it all the more challenging, you had to do it in enough time to get what you needed before he wanted this relationship to go public.

…because you didn’t care what Peter said.

He wasn’t going to be content with keeping this between you forever.

You hadn’t missed the way he’d said Bucky’s name at that restaurant. There were more sides to Peter you hadn’t been privy to yet, and you hoped to God that you never would be, but you knew without a doubt that there was a part of Peter that wanted to show this entire town you belonged to him. Peter had never struck you as that kind of man, but then again, there were a lot of things about him that you absolutely would have never guessed.

As you helped him unpack what he brought over, you tried to keep your face even at the sight of clothes and toiletries and nothing else.

“I’ll have to tell Nat that I rehired you, of course,” you said to him, hesitantly glancing his way. “It seems silly to have you hide away any time she comes over.”

Peter found that funny for some reason, and he nodded.

“Of course. What are you going to tell her when she asks why?”

You stewed on that for a moment.

“I haven’t decided on that yet. Maybe I’ll tell her that I just really need you around, right now,” you eventually came up with, and it wasn’t a lie.

“Well, it’s not a lie,” he said, voicing your own thought. “You do need me.”

He leaned in and pressed his lips to the side of your neck, pausing in his unpacking to give you his attention. Peter’s intentions were pretty clear, and you didn’t doubt that said intentions had been on his mind from the moment you’d uttered the words ‘you were right’ earlier. While you knew that it would eventually come to that—probably as soon as hours from now—you weren’t mentally prepared. You couldn’t make your body do that, right now, and so you hurried to ruin his mood.

“I’ll have to tell Bucky the same…”

Your words had the desired effect, and you relaxed a little when Peter froze. He lifted his head from the crook of your neck to rest his chin on it, and while you had expected several things, you hadn’t expected the next words that came from his mouth.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for Mr. Barnes to come by here, anymore.”

You couldn’t stop your frown at that, and you pulled away just a little to turn and face him. Peter’s visage was entirely serious, and your frown deepened as you realized this. His expression didn't relent at all the longer you stared at him, and you were the one to break the tense silence.

“Peter…”

“I’m serious,” he confirmed, moving to finish unpacking the rest of his clothes. “Now that our relationship has evolved, I don’t want him coming by here anymore.”

“...but he’s my friend.”

The younger man gave a scoffing bark of a laugh at that, and you watched him run his hand through his thick curls.

“Friend,” he repeated. “Yeah, sure.”

The humor disappeared from his features by the time he looked at you again.

“He’s your friend because you didn’t want more with him. If you had, he wouldn’t be your friend right now, and we’d be having an entirely different conversation.”

You blinked at that.

“The kind that would involve me telling you to break up with him because I actually dislike sharing.”

His tone was serious, and you swallowed as he stared you down. Your lips parted, and you snapped them shut, thinking over your next words carefully.

“If I suddenly stop being friends with him, it’ll be very suspicious, Peter.”

He stared at you for what felt like too long, expression unmoving before his lips suddenly pulled into a small smile.

“While true, I imagine that him walking in on you coming around me would be even more suspicious.”

His words had you blinking furiously, but before you could respond to such a thinly veiled threat, you heard a familiar cry. The curly-haired young man didn’t hesitate to drop what he was doing in favor of checking on whichever twin had woken up from her nap first.

You were still tense from his parting words, and telling yourself that you needed to pick your battles wisely, you softly sighed.

You knew that you couldn’t just outright ask Peter to delete that video. It was so brazenly stupid that not only would Peter accuse you of not trusting him, but he might even suspect this whole thing was an act. He’d be right, of course, and it was why you had to convincingly get him settled into a comfortable lull. 

…and you had to do that by committing to doing things you weren’t comfortable doing.

Your fingers clawed at your sheets as Peter’s tongue swiped between your folds and pressed itself into your core. Your girls were down for the night, and you knew that as soon as they were, and dinner was done and put away, Peter would waste no time in reaching out for what he felt now belonged to him.

“I haven’t stopped thinking about that night since it happened,” he’d murmured to you, humming at the taste of wine on your lips.

You’d concluded that you needed something in your system if you were to commit to this.

“The sounds you made, the way you tasted on my lips,” he’d breathed into your mouth. “The way you felt wrapped around me.”

He’d taken a reprieve on the stairs, just pinning you against the wall and kissing you. His hands hadn’t stayed in one place for long, touching every inch of you that he could, and when he seemed satisfied, he continued in pulling you towards your bedroom.

“Fuck,” he’d swore into the kiss the moment you were through the threshold. “I can’t wait to be inside of you again.”

The moments that followed bled together into one long endless pleasurable moment. You didn’t know if it was a relief or not that Peter was so skilled and so determined to make you come undone. You found it shockingly easy to surrender to his ministrations, unable to swallow down your moans and whimpers as he ate you out.

His tongue—so warm and firm���greedily lapped at you, and his fingers pressed into your thighs so hard that you didn’t doubt there’d be bruises in the morning. Your chest arched as you squirmed on the bed, and unable to help yourself, one of your hands found it’s way to his curls. Peter hummed against your cunt, and you knew that he liked that.

You confirmed as much when he reached up to find your other hand before forcing it to find a home in his hair right next to your other one. You were completely naked—Peter having wasted no time in getting your clothes off of you—but your nudity did nothing to cool you down. A thin layer of sweat coated your skin, and you absentmindedly recalled that Peter was only partially undressed.

It seemed that he only just remembered that too, and when he pulled his mouth away from you, you were ashamed of the stab of disappointment that tore through you. Your chest heaved with deep breaths, and you blinked as you watched him sit up before getting undressed.

He didn’t take his eyes off of you as he did, pulling his lip between his teeth as he rejoined you on the bed, a hand wrapping around your ankle. The wine in your system definitely helped you to relax, but if you were honest, it did more than that. Playing this part came to you easier than you anticipated, and that worried you a little. Maybe even scared you a little.

The younger man was gentle in running his hand up your leg, fingers dancing along your skin as he did so. His dark eyes appeared even darker if that were at all possible, and in this moment, it was evident that Peter cared about nothing more than he did the thought of being inside of you again.

Glancing down, you caught sight of his cock—erect and wet at the very tip and just waiting to fill you up.

“God, you’re beautiful,” Peter murmured, reaching for your face.

When he kissed you, you didn’t swallow down your hum in time, and your throat vibrated as it climbed out of your mouth and into the kiss. Peter’s entire body covered yours as he made himself comfortable on top of you, and—playing your part—you rested your hands on his back. His hands slid down to grip your thighs, pushing them apart to accommodate him, and you gasped at the feel of his length pressing against you.

Peter didn’t waste any more time.

Forcing your knees to hook over his arms, Peter lifted his hips and dipped his cock into you with one smooth thrust. A choked gasp left you, and your mouth was soundlessly parted as he started to thrust into you, hips snapping against yours every time. Your hands slid over him, unsure of what to grasp onto, and you couldn’t stop the small whimpers that started to fall from your lips.

Peter was fucking you with the assured confidence that he finally had you.

The strained grunts that left his mouth were in time with every push of his cock, and you were almost ashamed of how wet you were. Although, you supposed that it would only prove to help you in convincing Peter this was genuine. You were literally dripping around him, and you repeatedly reminded yourself that you were playing a part. That you were doing what you needed to do to earn his trust and get him to let his guard down.

Although that was easier said than done when his lips kept seeking yours out. Every kiss he gave you was hungry and heated, and you gasped again when his teeth nipped at the sensitive skin there. His toned chest repeatedly brushed against yours with every movement, and the gentle stimulation against your hardened buds made you shudder beneath him.

Every time he dipped his cock into you, the sound reached your ears…and his too.

“You’re dripping for me,” he whispered into the kiss. “I love how wet you are.”

You wanted to come up with something to say to reel him in more, but you were genuinely at a loss for words. It was hard to focus on anything besides the feel of him stretching you out.

“I’m so glad you came around, So glad,” he murmured, kissing you over and over and over again. “I really…I really didn’t want to do things the hard way.”

Your bed shook beneath you as Peter pounded into you, his curls tickling your skin.

“You may not believe that, but it’s true.”

He finally paused, holding himself inside of you as he pulled his head back some. He stared into your eyes—both of your chests heaving—and he looked between them as you struggled to catch your breath.

“I meant it when I said I don't take pleasure in hurting you. That’s not something that makes me happy,” he said through uneven breaths.

He slowly pulled his hips back before snapping them against you again, and you gasped. He didn’t take his eyes off of you as he fucked you, carefully watching your face.

“...but I’ll do what I have to. You understand?”

He didn’t give you time to respond.

“I’m smart, and you know it, and I know you know it.”

Your nails dragged along his skin as he thrust into you slowly, taking his time in pushing the length of him into you.

“So if all of this is just you playing at something, then you need to be prepared to play at it for the rest of your life,” he whispered to you, staring into your eyes. “...because you don’t know the things I’ve done to protect you.”

Your wide eyes looked between his at that.

“...and I’ll do worse to keep you.”

[fatherbrat]

cw. prequel to this. college au hockey player!sukuna. fatherbrat’s 2nd hugh hefner costume mention. reader is drunk. crack-esque. sfw, 1.3k words.

the first time you meet sukuna is at a halloween party. 

(it’s technically your halloween party. it isn’t your house or anything, but the boys that live there are happy to let you host as long as it means a house full of girls and none of the responsibility of setting up. you're happy to fulfill their requests, since it means you can have things go your way and then dip at the end of the night, leaving the post-party cleaning up to them.)

needless to say, you and sukuna do not make good first impressions. you would blame the alcohol, but honestly, it wouldn’t have gone any different if you were sober. 

he arrives at the party in a group. you recognize one of them—the tall, smiley one with impossibly white hair who sits behind you in biochem. he’s dressed up like a character from an snl skit, clad in an ill-fitting suit and round sunglasses with a present box glued to his pelvis.

you don’t recognize the one who comes in behind him, but he’s sexy and tanned and has a mustache. he’s also wearing the same costume as the white-haired one. gojo, you remember. isn’t he on the hockey team?

you immediately pull out your phone, searching up the school’s official instagram page for the hockey team. there they are, front and center in the most recent post. the third guy with them—the one with black hair and the scar that runs through his lip—is in the picture too. he’s wearing a batman costume now, half-assed but recognizable enough. at least he has on the mask. 

you squint at the last man in the group and frown. your gaze drops back down to your phone. 

in the second row of photos is a carousel full of pictures of this pink-haired brute. sukuna, the apparent team captain. his personal account is tagged, but it seems too professional to you, public and polished to perfection for recruiters. 

anyways. he’s here. at your halloween party. wearing an outfit you deem completely unacceptable. 

you down the rest of your (sixth) drink and toss the empty can onto the kitchen counter before making your way towards the group of men, wobbly as ever.

gojo is the first one to notice you. “hey,” he beams, “cool party.” he puts his arm around the guy with the mustache—shiu—and wiggles his eyebrows. “you like our costumes?”

you ignore him, something you wouldn’t do sober, but you’re on a mission. 

you point at sukuna, jabbing your nail into his chest. “where the fuck is your costume?”

sukuna glances down at your finger, then your costume, then your face. “you don’t see the jersey? i’m a fuckin’ hockey player.”

you pull back your hand, disgusted. “first of all, drop the attitude, mister. second of all, that’s not a costume. you’re on the hockey team.”

someone snickers. the one dressed as batman, you think, but you don’t turn around to check. sukuna’s face morphs through a few different emotions—amusement, annoyance, astonishment. he eventually settles on agitation, pissed that he hasn’t even gotten the chance to get some liquor in his system before dealing with bullshit like this.

“you wanna talk about costumes? you’re wearing underwear and a robe,” he says, gesturing towards you with a dismissive wave. 

you gasp and plant your hands on your hips. “this isn’t just underwear, idiot. it’s lingerie. i’m wearing a garter belt, for fuck’s sake. and thigh highs! plus you forgot about my hat?”

you use your entire arm to point at gojo. “who am i dressed as, dick-in-a-box boy?”

his face is flushed from laugher. “sexy hugh hefner. obviously.”

you throw your arm up in the air and let it fall against your thigh with a smack, not noticing the murderous glare sukuna sends towards gojo. someone somewhere turns down the music a bit.

“see!” you exclaim, addressing sukuna once again. “this is clearly a Sexy Costume™. and you know what else makes it a costume? i would never just leave my house like this on a typical day. it’s not a regular outfit in the slightest.” you speak slowly, wanting to make sure he understands every word. 

“you wanna know what makes this Not a costume?” you continue, still talking slow as you wag your finger up and down sukuna’s body. “it’s a regular-degular outfit. literally anyone can put on that campus store-bought jersey and wear it with those jeans on a normal day.”

sukuna starts to speak, but you cut him off. “didn't you see the sign out front? ‘no costume, no entry.’”

his jaw ticks. his right eye twitches. “yeah, i saw the fucking sign. i don’t-”

“oh, great,” you interrupt. “so you don’t know what a costume is and you can’t read. perfect. that hockey scholarship must be doing a lot of heavy lifting, huh?”

even in your inebriated state, you immediately know that was the wrong thing to say. the little crowd that gathered to watch your back-and-forth takes a collective inhale. sukuna looks downright irate, fists clenched at his sides as a storminess settles over his face. 

gojo lets out a long and low whistle, the kind that cartoon bombs make right before they hit the ground and explode. he pats your shoulder twice before abandoning you altogether. the rest of the crowd follows, leaving you to contend with this bear you repeatedly poked.

the music returns to its original volume, but it sounds like the speaker has been moved. away from you and closer to the living room.

maybe it’s the alcohol in your system, but you swear you can see literal steam coming out of sukuna’s ears. you sway on your feet a bit, waiting for him to say something. a thought occurs to you as you watch him pinch the bridge of his nose and breathe deeply, but you keep it to yourself, screwing up your lips in a physical attempt to keep from digging your grave further.

sukuna didn’t even want to come to this party in the first place. he actually mentioned the sign out front to the guys before they came in, trying to use it as an excuse for him to go home. his plan was to make an appearance, drink a beer, and then escape after thirty minutes. but here you are, this drunk stranger yelling at him for being dressed like a normal fucking person. the urge to stay strikes him. he wants to linger just to piss you off. 

“are you done?” he asks you.

you cross your arms. “are you leaving?”

“no.”

“then no.”

just as you’re about to dig into him again, sukuna’s thinning patience snaps.

“stop being a fucking bitch about this, alright? just relax. you’re acting fucking crazy.”

your jaw unhinges itself and you stand there, gawking. sukuna seems about ready to walk away, cracking his knuckles and looking somewhere behind you. your eyes land on his cheek, reddened and ready for a smack. you draw your arm back, wanting to make sure you gave him a slap that stings—and he catches it mid-air.

“are you serious?” he scoffs. you glance at your hand, his fingers around your wrist, the scowl etched into his face.

he glowers at you, not letting go when you try to shake your arm free. so you do the next logical thing.

you spit on him.

a glob of your saliva lands just below his eye. you smirk, satisfied. he drops your arm and curses, lifting the bottom of his jersey to wipe his face. then you make your first smart decision of the night and turn around, running back to where the rest of the party is to hide amongst the bodies.

he yells after you, but it’s drowned out by your giggles and the sound of chatter as you get nearer, bumping into countertops and side tables on the way.

someone pats your back and puts a drink in your hand. you pray you never have to see the captain of the hockey team again. 

tags. @nonamevenus @lavenderdaydream97 @rinofcike @gdamnackerman

[ahgasegotarmy116]

BANG-ABLE | Jeon Jungkook | Drabble 4

Summary: You get upset when you see other girls flirting with Jungkook but he always makes sure that you know you're the only one he wants Pairing: f!reader x Sex Bot Jungkook Word Count: 2.1k~ Warnings: Smuttttt hehe Requested by an anon 💜

"So yeah I was thinking maybe we could hang out sometime? My friends and I are going out on Friday a-" "Can I come?" I ask, cutting off the woman at the coffee shop that's decided to chat up Jungkook.

I swear I leave his man alone for five minutes and he's already got a line of woman drooling over him.

"Um I'm sorry...who are you?" she asks, scoffing as if she owns him and I'm the one that's imposing. "She's my girlfriend" he says and pulls me in by my hips, kissing me in front of her to make a point leaving her turning her face in disgust.

"Way to lead a girl on" she huffs and walks off.

"Not his fault that you couldn't take a hint Honey" I call after her, telling myself I can't keep bringing him out with me when I'm in the wrong headspace.

I just wanted some company though...plus Ava was busy so I didn't have much of a choice.

"Hi Baby" Jungkook says, coaxing my focus back over to him. "Hi" I grumble, crossing my arms over my chest, clearly still upset making him smile.

"I don't know why you let them talk to you" I huff and sit down at the table he had gotten us with him sliding in across from me, lacing our fingers together and placing a kiss on my knuckles.

"Because I like seeing that look on your face. Plus I know you get satisfied when you see their reactions, knowing that you have something they want but couldn't get even if they tried" he reminds me but it's not good enough to get me out of this bad mood, not today.

"I would rather you just ignored them or told them you have a girlfriend" I huff for what feels like the twelfth time but it doesn't seem to bother him.

"You know I hardly ever get to interact with people besides you and Ava, just think of it as research" he explains leaving me cocking a brow and echoing the last word.

"Yeah you know, I get to be outside of the four walls of our home and learn how to evolve and treat you better and you get peace of mind because you know I'd never want anyone else but you" he continues leaving me sighing, knowing he really doesn't get the chance to get out much and observe the world.

His patterns and behaviors do switch up a bit every time I bring him out with me so I have to admit that it does make things seem less monotonous, makes him feel real.

I just don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing...

"Come on" he says and gets up, waiting for me to follow and I do so cautiously. "I'm not gonna hurt you or anything" he laughs. "I just know you're not gonna enjoy being here anymore after what happened so let's just go for a walk" he offers, holding out his hand for me and so I resign to his idea and take it, allowing him to lead the way.

Our walk is quiet, contemplative even and it leaves him debating on whether or not to ask me what's wrong when he can infer the answer already, or at least part of it.

"I'm sorry" he says and pulls me aside to a more secluded area, gaining us a little more privacy. "I know you're just acting on your programing but I'm just not in the best headspace right now" I admit, having let my emotions simmer under the surface for a while now, leaving him placing a kiss on my forehead, a further expression of his apologetic state.

"You wanna talk about it?" he ask, cupping my face but not making me look at him, knowing I'd rather have a second to debate on if I'm ready to yet. I decidedly shake my head, realizing I'm not and he hums, not pushing it further, knowing that although in an area hidden from most of the people surrounding us this is not a place for uncomfortable conversations.

"Can I kiss you?" he asks, now bringing my face back over to his, stroking my cheek and giving me a sad smile, thinking it might make me feel better and so I nod, accepting his request.

He places his lips against mine, the first time he's done so since we left the house, knowing that public displays of affection tend to make me a little uncomfortable at times. This time the kiss feels different though, I can feel the intensity growing with every meeting, a familiar fluttering felt deep within me.

"Jungkook wait" I gasp, the need for air almost forgotten, trailing his lips down my neck as a compromise but not ceasing his efforts to convey how much he wants me.

"Jungkook someone could see us" I reprimand him half heartedly, tilting my head to the side automatically, my body going through the same song and dance we've done time and time again. "Don't worry, I'll be able to sense them coming" he says, alerting me to another one of his features that I had yet to discover.

"You mean to tell me you have sensors that'll alert you if someone is coming just so we can have sex in public?" I scoff, pushing him off of me so I can see his face, needing to know if he's lying or not. "Well...yeah" he says as if it's the most normal thing in the world...news flash, nothing is normal with him.

"What have I gotten myself into?" I sigh, closing my eyes and rubbing my temples giving him the opportunity to come in closer again, placing his hands on my hips and continuing his onslaught of kisses, no doubt leaving a mark or two.

"Let me make you feel good. Just for a little bit, yeah?" he asks, no doubt sensing my arousal that's starting to leak out. "Are you sure you'll know before someone sees?" I ask after contemplating it for a second and he nods, his kisses now on my collarbone, threatening to go lower.

"I know you want to" he temps and I can't ignore that I do. We both know that this would help improve my mood just a little bit so I don't blame his programing for coming up with this solution. My resigning sigh replaced by a whine, him biting down on my collarbone to make me answer sooner.

"Think you can make me cum in three minutes?" I ask, challenging his abilities when I know for a fact that he can. "I don't need three minute doll" he chuckles and slides his hand from my waist to my hip to my thigh and slips it up my skirt, taking his time to tease me making me groan from impatience.

"Come on, let me take my time with you" he rasps in my ear, playing with the elastic of my underwear. "We don't have time" I remind him but he snaps it back making me jump from the surprise abuse to my hip.

"We have plenty of time" he counters and places a kiss below the shell of my ear, his fingers now changing course and trailing their way to my inner thigh, soon rubbing me through my thong, the damp spot on it undeniable making me mewl at the sensation.

"Jungkook please" I whine, fed up with the teasing so he relents this time, pushing it to the side and running his finger through my folds, catching me off guard when it starts to vibrate against me, placing my hand over my mouth, preventing the moan that was about to come out from being completely audible to any passerby, no matter if they can see us or not.

He dips a finger inside of me, rubbing his thumb against my clit, kicking up the buzzing sensation, making me whimper, the pleasure bubbling up sooner than I had expected.

I had no fucking idea he could do this, the vibrating abilities seemingly hidden from me for a moment like this, when he knows I need to cum hard and fast, voyeurism not being one of my kinks...yet.

"Fuck, Jungkook. Please" I gasp, the intensity of his fingers enough to tip me over but when he kneels down in front of me I about lose it there. His mouth attaching to me immediately, his tongue exploring my cunt and making my eyes roll back, my throat gone completely dry.

I lace my fingers through his hair and pull at his locks, the balance against the tree not being enough for me anymore as he throws one of my legs over his shoulder, granting him better access, his slurping against me making my eyes roll back, forbidden sounds from him making me lose my sense of sanity, forgetting where we are.

Once he places his vibrating thumb on my clit again I'm gone, cumming harder than I have in a while, the intensity of it leaving my knees weak, threatening to make me fall to them.

Once he's stopped licking me clean, the mewls from overstimulation heard loud and clear he gets out from under my dress and smirks at me, clearly satisfied with the work he's done. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, not bothering to try to clean up properly, getting off his knees and pressing his lips against mine again, the taste of myself of his lips enough to make me wet again.

I hear a scoff from behind Jungkook and I bite down on his lip in surprise, backing away from him, him not flinching at all with the lack of feeling absent from his robotic state. "This is a public park you freaks" the same woman from the coffee shop reprimands us, mortified by the scene she happened upon.

"Had to make it up to her for earlier" he shrugs leaving her scoffing once more, her obvious favorite form of response and storming out. Her cheeks now tinted a dark pink from sheer embarrassment, but no doubt mixed with anger.

Jungkook chuckles and turns back to me, expecting my reaction to be just as amused as his but I'm mad. More than mad I'm furious.

"You said you'd be able to stop before someone got close enough to see us!" I growl through gritted teeth making him coo at my now humiliated reaction. "What? I figured it would be best to show her who I'm really interested in, and clearly belong to" he says and pulls me in by my hips with me reluctantly dragging my feet all the way.

"Love you" he chuckles, infuriating me further. "I hate you" I counter and he laughs, "I'm sure you do" he replies and turns to walk away from me making me chase after him.

"Hey! I'm not done talking to you" I call out, trying to yank him to stop but of course it doesn't work, his strength unparalleled leaving me again dragging behind him awkwardly sighing before interlinking our arms to keep him close on this suddenly crowded sidewalk, people no doubt coming out to watch the sunset, me completely disregarding that replaced by my anger towards him.

"Let's just go home, we can continue our conversation there" he chuckles leaving me now being the one to scoff, muttering curses towards him to myself, his hearing impeccable, never being able to hide even the slightest whisper.

"Yes but I'm your dumb fucking robot, emphasis on the fucking" he says, his corny try of making me smile unsuccessful, leaving me rolling my eyes, the reaction although not initially expected making him the one who's smiling as a result.

"I love you" he tries again but is met with silence, "Oh Jungkook I love you too, you know exactly how to eat me out just right. Oh please won't you do it again?" he says in literally my voice, yet another feature hidden from me.

"Shut up!" I growl making him laugh, my clear surprise to it thoroughly amusing.

"Didn't you read the manual? I'm surprised you haven't asked me about my other features besides the basics of replicating human sex" he says, loud enough for just anyone to hear but luckily we're out of earshot. "I thought it was pretty self explanatory" I say in a hushed tone after placing my hand over his mouth, him licking it as a result making me withdraw it immediately.

"What? 'How to fuck your robot' wasn't interesting enough for you?" he chuckles, using the term Ava and I made up for said manual. "Just shut up and get in the car" I groan and he thankfully does as he's told, telling me everything he can do in very, very explicit detail all the way home.

"You wanna try some of them out" he temps, sliding his hand along my thigh once we pull up to the house. "NO!" I growl and get out of the car, slamming the door leaving a very very satisfied Jungkook to follow behind.

Drabble Masterlist

Taglist: @jkslipppiercing @trina864 @kaitieskidmore97 @goddesofimortality @coolbluedude @coralmusicblaze @whoa-jo @00frenchfries00 @pastelpinkjoon Rest of the tags are in the comments 💜

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[rmview]

another member likes you, TXT.

featuring — txt members x f!reader ( masterlist )

summary — how the txt boys react when noticing that one of their group members has a crush on you!

contents — slight angst, no warnings.

soo ❣ bin

soobin noticed the way kai looked at you — the lingering glances, the quick smiles. at first, he brushed it off. he’s just being nice and i’m probably overthinking this, he told himself. but the way your name lit up in conversations, how his tone softened when he spoke to you… soobin couldn’t ignore it anymore.

one evening, as the two of you were cuddled on the couch, soobin hesitated before speaking. “i need to ask you something,” he said, his voice quieter than usual.

you sat up slightly, concern written across your face as you turned your attention to him instead of the tv. “what is it?”

he fidgeted with the edge of his sleeve. “do you think… do you think he likes you?”

you blinked, caught off guard. “what? who?”

soobin’s lips pressed into a thin line. “one of the guys. i don’t want to name names to make you uncomfortable, but… i can’t help but feel like he has feelings for you.”

your heart softened at the hesitance in his tone, not really caring about which member felt that way since you viewed them all as friends. “soobin, you’re the only one i care about. even if someone else felt that way, it really doesn’t matter to me.”

though your words reassured him, soobin couldn’t shake off his protective instincts, wanting some clarity. later that night, he approached the member in question. “i need to talk to you,” he said, his usual gentle demeanor replaced by quiet firmness, knowing despite everything, he could be open with kai and resolve the issue calmly.

when the truth came out — that kai indeed had a little crush on you — soobin let out a shaky sigh. “i can’t control how you feel, but i need you to respect what we have,” he said. “she’s important to me, and i won’t let anything come between us.”

yeon ❣ jun

yeonjun was confident in your relationship and trusted both you and his members fully, but even he couldn’t ignore the tension growing whenever you and beomgyu were in the same room. at first, yeonjun chalked it up to friendship. but the way beomgyu seemed to light up around you, the lingering stares… it started to gnaw at him.

one evening, after a group dinner, yeonjun casually threw his arm around your shoulder as the two of you walked home. “so,” he started, his tone light but laced with curiosity, yet wanting to get to the bottom of the situation. “do you ever notice how beomgyu acts around you sometimes?”

you tilted your head, confused at the unusual question. “what do you mean, jun?”

yeonjun chuckled, though his eyes betrayed a flicker of unease. “you don’t think he’s… interested in you or anything, right?”

you laughed softly at his words, shaking your head. “ah, is that what you think? i don’t know, even if he were, it wouldn’t change how i feel about you.”

yeonjun’s confidence returned, satisfied with the reassurance and he pressed a kiss to your hair. “good,” he said. but a few days later when he found himself alone with beomgyu, he couldn’t help but bring up the topic.

“hey,” yeonjun began, leaning casually against the doorframe of the practice room and fidgeting with his bottled water while beomgyu scrolled on his phone. “i want to ask you something, and i need you to be honest, yeah?”

when beomgyu admitted his feelings after some poking and uneasy hesitance, yeonjun’s expression softened slightly. “look, i get it. she’s amazing,” he said. “but she’s with me. i don’t want this to mess up our friendship — or the group. just… be careful, okay?”

beom ❣ gyu

beomgyu noticed the way soobin seemed to seek you out in conversations, laughing a little too hard at your jokes, and lingering in your presence. at first, he found it funny. “well, at least he’s got good taste,” he joked to himself. but the more he noticed it, the more it started to bother him despite his endless trust in you and his leader.

one morning, as you cooked breakfast after staying the night at the dorms with him, beomgyu blurted out when nobody was around, “do you think soobin has a crush on you?”

you blinked in surprise, glancing back at him owlishly with a spatula in hand. “what? no way! why would you think that?”

beomgyu leaned back on the stool, crossing his arms with a slight frown. “because i see the way he looks at you. i mean, i don’t blame him — you’re amazing — but it’s starting to get on my nerves a little.”

you put the spatula down and reached for his hand over the counter, squeezing it gently. “beomgyu, i’m with you. that’s all that matters, and i wouldn’t change it for anything. but also, he cares about you a lot no matter whatever his feelings are, so don’t let it get to you.”

he smiled and nodded, though the worry lingered despite your words making sense and he left the topic alone for the rest of the week. but one day when he caught soobin staring at you from across the room unblinkingly while you played a game with yeonjun, beomgyu couldn’t resist teasing the member in question. “hey,” he said, throwing an arm around soobin’s shoulder. “you’ve got good taste, but you know she’s mine, right?”

when soobin froze and stammered an apology, his ears red, beomgyu chuckled but then grew serious. “i’m not mad,” he said. “but i love her, and as my leader and friend, i need to know you’ll respect that.”

tae ❣ hyun

taehyun was perceptive — too perceptive for his own good. he noticed the smallest details, like how yeonjun seemed to look at your reaction to his jokes and antics or the way his teasing demeanor changed around you. taehyun didn’t say anything at first, but it was clear he was keeping a close eye on the situation.

while you and him were on a quiet walk one night as he took you home, he couldn’t help but breach the topic. “hey, i want to ask you something,” he said, glancing down at you.

“what is it, tae?” you replied, concerned by the serious look in his eyes despite his mask covering most of his face, your hand in his.

“do you think yeonjun likes you?” he asked bluntly, not beating around the bush.

you stared at him in shock for a few moments, before shaking your head. “taehyun, no. why would you think that?”

“because i see the way he acts around you sometimes,” taehyun said, his voice calm but firm. “i’m not jealous or anything — i just don’t want there to be any misunderstandings.”

you stopped walking and turned to face him, grasping both of his hands and smiling softly underneath your mask. “you don’t have to worry about anything, i only care about you.”

relieved at your words but still cautious since it was an itch he couldn’t forget, taehyun approached the topic when he got home that night and bumped into yeonjun directly. “i know how you feel,” he said, his tone respectful but unwavering as he spoke bluntly without thinking. “but i need you to back off. she’s with me, and i won’t let anything come between us.”

kai ❣

huening kai was usually easygoing, but he couldn’t ignore the way taehyun seemed to have a tendency to drift toward you, taking closer seats whenever you were at the dorms or trying to prolong conversations with you. at first, kai tried to brush it off as his own imagination, but as time went on, it became harder to ignore.

“kai, are you okay?” you asked one evening, noticing his unusually quiet demeanor while you were helping him fold some of his clothes in his messy room.

he hesitated mid-fold before blurting out, “do you think taehyun has a little crush on you?”

your eyes widened as you nearly dropped the shirt in surprise, finding it hard to believe since the chatty guy usually came off as friendly. “what? no, i don’t think so, at least. why would you say that?”

kai shrugged, fidgeting nervously. “it’s just… i’ve noticed the way he acts around you. i don’t know — maybe i’m just overthinking it.”

you walked to kai and sat him down, placing a reassuring hand on his thigh. “you have nothing to worry about, whether it’s true or not. i’m with you, and taehyun adores you too much to hurt you, so that’s all that matters.”

though your words comforted him, kai later found himself pulling taehyun aside before practice the next day. “hey,” he said softly but seriously, taehyun equally as owlish. “i don’t want there to be any weird tension between us, but i can’t ignore what i’ve noticed. she’s my girlfriend, and i need to know you’ll respect that.”

taehyun immediately apologized and reassured him that it was superficial and he just found you interesting, kai smiled gently. “it’s okay. i just… i love her, and i don’t want anything to mess that up.”

notes: the txt boys are so cute and this was so much fun to do! (i guess fluffy content isn't cutting it for me anymore xD)

[kaminocasey]

Hey! I'm gonna take advantage of your charity and incredible talent and ask me some Silco stuff, and I will make it very personal.

Im just a sucker for angsty fluff, so I was thinking something in the lines of reader works either in some restaurant where Silco goes or actually works in the last drop. And she's just having a rough couple of days and Silco finds out about it and just wants to help (maybe he gets frustrated because of it all, and goes all Silco, you know what I mean? Damn I'm gonna shut up now). But we all know Silco is not the most affectionate man, or at least shows it in weird (?) ways. I feel like it would be better (?) if they didn't have a relationship yet. But I'll leave it to your brilliance to do as you please, I have complete trust in your skills.

But remember, you don't have to do this if you don't feel like it of course.

Anyway, to much information already. So good luck, love your work, that brain of yours and you in general ❤️💙💛🤍

PS- do not allow me to make more requests, I will make them long, weird and I'll keep remembering more stuff to add and the next thing you know it's a full blown fic 🤣

Take All Your Sins

A/N: Thank you so much for your request, love!!! I was excited to do this one!!! This is going to be a two parter or MORE for SURE. <3 ilysm thank you again for your trust in me!!!

Summary: You work in the Last Drop and very close to Vander. What happens if Silco comes along and ruins that?

Pairing: Silco x Reader

WC: 1.4k

Warnings: Angst, sweet Silco, protective Vander, alcohol

Taglist Form | Arcane Masterlist

“If you have something else to do, I can finish those.” You come into the doorway of the kitchen, nodding toward the dishes that he’s doing. 

“I got ‘em. Almost done.” The older man smiles at you.

A few years ago, Vander gave you a place to stay when he found you out on the streets and ever since then, you were basically inseparable. His kids were like your own. 

“Rough night, huh?” Vander asks as you lean in the doorway, keeping an eye on the place in case more patrons came in. 

The Last Drop is usually busy this time of night, especially on this day of the week. But it’s like a ghost town right now and you can’t seem to figure out why.

“Rough week.” You sigh, crossing your arms. 

“Do you need a couple days off?” Vander asks, genuinely.

He always made sure you were taken care of, which you appreciate, but sometimes it feels like he does too much for others, and never lets anyone do anything for him. You’re bound to change that though. His birthday is coming up and you’ve been saving up for something special that will be from you and the kids. 

“Nah, I’m-” You start but hear the door open.

“You got it?” Vander asks and you nod with a grin and turn around to greet the customer, letting the kitchen door swing shut.

“What can I get ya?” You smile at the older man, who makes you do a subtle double take.

“Whiskey. Neat, please.” He smiles. 

He’s got dark hair, a partially scarred face, one blue eye and the other dark black with an orange iris that makes him look incredibly menacing. He’s wearing an open, fancy peacoat with a buttoned vest and tie. Who the hell is this guy?

His eyes rake over you as you approach the bar where he sits. 

“Haven’t seen you before.” You smile, politely. 

“I don’t get out much.” He takes his coat off and sits it down on the stool next to him. “I… work a lot.” 

His voice is silky and you can’t help but want to hear him say more. 

“What do you do?” You ask as you pour his drink. 

“I own my own business.” He tells you and takes the drink when you slide it to him. 

The way he says it, makes you think he doesn’t want to answer anymore questions about himself. 

“What’s your name?” He asks softly. 

You tell him and he takes a sip, keeping his blue eye on you. You smile softly, unsure of what to say.

“Pretty name.” He tells you, after he finishes off his drink. 

You go to pour him another but he puts his hand over his drink and shakes his head.

“Thanks.” You put the bottle back down and then take the empty glass from him, sitting it in the sink. “What’s yours?” 

“Silco. Do you like working here?” He asks, not missing a beat. 

You nod. “Yeah, I do.” 

“And you like Vander?” 

You nod. “Who doesn’t?” 

He chuckles, glancing around subtly. “Who doesn’t, indeed?”

“What are you doing after work?” He asks. 

Oh… of course. He thinks you’re going to put out- 

“I’m not trying to fuck you.” He tells you, as if he can read your mind while he stands up and puts his coat back on.

“You’re not?” You narrow your eyes at him.

“I mean, I wouldn’t say no if you wanted to, but that’s not why I asked.” He smirks.

You both stare at each other for a moment. His eyes fall to your lips before coming back up to your eyes.

“So… the real reason is?” You cross your arms.

“I think you’re beautiful and I’ve not been on a proper date in years.” Silco shrugs, placing a hand on the back of the barstool. 

You go warm in the face before looking down at his slender fingers and immediately can’t help but wonder what they’d feel like inside-

“I’ll be by at 11.” He tells you, snapping your thoughts back to the present as he places a few cogs onto the bar. 

“Um. Alright.” You nod, giving a kind smile. 

He stares at you for another short moment before giving you a smile back and then leaving. Just as the door closes, Vander walks out and sees you staring at the door, breaking you out of the trance that Silco seemed to have put you in.

“Everything okay?” He asks, placing a hand on your shoulder.

You look up at him, smiling a little dreamily. It’s not something you’re used to. Normally, when customers ask you out, you brush them off and pay them no mind. But Silco… he managed to get you to pay attention. 

“All good. Um… I have a date after work.” You go warm in the face at the word ‘date’. 

It’s not like you don’t date… you do… just not consistently. The last date you went on was a year ago. It didn’t go well so you decided to just focus on work.

“With the customer that just came in? Who is he?” Vander’s eyebrows raise in surprise, knowing that you haven’t gone out with someone in a long time.

“Just… some guy.” You shrug, starting to wipe down the bar. 

Vander chuckles. “Alright. Keep your secrets. I was young once, too.”

You laugh with him, your thoughts immediately going back to Silco’s unmatching eyes and the way they softened at the sight of you. 

“You can go get ready if you want. I can finish here.” Vander smirks. 

You roll your eyes. “Thanks. I owe you.” 

“Nah. Get outta here.” He nods toward the door that leads to the upstairs. 

You pat him on the shoulder as you walk past him, heading upstairs to go shower. You look at the clock and see that it reads 9:30. That should give you plenty of time to get ready. You don’t take particularly long showers. 

As you turn on the water, you climb into the shower, letting the water flow over your body as you stand there for a moment before starting to wash your body and hair. You still can’t stop thinking about the older man. He had to be about Vander’s age, right? You wonder if they know each other. Perhaps after you get to know Silco a little more, you’ll introduce them. 

After your shower, you dry your hair the best you can and then settle on a dress that you’d saved up forever to buy just because. What better excuse to wear it than on a date with an extremely attractive, slightly intimidating, man? 

At ten til 11, you make your way back down to the bar. Vander and Benzo both let out a whistle at the sight of you.

“Don’t you clean up nice?” Vander grins. 

You shrug, going warm in the face from the attention. “I guess.” 

You sit up on the bar stool next to Benzo. You glance over at the door and then back at Vander. 

“Do you want something to loosen your nerves?” Vander teases. 

“I’m alright, thanks.” You roll your eyes, amused.

“Who’s this hot date with?” Benzo nudges you with his elbow. 

You go warm in the face all over again, thinking about Silco. “Just some older guy… he’ll be here any minute.” 

They accept that answer and continue their conversation from before about business stuff that you don’t really mind yourself with. You pretty much just show up and do your job and do exactly what Vander tells you to do and then go back upstairs and sleep. And then repeat. 

The door opens moments later, and the three of you look up to find Silco walking in. You can’t help but give him a sweet smile. He smirks at you and pauses by the door.

“Are you ready-” He starts.

“Silco.” Vander growls. 

“Hello, Vander.” Silco’s eyes fall past you to the man behind you. “Lovely establishment you have here.”

You turn to Vander, confused. “You know each other?”

“Oh yes, we do.” Silco walks toward you, wrapping an arm around your lower back, looking you up and down. “You look beautiful, darling.” 

“She’s not going anywhere with you.” Vander comes around the bar and starts toward Silco but Benzo gets up quickly from the stool and stops him. 

You look between Silco and Vander, still confused.

“I think that’s for her to decide.” Silco smirks up at Vander who stands almost a foot above him.

You turn to Vander, with furrowed brows. This man is the one who gave you life again, the man who is like a father to you. The man you owe your life to. If he says you shouldn’t go… then shouldn’t you listen to him?

[toxycodone]

mouthwashing characters when you’re depressed

ship. tulpar crew x reader cw. sfw + fluff/comfort

an. s/o to @xyfanficarchive for the Daisuke ideas!!!! my muse…

Curly

Oh he gets it. Full understands what you’re going through. (You can’t tell me he isn’t on some sort of anxiety/depression meds or at least got a potential diagnosis).

Curly most likely predicted that a depressive episode was coming. Whatever your key “tell” is: whether you start pulling back, issues sleeping, more nonchalant, appetite changes, it starts setting off bells in his head and he’s prepping.

He doesn’t wanna outright ask “are you depressed?” (He doesn’t know how to approach the subject at first really). So he just acts/reacts accordingly. He makes meals, helps you shower/bathe (he’s not gonna force you every day but if you go 2 or more days without it he’s putting you in there himself).

He even does little things like making sure you wash your face at least once a day and brush your teeth too.

Honestly, he does enjoy taking care of you. I think this is how he’d show he loves you for real. Even when you’re at your lowest you’re worth caring for. (It also distracts from his own issues buuuuut. That’s another story.)

My only qualm is I think he has that “toxic positivity” mindset unknowingly. He’s always like “it’s gonna get better! you need to drink more water/take vitamins/work out!” (these are just things he’s constantly telling himself tbh).

But Curly isn’t stupid. Like he will quickly pick up that’s not working for you and not what you need to hear and shift into a “shut up and help out” mindset. He moves from self help mode to just being there for you. I really have this mental image of him just hugging you on the couch and talking about his day. Sneaking in a few kisses or just giving compliments. But also if you’re not into that he just rubs your back while you bedrot. You’re quiet but enjoying time together and you know he’s there for you.

Jimmy

Been there, done that.

Okay, but seriously. He’s not to pressed at first. He’s basically living between bouts of depression, general neutrality, and mania. So this just seems like an inevitable “phase” you gotta go through.

But this is what makes him the most realistic when dealing with this. Jimmy isn’t gonna baby you or anything. He’s just like “it be like that” forreal. And unlike curly he’s not gonna rebuttal with reasons why life is great and why you shouldn’t be sad, he’s gonna agree. You say life is shit? Yeah, Jimmy 100% agrees. You two commiserate and it’s actually really cathartic because for once someone doesn’t make you feel crazy for being so down when there’s “so much to live for”.

He self medicates when he’s depressed. You’re getting offered pills or alcohol or a blunt or something. Whether you take it is up to you.

I can say Jimmy, for once, would stay sober. If he’s in a good enough mental state he’ll take one for the team and trip sit you or whatever so you can get that nice dopamine rush in peace.

Jimmy thinks it’s insane that he’s doing this, but when you’re depressed, and like really depressed—going through one of those terrible phases he’s been through before, he genuinely feels sympathetic. And it prompts him to do things he never thought. By that I mean doing your laundry, cooking what he can, making the bed. He doesn’t really get why, but he wants to do this and only for you. He really is angry about the fact no one has done this for him when he was in the same boat, but the thought of you having to suffer like he did? Just no. He’s gonna pitch in. He just has to.

But again, he’s best for commiserating. You two bitch heavily about how much the world sucks over way too many beers on his back porch. Probably throw rocks or smash junk while absolutely hammered, too. Then the next morning you’re hungover as shit and spend the day recovering before it’s back to “it is what it is.” Like yeah, it sucks and you feel like shit, but at least you have each other in your corners. If one of you is still kicking, it’s only fair the other is too.

Anya

Like Curly, she knew this was coming a mile away. Anya is not stupid. She’s spent so much time with her nose in psychology books that she gets tipped off insanely fast.

Unlike Curly though, she wants to address the problem. Anya starts gently at first with a simple “are you okay?” It opens the floor for you to be honest. And if you aren’t willing to talk about it or if you mask it with an “I’m fine!” She just. Frowns. Anya does not believe it, but she’s not gonna force you.

Until you start with more textbook symptoms. Then she’s like “I think you might be having a depressive episode.” She’s not letting you dance around it by then. You two are facing this head on.

and the good thing is that you guys talk about it. Like actually talk. Anya listens, lets you say your peace. Nods in understanding and shows you she’s actively taking her time to understand you. Then instead of giving her two cents, she asks you what you want her to do. Anya wants to know how she can help you in the moment and in the long run.

And she does it! Whatever she’s able to, she’s gonna do it. Anya is a really reliable partner and just truly solid. It can be anything from sharing a shower, ordering takeout and chilling on the couch, or even if you just need her to be in the same room but leave you the fuck alone—she’s there for you.

She’s definitely recommending tips from psychology books too. Journaling, eating spicy foods, getting a little exercise if possible—you guys go down a laundry list to help kick this episode in the butt.

And then when the time comes, you two have a good conversation about therapy/medication. (Don’t worry she won’t offer to be your therapist and encourages you to see a neutral third party you can be honest with)

Daisuke

Okay…Daisuke is a bit of a mixed bag. I think he’s been sad, but not truly depressed.

He doesn’t catch the warning signs, so at first when it hits, Daisuke just thinks you’re in a bit of a funk. It’s okay! He’s been through this before. And he’s happy to help you out of it!

Daisuke takes you to the arcade, thrifting, maybe on a little shopping spree…but when that doesn’t work (or when he can’t even encourage you to do it in the first place), Dai hits a wall.

He’s confused. And worried. Really worried about you. This depends on you as a person and whether it makes you feel better or worse, but I think it’s very visible how your depressive episodes affect him. Until he really understands what it is and what it means, Daisuke’s really fretting when this happens.

And so…he voices that concern. “I just noticed that you seem sad. Like, really sad. And I don’t know what to do!” So!! He asks!! What can he do to help you? Or do you even want his help?

And whatever your answer is, he does it. He’ll give you reminders that he loves you, takes care of you, even binges shitty tv shows over even more terrible for you junk food. As long as he can just keep showing he’s there for you and that you’re worth it. That he loves you even when you’re at your lowest…that’s what matters the most.

And just being the goof he is, he’s gonna do things to make you smile. Dancing around the kitchen, showing you his playlist of funny TikToks, cracking some stupid jokes he may or may not have stolen from Twitter. Any time he can crack even a hint of a smile he’s fist pumping and celebrating.

And then…he is probably going to recommend therapy. (He has an awesome adhd therapist he’s working w so. He’s singing the praises for it to you.)

Swansea

Oddly enough I really see him similar to Jimmy. Swansea’s so realistic he’s just like “you’re depressed? Yeah life sucks, so what? You keep going.”

But he’s smart enough to not be like “just get off your ass”. He takes pity on you, whether he likes it or not. Seeing you out of your element does make him upset.

He’s a comiserater, but he’s always going to counter with like “but we keep going anyways.” And if you’re like “but why?” He’s like “why not?”

Like yeah, shit isn’t always good, so you settle for mediocrity. Because the mundane can actually be really nice. Swansea’s a simple pleasures man—good coffee, good food, good times spent relaxing either alone or with the ones you love. That’s what makes it all worth it.

Swansea’s like “you can have your little moments where it all seems like shit, but eventually you gotta face the music and go back to reality.”

He’s a very grounding presence, though. I’ll give him that. He’s also 100% going to cook for you. And you can tell he cares because he has difficulty leaving you alone. He hopes that you seeing him doing stuff. Persisting. That it’ll give you some hope.

and when you start getting more back to normal, showing interest again in your usual hobbies or responsibilities—you can see a weight visibly lift off his shoulders.

[angelpuns]

50AU Part 34/Finale

Donnie would like to say that the worst 10 minutes of his life was when he had to watch as Leo sacrifice himself with no way to stop him. 

He would like to say that. 

But now that he'd seen Leo's memory of that moment, watching his twin throw himself into another dimension was taking second to this moment. 

The moment in which he described what had happened during the curse to Leo. 

Because he could have lied. He wasn't good at it, but he could have at least tried to lie. It would keep Leo from worrying about the things he had done during the curse, and it would keep Donnie from having to tell him about what happened during the memory spell. 

Except, Leo looked so tired. And Donnie was sick of lying to him. 

And he was fairly certain Leo would find a way to learn the truth on his own, anyway, whether Donnie wanted him to or not. 

He slowly went through the events of the curse. How well the first day had gone, how Leo had ran the second one. How he'd been injured and just kept running,  and how they had been so sure they got through to him. Only for Leo to have been acting. 

It felt like so much when he was saying it aloud, but it…it really had only been a week. 

And barely even that. But so much had happened that it felt like forever. 

Leo's face fell as Donnie kept going, as he described what had happened day by day.

As he suspected, Leo had found out about their fight on his own. Leo hadn't said anything until Donnie brought up the fight, so it was a little surprising when he interrupted. 

“ And then I-” 

“ Did it hurt?” Leo asked, voice small. He had shrunken in the booth, shoulders hunched and eyes staring down at the table, “ When I…when I attacked you?” .

Donnie blinked. He lightly touched his beak, which was thankfully no longer tender. It had hurt a lot, but Leo already looked so guilty. 

“ No, it didn't hurt-”

“ why are you lying?” He hissed, glancing up to make eye contact with Donnie, “ don't lie, Dee, I- I would be fucking scared of me, too”

Scared? 

Leo thought they were scared? Of him? 

It was almost laughable, really, but Donnie had enough self control to keep himself serious. 

“...is that what this is about? You think we're scared of you?” He asked, unable to keep the humor out of his voice. Nothing about the situation was funny, but for Leo to think they were scared of him was- well, it was downright hilarious. 

Leo didn't seem to agree, though, looking away guiltily. 

“ Lee, c'mon, as if any of us could be scared,” He tried, “ It was pretty wild to see you so…violent, don't get me wrong, but-”

“ But I hurt you! And-and apparently I hurt Mikey and Raph, too!” Leo retorted, suddenly sitting up again, “ I mean- I-I could have seriously injured one of you or even-”

He snapped his mouth shut and shook his head, like he didn't really want to say it. 

Donnie sighed, “ Look, ‘Nardo, that wasn't really you, I mean, you were cursed-”

“ You don't get it! That- That was still me!” Leo hissed, throwing his hands up in the air, “I am angry! And violent! And- and terrible!”

“Leo, we're not scared of you, even if you are like that, it-it doesn't matter, we know you didn't mean to!” Donnie protested. 

He wasn't really sure where all this had come from. Leo claiming to be angry and violent. Sure, Donnie had seen Leo get mad before. And he could really get mad. But it wasn't like he couldn't control it. 

Donnie remembered when they were kids and Leo would get so mad he'd just cry. He'd be so upset that it wouldn’t have anywhere to go, and he'd just burst into tears and run away. 

Once, Donnie had followed him to try and apologize, only to walk in on Leo throwing his things off his bed and screaming into a pillow. So Donnie of all people knew his twin could get mad. 

“Raph gets mad all the time, and we're not scared of him, right?” Donnie tried, “ you're not scared of Raph, are you?”

“‘Course not…” Leo murmured. He rested his forehead on the table. 

 “ ….Even though Raph tried to…to kill you? During the invasion…?” 

They both looked up at the voice, Donnie blinking in surprise. Raph and Mikey had shown up almost out of nowhere. Right. Donnie forgot to leave a note. 

“ Raph….I'd never be scared of you,” Leo sighed, “ that's- it's different- ” 

“ Its not. Leo, we get that you were still yourself during the curse,” Mikey said matter of factly, “ But the point is that you didn't know it was us. If you had actually believed us, would you have done any of those things?” 

Leo scoffed, “ of course I wouldn't!” 

“ Okay, then, it's settled. We're not scared of you, and we have no reason to be. Got it?” 

Leo frowned, but nodded a bit. 

He looked up at Donnie. 

A small part of him was hoping Leo would be satisfied and not ask to hear more, especially not the whole ‘ went into his memory and accidentally saw some shit’, but he knee his dum-dum twin wouldn't be satisfied. He wouldn't have been either, if he were in Leo's shoes. 

“ Donnie, what happened after that?” 

Donnie took a deep breath, “ Let's- before we get into that let's go home…” 

Leo glanced around, seemingly just noticing that they were the only ones left in the restaurant, save for Hueso and Leo's….boyfriend watching from the kitchen. 

“Shit, I forgot about- uh, lemme apologize to Hueso and uh- “ His cheeks flushed as he gestured to the waiter, Donnie unable to hold back a snort. It was a little funny that Leo thought they didn't know. About him being gay, that is. He’d actually hid his boyfriend pretty well, even from Donnie. 

They watched as Leo hurried over to Hueso and apologized, the skeleton waving it off like he had last time. Donnie planned on giving him a full kitchen remodel to make up for all the damage they kept doing to his restaurant.  

Then, Leo turned to the waiter and pulled him into a tight, squeezing hug. He glanced back at his brothers with red cheeks before giving the waiter a peck on the cheek and hurrying back to their side. 

“ Ohohoooo, Looks like Leo's got some explaining to doo~” Mikey teased,  “ Dude, Raph is gonna hunt that waiter down and give him the shovel talk!” 

“ Raph is not!” Raph retorted, glancing at Leo, “ unless he ain't treatin’ you right already. then Raph'll have to talk to him,” 

“ Oh my god can we please just go?” Leo whined, already cutting open a portal, “ I didn't plan on having so many emotional talks tonight and I just wanna get this one over with,” 

Raph and Mikey stepped into the portal, Donnie starting after them. 

He was…scared. Scared that once Leo found what he did, he'd never forgive them. Never forgive Donnie. 

It made him shudder with anxiety, wringing his hands as Leo followed him through the portal. They emerged in the living room, Mikey and Raph already taking up two of the beanbags. 

Leo closed the portal and slumped into Dad's chair.  Donnie swallowed down the nausea at the sight. 

“ Okay, chop chop Dee, I want to get all the emotional talking out so then you all can tease me about Yuichi and all that and we can all go back to normal, ‘kay?” Leo sighed, looking far too comfortable in the chair that they'd trapped him in. Twice. 

“ Well..well, after that, Draxum finished the potion and…” Donnie started, starring to pace. His fingers ached with how hard he kept squeezing him, but it was the only thing keeping him from just running away.  He hated this he hated this he hated this! 

He hated that he didn't know how Leo would react. Obviously he didn't give a shit if Leo decided to fight him again. That would make sense, at least. 

But it would hurt more knowing that Leo was well within his rights to just…dedide he didn't want to interact with Donnie ever again. That he wasn't to be trusted. That Donnie could never be trusted with anything again now that he'd done this. 

Leo could be understanding, sure. But he was the king of holding grudges. Rest assured that if this upset Leo, Donnie would be living in the aftermath of it for..probably forever. 

But he could not keep lying about stuff to his already confused twin, he couldn't keep breaking promises. 

He described the whole memory spell, that Draxum had modified it so they could stay there longer, that they first had cleansed the memory of him falling off the roof. 

“ and then we were….it was your memory of the invasion, back when…when you decided to…” Donnie swallowed back his anxiety. He was pacing back and forth. He'd been doing so as he spoke, afraid that if he sat down he wouldn't be able to say it. He couldn't stop to watch Leo's expression, to try and puzzle out his reaction to what Donnie said. He had to keep moving or he'd never be able to say it. 

“ But- something happened. We were too far, the item was your sword, and- and you were about to portal into the prison dimension,” Donnie sighed, rubbing at his arms thoughtlessly. He finally stopped and looked at his twin. 

His expression was like something out of a drama. Wide-eyed realization set in. Leo blinked, staring at him incredulously. 

He smiled faintly, a lopsided, shaky thing that was nothing like Leo's usual smirk or even his more rare, soft smile. This one didn't fit his face right, didn't curve in the right way, it hardly looked real. 

“ You…didn’t. You wouldn't…” he chuckled, standing up off the couch and stepping up to Donnie. He put his hands on Donnie's shoulders, grip not overly tight, but definitely noticeable. Like he was purposefully holding back, “ Donnie, please tell me you didn’t,”

Donnie sighed shakily, “ I didn't have a choice,” 

Leo’s strange, crooked smile cracked into a shaky frown, his expression changing a thousand miles a minute. It didn't take the years of practice Donnie had had trying to interpret his expressions to know that Leo was angry. He pushed away from Donnie - the softshell only stumbling a little. It wasn't nearly as hard as Leo could have pushed him. 

His hands shook with the effort it must have taken to hold back. The mask of control sliding down before Donnie had the opportunity to see Leo get angry again. Not that he wanted to, but it wasn't as if it would be a strange occurrence now. Not after the curse, anyway. 

“ You- you promised,” Leo bit out, taking a few steps back. His eyes were glassy, like he might cry. It had been years since Donnie had seen Leo cry out of frustration like that. He was sure it had happened, but never in the view of anyone else.

“ you promised you wouldn't- you wouldn’t ask about that anymore, but you just had to know, didn't you, ‘Tello?” He bit out, voice shaking with barely contained anger, “ You just- you just had to see it, huh? Co-couldn't even wait to ask again?” 

“ It- it wasn't on purpose! I had to get the sword, and you were already teleporting, and I couldn't- I couldn't get out!” Donnie retorted, knowing he must have sounded desperate. But he needed Leo to understand it was an accident, “ I tried not to look, I-I promise, but you made me!” 

“I made you?” Leo scoffed, tears rolling down his cheeks. He was laughing, throwing his arms up in the air at what must have felt like a cruel joke, “ oh I'm sure! I'm sure I made you follow me in, made you watch as I- as he-” 

He shut himself up, snapping his mouth closed and shaking his head. 

“ I never wanted you to see that,” He bit out, “ I would never want anyone to see that”

“ I didn't mean you as in- as in you- you,” Donnie sighed. He felt so defeated. He was so tired still, even if things were fine again. Because they didn't feel fine. Leo was mad at him. Mad at him. And rightfully so, but…it still hurt. 

Sure, Donnie had been avoiding him lately. He just…he hadn't wanted to tell Leo what happened. He thought maybe if they didn't talk, Donnie wouldn't have the opportunity to tell Leo what he'd done. And eventually they'd all forget and move on. 

“ your…the inner Leo made me watch. I promise, I tried to-”

“Oh so now you're saying that-that I must have subconsciously wanted you to see it!? I bet you told Mikey and Raph everything, didn't you!?” Leo chuckled, eyes unfocused. He was hardly even looking at Donnie anymore, pacing back and forth in a way that mirrored what Donnie had been doing before, though it was far more erratic, “ I bet everyone knows now how - how broken I am and how scared I was and-”

“I’m not saying- I-I didn't tell them!” Donnie cut him off, grabbing Leo's arm to stop him, “ Leo, I didn't want to- I didn't mean to see it, I promise! I’m sorry, it-it was a mistake!” 

Leo wrenched his arm away with a scowl, eyes still unfocused. Like he wasn't really listening. “ you promise, huh?” 

It was silent for a moment, Donnie unsure what to say that hadn't already been said. 

“I need..I need to go..” He murmured, turning away, “ Please, don't…don’t try and- I just need to be alone…’ 

He still had his sword on him from his impromptu pizza trip, and he quickly cut a portal and stepped through it. Donnie just stood there. 

He didn't know what to do anymore. How to fix it. He'd finally managed to fix the curse but how was he supposed to fix what he'd done? It had been an accident, but still. 

He glanced back to Mikey and Raph, who were watching the entire thing with concern. 

“ You guys…i think-  I think I really messed up..” 

Donnie didn't tell them what he'd seen. He didn't dare fuck that up again. But he did tell Raph and Mikey about the promise he made with Leo, about how he had purposefully kept the truth from his twin the entire week. And about how Leo had found his security tapes from before. 

He almost wanted to delete them, to get rid of any evidence that Leo had been…. But he didn't touch them. If Leo wanted to know the truth, he should be able to see it for himself. 

“He’s never gonna forgive me…” Donnie murmured, now cradling a cup of tea. Mikey was making breakfast, even if it was a little too early. He'd urged them all to eat something, even if Donnie was especially not hungry. 

It had barely been an hour, not even that, but it felt like Leo was going to be mad at him forever. And he couldn't fix it. He didn't know how anymore. He didn't know Leo anymore. 

It all just kept circling back to the same thing. If he had done better. If he had paid more attention to the changes Leo was going through. If he had been able to keep Leo from hurting him or if he had been faster or if- 

He didn't know. It was done, now, but he wished he could just go back and-and maybe even take the hit. It was his fault they were fighting in witchtown in the first place. At least if he had forgotten his family, it wouldn't have been- well, wouldn't it have? 

Leo was better at reading people, though. And a much better strategist. He could have kept Donnie from doing anything too permanent, kept him from running off. 

Ugh, this was getting them nowhere! Wishing things were different just made everything feel worse. He needed to find a way to fix it, not dwell on it further. 

“ D'you think Leo hates me?” He asked, not realizing he'd said aloud until Raph reached over and put a hand on his shoulder. 

“ Nah, he doesn't hate you,”  Raph rumbled, squeezing Donnie's shoulder a bit, “he’ll figure out it wasn't your fault soon enough,” 

Donnie nodded, though the thought didn't comfort him. It was his fault, after all. He'd thought he could get the sword. Not to mention Leo was so stubborn, he was probably never going to forgive Donnie. 

“ Yeah, maybe..” Was all he said, knowing full well that Leo probably did hate him and would never forgive him and- 

He sighed, and took a sip of tea. 

There was no fixing this, was there? 

Leo only ignored him for a couple of days. He'd bounced between a couple of random beaches on the West Coast before returning that same night. Donnie watched his tracker for a while that first day. How he seemed to be pacing a lot. Like he was deciding whether or not to forgive Donnie. 

Which, he shouldn't. Except when he was doing that open and honest thing with Mikey, Mikey told him not to think like that. Because it wasn't his fault, even though Donnie was pretty sure it was. 

As much as he hated discussing his feelings, it kind of…helped. A little. It made him less sure that Leo was going to hate him forever, at least. But not entirely sure, as he would have liked to been. 

Finally, after two days of the cold shoulder, Leo came and knocked on his lab door. Donnie was trying to distract himself with work, but he'd been having trouble with the coding on Shelldon 4.0 and it was leaving him more frustrated than distracted. 

Then again, he'd been trying to replicate Sheldon for nearly 6 months now with hardly any progress. That would frustrate anybody. 

“ I took a nap earlier, Raph, I'm not going to bed anytime soon!” He sighed, knowing it was probably Raph trying to get him to sleep, like he usually did. He did nap earlier, so at least he wasn't lying. 

“ Not Raph,” 

Donnie turned to see Leo standing in the doorway instead, leaning up against the frame with a faint frown. 

“ oh..” Donnie didn't know what to say. He could apologize again, but he didn't know if it would make things better or worse. He couldn’t tell what Leo was thinking. It seemed he could never tell these days. 

Leo sighed and shut the door behind him, stepping into the lab without invitation. Not that he needed it. As much as Donnie liked to protest his presence, he never really minded it. He would lock the door if he didn't want Leo to come in, after all. 

“ So…I’ve been thinking..” Leo murmured, rubbing at his arms a bit, “ I don't…I don't think its…that terrible that you…saw everything…”

Donnie blinked in surprise. It was about the last thing he thought Leo would say, especially knowing how well Leo held a grudge. 

“ I just mean- maybe it's…not so bad to have someone else know and all…” He continued, “ cause- cause at least someone else can tell me it was real. And it’s okay to be…upset and- ughhh, this is too real for me right now!” 

He ran a hand down his face and looked at Donnie. 

“ I just- I don't want you to, like, pity me or- or- think I'm…weak or fucking whatever..” He muttered, cheeks pink, “ cause I survived, didn't I? And- and I’m fine, so-” 

Donnie chuckled faintly. He dropped what he was doing and buried his face in his hands. He wanted to scream. 

“ I didn't think that for even a second,” He sighed, leaning back in his chair, “ Leo, you may be an idiot, but you're one of the strongest idiots I know. Slash SRS on the strongest part and slash j on the idiot part, just in case that wasn't clear” 

Leo snorted, leaning against Donnie's desk, “We’re not really good at this open and honest stuff, are we?” 

“ No, and I never claimed to be,” Donnie sighed. He stood up and opened his arms for a hug. He kind of needed it himself, actually. 

Leo gave him a tight squeeze back and they stood in the silence of the lab together for another moment before Donnie finally, lightly pushed him away. 

“ Okay, enough lovey-dovey twin stuff,” Donnie sighed, “ are you…mad at me?” 

He hated that he couldn't tell just from the hug alone, but he needed to know. He needed to know Leo wasn't gonna hate him forever, even if he seemed to have forgiven the action. 

“ No, I'm not mad at you,” Leo sighed, “ I just want..I want everything to go back to normal. I know it…it probably won't, but I can dream, right?” 

Donnie sighed, slumping back into his chair, “i don't think it will go back to Normal normal. But…I will try my best to make it feel that way,”

Leo leaned back against his desk with a faint smile, crossing his arms and watching as Donnie got back to work. 

And it was about as normal as it could have been. 

No curse. No grudges. No looming worries, for now. 

---

this is not a great ending, I am super aware of that, but sometimes it's good to just finish the thing. I do wanna write a REAL fic for 50au, okay? And I will eventually. This was a decent start at the very least.

So that's how it ends. Keepin' it open ended was a good idea methinks. The google doc for this is lik 50,000 words (minus the 1000 for the OTHER outline i did at the beginning) and like 130 pages so yay?

Enjoy (or don't)

part 1 | Part 33

[chaos-in-deepspace]

LADS Xavier: Seasonal Moods | SFW

I've been feeling really off the past few days with a swirl of negative, self deprecating emotions, and decided to attempt to cheer myself up by writing some comfort. The newest event with Xavier really drove home the point to me that he would be the best at helping his depressed partner.

I know I'm probably not the only one who feels like this, and with winter being here I know a lot of us with year round depression if getting hit a bit harder than normal, so if this is you, I hope you can find a little comfort with this fic. Remember you're loved and cherished and the voices in your head feeding you all these negative thoughts are lying to you.

Anyways, I didn't proof read this as I didn't have the energy so I apologize for typos.

❧ Pairings: Xavier x Reader ❧ Warnings: Depressed Reader, Non Sexual Intimacy, Non Sexual Nudity ❧ Synopsis: Sometimes seasons make sad moods worse, but sometimes people in your life can help make it a little better. ❧ Word Count: 2.2k

Disclaimer: This is an original fan work for “Love and Deepspace”. Do not repost on other platforms or plagiarize. All characters shown in this fic is 18+.

Blog Information | Masterlist

Xavier

Seasonal Moods

You were feeling…some sort of way. It wasn’t a particularly good feeling in you, in fact you’d say it was rather the opposite of good. You felt dreadful, and for no reason other than it was winter. You had less sunlight, colder weather, and with that sometimes came a certain melancholic sadness that washed over you. You just felt…horrible.

Whenever you saw your friends together it felt more like they were almost ignoring you, even Tara seemed more distant from you. You knew logically it was all in your head, that these things weren’t happening, but it didn’t make you feel any better. It was like you were looking at every outing through a glass, you were there but there was something separating you from all the others.

You felt like you couldn’t reach out even if you wanted to. When everyone was having fun it felt like you bringing anything up would ruin the atmosphere. So you began distancing yourself as much as possible. Putting your phone on silent and saying you were asleep or busy when questioned why you didn’t answer, claiming you had something going on when invited out, the whole works. If you were forced to reply in message threads, it was easy enough to have some self confidence and fire at least. As long as you didn’t come face to face with others, most thought you were doing just fine. It did work, for the most part.

There was just one person who didn’t buy the facade.

Xavier.

How he always managed to know when something was slightly off with your mood was a quality in him you both admired and hated. He was your hunting partner, your neighbor, your friend, and possibly something more, but you two hadn’t had that discussion yet. You probably had just spent so much time together in the past few months he was able to easily tell when you were acting different. It shouldn't have surprised you, not with how observant he always seemed to be when it came to you.

You just wished he didn’t care so much, that he couldn’t tell you were depressed. That way you could easily distance yourself from him like you did with everyone else until you worked out your own thoughts and emotions. Sure it might’ve taken all winter to begin feeling better, but at least he didn’t have to see you like this.

He had made a surprise visit while you were in your bed, scrolling through funny videos in an attempt to distract yourself from your thoughts. You had managed to slip up at work and gotten a very minor injury, but it was enough to force you to take a few days off. You hated that more than anything. At least at work it kept you busy so you didn’t have time to deal with your emotions. When you were at home by yourself it seemed to only amplify the darker thoughts in your head.

“Hey,” his soft voice had startled you at first and you flinched, locking your phone and putting it against your chest. You closed your eyes, hoping he hadn’t seen you were awake on your phone. You were laying on your side, facing away from the door to your bedroom, so there was a…low chance.

Then you felt the bed dipping as he sat down, and you felt his hand threading through your hair so gently you leaned into it, “There we are, you are awake after all.” He said, the laugh he had was a little airy and you finally glanced at him. He was wearing his signature white hoodie at the moment and his hair was a little disheveled as if he just woke up a few minutes ago, “How are you feeling?”

“My side hurts, but other than that it’s fine. I can sleep it off.” You quickly said, slowly leaning away from his hand and placing your head back on the pillow.

“Have you already changed the bandages?”

“Yes.”

“Have you eaten today.”

Silence filled the air as you thought about that. You didn’t even know what time it was, let alone if you hadn’t eaten. The days were melding together, so you weren’t sure. You could see the sun was setting beyond the horizon…or perhaps it was just coming up. You had been doing nothing but bed rotting the past few days, sleeping on and off, and only getting up when you needed to use the restroom or when you realized how dry your throat was. When was the last time you even showered?

“I’ll take that as a no.” He said with another laugh, but this time it was less enthusiastic, “How about I go make you something real fast.”

This had you grabbing his wrist quickly, stopping him in his tracks, “What are you planning on making?” while Xavier had slowly gotten better at cooking foods, using things like the oven or stove top was still a hit or miss situation.

“It’s a bit chilly today so how about some ramen?” he suggested. Xavier could see the way your shoulders seemed to sag in relief at his suggestion. You weren’t particularly hungry, but you knew food would probably be good.

“That sounds good to me.”

“Alright, wait here, I’ll be back in a few minutes.” Xavier ran his hands through your hair again, scratching at your scalp and you wanted to flinch away. It was probably oily and gross and you didn’t want him to feel it.

You felt the bed shift again as he got up and the door closed behind him, leaving you alone again. You stared at the wall in silence, wondering if maybe you should get up and tell him he can go home, that you were capable of taking care of yourself right now. It would be a lie, sure, but you didn’t want him fretting over you. You didn’t deserve his attention when you were the one who dug this self deprecating hole yourself.

You didn’t have the energy though, and instead just laid there and waited for him to come back. Once again you didn’t know how much time had passed, it could’ve been hours or even seconds, it all felt relatively the same to you. The door opened back and you could smell the savory ramen, he had made one of your favorite flavors…again he was far too observant. The bed dipped and you heard items being placed on the nightstand next to you.

“Come on, let me help you sit up.” Xavier said, slowly lifting your body into a sitting up position. You felt him grabbing pillows to help prop you up in the bed and you sighed when the warm ramen was placed in your hands alongside chopsticks, “Eat up, I’m sure you’re starving without even realizing it.” He said. You glanced back at him, noticing how he was eating as well, blowing on the steaming noodles before taking a bite.

You followed the motions, noticing that, for some odd reason, the food tasted a little better than usual. The moment you took the first bite it was like your body kick started and you realized you were pretty damn hungry. You two ate in silence side by side on your bed, and by the time you finished you were being handed a nice cool glass of water to sip on. He let you just be for the time being, not saying anything but just being there. He helped clean up the empty containers and when he came back to the room he was shifting you again, picking you up.

Your hands found purchase around his shoulders, “Xavier, what are you doing?” you quickly ask, not understanding why you were suddenly being carried somewhere.

“To the shower.” It was simple enough of a statement, but you felt a wash of shame overtaking you. So he had noticed, of course he did.

You gave a strained laugh, “I must smell pretty bad if you’re dragging me to the shower…sorry about that.” You murmured, trying to make light of the situation.

“You don’t smell bad,” He quickly stated, “and even if you did, I don’t mind.” The door to the bathroom opened and he placed you on top of the counter, “I just realized you probably hadn’t had the energy to do it, so I’m helping.”

Your face felt a bit hotter now as you avoided him, “I’m not that injured.” You muttered under your breath.

“It’s not the injury I’m worried about.” Xavier was already working your clothes off, tossing the fabrics you’d been wearing for days off to the laundry basket you kept in the bathroom. It was almost overflowing with clothes at this point, and while you wanted to be embarrassed being stripped bare in front of him, his eyes weren’t focused on your body. He was more focused on taking care of you, which you didn’t know if it made you feel better or worse.

“Then why are you fussing over me so much if it’s not because of the injury?” you finally asked, watching as he went to turn the shower on to a warm temperature.

He began taking his own clothes off as he answered you, “You haven’t been yourself lately. Tara had even come up to me and asked if you were alright. I was going to wait a bit and see if you’d reach out, but I can’t wait too long when I knew you were here by yourself.” He explained, “You haven’t answered my messages like normal, and any time I try to make plans you say your busy, I got worried.”

His words were earnest and made you feel even worse about yourself. Congratulations to you, you’ve managed to make the sweetest man you knew feel bad and worry over nothing.

“I’m sorry…” it was all you could say as he began dragging you into the shower. His hands were already working on getting your hair wet so he could properly wash it for you. He didn’t know your entire hair routine, but at the very least your scalp would be clean. Anything else could be taken care of when you felt better.

“Don’t apologize.” He said, his words a bit sterner, “I’m not upset with you. You’re allowed to reach out whenever you want, or not at all. It won’t change the fact that I care about you and wanted to make sure you were okay.” He explained.

“If I hadn’t been so distant though, you wouldn’t be so worried.” You explained, “It’s my fault.”

“Is it also your fault that your brain decided to make you sad for no reason?”

“Yes.”

“No, it isn’t.” He said, rinsing out shampoo from your hair and putting in some conditioner, “It’s not. Sometimes things just happen. I wanted to be here for you, it’s as simple as that. I’ll continue being here for you as well, whether your sad or happy, and that’s of my own free will. You have nothing to apologize for, besides, I like being able to take care of you like this. I wish it were under better circumstances, but that’s no fault of yours.” He explained.

You didn’t know what to say, honestly, so you didn’t say anything at all. Instead you just let him wash you, and then you were being wrapped up in a fluffy towel and dried. The hoodie he had some in was placed over you, the smell of him taking over your senses. He put on the blue shirt he always wore underneath it and finished getting you two dressed. He went back to carrying you, but instead of going to your bedroom, he carried you out into your living room.

There were a lot of things you expected, but seeing a giant blanket fort with fairy lights, the TV on with a movie already prepared, and some soothing smells coming from an oil diffuser that you were certain you didn’t own…it hadn’t been what you expected.

He placed you down onto the soft blankets and you noticed a box of mini cupcakes next to you, all of them having cute designs in an assortment of flavors, “Tara bought those for you,” Xavier said, “She said when you’re feeling better she wants to take you to this new bakery that opened up, that’s where those came from.”

“I should message her soon.”

“I’m sure she’d appreciate hearing from you, but for now.” You felt Xavier getting into the fort with you, pulling you against his chest as he started an older movie. It had cartoon characters and you recognized it as one of your favorites growing up. You were certain you had only spoke of it once with him, but of course he remembered, “Let’s just relax for the rest of the night, okay?” he said.

“Ya…I  like the sound of that.” You got out. You still felt a bit numb, still felt off. It did make you feel better though, especially when you saw some lights from his evol, a little bunny he made, bouncing around. It was enough to make you genuinely smile for the first time in a while. Perhaps…being taken care of wasn’t so bad.

[burreauxwrites]

“K-I-S-S-I-N-G” - (andrei iosivas x reader)

description: ja’marr and tee tease you about your crush on andrei, employing the good old “sitting in a tree” nursery rhyme. but actually…it turned out to become a reality.

word count: 1.8k

warnings: andrei x reader, reader is apart of the social media team, tee and ja’marr are goofy bffs (joe is the somewhat reasonable one), fluff, kissing, a bit of swearing. really just a cute blurb overall! :)

“andrei and y/n sitting in a tree!”

“ja’marr. tee.” you sighed.

“K-I-S-S-I-N-G!”

you groaned. this would be the very last time you ever told ja’marr and tee anything. at least joe wasn’t obnoxious about any secrets. plus, knowing how hardworking he is, he’d probably have forgotten by time he gets home and sleeps.

upon sensing your annoyance, joe hushed his two best friends down. “okay, guys,” he said, smacking their shoulders, “that’s enough.”

ja’marr caught his breath, looking at you curiously. “okay, but…when did this crush start?”

you shrugged. to be honest, you could never exactly recall when your little crush on andrei started. crushing on people was not exactly your thing. but ever since you became part of the social media team and got closer to the players over time, you just kind of…liked him. he made you laugh the most, and he just had the most charming smile that you’d ever seen.

“don’t know,” you answered, folding your arms.

“well…he is nearby if you want to tell him.” tee nudged your shoulder.

“cmon, man. she aint gonna do that!” ja’marr interjected, making tee laugh.

at that, you gave the both of them a deadpan stare as they burst into laughter again. you look at joe, who seems to be holding back a chuckle of his own.

“yeah, um…i don’t see you telling yoshi that you like him. no offense.” joe added, shaking his head.

the problem is…they didn’t lie. you were extremely introverted as it is; plus, you had this tendency to be very quiet and pretend that you have no crush at all. it was kind of easier that way. but the fact that these three knuckleheads were teasing you made you want to prove them wrong.

and so, you turned on your heels and walked away, leading to some cheers from ja’marr and tee as they started whistling. meanwhile, joe watched, giving you a thumbs up as you looked back.

you couldn’t believe you were doing this.

soon enough, you found andrei, letting out an anxious sigh. you easily could just walk away, and nothing could ever come of this. but here you were.

“oh, hey, y/n!” andrei grinned at you, patting your head briefly.

“hey,” you chuckled, fixing your head as you look at him. “how’s the practice going?” you asked, folding your arms a little. “working hard, or hardly working?”

andrei chuckled; curse him and his attractive laugh. though, he everything that he did was attractive. it was like he didn’t have to try. and that pissed you off a bit. all he had to do was stand there and you’d fall for him. it was pathetic on your part, kind of. but who could blame you? you saw people’s tiktok edits of him. so it wasn’t just you who had the hots for him.

“working hard or hardly working,” he said, pretending to ponder, “i mean, it’s been a relatively easy day. so, i’d say the latter.” he nodded, watching as some of the other players did some drills out in the field. the weather was nice, the wind slightly blowing your hair a bit.

you nodded along as well, also watching the players run some drills. however, you were busy thinking about what on earth to say. conveying your feelings verbally wasn’t your thing. hell, conveying your feelings period wasn’t your thing; you’d rather do anything else than put your feelings into words, especially when it comes to some…crush.

before you could speak, andrei wrapped an arm around your shoulder, looking down at you.

“so. i heard ja’marr and tee earlier,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “seems like they were…bugging you about something.”

fuck. he heard? why must this happen to you?

“it was nothing. just them being ridiculous like usual.” you shook your head in denial.

“really? because ‘andrei and y/n sitting in a tree’ doesn’t sound like nothing to me.” he teased, shaking you a little.

your face burned in embarrassment. quite frankly, you felt like dying. this was humiliating. so humiliating. but at least this saved you a little bit of explaining.

“well. i guess i have a crush on you,” you admitted, sighing a little, “but don’t think i’m telling you this because you know now. i would’ve told you eventually.”

andrei laughed. you were funny. because this whole time, he knew you liked him. it was an obvious thing to him really. you lit up like a lightbulb when it came to filming tiktok videos for the official account, and you let him make all sorts of inside jokes with you. nine times out of ten, you were stoic, all business, very polite. but that little sliver of energy and joy came out when he was around.

“you’re not slick, y/n. honestly, i kind of figured you liked me.” he squeezed your shoulder, pulling you closer.

“oh.”

“pfft, ‘oh’ is correct,” he grinned at your reaction. “if you want though, we can hang out later tonight.”

“yeah…! i’d like that.” you nodded, your voice filled with a bit of excitement.

‘that was cute,’ andrei thought. he knew you enjoyed his presence and all, but seeing you so thoroughly joyed to spend time with him was precious.

“great. i gotta get back to practice though,” he pulled away, ruffling your hair once again, “see ya later, cutie.”

as he headed off to do more drills, you stood there. dumbfounded. in a way, you owed it to ja’marr and tee. if they weren’t being as obnoxious as they were, this probably wouldn’t have happened.

_________

it was late at night, the stars twinkling brightly in the sky. the vibe was pretty casual overall, as you and andrei talked about life events and other things. it was nice, really. mostly because you were with the guy you’ve admired for a while, but that’s besides the point.

the both of you spotted a massive oak tree in a desolate area of the park. deciding to take a bit of a risk you guys decided to sit in it. finding a sturdy branch, andrei took your hand, helping you up and making sure you were comfortable next to him.

but, he didn’t let go of your hand. you didn’t mind though; in fact, it made you quite happy.

“y/n,” andrei spoke up after a moment, looking over at you, “do you know how amazing you are?”

that was a difficult question. because honestly, you didn’t know. you kind of just…existed. you did whatever you felt like doing. but to have someone like you like that and find your unapologetic personality worth liking…it made you happy.

“well…no, but you can tell me more, if you want.” you smiled, curious to see if he’d expand a bit more on his words.

“you’re just…awesome,” he began, looking at you fondly, “first of all, you’re pretty. stunning, even,” he smiled, “but on top of that, you’re just…different. i honestly thought you were just standoffish at first, but you’re probably one of the funniest people i know.”

“funny…? please…you’re the funny one. i only laugh because of you, really.” you shook your head as you nudged andrei’s side.

“then, i’ll wear that like a badge of honor.” andrei laughed, squeezing your hand tightly as you leaned against him.

you sighed, smiling as you rested your head against his shoulder, looking at the stars.

“i just think you bring out the best in me.” you stated, peeking up at him with a tender gaze. “i mean, you make me feel more expressive, more free. i don’t have to be so hardcore all the time around you.”

andrei chuckled, his hand sliding under your chin and lifting your head slightly. the feeling of your skin was soft underneath his fingers, and everything about you looked so beautiful. he was completely enamored by you.

“i’m glad i bring out the best in you, y/n,” he spoke sweetly, his own stare flitting down to your lips momentarily, “i think you bring out the best in me too.”

you let out a faint, contented laugh, leaning into his touch. but his eyes on your lips didn’t go unnoticed by you. you actually…liked it. with an odd feeling of confidence washing over you, you slowly leaned in towards andrei, also scooting in closer to his side.

deciding not to miss this opportunity, he too leaned in, his thumb sweetly caressing your cheek. your lips ever so gently brushed against his for a moment, the sensation sending a shiver through your spine.

you both eventually locked lips, arms wrapping around each other to hold the other as close as possible. it was almost as if the both of you feared the other would drift away.

everything about this moment just felt right. your arms around his shoulders and his own arms around your waist. the kiss was slow and tender, the both of you savoring this moment together; you’d occasionally pull away, sharing a bit of laughter and small pecks on the lip or cheek.

“well…i guess ja’marr and tee were right when they said me and you sitting in a tree.” andrei joked.

“pfft. k-i-s-s-i-n-g?” you added, giggle a little.

“yeah. first comes love, then comes marriage-”

“no babies in carriages, please,” you interject, shaking your head, “i can barely care for myself as is.”

the both of you shared a warm laugh, nudging each other as you joked. you looked at the stars for a moment, catching your breath with a happy smile. and andrei was just as happy as well, his own gaze on you. to him, you were the brightest star there ever was.

“so, cutie,” he started to speak, his hand caressing your waist, “what are we?”

that was a good question. what were you guys? surely not friends; friends don’t kiss in a tree.

you grinned, looking at andrei. “boyfriend and girlfriend?”

“sounds good to me,” he agreed with no hesitation as he stared at you lovingly, “me and you, boyfriend and girlfriend. i don’t think there’s anything better, really.”

and well, you had to agree. there was nothing you wanted more in the world than to be his. though you weren’t the most romantically experienced, you were excited to see where this relationship would go.

you’re interrupted by your thoughts when your stomach began to rumble.

“you’re hungry, huh?” he snickered at the grumbling sound, “how about we go get some burgers. it’s all on me.”

“hmm…do i get a milkshake too?” you ask, raising an eyebrow.

“whatever my favorite girl wants, she gets it.” andrei insisted, kissing your temple.

the two of you climbed down from the tree, heading to the nearby burger joint. in your mind, you knew ja’marr and tee would flip out and tease you relentlessly after this, but you didn’t care. in the end, you and andrei were in fact sitting in a tree, kissing.

and it was the best moment of your life.

this is my first blurb for someone that’s not joe lmao! but i hope you all enjoyed it! <33

[gay-dorito-dust]

Are you taking requests for kraven? Maybe dating hcs where reader is lowkey insane?

Reader might come off a little more deranged/ morbidly curious rather than insane. But yeah enjoy whether this was.

You came across as a typical upstanding citizen of society, nothing out of the ordinary but not everything about you was ordinary when animals -whom are good judges of character- were adamant in avoiding you, running away as fast as they could if you were nearby and or show hostility towards you in hopes that you’d leave them alone.

You unsettled them as you were silent chaos waiting to break out, other people just get an unnerving feeling about you that they’re quick to dismiss when you show them a side that’ll make them less skeptical of your true nature. It was rather easy to fool others by putting on a charade that they can digest.

Sergei -upon first meeting- had a feeling that something was off about you as his eyes took you in, you looked normal but yet something within him told him to be weary of the fire within your eyes as you smiled at him.

Then again your meeting came at a time where one thing and one thing only was preoccupying his mind, so human interaction with anyone that could potentially get hurt by his father’s associates was far removed from his mind as he was quick to pick up where he had left off.

But it wouldn’t be long before you were too deeply involved with his plot against his father and you would have to remain close by the burly man for your own safety in fear that his fathers men would come back and finish the job that they should’ve beforehand.

However you seemed unfazed by all the violence and blood that came from Sergei’s lifestyle, almost coming across as numb when you saw how he’d tear through people as though they were nothing, your eyes would be wide slightly in morbid fascination at how effortlessly limbs were torn off and sent flying elsewhere.

Had it been anyone else would’ve ran away and seek for shelter for their own safety, get away from all the chaos and destruction happening before you. But you were a little different as you would only sit yourself down on a nearby surface and watch Sergei go to work in awe of how truly violent one man could be to cause so much bloodshed.

Sergei would naturally be a little pissed that you were so close to the violence, so close to getting hurt and looking about as unbothered as you were being told something that didn’t affect you directly. Like nothing truly disturbed you because you’ve already seen your fair share of chaos and carnage in comparison to a normal civilian.

It was eyebrow raising to say the least but your safety was his bigger concern as he held you by your shoulders and looked at you with wild eyes, expecting you to flinch but you didn’t, if anything you only smiled at the man as you hugged him tight; not caring for the blood that stained him as you knew simple but effective methods to get rid of such a stubborn substance.

‘You could’ve gotten hurt.’ He tell you.

‘No I wouldn’t.’ You replied so certainly, a little too calm for someone who’s seen people die before their eyes. ‘I have you.’ You added.

‘You act unfazed by such displays of violence,’ Sergei starts, ‘I wonder why, you don’t seem to have any background in anything that could have you withstanding the sight of a man with his entrails hanging out.’

You merely shrugged. ‘I might just have a strong stomach and the idea that you know so much about me and my background should off put me from you as being creepy, but I kind of admire a man who wants to learn all about his prey before pursing them in a hunt.’ You cackled as you messed with the fur lining of his coat.

Sergei removed your hand from his coat, holding them in his own as your fingers caressed the bruised and bloody knuckles tenderly. ‘Having a strong stomach is one thing love but your reaction alludes to a darker side of you that I have yet to see, almost as if the thrill of the hunt excites you along with the harm it causes others too.’ He adds in a low whisper as though he finally had you figured out, his eyes narrowed by his hold on you was still gentle and protective as though he was trying to protect you from your darkest version of yourself.

You pecked his lips innocently. ‘The hunt does thrill me, though only when I get to see you at what you claim as your worst and still feel nothing but love and affection for you my beloved Sergei.’ You tell him as you squeezed his hands, memorising their roughness and each individual callousness they had with the idea of worshiping a man of such raw power and strength. ‘You’ve always fascinated me, and you only continue to fascinate me even more.’

‘I’m not safe company.’ He tried to tells you.

‘I don’t care whether your safe company or not, they’re going to come after me regardless if you explained that I have no ties with you, and this-‘ you gesture to the dead bodies nearby. ‘Will only tell them that there is something between us. A connection that they can exploit to their advantage against you, so if anything I’m in safer company with you than without you.’ You replied.

Sergei knew you were right, the damage was already done and more people will only be after you and him because of it. However this doesn’t solve the itching feeling that he got from that darkness within your heart, that curious nature that you possessed that could borderline dangerous.

Who was he romantically involved with and why did it send his senses haywire into whether keep you safe from that inner darkness or keep himself away from that very same thing?