#now did anyone technically ASK me to organize my fics. no. did i want to? yes.

[transannabeth]

i'm slowly playing the first ace attorney trilogy and i want to read your fics but i don't know half of the characters in them. i'm on the fifth (extra?) episode of the first game. when would you say i can start reading

oh wow i'm honored that you want to read my fics!!! i'm a terrible person to ask since i started reading fanfic for ace attorney long before knowing what was going on and piecing things together (like i only saw the first two cases and a tiny bit of turnabout samurai before diving in) so i am probably not the person to ask

but!! if you care about spoilers, under the cut i organized my fics by the games they spoil up to. which made me realize how much stuff i write in one specific area

right now i think the only one you can read spoiler free is turbulent golden skies if you're staying spoiler free!! you can also read the first chapter of dedications if you'd like, though the second chapter has an aa2 character

i hope that you're enjoying the trilogy!! and rfta because it's a long case but i love what it adds to the story. i hope if you ever get the chance to read any of my fics you enjoy them!! 💞💞

the game each fic is next is where it spoils up to, aka something listed for aa3 may spoil 1 and 2 as well as possible spoilers for the entirety of aa3!

aa1: turbulent golden skies

aa2: none whoops

aa3: the webs we weave; beautiful little fool

plvspw: birds of a feather

aai: none

aai2: next up forever (forever second in line)

aa4: final call; red tape and the pieces of youth [as of right now]; black, bitter, and a splash of cream; a foolish precedent; a turn about the thrift store (gonna find something that fits); one thousand one hundred ninety [very minor]; the safety of a dinner; stay till the a.m.; how to care for your slender palm lily; another four o'clock on a friday; cat and mouse; wildflower summers and fresh-cut bouquets [has aa5 character]; ascension, decent, and the landings in between; trust falls; phenyl oxalate ester; a little spring cleaning; inch by inch; phosphorous sulfide and the guidebooks we set ablaze; an experimentation in thermal equilibrium; da capo al coda; salty ramen and the upright fool

aa5: rsvp with a plus-one

aa6: one hundred and twenty miles (plus some for backroads) [so minor. could probably be after aa5 tbh]

dgs: none

dgs 2: steep for two minutes; the hunt for an invention of much importance; till our ribs get tough

[spacedace]

Still thinking about the Social Worker Jazz concept that @gilbirda posted about and it's slowly turning into a full Anger Management fic send help

-

Jason at length - much longer than it really should have taken really - set the resume down.

The new Social Worker’s resume. Because she was there, in his office, trying to convince him to hire her as a member of his criminal organization.

Crime Alley’s new social worker. A bright eyed Midwestern transplant from some tiny speck of a place that only qualified as a city because there was nothing bigger in a hundred miles in any direction to claim otherwise. The new social worker who had a Psy D. and three masters degrees and who had graduated Valedictorian. The one that had high paying private gigs lined up all over the country with the offering companies fighting over her.

The one who had, apparently, decided to take a shit job in Gotham’s shoddy social services department instead. The one that got kicked to Crime Alley - which was its own division despite technically being a small neighborhood in the grand scheme of things - within her first month. Supposedly for the sole purpose of scaring her off or getting her killed for all the questions she was asking and secret dealings she was sticking her nose into.

That social worker.

“I’m gonna need you to run this by me again.” Jason said, never so grateful for the voice modulator in his helmet as he was in that moment. It stripped out the bewilderment that had bled through into his words and made him sound stoic instead.

“I’d like to work for you.” The social worker - one Dr. Jasmine Nightingale - repeated primly. Back straight, clothes neat - if skewing more on the librarian side of professional - expression confident and hopeful. Completely and utterly oblivious of how fucking insane she sounded. “I was told that you’re the person in charge of Crime Alley.”

He resisted the urge to scrub at his face. It’d just look weird with his helmet on and not do anything to actually settle him in that moment anyway. “I understood that part.”

“Look, Doc,” She earned a doctorate and she was crazy enough to waltz into the office of one of Gotham’s most powerful Crime Lords, he’d be respectful about using her proper title at least, even if he suspected she was ten pounds of crazy in a five pound bag. “You’re going to have to tell me why. I was under the impression the only reason you ended up dumped on our end of the city ws because you wouldn’t play ball. But now you want to sign up for my crew?”

Nightingale frowned a little at that.

“Is that what people are saying?”

“What else are they gonna say?” Jason answered, leaning back in his seat, “Head of the department only dumps Crime Alley on folks he don’t like. And everyone knows he doesn’t like anyone that can’t or won’t play his game by his rules.”

“Alright, well. I’ll give you that.” Nightingale conceded, “Payne doesn’t like me. The feeling’s mutual. But for the record,” She added giving him a wry smile, as if sharing wry smiles with Red Hood was just something people did, “I asked to be assigned to the Park Row and Bowery neighborhoods.”

“You wanted to work here.”

“Yes.”

“Bullshit.”

Nightingale laughed. It was a bright sound. Not especially clear or pretty, but warm and welcoming in a way that carefully calculated giggles or overdone guffaws couldn’t be. Something with real and honest amusement in it, that encouraged those nearby to laugh along. Not the kind of involuntary, nervous chuckling people tended to slip into when they thought they had pissed someone that scared them off.

She just wasn’t intimidated by him at all, was she?

Behind his helmet, Jason found himself smiling. Just a bit.

“I’m serious.” She assured, blue-green eyes meeting the dark stare of his helmet without a moment of hesitation. He watched as she brushed a lock of her bright red hair behind her ear and out of the way. She’d woven it all into a practical, neat braid but a few sly pieces had snuck out to bounce around her. Gilding her quiet professionalism with a playful charm that worked well with her academia but make it cottagecore kindergarten teacher aesthetic.

“I’ll admit, Gotham wasn’t part of my plan when I first graduated. Time and choices take you funny places sometimes.” She plucked an invisible bit of lint off her soft blue cardigan, not nervous but absent as her gaze went distant for a moment. Thinking back on the events that had led her to his fine city. In a blink, those sharp eyes were back to focusing entirely on him. “But Gotham is where I am now, and I want to help.”

She looked at him, a serious, determined expression settling easily on her face. “The city as a whole has so much chaos and crime breaking out all the time.” No censure or horror in her voice, just a neutral fact to be observed. “But where the rest of the city has millions of dollars poured into it by various foundations or charities run by the Waynes, Park Row is largely ignored.”

Jason watched as steeliness sharpened her gaze, the blue-green shifting from the shine of a bird’s wing to the warning hue of something poisonous and deadly. “No one deserves that. No one.” Her chin tilted up, proud but not imperious. “So yes, I want to work here. There are people in Park Row and the Bowery who need help and I refuse to let any of them feel like they are going to be ignored.”

Jason considered her.

Really looked at her. Pealing back his initial off handed impression of her as some clueless transplant in over her head with no idea of what she was doing or what she was poking her nose into to find the real woman beneath. Her confident poise, her clear unshakable belief, her unflinching willingness to look danger in the eye and not blink. The tense curve of her frown, the lines of pain at the corners of her eyes, the simmering anger beneath it all. There was an edge to her, too. Something sharp and dangerously well hidden by the cardigan and folksy charm of her accent.

It was personal for the woman before him, Jason realized. Maybe not Crime Alley specifically, but something about the whole situation. The treatment the neighborhood and its residents received from the city at large, from those even beyond it.

Crime Alley wasn’t a place that received much in the way of charitable thought. The average joe with their house in Somerset and job at some corporate shithole hating every second of their life but thinking at least I don’t live in Crime Alley. Those asshole hoity-toites in city hall throwing money around equally between shit that’d get them re-elected and their off-shore slush funds in the Caymens doing their damn level best to pretend the black mark on the other end of the city just didn’t exist. Bruce, flooding the entire city with charitable programs and carefully constructed infrastructures shying away from the manifested grief and trauma that was the place he watched his parents get murdered.

For the most part no one from outside of the Alley gave a shit about the Alley other than as a place to avoid at all costs. And most of the time those natives that manages to claw their way out into better and brighter lives didn’t ever turn to glance back. Orpheus could have learned a thing or to from an ex-Alley Kid who managed to eek out a steady 9-to-5 and move to Burnley.

And something about that seemed to piss Dr. Jasmine Nightingale Psy. D right the fuck off.

He could see why Bill said he liked her enough to let her in.

“Alright.” He said, tilting his head, watching the woman seated across from him carefully, “Still doesn’t explain what you’re doing here. Why you’re trying to get on my payroll.”

“I’m not trying to get on your payroll.” She said, some of the glinting edge softening, but the steel remaining. Strong and unyielding. “I’m trying to get into your community outreach program.”

Jason thanked god and all the saints once again for the gift of his helmet. That baby had saved his ass more times than he could count both by keeping his head in one piece and keeping his stupefied expressions wrapped up and hidden from view. Dr. Nightingale was one hell of a woman to make him have to rely on that fact twice in one conversation.

“Wasn’t aware that was something I had.”

Nightingale, not fortunate enough to have a full face covering helmet of her own, had nothing to hide her stupefied expression behind. Jason had a feeling she might have removed it to make sure he saw even if she did though. She looked like she had caught him eating glue like it was a cheese stick.

“Yes you do.” She said, sounding deeply confused but unshakable confident in what she was saying. “I’ve seen it. The soup kitchens, the shelters, the collection boxes for donating old clothes, the after school day care.” Nightingale ticked off on her fingers, “I’ve lived here for less than two weeks and I’ve lost count of all the things I’ve seen setup to help people struggling in the area that I’ve been very reliably informed you and your organization are behind.”

Oh.

Those.

“Those aren’t part of some community outreach program.” He said, “We are simply locals offering services for our neighbors.”

He watched as her caught-him-eating-glue expression shifted into one that said she’d stumbled upon him licking electrical sockets for a mid-day pick-me-up instead. He had to give it to her, the woman was not afraid to let one of the most dangerous men in the city know she thought he was a fucking idiot.

“Let me see if I understand this right.” She said, and he appreciated that there wasn’t any kind of condescension in her voice, even though she very clearly thought he’d been dropped on his head as a baby. Possibly from the top of a three story building. “You have a large group of people working together to plan, organize and execute multiple services in your area - your community, if you will - that provide aid and support to those that otherwise would not receive it. Reaching out with your available time and resources to offer these services, that you provide. For free.”

Alright, Jason got it. He had stumbled ass backwards into creating a community outreach program. But he wasn’t just going to let her think she won this one. He was Red Hood, he had a reputation to uphold here.

“What makes you think any of that is free?” He tilted his head at just the right angle, the one that cast shadows across the planes of his helmet and made him look hell-touched and terrifying. “Just because we don’t charge money, doesn’t mean there isn’t a price to pay.”

Dr. Nightingale, dressed like a damn kindergarten teacher, laughed at him.

[runningfrom2am]

leveling the playing field // epilogue

summary: seven years later.

pairing: coriolanus snow x fem!reader

wc: 2.7k

masterlists / nav / requests

tags/warnings: capitol brat!reader, maybe slightly ooc coryo, idk i tried my best. this part is quite tame! idk, discussion of the games as a concept is pretty messed up? obviously r & coryo are both delusional but whats new??

a/n: this is it :') thank you all so so so much for all the love on this fic! it means so much to me that you guys enjoyed it! but don't get too sad (like me) bc i am not ready to let them go so i'll probably do like blurbs and stuff ab this series so stick around for those!

series masterlist // playlist

~ seven years later ~

"You've got this, Darling. It's going to be perfect." Coryo insists, kissing your temple as you relentlessly adjust your hair, trying to tame any imaginary flyaways in your flawlessly straightened hair.

"As long as it's not a disaster..." You mumble, giving up on your hair and refocusing on making sure you have all your papers.

Arena map? Check. Tribute and mentors list? Check. Schedule?

"With you in charge, I do not doubt that it will be anything short of flawless. I know you. You wouldn't have it any other way." Your husband assures you, taking your spot in front of the large mirror to adjust his red coat, matching to yours.

You sigh, tucking the large stack of meticulously organized papers into your bag. "I mean, does anyone honestly expect it to be perfect? It's my first games... There's a small margin for error, right?"

"No." Coryo replies sternly, turning to face you. He grabs your chin as you groan, forcing your eyes to meet his. "There's no room for error, but it will be perfect. So don't worry." He plants a gentle kiss on your lips. "And if you need anything, just call."

"Okay..." You hum, smiling as you look up at him. "I'm going to miss you, though." Your smile shifts into a pout, and he kisses your forehead.

"I know. I'll miss having my assistant around, too." He mumbles against the softness of your skin.

Your time working together under Dr. Gaul had been a dream. Why did everything have to change all at once? You've been together every day for years, and you had the most fun helping plan the games and pitching all your ideas to Dr. Gaul, staying up late over ideas due the next morning and too many cups of coffee, giggling over how funny it would be to see a games where the people of the Districts got to vote over who to send in.

"Do you think it's because that's kind of what happened to Lucy Gray?" You giggled in the dark, feeling Coryo's form shift under the blankets next to you before you felt his breath hit the side of your face.

"Now that you mention it..." He laughed quietly. "Yeah, it totally was."

You had always come up with Dr. Gaul's favourite ideas together. But now, she was gone. And it was just you. You honestly thought that woman was some kind of immortal beast, but clearly, no one is fully bulletproof.

She had offered the position of Head Gamemaker to both of you in her will. You and Coriolanus had worked well together, she had always said that about you. That the two of you were her favourite experiment.

"No, Darling. You take it."

"What? No, we've always done everything together." You protest, furrowing your brow. "She's offered it to both of us, we can do whatever we want, no more waiting for her approval. We can run with it! Come on, it'll be so fun, Coryo."

"That's your dream. Not mine." He smiled at you, brushing his thumb over your cheek.

You frowned, focussing yourself on pulling the buttons of his shirt so they were perfectly aligned. "Are... Are you sure? I don't know if I can do it without you."

"You'll never do anything without me, you know that." He hummed, pushing your hair out of your eyes. "If you need help, just ask. I'm right here. Always."

"I'm not an assistant anymore." You laugh. "Technically, you're kind of my assistant now." You shrug, leaning down to pull on your shoes, white with bottoms red to match your coat.

"Okay, well, I wouldn't put it like that..." He laughs, shaking his head at you and holding out a hand to steady you while you adjust yourself to accommodate your heels.

You take it gratefully, standing up and brushing off your coat once more with your free hand. "Be honest, Coryo, do you think the bear is too much? I feel a little like it's cheating, they don't even really have a chance. Do you get what I mean?"

"Darling," He cups your cheeks in his hands. "No one will be able to look away. That's the most important part."

"I just... I want it to be something different. Something people will still want to watch."

"Everyone will be watching." He assures you. "Now, let's get going. You have a big day ahead."

"Yes sir, Mister President."

"My name is Lucretius "Lucky" Flickerman, your favourite and only host of the annual Hunger Games on Capitol TV, and I have a very special treat for you all this morning before the beginning of the games." You gently remove your coat as you sit down across from Lucky, holding it out for someone to take before the cameras flit your way, though the live audience can already see you.

"For anyone who lives under a rock, this beautiful woman here with me is our lovely First Lady of Panem, and now, Head Gamemaker, Dr. Y/N Snow." He continues as your coat is taken away, and you smile across at him. "Thank you so much for squeezing us into your very busy schedule. Now, how are you feeling about today, Miss Snow?"

"Doctor is fine." You correct him politely, to which he utters a quick apology. "And I am feeling very good about my first games. Dr. Gaul left some big shoes to fill, but I've been working with her for years so I have some really exciting ideas that I just can't wait for the world to see."

"Yes! I'm certain you do." Lucky grins. "Now, I don't know how much of our audience will remember this, but the first time we met was during the tenth games, I was hosting for the first time and you and your husband were both mentors! Just young academy students with some big dreams, isn't that right?"

You laugh, nodding as he speaks and letting the cheers die down. "Yes, I remember that. All of us were kind of getting a feel for how things would work, and my husband was actually the one who came up with the ideas of betting and sponsorships. He has truly always been such a leader, and so smart. He was the one who asked Dr. Gaul if I could help him with his mentorship, and she agreed, and then she just really loved how well we worked together so she kept us around to study under her all these years. It has been such a fun and kind of... fulfilling journey for us both."

"And now, here you are." He nods at you.

"Here I am." You echo it back to him, waiting for another question.

"Now, we have to address what can only be described as the elephant in the room..." He starts, and you try and hide your confused look as you straighten your posture. If there was some kind of problem you should have been made aware before you set foot on stage. "That summer, after your mentorship. Tell us. What happened? Both of you disappeared off the face of the earth right after your success in the games, then came back with these shiny new internships under Dr. Gaul, how did you swing that?"

"Oh!" You laugh, partially relieved it wasn't about these games, but hesitant because everyone knows better than to bring up the tenth games in any sort of detail. "Well, that was the beginning of our internship with Dr. Gaul, and she wanted us to gain some life experience, so we did some touring of the Districts on our own to get to know the people of Panem better. Neither of us had ever left home before, so it was definitely a unique experience that I think was really good for both of us. It was a super secret thing, for some reason. We weren't even to tell our families."

"I see! Well, I hope you learned everything you sought out to?"

"We did." You nod. "And more."

"Okay, well, with that cleared up, tell us more about the games you have planned for us this year. Is there anything new we should be expecting?"

"Oh, definitely." You nod, smiling wide now that you can once again talk about your games. "But I wouldn't want to spoil anything, so everyone will just have to watch." You shrug.

"I don't know if you are aware of this, Dr. Snow," He leans in a little closer, smile on his face. "But one new thing that we know for sure is changing this year, is that the president, your husband, has made it mandatory to watch the games. Not just here in the Capitol, but everywhere in the Districts as well. He made an announcement just this morning, he wants everyone to see what you've worked so hard for."

"Aw." You blush, pressing your hands to your chest. "That's so sweet! No, I didn't know that." The audience eats up your reaction, and you try to keep your eyes on him instead of acknowledging all the clapping and shouts from below you.

"Well, that's just about the cutest surprise! He has a lot of confidence in you." He laughs, reaching over and patting your leg. "You've all heard it here, he's just as good a husband as he is a president!"

"It's true." You agree, hardly audible over the crowds enthusiasm.

"Speaking of your husband..." He says, turning back to look into the wing of the stage and nodding at someone. "He set us up with a little surprise for you, if you don't mind."

"Oh, please." You laugh, covering your face as your cheeks heat up. "Of course he did." You shake your head, whistles from the audience not helping your blush.

"Okay, you can look now. Don't hide!" Lucky laughs, and you lower your hands from in front of your face to be presented with a bouquet of white and red roses. It wasn't an extravagant gift from him, the amount of roses he has gifted to you since your return from Twelve together is astronomical by now, but it's a gesture you cherish nonetheless. You smile as you take them.

"Beautiful, as always." You grin, making a point of smelling them before handing them back to the assistant who's waiting with a vase for them.

"And we have one more thing here, I believe..." He hums, looking back again while you're distracted passing off the wrapped flowers.

When you turn back to look at him you gasp, hands flying up to cover your mouth, fearless of whether or not you would smudge your lipstick. "Is that for me?" You ask, voice higher in octave from the excitement as one of the stagehands walks out with a small dog, fur dyed a soft shade of red with a matching bow around its neck.

"Indeed it is!" Lucky laughs as you're handed the puppy.

"Oh my god..." You smile, tears brimming in your eyes. "Hi there..."

"I think there's a note for you there too..." Lucky urges you and you grab the tag tied onto the bow. "Mind reading it for us?" He says, holding his handkerchief out to you.

"Thank you," You laugh, dabbing under your eyes with your free hand. "A new assistant to match your shoes." You read, laughing at the inside joke.

Everyone laughs, and you get from Lucky's confused expression that you should explain. "Uh, working under Dr. Gaul we would always joke that he was my assistant and vice versa." You laugh, wiping your eyes again before you continue. "I am so proud of you. Finally, the world will see you as I do. Intelligent, strong, and beautiful. Unstoppable. That's why I love you, you're as pure as the driven Snow."

The audience awe's, but you know none of them get it the way you do. "Another inside joke." You nod at Lucky, trying to hold back from crying so much you turn into a mess.

"I stand corrected. That is the cutest surprise." He points to the dog in your lap. "Both literally and figuratively."

"I don't know what I'll do with it." You laugh, shaking your head as the puppy jumps up against your chest, trying to lick your face.

"How about a name, to start?" Lucky prompts you.

"Oh, gosh. Well..." You giggle, lifting it and setting it back down so it will sit in your lap. It's so small, hardly bigger than your hands. It'll likely never grow larger than your lap. It's perfect. "What about Lucky?" You tease.

"Oh, you flatter me, Y/N. Come on, something better."

"I don't know!" You laugh. "I'm not good at naming... things."

Lucky laughs. "Our Head Gamemaker with no ideas? That seems unlikely."

"Okay, okay. You're just putting me on the spot here, I'm a little nervous." You laugh, stroking over the dog's head. "I tell you what, before the games begin this morning I'll come up with twelve names, assign them randomly to the districts, then whoever shall win the games will determine the name of my dog. Does that sound fair?"

"Ah! That's brilliant!" Lucky laughs, clapping his hands together. "And that's a good incentive for anyone who hasn't yet placed their bets or sent in donations for the tributes! Your donation may just be what gives the First Lady's dog its name. How fun!"

"It'll be interesting." You giggle, looking down at the puppy in your lap. It must have been white before the dye, it took so well. Maybe it will fade into a pink before it grows out its natural white fur- you wouldn't want it to stay red forever, but for show, it was perfect.

"Now, we really shouldn't be taking up any more of your time. You have a busy day ahead!" Lucky says and you nod in agreement, standing up and carefully tucking the small dog under your arm. "Thank you for making time for us, I know I'm looking forward to seeing what you have in store for us."

"Thank you. I really hope you all enjoy the games!" You smile, holding out a hand for him to shake which he takes quickly, then allowing you to walk off the stage.

As predicted by a certain Mister President; Coriolanus Snow, your first games as Head Gamemaker went without a hitch. They were perfect in every way. Capitol citizens were buzzing- not just about the games, the mutts you incorporated into the newly decorated arena, or the most shocking kills, but also about your dog. The people loved her, and so did you. She hardly ever left your lap or your side for the duration of the games, which only lasted a matter of days.

The party your husband threw for you at the presidential palace, your home, at the end of the games was extravagant. Coryo couldn't help but broadcast his pride to all of the Capitol. He loved you; you were his, and he needed everyone to know. Not a soul in all the world was anywhere close to being on your level, and shaping you into the perfect wife and First Lady was what Coriolanus Snow considered his greatest achievement. As you stood next to him, his palm tucked neatly against your lower back, you were perfect. More perfect than you were the day you fought for a spot in the mentorships that he granted you, more perfect than the he first time he kissed you, and more perfect than both of the days he had killed someone for you. Without question, he would do it all again if it meant he would get to hold you even just one more time.

"I'm so proud of you, Love." He gently rubs your back, looking down at you while you overlook your garden from the patio off of your bedroom.

You smile, standing up on your toes to plant a kiss on his cheek. "Snow lands on top." You whisper, biting your lip when you see a shift behind his eyes.

"You bet we do." He hums with a smug smile, lifting you up and carrying you back inside.

And somewhere, thousands of miles away in the Northern shambles of a still recovering District Thirteen, while you and your husband are celebrating, Sejanus Plinth and Lucy Gray Baird share knowing, sorrowful glances when it's announced on the crackling radio that the winner of the Seventeenth Annual Hunger Games was a boy from District Two, and because of this, the First Lady of Panem's dog shall be called Sage.

taglist: @totallynotkaibiased , @stelleduarte , @klplynn , @secretsicanthideanymore , @bejeweledreverie , @gloryekaterina , @andrewgarfieldsbitch , @queenofspades6 , @pepperonipastas , @ladybug0095 , @lunamothwrites , @sbrewer21 , @mus-tbe-a-weasley , @splxtscreen , @unclecrunkle , @karmaswitch , @coconut-dreamz , @nekee-lilac02 , @ooooglymoooogly , @riddlerloveb0t , @lovedbalances , @notyourwildestdream , @snowlandson-top , @too-lit-for-fanfic , @utopiakys , @deafeningballoonnacho , @roosterschanelslut , @chmpgneprblem , @cosmoetik , , @urvampgfsworld , @carolanns-world@nan-nie , @shakespearseclipse , @iovemoonyy , @notyoursweetheart-honey ,  @xyzstar , @eatpizzasass, @slytherinholland , @queenofshinigamis , @elodiebeau , @soulessjourney

taglist is closed for coryo unfortunately, but my requests for him are open!! so send me all your suggestions!! requests here!!

[lorax-devito]

Ahhh melvins fist kiss,such a lovely,romantic moment with such tenderness and definitely not el thinking and getting really happy over the fact that they might become siblings

okay I will admit malnourished fallopian tube can have some cute moments but this kiss just rubbed me the wrong way…it just seems very…forced and yeah,I get that ‘actions speak louder than words’ and all that but it’s just with the context it all just seems a bit…icky…

I’m not saying like forced himself into el but he kinda did,not in a technically bad way bc el never said no and all the complex stuff I’m not going to get into but by forced I mean that Mike got influenced or forced by Lucas and well el,she was fresh outta the lab she had no clue what was happening and as much as a want to regain my self from bringing up the whole ‘you’d be my brother’ incident (bc I bring it up a lot when comparing byler or using Melvin as an example for smth )I’m going too bc omg 😭the girl was not only okay with them just being bffs but she was exited over the idea of them being related and yeah,in els eyes that’s probably just friends considering the whole oh yeah,she was raised in a lab and called (I forgot her name) the other girl in leather her sister and papa told the other kids that they were all siblings and all that messed up stuff so ig she just sees siblings as friends or (the whole thing in s4 with her getting bullied in the lab and battered by the other kids In the lab) potential bullies.idk that’s just how I veiwed it but anyways here’s the byler stuff-

I’m leaning more onto the ‘passionate,sudden,I’ve gotta have you righty here right now’ kinda kiss with byler (if that’s the right way to explain it lol) but I also think a slow, gentle kiss with byler would be such a good contrast to mouldy eggs rushed kiss.the best way I can describe it is like the kiss in the fan fic ‘wills fluffy hair’ (I’ll link it at the bottom).

(I’m pretty sure that’s the right fic but they all kind of merge into one so if I got it wrong and realise I’ll change it later 💀)

if you can’t be bothered to read it basically Mike asks if will is okay,will cry’s bc he thinks Mike is lying/teasing him,it’s angst and I love it

basically the kids would be slow and Mike and will just taking their time,no interruptions,they keep asking each other is every inch or so that they move closer is okay and if anyone thinks ‘ewww that’s not hot or anything’ CONSENT IS MF HOT OK IM ALL FOR THE BIG ROMANTIC KISS WHERE THEY GO ALL IN AND ITS MESSY AND STUFF BUT IT CAN STILL BE ROMANTIC WITH CONSENT-okay,mini rant over,anyway they are both so terrified bc (Im pretty sure I’m quoting a fic rn😭god help me) is this allowed? Are they allowed to do this? It feels so wrong yet so right.

they have one small kiss,they’re lips barely touching or they are rlly close,noses brushing up against one another,neither one of them daring to be the one to break the small wall between their lips and omg I think I’ve done it again,good god I’ve quoted a fic,again😭

basically they are both so nervous and scared and then suddenly for one small moment everything goes away,they’re kissing and oh god it feels like heaven and then they both start crying and the just keep being big romantic,cheesy dorks and it’s emotional and all of the miscommunication gets cleared up and yeah,I just think that’s a nice way the byler kiss could go,I’m still a huge rain fight kiss fan (tbh I like most scenarios where they kiss and fall in live and are happy forever😭) but this is also nice,it itches a different kind a scratch,plus I just know that Noah would be able to pull his best acting skills out for that scene and melt our hearts which he’ll do anyway but we all know how this he is at crying scenes (I mean he’s had a lot of practice,I’m looking at you suffer bros🥲)

I think it’s is the right fic but as I said if I notice that I got it wrong then I’ll change it later,it’s still an amazing fic tho,so much angst😭😭

[kaelidascope]

Dude, I love this fanfic so much! I just wanted to ask where you got the idea from. Did you have any inspiration from anyone? Also, what's your favorite fanfic? And want do you recommend ?

AWE bless!! Thank you so much I'm glad you're enjoying it <33

So actually a good 80% of this is written from personal experience LOL I used to dance and was into drift building/racing in my late teens/early twenties! Most of the references or scenes in Midnight Menagerie are references to things I've seen or done in real life, OR stories friends have told me within the same field. (Nora is literally just a rebranding of this one mutual friend we had who just. Absolutely fucking unhinged) Like for example, the anticipated Hangover Chapter is just a retelling of an insane Summer weekend I had in 2017 ☠️ it's a personal delight being able to translate things into the narrative, even more so knowing people find my stupid, terrible decisions as amusing as I do in current times lol

My general rule of thumb is to write from experience. Things I understand either on a technical point or emotional connection. So, if you've read it in my work, it's probably something I've done LOL

Another reason I find drive in writing this type of narrative is that MM!Blake's type of dissociative PTSD is something I haven't seen much in media in general. I've seen people depict her in various ways (some of them good!), but none of them ever really apply directly to me, so I wanted to make something that I could relate to and how to properly navigate life, given the environmental circumstances. Plus some us need better examples on how to juggle mental illness as adults and also be in healthy long term relationships because damn I have zero reference LOL

For the fic recs, oh boy I have so many LOL time to be a pathetic fangirl on main but okay here's the ones that immediately jump to mind (also heads up most of these are mature or explicit rating);

Certified Kaeli Fresh Fics

Let You See My Wilder Side (If I Can See Your Bones)

We all know this one but it is, hands down, my favorite piece of literature of all time. Masterfully crafted and a timeless classic worth several rereads (and I have. Embarrassingly so)

Written by @/lucytara on tumblr || @/explosive_sky on twitter

honestly all her works are immaculate and beyond compare. Also a major fan of I Have A Bullet With Your Mouth On It (That was first RWBY fanfic I ever read LMAO a friend recommended it to me before I even watched the show) I aspire to write like her some day. It's what got me writing fanfiction in the first place. So, credit goes to Erin for inspiring me to post my manuscripts at all. Words cannot express my gratitude and appreciation. I have two book series in the process of being published now and I wouldn't have had the nerve to do it had it not been for this specific fic.

2. One Day At A Time

Also one of the earlier fics I read before getting into the show LOL I love all of @/Frenchsoda 's work, the full list is also worth checking out. I'm a fan of disgruntled Blake who doesn't understand her attraction to Yang but it's so god damn sweet ugh

3. Fucking In Love

Written by @/Set_WingedWarrior and @/Softlight

This one circulates a lot in my social circles. Everyone I know LOVES this one and after reading it earlier this year, now I see why. As someone who worked in the sex industry for a brief period of time, this one's not only accurate but also A DELIGHT to read. The premise is fun, captivating, and worth the wait. I actually discovered a chapter update earlier this year and sent the gc into hysterics because we thought the fic was dead LMAO props to these authors!! They're doing an amazing job and deserve praise

4. You're A Mountain, Full Of Glory

written by champion author @/lescousinsdangereux

I should just preface already that every book Blake reads in MM is a fanfiction that exists because I love Easter eggs. Everyone knows I had Blake reference this in chapter 3 LOL but it's equally as immaculate as Erin's work. I LOVED especially the dynamic between Weiss, Yang, and Ruby in this one. Baby, we're complicated fucking murdered me 😭 also that fuckass Christmas scene, that's my favorite Christmas song LMAO

5. The Home Inside Your Head

Written by the ever skilled @/writeriguess . I found this fic by accident by seeing fanart for it floating around on this site. Got curious, picked at it, and. Oh, my god. It's not very often my brain gets scratched in the right way, but boy this one does it. This author does something specifically unique I haven't seen many do before, and I applaud them for it. There's great detail on the scenes that matter, and the fucking organic build up between Blake and Yang is just. God. Chef's kiss. Truly. It feels so god damn natural and healthy and it's already crossing off several of my agendas already. Give this one a read and give the author some love. SENSUAL FACE TOUCHING? CHAPTER 13????? BOOOOOOOYYYYYYY I'm normal about it

6. You'd Be Paranoid Too (If Everyone Was Out To Get You)

Written by @/WabaJaba_ on twitter

Okay so this one's completely different than what I've previously listed but HOLY FUCKING SHIT IS IT A THRILLER. It doesn't nearly have the amount of love and attention it truly deserves. A friend of mine recommended it to me because it shook them so fucking hard they were in total brainrot hell for a MONTH. NOW I UNDERSTAND WHY LMAO God I was obsessed with this for weeks myself. It obviously lives up to it's rating, horror fics aren't for everyone. But if you're able to read it, good lord you should. It's chilling, captivating, and had me on the edge of my fucking seat the entire time. Both endings are good, I still can't decide which one I prefer but RAH I will make sure this is seen god dammit

and last but certainly not least

7. You And Me and This Temptation

written by talented author @/ProfessorSpork

Okay this one was an accidental find as well. A friend sent it to me because THEY found it by accident, I clicked on it for later, went looking for a completely different fic that I mistook for this one, started skimming and realized 'wait a minute LMAO I don't recognize this'. But the thing you have to understand is I hate reading. I'm not a reader, I'm picky and it needs to be worth sitting down for long periods of time. This is one of the rare instances where I was so captivated by it I kept reading more and more from the middle where I landed, and eventually just said ykw let me just start from the beginning cus LMAO context.

This one is, by far, one the healthiest and loveliest depictions of first times I have ever seen. This shit was so inspiring to me that it literally kickstarted an essay in someone's DMs why depictions like this are so important. I didn't have this experience irl, and why MM is written the way it is is because its meant to serve as a lighthouse for those who, like me, haven't. This fic however I feel like should be a required read for anyone getting into relationships for the first time because if it's not like how these two interact, LEAVE IT. This is the standard. This is amazingly written, it's the closest I've ever seen canon Yang and Blake be written to date. The fucking souvenir bit 😭 NJKFGNFJKGNGJ killed me, I was kicking my feet laughing for a good minute. This is the kind of standard everyone should look at and go 'yeah, I want what they have' BECAUSE IT'S CORRECT. LOUD CORRECT BUZZER NOISES

Honestly everything in my bookmarks is certified Kaeli Fresh but these 7 are my top faves. They're probably also really commonly known I'm sure but LMAO like I said I don't read much 😭 which is heavily ironic considering I write myself. Anyway this ended up way longer than I intended but LOL <3 <3 go give these incredible authors love!!

[daifukumochiin]

Writers ask!

1. Start to finish, how long did it take to plan and write? Did you take breaks during the process?

6. How did you decide what tense and POV(s) to use?

18. Talk about your editing and revision process

26. Share your favorite detail

Since no one is curious about any particular fic, I'll just answer in a general sense, Lav 🥲 I'll address it to everyone who'd come across this post. 1. How long does it take me to plan and write a story? Do I take breaks during the process? > I don't have stellar records. So far, out of nine that I uploaded on ffnet, I have two completed one shots (one of those, I promised I'd write a part two, but I'm not interested in it anymore), a completed short multi-chapter fic, a microfic anthology, and then all the rest are WIPs. I've been DM for 7-8 years now... That's how long it is to plan my most read fic xD Technically, it is complete, but I promised some extra chapters and I could just never get it done. I'm answering in a roundabout way because I'm not as organized as Lav when planning and writing my fics. I don't keep records, I mostly go by feeling. However, if I do put my mind into it, I guess I could be the type to set a deadline and get it done. Though it's not a guarantee that I'd get the response that I hope for, and that makes me feel gutted. So, in my case, after getting familiar with my writer self through all these years, I need to believe in the importance of a fic more than anyone so that no matter the response and readership, I'd never stop until it's complete. How long does it take me to plan and write a story? Until the will to do it takes me through its completion, that's my answer. Do I take breaks? Hahaha! It's breaks that need to be taken from me.

2. How do I decide what tense and POV(s) to use? > Past. Third person limited POV. Those are my default. I don't think much about it. 3. Talk about your editing and revision process. > Even after I finish uploading a fic, I'll always end up finding errors here and there. I don't have a perfect chapter unlike PianoCoat. When I see an error in PianoCoat's chapter, I'm like, "whoa, that's rare." I edit for as long as I see mistakes, and for as long as I wanted to check for mistakes. I used to be more prudent with this, especially with my first fic, but recently, I don't have much time anymore, and you know, that's fine. I run it through Grammarly-sensei and even after then, I'd still catch some errors. Fresh eyes? Don't know her. Maybe give it five to ten years, then I'd truly have fresh eyes. Not the day after. Fresh eyes I tell you, isn't necessarily a good thing. Your past self's treasure could turn into your future self's cringe. My verdict: I edit and revise, but I'm not the best person for it.

4. Share your favorite detail. > 🤔... This took long for me to think about to be honest. I think I've already told everyone in the SasuHina Month discord about things I liked that I felt those are old things that aren't necessarily very true for current me anymore. I'm thinking maybe something from my most recent works. Is 2022 recent? Doesn't matter, let me tell you about it, 'cause I haven't told this to someone yet. I liked how my story for SH Month 2022 Day 3: Dépaysement took everyone on a journey where they didn't know how it would turn out. That's my favorite part about it. People knew it was a SasuHina story, but they weren’t able to predict the ending because the experience of the journey had immersed them. Also, I liked that Hinata had a hard time with the goats. That part was semi-autobiographical🤣

Thanks for checking out my stuff😽💞🙌 If you haven't yet and are interested, here are links for you:

AO3 https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daifuku_Mochiin/works

FFnet https://www.fanfiction.net/u/9526245/Daifuku-Mochiin

[miceysfandomcreations]

I wrote a part 2 to my denji fic. Big thanks again to @yinyuedijun for starting it all!

Another day, another evening, another scintillating episode of I Married a Fiend: Japan Edition. In it, a dashing suitor accused Identity Theft fiend of copying his mother’s fried rice recipe and claiming it as her own. The fiend, of course, denied and claimed that his mother’s recipes itself was copied from some foreign cookbook and another fuss was raised. Once again, your mind fell to Denji and Pochita, the duo you met a long while ago.

Upon your parents’ arrival home, they immediately whisked Denji and Pochita to the police station, with your mother calling a devil hunter relative about Pochita. To your relief, Denji and his companion escaped halfway to the station, after stiffing your parents with the bill at a Lawson’s. You, on the other hand, were under strict instructions to call the authorities immediately if you saw Denji again. It was only recently you were trusted to be home alone again. Well, technically, you were only home alone because the area was under lockdown thanks to a wandering scalpel devil, and your parents had to stay the night in a hotel.

And so it went for the past few months. Peeking around corners for Denji’s figure, wanting to feel Pochita’s velvet fur under your fingers again, forcing yourself to check the obituaries section of the newspaper for any news about a scrawny, yellow-haired school-aged boy and his best friend.

The episode cut to a subplot about prejudiced relatives threatening to ruin a dinner out. Your stomach grumbled. You wondered if you should order something, because there wasn’t a lot of food in the fridge. You searched for the remote; there were voices outside your door, and you wanted to hear what the softly spoken Pillow Fiend was about to say to her potential in-laws.

“I’m telling ya, this is the right place!”

A familiar voice, were you hearing things again?

“If you two run off and leave me to apologize again -“

“Just because Truck Fiend ran over your brother three months ago -“

“You’re taking too long. I demand sustenance!”

“Power no!”

Someone began to bang on your door in a manner reminiscent of a typhoon. You swore your furniture shook.

“Coming!” You yell.

You throw open the door to some long-haired girl with horns too realistic be be anyone but a fiend, a black-haired guy with a topknot, and a very welcome sight. “Denji!” You smile and launch yourself at the teen. He feels less scrawny than you remembered, his clothes more clean. You pull back and look around at his feet. “Where’s Pochita?”

Denji’s face fell. “He died to save me,” he placed his hand over his heart, “but he’s still in here.”

“Oh Denji,” You wished you had cuddled that chainsaw dog longer, “I’m sure he’s in all of our hearts.”

“No. He’s literally in here. He became my heart after we were sliced up by yakuza and tossed into a dumpster.”

“Oh.” Denji said all of that like he was recounting a trip to the supermarket. “Are you doing okay?” You ask.

“Good question! I think so - “

“Hungry!” Roared the long-haired girl. “Denji said your fried rice is the best in the world. It is dinner time, and I demand sustenance now!” She shoved past you and made a flying leap at the couch.

“That’s Power,” Denji said sheepishly, “and that’s Aki.” The man with the topknot gave you a polite nod. “I’m living with them now.” 

“Cool.” You wondered how Denji found these people. He seemed quite happy with them. Did he save any of them from a devil? “Are they feeding you alright?” You blurt out the first question that jumps up in your brain. 

Denji’s smile slid back to his face, “yeah, they are. I had porridge for breakfast and noodles for lunch. Sometimes Aki makes fried rice but it’s never as good as yours. You don’t have to make anything for us now, I just - “ he looked around at your apartment and the shoe stand full of mismatched shoes, “this is the right place.”

“If you’d like, I’d be interested in getting the recipe from you later.” Aki said, “now, if you’ll excuse me,” he moves past you and into the apartment “Power! Get out of her pantry!”

You and Denji stood silent in the hallway. “Er, my mom didn’t make stir-fry this week, so I can’t make fried rice today. It’s a mix from the freezer section of the supermarket, and then I pour other leftovers into the rice. It’s nothing special.”

“I don’t care.” Denji stated, “Pochita and I loved it.”

“Denji, I’m really sorry about Pochita.” You didn’t know what else to do than apologize. Whenever a classmate lost a loved one to a devil attack or some other common tragedy, you were more likely to stay away and ignore. Better to act like everything’s normal, no need to treat others like they were made of glass all of a sudden. But now, in front of only one half of a pair, you realize that coldness was more for your benefit than anything else.

An arm reaches out from you and pats Denji’s shoulder exactly three times. “I’m glad you got to hug him more than me.” You say.

Denji touches your opposite shoulder. “Yeah, I’m glad too.”

“You want to come it? You guys came all this way, I’ll make a snack.”

“Sure.”

-

Power had torn open your snacks cabinet and was wrestling an irate Aki in front of the TV. I Married a Fiend had been interrupted by another emergency broadcast about the scalpel devil. Denji looks at the TV and shrugs, “eh, it’s my day off,” he says. “She’s letting us stay over!” He tells his friends, “Power, finish your snacks when you open them!”

Power looked at Denji and shoved a shiny foil wrapper into her mouth.

Denji glared, “Power, if you get your stomach pumped from that again I’m not gonna help you.”

“I’ll be in the kitchen,” you say, “feel free to change the TV channel.”

-

Aki follows you into the kitchen. He doesn’t get in the way, he just stands and watches you search the fridge for any leftovers (nothing good), find the pan from the drying rack, and gather your ingredients. He only spoke to point out where your spatula was (also on the drying rack). He also offers to help, which you decline.

You spray the pan with nonstick cooking spray, turn on the stove, and get the eggs out of the carton. You’ll make over-easy eggs with the rest of your leftover oyster sauce, that was easy enough. Maybe you’ll dig an unexpected container of green onions out of the fridge too (pre-sliced, you didn’t trust yourself with kitchen knives).

You crack three eggs open on the side of the stove and put them in the pan in quick succession.

“You put the eggs in before the pan’s hot?” Aki said, bewildered.

“Yes.” You reply. What Aki said made a lot of sense, you will keep that in mind for later.

You wait at the stove, prodding the egg edges when they look solid enough. A sizzling sound fills the air, over the TV and Denji and Power’s arguing.

“So how did you two meet?” Aki asks.

You prod at an edge. Should you flip now or later? “He and Pochita saved me from a devil when I was walking home from school. I invited him over for dinner, and he left the next day.”

“Hm. He talks about you a lot. Not just about your cooking.”

“He does?” Denji? Thinking about you? You flip you egg conglomeration over in one go. “Cool.”

You look at Aki and his ramrod straight back. “Are you devil hunters? Do you work for public safety?”

“Yes.”

Public devil hunters. That was the more dangerous sector. “Is Denji strong? Can he heal fast?”

A small smile crept across Aki’s face. “You have no idea.”

You turn the stove off and deposit the eggs onto a plate. You open the fridge yet again in your search for green onions. Your eyes land on a wad of sliced ginger the  exact same shade of Pochita’s pink fur. “Have you ever met Pochita, Aki?”

“No, he was already fused with Denji when I first met him.”

“Did you know what he looked like before?” You ask.

“If I recall correctly, he was in the form of a small, pink dog with a chainsaw sticking out of his head.”

“Yeah.” You remember you have dried black seaweed flakes in one of the cabinets. “I was scared of him at first, can you believe that?”

“Well, he didn’t look like a normal dog. It’s natural for people to fear anything that doesn’t look typical.” Aki pauses, “no matter how benign or conscious they may be.”

“I saw that Pochita was a devil or devil adjacent, but then I felt his fur and it was so soft, like a normal dog. I saw how he and Denji loved each other and it made me feel happy for them.” Denji’s sharp-toothed smile flashes through your mind. “Aki, this is an odd question, but is it shallow to get really attached to someone after spending a super short time together?” You take the container of ginger out.

More silence. “No, it’s not shallow at all,” Aki finally says.

You grab chopsticks from the drying rack and begin to rearrange the ginger.

-

You and Aki arrive back to Pillow Fiend and his girlfriend’s semi-legal winter wedding in Hokkaido, about to be interrupted by protesters. Power was giving commentary from a fiend’s perspective, Denji was glued to the screen.

“Pillow fiend, even though my parents may never see me again -“

“They are fools, why must they insist on abiding by these human standards of love? If I were Truck fiend, I’d steal my human away immediately!”

“Power! Shhhhhh. They’re about to kiss.”

“Food’s done!” You say.

“Wash your hands first!” Aki continues.

While Denji and Power were busy drying their hands on their shirts, you carried what you made to the living room table. Denji took one look at it, and fell silent.

Atop three lovingly over-easy eggs with non-broken yolk, was a rough, cylindrical shape made of pink ginger. Along the four corners of the shape were smaller ginger slices rolled into little spheres. Covering everything was a layer of black seaweed flakes.

You wanted to draw facial features on the ginger with oyster sauce and a toothpick. Realizing that was impractical and you had no artistic ability whatsoever, you opted to write words on the plate with the sauce instead. But then Aki pointed out that any words would be hard to see considering you had just covered the plate with seaweed flakes. You decide to let the image speak for itself and hope Denji notices.

Denji picks up one of the forks you brought and pointed it at the ginger amalgamation. He tosses a wrapped snack at Power who occupies herself with opening it.

“Is that…Pochita?” Denji said.

You nod. “I’m sorry for your loss,” another platitude came out of your mouth. You were really going to miss that little guy. “It’s ginger and I’m not sure how it’ll taste with eggs -“

Denji picks up the main blob with his fork and plopped it into his mouth. You hear it crunch beneath his teeth. Aki makes a weird noise behind you.

You study his face for the wince inherent in biting straight into an ingredient known for killing bloodborne parasites in sushi. That, or tears.

You watch Denji swallow with not a twitch in his face. You still expect him to cry. Or scream. Or ask for something more, like a glass of soy sauce to chug, or a shovelful of pure wasabi.

“The real Pochita may be in my heart, but this one is in my stomach.” Denji said.

You laugh. You laugh harder than expected. Many months of worry slough off your back. Denji laughs with you and you smell the ginger on his breath (were his tastebuds able to regenerate or something?). Power joins in; Aki watches on with mild bewilderment. You think things may be fine. Denji can still smile, you can still laugh. Pochita may be gone, but there’s Power, Aki, and you.

You lean on Denji’s for the rest of the reality TV marathon. He ran very warm. At some point he lopped an arm around you. Pillow Fiend’s wedding goes off with only a few minor hiccups, leaving on a message for tolerance and love. The eggs are eaten and the yolk is mopped up from the plate. Still, eggs were no substitute for a full dinner, so you disentangle yourself from Denji and head to the phone. “Guys, do you want dinner -“

The scalpel devil crashes through your living room wall.

Denji, Power, and Aki leap into action. You back into the kitchen. There was a window exit nearby, you could escape through that.

Denji yells, “Short Chick! I thought you had everything handled!” to a panicked female figure outside. He turns toward you, already halfway outside, with the sounds of emergency responder vehicles waiting. You shoot him a thumbs-up. He nods and joins his friends in trying to drive the devil out of the apartment. You crawl down the window exit.

On the ground, blanket thrown over your shoulder despite not needing it, you hear a chainsaw rev up, and you are escorted to a nearby shoulder with the rest of the apartment residents.

You hope Denji really is a fast healer, and that Aki and Power stay with him as long as they can. You certainly plan to.

[mephestopheles]

ngl, I probably took the wrong ‘lessons’ from Robocop when I first saw it when I was like 10 or 11 and have been mildly and passively obsessed with cyborgs and robots and other forms of artificial intelligence ever since. (Side note this does make the current timeline suck because I could be talking to actual machine intelligence but no, tech bros just want generative ai to make art for them)

Did a quick bit of more research and while “I” comes over from Old English and prior to that proto-Germanic from ‘ic’ or ‘ek’. The newness is that it didn’t start getting capitalized until the 15th or 16th century. So that’s cool, not sure how it’s useful to the fic but research rabbit holes happen.

The fic started off after I did the Citadel DLC and the introduction of the clone. One, I absolutely loved seeing all of the characters interact and have fun with each other, outside of the doom and gloom it did give me more of a grasp on their characters overall.

Finished the game (regretted waiting so long to do the citadel dlc because I didn't get all of the side stories) and got really angry with the choices. They have probably been hashed out time and again, but the idea that I would be willing to destroy the Geth and who knows how many augmented organics to get rid of the Reapers was not a choice I could willingly make. Not after working so hard to find a path where we could work together. Control was out of the question as I could so easily see how removing and sense of self would over time put us back in the same situation, a higher being without any concept of why they're technically saving anyone would inevitably forget why they chose control in the first place.

Synthesis was the acceptable option considering the choices. However, a clone was introduced and I was super angry that even the Paragon interrupt forced the clone to die. That felt cheap.

So I'm asking a question, what if your clone wasn't given such an option on the Normandy, but now has to reconcile who they are away from Shepard and company, and how does that change the person Shepard could become, with essentially a new slate of post ME2.

It's a lot of identity stuff, who we are with and without our memories. Are we still capable of doing good works as we process our trauma. I have the benefit of also picking the spacer background and the war hero psych profile as a starting point, so I got to add more of Hannah Shepard and how she would react to all of this.

Which is also kind of how I got into adding more Geth, mostly because, well Shepard 1 got to have a friend Geth, baby brother gets to have one too.

I have a destination in mind, it is already making me sad, and I can't wait to share it with folks when the time is right. I will eventually need a beta for canon and lore wrangling when the time is right :)

I'm planning on doing a deep dive into the lore stuff myself at some point but I'm nervous to add too much information before I get more plot out of my head. If I'm not careful I will try to rewrite the entire thing.

Welcome to the brainrot, have we considered Geth naming conventions?

Geth are autonomous small running programs stacked on top of each other in a "mobile platform" that generally becomes more intelligent the more there are. Even post Rannoch and with the upload Reaper code their sense of individuality is going to be very different than humans or other organic species.

Legion was content with being given a name in ME2 but that's because to them* naming the part that speaks is weird, it would be like naming a toe. At least in a Geth, their toe would also be part of the consensus so to speak.

This got long, the rest is under the cut

Post Rannoch, (and leaving aside that the sudden and faulty storytelling of trying to repeat Mordin's sacrifice) we see Legion not only say "I" instead of "We", they sacrifice themselves to complete the upload, spreading their many programs amongst the rest. The other Geth that comes over does note that Legion's sacrifice will be remembered, which suggests that instead of individual programs creating a higher intelligence based on numbers, they're unified in each mobile platform.

Does this mean that the individual smaller programs are now considered individuals, or is it still many smaller programs that inhabit a mobile platform? Only becoming a single being as they evolve together to develop personality quirks and preferences as time goes on?

From a writing standpoint, it was definitely easier for them to basically hand wave the "there they're intelligent now and understand the difference between I and we. But the hand wave doesn't work for me. If they're essentially software and can go anywhere, do they "die" when they leave their platform to rejoin a hub?

If that was the case before the upload, what happens now? Are they locked into specific platforms now and can't bounce from one to another? Does that frighten them because that locks them out from the way they used to understand and know each other? If they're not locked out from rejoining hubs or becoming part of a ship or space station, do they retain who they are when they return to their mobile platform?

Legion's sacrifice suggests they can't, but given that's to complete the upgrades, it stands to reason the Geth would either find a way to maintain cohesion while changing spaces, or would remain in one platform.

Now granted this is a very limited viewpoint. It assumes that the Geth's response to individuality would align with other organic responses to it, and with a sense of "self" would begin to understand self preservation.

They understand preservation of their species as a whole, as we see with them willing to forgo freedom and autonomy for base survival. But individual freedom and individual self preservation is going to be very new, they might even as a species refuse to participate in that kind of individualism even if they have to work harder to maintain the community they are used to.

All of this so I figure out naming conventions among Geth.

I can't see them suddenly developing names as organic species understand them, although they might start using a similar convention as the Quarians use. They might also prefer numbers or codes. Shepard was inside the consensus for a while, it's unclear how long, but when I species measures in nanoseconds even a few minutes would be a lifetime. Would that impact any human-like characteristics upon the Geth? Do we think that Shepard has that much influence even as he's removing the virus from the Geth?

I think Legion believes so. I think that Legion has felt and responded to Shepard's influence even when they were speaking across a gulf of disparate understanding. Shepard's willingness to give Legion a chance, willingness to help Legion, and treat them as an equal in the latter half of ME2 and when you meet him again in Me3 make me believe they fully believe that Shepard is enough to change things.

So a new Geth, someone joining the Alliance to help but doesn't have a name, or designation that humans would understand. Would they accept a name given by a human, or an Asari? I'm not even sure the Asari would try to impose a name on a Geth.

I know humans will. We can't help it. We fucking named a roomba Stabby. We name snow plows. I know humans on some level are nervous of artificial intelligence, but let's face it, the Geth arrive to give us a hand, we will adopt them, even if they don't understand why.

So, that leaves me with a couple of possibilities, the Geth that stick around Rannoch and decide to help the Quarians rebuild will likely take their naming conventions after the Quarians at first before developing their own names over time. The Geth that interact with humans more are probably going to develop human naming patterns, if not outright named by humans to the point that maybe some Geth develop a culture that your name is bestowed by your favourite human.

Maybe that is a piece of code that's left over from Legion, a small program replicated many times that is within all of the Geth, but cultivated in those that stick around humans, that being named by a friend becomes a coming of age so to speak.

*they being used as the collective noun, and not the singular personal pronoun. I'm not even getting into Geth genders or if they even have a concept of gender. They're just figuring out person hood, nevermind gender roles.

[collecting-stories]

Cruel Summer - JJ Maybank

Request: hey!! could i request a fic where reader is a pogue and reader and jj have recently started a fwb relationship but they both start to fall for each other with out telling the other.  finally reader tells jj she can’t do it anymore and then a love confession please!! thank you i love your writing so much :)))

TS Anthology Series | Outer Banks Masterlist

_ . ◦ ⭐︎:*.☾.*:⭐︎◦∙._

The first time you slept with JJ was a party at the boneyard. It was technically in the back of the Twinkie while everyone else was down the beach, three sheets to the wind. You were drunk enough to think sleeping with your best friend was a good idea but sober enough to remember the experience the next day. 

While the initial shock of knowing that you’d had sex with your best friend, possibly altering the course of your friendship in the process, wasn’t easy, it was a welcomed relief that there were no messy feelings involved. There was no denying that JJ was attractive, you were a human with a pulse after all, but you weren’t secretly harboring a massive crush on him that had led to sex. It was just a matter of timing. You were both there, both in the mood, it just sort of made sense…in a weird way that you didn’t think too hard about. 

JJ was much more laid back than you were about the entire ordeal, even if neither of you were interested in each other. “Last night was fun, we should do it again.” 

And that was how it started, really. JJ’s suggestion, observation, whatever you called it in the moment, that you keep doing the thing you had done last night. Just as friends, just for fun. You were laidback and chill, or maybe you wanted to prove you were, so you agreed. It wasn’t like you were dating at the time. It wasn’t like you wanted to either. 

Everything always felt relaxed with JJ. Whether it was because he manufactured every single moment that way or because he was just organically that laidback on a regular basis, having sex with him just to have sex felt as bizarrely normal as meeting up for a surf or lunch. 

“I can’t believe you guys are sleeping together.” While most of the pogues knew and pretended they didn’t, Sarah was unable to shake the idea. She was the least inclined for casual sex and seemed determined to prove that it was impossible. At least, between the two of you. 

“Why?” You shrugged, sucking the last remnants of your slurpee from the bottom of your cup. The two of you had met up at the corner 7-11 and were making your way slowly down the beach to meet everyone else. “I get to have sex and it’s with someone I’m comfortable with who I trust totally…that’s not weird.” 

“So there are no feelings? At all?” She asked. 

“Well yeah, he’s my best friend and I love him but not like that…I’m not in love with him.” 

The adjunct onto the end of the sentence felt clunky and awkward. When Kiara had first found out, she’d asked if you guys were dating and JJ had answered, laughing, that “you know I’d never do that to you”. It was an ongoing joke amongst the pogues, simply because everyone else had always been convinced there was something there. Despite knowing there was nothing, you couldn’t help the twist in your stomach though you chalked it up to being caught on the couch in the porch at the Chateau. 

Now you had that feeling again and it wasn’t the slurpee or the heat. 

“What if he starts dating someone else?” She kept the probe going as you crossed over some vacationing families and spotted the other pogues already set up. 

“Well, we’re not dating so it doesn’t matter.” 

Your conversation with Sarah ended then but her words didn’t leave you, like an alarm that kept going off inside your head, just when you started to ease yourself into the afternoon JJ would do something that would set off the echo and you’d feel yourself pulling back. You’d always been affectionate with each other and maybe sleeping together, being so intimate, allowed for more affection to spill over into regular hang-outs. It wasn’t something you usually worried about but suddenly it felt like the only thing you could concentrate on. 

Maybe Sarah was right. Maybe you hadn’t liked him in the beginning but over the course of things, opening yourself up to someone you trusted and felt so comfortable with had turned into something more than friendship and you were just lagging behind, refusing to see it. You weren’t the only one in the relationship though and as soon as you had settled your own feelings you began to fret over JJ’s. Had he reached the same conclusion as you? Did he feel the same way and he just wasn’t telling you? 

He’d always been pretty upfront with his feelings. JJ was the one who wanted to keep this going in the first place, not at all shy in the proposition. Knowing that, you doubted he felt anything…he would’ve told you if did. And he hadn’t, so he didn’t. 

“Hey,” the cold glass of a beer bottled was pressed against your bare shoulder blade and you arched forward suddenly, trying and failing to get away from the sensation as droplets of water rolled down your skin. When you reached for the bottle it was removed, held above your head and you realized it was JJ behind you, grinning as a droplet of perspiration fell from the bottom ring and landed on your cheek. 

“Oh my god, JJ, that’s freezing cold.” You grumbled, “what the hell?” 

“What the hell is right,” he replied, though there wasn’t any edge to his voice, he was perfectly relaxed, “what’s up with you?”

“Nothing, why?”

“Cause you’ve been sitting over here all day.” Calling the last three hours all day was a gross overstatement of time but you knew what he meant. 

“What’s the problem with that?” You were being evasive. 

“You usually sit next to me.” He pouted. “Is something wrong?” 

You bit your bottom lip, dragging your teeth over your skin until you released it before attempting what you knew was an awkward smile. You had already pre-decided JJ’s feelings for him and were avoiding him to avoid  the conversation you were bound to have when he found out you had feelings for him. JJ had been pretty clear in the beginning, he just wanted something casual, where he didn’t need to live up to anyone’s expectation. 

“No,” you shook your head, looking down toward the shoreline where your other friends were jumping waves. You’d been so lost in your head you hadn’t even noticed they left and now you were trying to tell JJ that you were fine. 

“Are you sure?” He pushed, an obvious sign that he was sure you were lying to him. 

“I don’t think we should sleep together anymore.” You got the words out as quickly as possible, letting out a quiet huff after, avoiding JJ’s eyes. “It’s just…awkward and weird now and I didn’t think it would be but it is.” 

“Oh,” JJ slipped his hat off, bending the bill in his fist as he tried to process your words, a last ditch effort to save face, “well I’ve never had anyone describe me as awkward during sex-“

“JJ,” you laughed in spite of yourself, nudging him with your elbow, “I just...” pogues never lied to each other, they were always honest, it was like the holy grail of rules amongst your friend group. “We agreed when we started this that it was no strings attached, ya know? Just two friends hooking up.��

“Yeah, so?”

You shrugged your shoulder, leaning into it as if you could burrow your head back into yourself somehow, “so...that’s not me anymore. I don’t feel like I wanna be just friends hooking up anymore. In the beginning, it was easy...but. But I really like you, like a lot. And I don’t wanna just be your friend, waiting for you to cut this off for someone else.”

There was a beat between you, when both of you were just staring straight ahead at your friends playing out by the waves. This wasn’t the light-hearted conversation that JJ had walked over here for. This felt heavy, it felt like it could change everything between the two of you, if sleeping together hadn’t already done that.  

“Maybe I want that too.” JJ finally said, adding, “No, not maybe...I do want that too.”

“What? Are you serious?” You hated sounding so surprised when you were always so sure you knew JJ better than anyone.  

“It’s been a long time since I’ve thought of this as a friends with benefits thing...I’ll be honest, I’m not really sure I ever did.” JJ replied, “good to know my undeniable charm worked on you.”

“Your undeniable charm?” You laughed, turning away from the ocean to look at him.

“How is that so hard to believe?” JJ hooked his arm around your shoulders, bringing himself a little closer to you so he could lean in, pressing his forehead to yours, “we could get outta here and celebrate?”

“Do people celebrate dating?” You asked, setting your mouth in a line and narrowing your eyes as if you were truly contemplating the question.  

“What are you celebrating?” Kiara’s voice sounded and JJ broke away in surprise, cursing at her under his breath. “Are you guys ditching us to have sex? Again.”

“No-”

“Yes-”

You and JJ answered respectively and you elbowed JJ again, “we aren’t leaving. We’re coming down to join you...oh, did you know JJ has undeniable charm?”

Kiara looked him up and down skeptically, “this JJ?”

“You guys are dicks!” He huffed, getting up off the towel and following you down toward the ocean. He grabbed your hand when he got close enough and you paused for a second so the two of you could walk side by side.  

“You know my parents are visiting my grandma on the mainland tonight,” you mentioned, “we’ll have plenty of time to ‘celebrate’ then.”  

[drawlfoy]

detention, retention, and draco malfoy being a little shit

masterlist request guidelines

pairing: draco x reader

request: no not really

summary: golden trio friend y/n y/l/n tries to extract information out of draco malfoy after being placed in detention together.

warnings: swearing, panic attack kinda stuff, just the dark war things that would come w having the task that draco does

a/n: ayo so i started this as a fic i was originally planning on writing in a week. i discontinued it bc i didn’t think anyone was that interested, but i’ve written for it on and off. it’s about 16k words right now standing, but i’m reposting this as a 2 part series. here are the first ~12k words....enjoy :) IMPORTANT: if you’re like “hey i started reading this in october why tf are you reposting the first two parts” just keep reading ok lmao i promise there’s more there’s about through part 6 in here hehe. i just wanted new readers to be able to pick up on it without being turned off by the fact that it was part 3. this will b e 2 parts and at least 20k words

word count: 11.6k

taglist: @gruffle1 @missmultifandommess @cleopatera @hahaboop @accio-rogers @geeksareunique @eltanin-malfoy @war-sword @cams-lynn @itsivyberry @ayo-cowbelly @nerd-domland @yesnerdsblog @shizarianathania @evanstanfanatic @strawberriesonsummer @hariosborn @night-ving @straightzoinked @imintoodeeptostop @naiomimoonshard @jejegu @ophelia-enthusiast @alwaysbeanunknownfan @nearly-memories @litty-dumb @callieclearwater @malfoy-wife15 @charlenasaxen @belladaises @fiantomartell

happy reading y’all

For legal purposes, the york pudding she lobbed at Pansy Parkinson’s head on Monday evening was simply meant to be a joke. She didn’t know that her aim was bad enough that it was going to get in Snape’s hair instead--honestly, it wasn’t even supposed to get past the Ravenclaw table, much less veer to the left to make a beeline for the professors--but no matter how much she tried to explain this to McGonagall, her sentence remained the same: detention every Friday. For two months.

Her life was ending for sure.

“I honestly don’t know what you were expecting,” Hermione told her as she gently wiped off the nib of her quill later that night in the common room. “Even if you had hit your mark, that’s still technically assault.”

“Did you even hear what she said to me? She told me that I looked like the type of kid that bit people in primary school,” complained Y/N. “I didn’t even think she knew what primary school was!”

Hermione snorted. “How long ago?”

“Two days. I’ve been waiting until there was something throwable on the dinner table.”

“How very analytic of you.”

“I’m going to hit you.”

“And you wonder why you’ve got detention.” Hermione tsk-ed at her, her face stone serious but her tone light hearted. “Maybe take this as an opportunity to, I don’t know, do your homework for once? So you won’t have to have a breakdown over the next Potion’s essay and beg me to write it for you?”

“I’m going to go to sleep and think terribly mean thoughts about you.”

“Have fun.”

~ 

Detention.

Something that Y/N wasn’t completely unfamiliar with--she’d done her time organizing Snape’s cabinets, just like every other Gryffindor--but it was different when it came to McGonagall. An impressive old lady, she thought that McGonagall saw something in her. She was always the first to chuckle at Y/N’s jokes and hesitated to reprimand her stupid behavior. And she never gave Y/N detention.

Until now, she supposed. 6th year was changing a lot of things--even their Potions professor--so McGonagall turning a new stone shouldn’t have been anything shocking.

At least, not as shocking as the first thing Y/N saw as she walked into her house head’s office.

“Malfoy?” she spat.

The platinum blonde didn’t even bother to look up from his desk.

“Miss Y/L/N,” Professor McGonagall chided. “I think we would all prefer if you restrained yourself from getting into any more physical altercations with Slytherins.”

She huffed, plopping down in the chair furthest away from that foul git and reaching for her satchel.

“I’ll be back in two hours,” said the elderly professor. “If I hear anything, and I mean anything, other than the sound of studying, consider your sentence doubled.”

With a swish of her robes, McGonagall was gone, leaving her with Malfoy. 

“So what’d you do to get in here, huh? Did the administration finally get a hold of that video of you licking Voldemort’s toes?”

“What the fuck does that mean?!” he snapped, whipping around to glare at her.

“‘s just a joke,” said Y/N. “Like--how everyone says your family houses him and everything--but whatever. I can tell it’s a sore spot.”

His gaze, never withering in intensity, remained trained on her face. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Apparently so. What’re you here for?”

He exhaled sharply. “If I tell you, will you shut up and let me think?”

“No promises, but maybe.”

“Late work. I forgot to turn in the Transfiguration exam last week.”

She made a tutting sound as she lazily shuffled through the crumpled parchment in her satchel. “I expected more from you. Aren’t you gonna ask me how I wound up here?”

“No. I am going to ask you to stop talking now, though.”

~

“That’s terribly unfortunate,” Hermione said over breakfast the next morning. Ron and Harry were nervously chit chatting at the other side of the table over the Saturday Quidditch game against Hufflepuff--supposedly it was supposed to be quite a high stakes match. Not like Y/N cared much, though.

“Yeah! And the worst part was that he won’t even tease anymore. Like, he just sits there all broody and woe is me. We’re all witnessing our nation’s descent into war--he’s not special!”

“Who are you talking about?” asked Harry.

“Oh, just Malfoy,” said Y/N. “We have detention together with McGonagall. He’s such a nasty little greaseball, don’t you think? I mean, look at him right now, glowering over his cereal.”

“Wait! That’s it!”

“What’s it, Harry?” Hermione asked.

“It’s genius, really,” he said. “Y/N has to spend time with him alone every week, and we know that something is up with him. Malfoy is absolutely a Death Eater and has connections to You-Know-Who, but I just need to find a way to prove it.”

“I vaguely forecast where this is going, and I hate it already.”

“Listen, Y/N. It’s not for that long, and it’s for the health of the wizarding world. If you just get to know him--”

“Ick!”

“If you just get to know him, maybe get him to trust you and find out his secrets...we’d finally have enough to turn him in and throw him out of Hogwarts for good.”

“Is that really necessary, Harry?” Ginny butted in from her seat further down next to Dean. “Malfoy’s probably just exhausted like the rest of you. 6th year is difficult, and we have no solid evidence that he’s a Death Eater. I’m sure being stuck in a room with him for 2 hours is hard enough without pretending to be nice to him.”

“But what if Harry’s right?” said Y/N. “What if he is actually a Death Eater? What if he’s an active danger to the student body?”

“Exactly!” The joy written across Harry’s face at the prospect of someone else finally agreeing was infectious. “So will you?”

“Er…” She dragged her spoon across the top layer of her porridge. “In theory, sure. In actuality, I’m not sure how I could do it. Malfoy doesn’t want anything to do with me, either.”

“Love potion?” offered Ron.

“I don’t care how much of a prat he is, I’m not roofying him.”

“I rarely agree with you, Y/N, but I think you’re right. If you want to do this, you need to get him to trust you for real.”

“Your back-handed compliment skills never disappoint, Hermione. Do you think you could help me out with a plan?”

A slow smile spread across the girl’s face as she nodded. “That’s my strong suit.”

The plan they laid out over the remainder of the day was ambitious but at least do-able. Each week was split into different subtasks, the end goal being a somewhat tentative friendship between the two. 

“If you can flirt with him and get him to have a crush on you without scaring him off, you’d be in the best possible position,” Hermione told her as they walked back from the Quidditch pitch among the screaming Gryffindor fans. They’d won--yet again. “Obviously I don’t foresee that being likely, but if you pull it off somehow he’d probably be willing to tell you anything. The fact that you’re a pureblood is going to carry you through this whole ordeal. He’ll at least be accepting of your existence in the wizarding community.”

The bitter edge in Hermione’s tone made Y/N’s blood boil. There was no reason for Malfoy to be as prejudiced as he was--he’d spent his adolescence in Hermione’s academic dust. She was obviously smarter than him. 

“You got it, ‘Mione,” she said. Her voice barely carried over the cheers of her peers as they ascended the steps to the common room. “We’ll take this little ferret down. I can’t wait.”

“Don’t get too cocky, now.”

The Gryffindor after-party was crazy...per usual. The charmed self-filling goblets, the blasted playlist of Wizpop pumping through the air, and the buzzing energy of the room was giving Y/N a giant headache. She stood with Hermione and Harry by the edge of the crowd, watching Ron get hoisted up on the shoulders of the chasers. 

“No wonder the Slytherins think we’re Neanderthals,” Y/N mused. For once, Hermione didn’t respond. “Hermione? Is everything okay?”

The second she turned away to look at her best friend, gasps and whistles filled the room. She whipped back just in time to see Lavender Brown, a sweet but slightly ditzy girl in their year, pull away from a kiss with Ron.

“Oh shi--Hermione!”

Harry and Y/N shared a glance before darting after the witch--who had impressively already made it to the door. 

“Hermione, wait!” Y/N called as they jogged after her, throwing open the common room entrance and finding her sat by the tapestry on the other side of the hall, knees to her chest.

“‘Mione, what’s wrong?” asked Harry.

“Don’t be daft, Harry,” said Y/N. “You saw exactly what the rest of us did.”

“I don’t understa--”

“Harry.” Her voice was taut. “I know you’re just trying to help, but I think that it might be best if you let us be. Go back and enjoy the party.”

He gave her a tight, grateful smile before darting back through the door. Y/N wasted no more time in walking over to Hermione and throwing her arms around her shoulders.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, hugging her tight. Hermione made no move to detach them, so she continued. “Ron is an idiot. You deserve so much better--your first kiss was Viktor fucking Krum, after all. You’re hot stuff and this place is just unfortunately running dry of men who are impressive enough for you. Once you’re out of here and working in the Ministry, you’re gonna have the time of your life with men actually in your league.”

Hermione managed a sniffly laugh as she wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “It’s just so fucking embarrassing, you know. Like, I have a crush on him because I think he understands me and I smelled him in my Amortentia and I thought he’d like me back, but…” She hiccuped. “Then he goes off and kisses Lavender Brown, of all people. There’s nothing particularly wrong with her or anything, but she’s so different...I’m so bookish, and she’s so girly and everything I’m not…”

Y/N took the opportunity to tuck a lock of Hermione’s hair behind her ear as she listened.

“And it can’t help but make me think--was I ever anything to him but a friend? If the girl he ends up choosing is the opposite of me?”

“Girly, don’t think like that,” murmured Y/N. “He’s a teenage boy. They don’t think of love the way that we do--to them it’s a game of availability, not of choice. At least for Ronald. You intimidate him, and by extension, you’re not available.”

“That shouldn’t matter!”

“You’re right. It shouldn’t.” Y/N drew a long breath. “So you should find someone who always has you as their first choice--someone who isn’t intimidated by your intellect. They’re out there. I promise.”

Hermione managed a shaky smile. “Thanks, Y/N. I mean it. Do you mind if I have some alone time? I don’t think I’m ready to go back to the party but I just want some quiet.”

“Of course. Let me know if you need me,” she said, brushing herself off and making to walk down the hall.

“You’re not going back to the party?”

“Nah. It hurts my head and I want fresh air. If I’m not back here in a half hour, assume that I’ve been kidnapped.”

With that, she started her walk. She wasn’t planning on going on a long stroll--there was a small balcony that she often went to when she needed to clear her head. It was beautiful, especially on a snowy night like this.

But the walk was creepy.

There was only one way in and out--a narrow, damp hallway that had absolutely no light fixtures. If Y/N really wanted to, she could cast a quick lumos, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to see what lived on the walls. The stairs were steep, too, but she managed to bound up all 40 of them in record time. 

“Who’s there?”

The sudden voice ripped a scream out of Y/N’s throat as she reached the top, catching a glimpse of the shadowy figure at the edge of the balcony that spoke. She clasped her hand over her mouth and she crept forward to the opening, getting a better look at the person that was in her secret spot.

The clouds shifted in the sky to allow more moonlight to cast a soft glow on Malfoy’s face, hardened with irritation.

“Malfoy?” Y/N asked, rather dumbly.

“What stellar observational skills,” he drawled. 

She felt her cheeks grow hot. “What are you doing here? This is part of the Gryffindor tower. Shouldn’t you be...I don’t know...playing hide and seek with the sewer rats in the dungeons?”

“Very funny.” His flat tone exposed the fact that he did not, in fact, find it very funny. “There’s no rule barring me from coming up here.”

“But why? This is my spot!”

“Because I wanted to get out. Now, I was here first, so unless you want your detention extended, I suggest you leave.”

Y/N bit the fiery comebacks on the tip of her tongue as the memories of her plan with Hermione began floating back to her. 

Week 1 -- Hold one neutral, civil conversation with Malfoy.

“I’ll be quiet. You won’t even know I’m here,” Y/N decided upon. leaning up against the balcony. The rogue snowflakes that made it past the overhanging roof melted on her cheeks. 

“That isn’t a suggestion,” said Malfoy. “I’m demanding you leave.”

“Beautiful night, isn’t it?” Y/N asked, pointedly ignoring his words. “I’ve always loved the snow. It’s so quiet.”

“And it would be even quieter if you left.”

“Aren’t you the conversationalist?” said Y/N.

“If you don’t leave, I will hex you,” Malfoy told her through gritted teeth. 

“I just love how the moonlight reflects off of the snow,” continued Y/N. “It’s so...pure.”

“Please leave.”

On her walk back down the dank stairwell, she allowed herself a little smile. 

Task 1? Technically done.

~ 

The first week went largely as planned. Malfoy was cold and certainly suspicious of her, but he wasn’t completely venomous when Y/N asked where he got his quill from in Potions. It was silver, charmed to shimmer with flecks of forest green. He told her Barnaby’s in France, and that was that. She walked away from his table with all of her limbs attached. Perhaps that was all the progress she was going to make in the next few weeks, but the task at hand certainly made the prospect of her lost Friday afternoons more bearable. 

Harry was going completely batty, rambling on about how Malfoy was behind the mysterious cursed objects that had been floating about the castle without explanation. 

“And why would Malfoy bring cursed objects to Hogwarts if he has aspirations other than being expelled?” Hermione would ask over their books.

“You don’t understand, Hermione! You girls need to be careful walking around at night--especially you, Y/N. I don’t want you going missing after detention because of that slimeball.”

Y/N always gave him a laugh, berating him for his slight misogynistic commentary and turning back to whatever her task was, but the truth was that she was worried for him. The mental weight of the impending war and the fact that he couldn’t do anything about it was certainly getting too difficult for him to bear. It was heartbreaking to see the vivacious boy she’d grown up with crumble under the responsibilities of something he should never have to worry about in the first place.

Friday came much sooner than expected, and Y/N reluctantly left her friends in the common room to trek to McGonagall’s office. The walk was frigid and the wind bit at her cheeks as she rounded the last outdoor hall.

Why was this castle so dark?

A thump behind her made her jump, and Harry’s words came floating back to her. 

Remember all those cursed objects? What if there’s someone just...stalking the school grounds, waiting for someone like me to snatch?

She shivered, throwing herself at the office door and slamming it behind her.

“Miss Y/L/N,” Professor McGonagall greeted, her eyebrows raised in amusement. “Something giving you trouble?”

“No, Professor,” she answered, setting her bag down on the desk next to Malfoy. He sent her a curious look as well. “It’s just cold outside.”

She chuckled. “I need to go speak to Headmaster Dumbledore. I expect that, upon my return, you both are in one piece and alive.”

“I’m not sure if I’m the one who needs to be given that speech,” said Y/N, bored and testing the waters.

“She’s right, Professor,” added Malfoy. “There’s no projectiles here.”

McGonagall exhaled a long, shaky breath before brushing herself off. “Please. Behave yourselves.”

“You got it, boss,” she said as she watched her Professor walk out the door. “So, Malfoy. How was your week?”

“I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’d way prefer if you didn’t speak to me,” he said, refusing to make eye contact.

“I’m not up to anything! We’re in detention together and, I dunno, since I see you sometimes at balls, I thought it’d be nice to be on good terms.”

“Good terms?” He scoffed. “You’re a Gryffindor. I’d rather you be a bloody Hufflepuff.”

“How about neutral terms?”

Even though he wasn’t looking at her, she could catch a glimpse of him rolling his eyes. “If neutral terms mean you being quiet, then, yes. Please.”

“I’ll be plenty quiet. After I hear about your opinion on what happened in Potions today with Brown and Weasley. When Snape yelled at them for holding hands.”

He let out a sharp sigh. “Believe it or not, I actually have better things to do than keep up with whatever stuff your house does.”

“But…?” Y/N pressed. She may not’ve spent her time at Hogwarts as Malfoy’s best friend, but she had grown up with the boy, and she could tell when he was holding back.

He stared blankly at her.

“Come on. I’m literally the only person in my house who’ll openly admit that they’re disgusted by that dynamic. I’m begging you.”

She wasn’t sure if she was imagining it, but she thought she saw a flicker of amusement dance across his face for a moment. “Your house sounds more like a cult than a student group.”

“Oh, says the one from Slytherin,” said Y/N. 

“We only act like that because our families are close. What’s your excuse? Hormones and Quidditch culture?”

“Touché.” As much as she wanted to fight back, she bit her tongue. Whatever she was doing was making progress, and quicker progress than she was expecting. Her next task was to make him laugh, and she was emboldened by the fact that she could potentially be able to kill two birds with one stone. 

They sat in silence for a little bit, but this time, it was a comfortable silence. Malfoy wasn’t staring at the clock on the wall or rolling his eyes at her every move, so she had time to plot.

On one hand, she could make a fool of herself--drop her inkwell, say something stupid in class, fall down the stairs--but she had a sneaking suspicion that her sorry attempts at slapstick humor wouldn’t land well with Draco anymore. He’d become so serious lately, so solemn. This was the most light hearted she’d seen him, even compared with how he acted with the rest of his Slytherin lackeys. 

On the other, she could try to sell out her friends. She could confide in him how “big” Hermione’s teeth were (they weren’t even big) or tell him that Ron smelled of eggs (true, but that was a low blow). Something told her that this would be much more successful, but she wasn’t willing to turn to that so quickly--she was already a week ahead as it was. 

“What is it?” 

Malfoy’s bored drawl cut through her flurried thoughts. Her cheeks turned pink as she blinked, noticing that she’d been staring at him for far too long. “Nothing. Sorry. I just spaced out.”

“Sure,” he mumbled, giving her another suspicious look before turning back to his work. “Can you maybe space out somewhere other than my face?”

“Where’s your vanity, Malfoy?” she pressed as she leaned back in her chair, hair swinging over the back. 

“Shut up,” he snapped. She could tell that whatever connection they’d had in the fleeting moments beforehand was being burnt by the second, but her embarrassment and pride drove her forward.

“Merlin, what’s got you so wound up?” she prompted, noting how deliciously unraveled he looked at this. “Where’s my cool, collected Slytherin?”

He slammed hands on his desk at this, whipping around to glare at her. “What’s your angle, Y/L/N?”

“What?”

“Why are you bothering me?”

“Because I want to.” She beamed.

Malfoy ran his fingers through his hair, mussing up the usual neat manner in which it normally laid on his head. “Compelling. What do you want from me?”

“What do I want…?” She tilted her head at him, narrowing her eyes. “What?”

“You never talk to me,” he explained. “Obviously, I prefer it like that. I can’t help but wonder why suddenly you want to be making small talk. So, what is it you want from me?”

“Malfoy,” she said. “I think you’re a spoiled prick who thinks far too highly of himself and drives me insane. But I also think that you’re funnier than what my friends give you credit for. Granted, you’ve always been annoying, but I don’t want anything from you. I just want to, I dunno, make these next few months less insufferable.” Somehow the lie slipped through her teeth easier than any of her previous bluffs. 

He frowned, his mouth opening once before firmly screwing shut into a scowl. “Oh.”

“No offense, Malfoy, but what else can you offer me other than your dazzling personality?” she teased. “You know my family. I don’t need to blackmail you to pay for jewelry I’ve had my eye on or anything.”

He scoffed. “As if I’d say yes.”

“Exactly my point. It’d be fucking weird. Merlin, I’m not trying to butter you up to buy out Borgin & Burkes for me. Do I give off gold-digger vibes? Is that what this is about?”

“Fucking hell.” Malfoy turned to her in disbelief. “Do you ever shut up?”

“Answer my question. Or better yet, pull out your wallet. Wait, did I say that out loud?” She mimed surprise and covered her mouth. “Oh no! What will my mother say now that I’ve squandered my last chance of hitching you? There’s no way I can go home for Christmas break now.”

He rolled his eyes so hard she found herself worried for a moment that they were going to just permanently get stuck in the back of his head. “Hate to break it to you, but you didn’t really have a shot to begin with.”

Ouch.

She huffed and dramatically flopped over the back of her chair, hoping he couldn’t see that she’d flinched. “So you don’t think I’m pretty??” 

“Y/L/N,” he snapped, his voice a low warning. “Can I please just work? What is with you today?”

Y/N sent him a sour look before giving her Charms work another look. Malfoy was awfully quiet, and when she snuck any glances at him later on, he was angled to face away from her. 

Why did she feel like such shit all of a sudden? She cataloged the past events, trying to pinpoint the exact moment that her stomach dropped. It all made sense when the words “You didn’t really have a shot to begin with” echoed around her head once again. She’d failed Harry. She’d failed Hermione. There was no way that she was going to be able to get him to reveal his secrets now--it’s not like he was confiding in even his closest friends as Harry made apparent when he explained how vague his statements were to his fellow Slytherins on the train. Her only chance would’ve been to somehow get him to fall for her, and that wasn’t going...great. And it had been a pipedream to begin with.

When McGonagall swished back into the classroom to dismiss them, Y/N shot out of there without even looking at Malfoy again. It felt like something was lodged in her throat and she was not going to cry in front of him. No, no. She had to make it to Hermione to tell her what was going on. 

“Y/L/N?” 

Malfoy’s voice made her pause in her flee as she nearly rounded the corner in front of her, but she refused to look back. It was far enough away that it was possible she didn’t hear him.

“Wait!”

She was up the stairs and speed walking as fast as her legs could carry her to the Gryffindor tower before he even saw which way she went.

~

“I don’t think you understand,” Y/N wailed by the fire as Hermione rubbed her shoulders and Harry sat awkwardly perched on the couch. “I can’t do this. The only way this was going to work was if he had a crush on me, and I don’t think he ever will. I fucked it up! The one time you guys need me, I fuck it up! I let you down!”

Hermione’s left hand stopped its rubbing to rest firmly on her shoulder. “Please don’t be upset. You didn’t let us down. Plus, you’re only, what...two weeks in? You don’t need him to like you to make it work. Just getting him to trust you will be enough, and you’re good at that.”

“I don’t think so,” continued Y/N. “Harry said that he wasn’t even that open on the train when he overheard him talking to all of his friends. And those are purebloods that he likes! That he’s trusted and known for years and years! I’m a friend of you guys, and he knows it. I think he’d figure it out quick.”

“We should take every chance we can get,” said Harry from his spot a few feet away, his eyes lazy and unfocused on the fire crackling in front of them. “You won’t let us down if you can’t get anything, Y/N, you know that! But if you got anything from him, it’d be incredible. It’s a win-win. I don’t understand why you’re so upset.”

“I’m not upset,” she said, her tone becoming defensive. “I just...don’t want to mess this up. I know how much it’d mean if I succeeded.”

“So just try!” Hermione said. “There’s nothing wrong with it. I’m sorry he was kind of mean to you today, but I don’t think that should bother you too much. He should be more afraid of what you’d say if you didn’t care about being a good person.”

“Fucking right on there,” she said, wiping away the frustrated tears. “If I was honest with him, he’d leave crying. He should be grateful that I’m taking this bet so I actually have to be nice to him.”

“That’s the spirit.” Harry leaned over to smack her back like he did his Quidditch teammates after a winning match. 

After they’d parted their ways with Harry, Hermione and Y/N made their way slowly up the stairwell to the girls’ dorms. 

“Y/N?” Hermione asked, breaking the silence. 

“Yeah?”

“Do you think, er…” She paused. “Do you think you were really upset about failing us today? Or was it something else?”

“What do you mean?” Y/N furrowed her eyebrows. “I don’t see what else it would be.”

“I’m sorry,” responded the bright witch. “Forget I ever asked. It was a stupid thing to wonder about.”

“Weirdo,” she teased as she waved her a goodnight and made her way to her dorm.

The next morning, Y/N busied herself with revising her Charms essay over her breakfast--a cup of tea and a half-buttered piece of toast--while Hermione leaned over her shoulder, nodding or grimacing at the corrections she made. 

“Did you work during detention? Like, at all?”

“‘Mione,” moaned Y/N. “It’s too early for this. I don’t want a lecture. I just couldn’t focus.”

Her warm brown eyes narrowed as they bore into Y/N’s face. “Why were you distracted?”

“Oh, I, uh…” She stumbled over her words as Hermione drew closer. “Merlin, Hermione. I told you last night. I just felt like I was letting you all down.”

“Mhm,” was all she got in response before her best friend tilted her head back down to the parchment in front of her. 

Y/N sat, completely puzzled. What was Hermione on about? She’d been straightforward with what was hurting her--she didn’t want to mess up the only task the Golden Trio had ever given her--and, even if she hadn’t been, Hermione was smart enough to deduce things for herself. So what was she thinking about?

Her eyes drifted over to the Slytherin table where the usual 6th year pureblood gang loitered about, drinking black coffee and sulking--but Malfoy was not to be seen. She jumped when her eyes met Parkinson, her dark eyes burning into her soul as a deep scowl was written across her face.

“Malfoy, what the fuck do you want?” Ron’s voice pulled her back to reality to see him glaring somewhere behind her.

“I wasn’t here to talk to you,” a familiar voice drawled. 

She turned to see Malfoy standing behind her, a sneer written all across his stupidly pretty face.

“Miss me already?” asked Y/N as she raised an eyebrow and cocked her head to the side. 

“For fuck’s sake, stop doing that,” he mumbled, reaching into his pocket and throwing a box at her. “You forgot your quill. I took the liberty of properly storing it, because it seems like you lot like to just throw them in your bag. Makes me physically ill to watch.”

“Oh.” Y/N studied the intricate box in her hands before tucking it away in her knapsack. “Thanks? I guess?”

He nodded curtly, contorting his face into one last scowl to send to Ron before turning and leaving,

“So,” Hermione began, cutting her omelet at a much brisker pace, “I think we need to have a little chat. About...all of this.” 

“Why?” 

“Not right now,” she said, her voice low and her eyes flicking at Ron and Harry sitting across from them. “I don’t think it’d benefit us for them to hear.” 

“Ok?” She cautiously took a bite out of her toast and continued staring Hermione down. “You’re scaring me.”

“It’s...I don’t know. I thought I was crazy for thinking this, but it seems like we need to talk about it anyways. For this little mission of yours to work, we need to be totally open and honest with each other.”

“Sure.” Y/N took another bite. “I honestly have no clue what’s got you so on edge, though.”

“Who’s on edge?” Harry asked, leaning over the table and stealing the croissant on Y/N’s plate. 

“Hey!” she exclaimed. “Do you not see the entire plate of them over there?”

He laughed, sending her an easy grin and dunking a piece into the hot chocolate in his mug. “Finders keepers. Say, Y/N, are you busy next weekend? Ron and Lavender are going to Madame Puddingfoot’s together, and I know Hermione isn’t going to want to take a weekend off studying to go to Hogsmeade, so I thought that maybe we could go cause some trouble at the Cauldron.”

“If you stop stealing my food we can talk about it,” replied Y/N, the corners of her lips tugging up into a grin. 

“Deal.”

Hermione tugged at her arm. “I just realized I need to get something out of my room before we watch the Quidditch game. Will you come with me, Y/N?”

“Sure!” said Y/N. “Gee, I’m rolling in invitations today.”

Once they exited the dining hall, though, it immediately became evident that they were not actually heading up to the dorms. Hermione dragged her into the nearest bathroom before casting a quick silencing charm.

“Myrtle! Are you in here?” Only when she was sure silence was the only response to her question, she seemed satisfied to turn to Y/N and begin talking. “When were you going to tell me that you have a thing for Malfoy?”

“I’m sorry, what?” Y/N felt the heat that had risen to her cheeks from the last quill-encounter re-emerge.

“You know exactly what I’m talking about,” said Hermione. “Are you seriously going to expect me to believe that you nearly sobbed over some random pureblood git telling you you never had a chance with him because it might slow down your progress with helping us? Actually? I’ve seen you look more ecstatic about hearing that your dear granny passed away.”

“To be fair, she had really good life insurance,” Y/N cut in. “And she was an old hag. Never had a nice thing to say to me.”

“Life insurance or no life insurance...you can’t seriously expect me to believe that you were just upset about not being able to help us as much. That was ridiculous. I don’t buy it. And the way you blushed like crazy when he came over to talk to you--the way you try and pretend like you can flirt...please. Y/N, it’s clear as day. I know you, and I know you have a crush on him.”

“Hermione!” hissed Y/N. “You have no clue what you’re talking about!”

“Yes, I think I do,” she pushed. “And you need to be honest with me if you want to be of any help right now.”

Her bossiness lit a fire of rage in Y/N’s chest, but she sucked in a deep breath, shutting her eyes before releasing it. “Believe me when I say I haven’t ever acknowledged any feelings I may or may not have towards him.”

“Ok.” Her face softened. “I know it might take time, but I honestly do think I’m right. Please just...be careful. This is a really odd situation to get caught up in if you actually have feelings for the other person. You’re trying to manipulate him, for Merlin’s sake.”

“And if I have these feelings for him, I’ve done a pretty damn good job of suppressing them for however long they’ve been here.” 

Hermione sighed. “That’s true. I’m just saying that spending this much time with him is probably only going to make things worse. Will you please tell me if anything changes between the two of you?”

“Anything changes?” Y/N’s voice was dripping in disbelief. “You’re joking. Even if I was obsessed with him I don’t think there’s ever a chance of hell in anything ‘changing’ between us. He said it himself.”

“You know what I mean, Y/N,” responded Hermione. “Just promise me, ok?”

“Ok,” said Y/N. “I promise.”

That seemed to satiate Hermione as she nodded approvingly at her friend. “I think it goes without saying that Ron and Harry shouldn’t hear about this.”

“There’s nothing to hear about, but yes.” She shuffled her feet before meeting Hermione’s eyes again. “Er, I’m sorry for this being a weird question, but would you mind coming along with me and Harry to Hogsmeade? I don’t really see him like...that...and I don’t want to read into it too much and reject him if he is doing it just platonically, but just in case. Y’know.”

“Sure,” said Hermione, even though her face took on that curious expression yet again. “Anyways, you actually did forget something--you’re not wearing a single piece of Gryffindor colors for our game today. You should probably run back to your dorm before Harry and Ron notice.”

After they said their goodbyes, Y/N found herself turning over the things Hermione had said to her in her head. Did she like Malfoy? No, no fucking way. But a part of her really did think he was funny. And of course it was natural to feel rejected when anyone insinuates that they’d never consider you as a romantic interest without jest. 

Once she’d made it up to her room and grabbed a few scarves, Y/N made to put her red cloak into her satchel. Her fingers ghosted over the box that Malfoy had given her and scoffed once she saw the Malfoy crest engraved into the rich wood. 

Narcissistic snot.

Her curiosity got the better of her as she reached over to open up the elaborately decorated box. What met her was not just one quill but two--one of which was most certainly not her own. 

She took them both out, tossing the old one in a pile with her other trusty familiar white feather quills and picked up the other one. It looked familiar--identical to the quill that she’d complimented Malfoy on in Potions about a week ago. Butterflies began to flutter like crazy in her stomach as she turned it over in her hand, watching the gray and green glitter together and the magic sparkles cast a gentle light over her bed. She generally avoided dipping into her family’s pockets to get school supplies any more than she had to--it’s not like it made her friends feel good about themselves when they were reminded how rich her family was--but this might be what she could consider to be an exception. She hadn’t even liked his quill all that much when she first saw it in Potions--but it was one of those things that was so noticeable that it made sense to compliment him. 

She gave it one last look before tucking it back away into the elaborately decorated box. Perhaps she had spoken too soon when she’d told Hermione all hope was lost. 

~ 

When Monday morning Potions class with the Slytherins rolled around, Y/N wasted no time. Malfoy was alone--even his Slytherin lackeys seemed to know not to bother him. Just what she needed.

“Malfoy,” she greeted, setting her bag down on his table and looking him dead on. He raised to meet her eyes, his eyebrow raised.

“Can I help you?”

“I just wanted you to know that I also really like your immense fortune,” she said. “And your manor.”

“Well, a lot of people do,” he mumbled as he looked away to dig through something in his bag. If she didn’t know any better, she would’ve thought he was blushing.

“I’m just letting you know,” she continued. “In case you were wanting to give them away. It worked for the quill, so I thought, well, why not?”

He exhaled, a deep and annoyed sound escaping his lips as he rolled his eyes up to the ceiling. “I knew I shouldn’t have done that.”

“You really didn’t have to.”

“I was getting sick of it,” he told her. “I never can stick with one quill for too long, and I thought it’d be a shame to toss it. I thought it’d be better to be charitable--it’s not like your family could get an appointment at Barnaby’s if they tried.”

“Hey!” Y/N said indignantly. “You don’t know that!”

“I’ve heard your parents try to speak French,” he said. “If you’re anything like them, you'll be barred from ever entering the country.”

“Malfoy!” 

His lips turned up into a smile, a soft laugh escaping his lips. Y/N suppressed the urge to grin in return. Task 3? Done. “What?”

“I can’t even argue with you,” she said. “It’s tragic.”

She stared at the empty stool next to him, wondering if she should just take the leap and sit with him. Malfoy seemed unbothered by her presence as he opened up his Potions book and set it next to his cauldron. “Do you want a partner?” The words left her lips before she could stop them.

He cast her a curious look before glancing at the empty stool. “It depends. Are you going to be annoying?”

She gasped in faux-offense. “What makes you think I could ever be annoying?”

“On that note, I think you better get back to Potter.” He motioned with his head towards the side of the room where most of her Gryffindor friends were chatting. Harry was staring at her, his fists clenched by his side.

Y/N smirked and sent him a wink. 

“On that note,” she said, careful to imitate Malfoy’s drawl and sending him a smug grin, “Maybe I better sit here.”

“Hm.” He awarded her one more uninterested look before rolling up his sleeves and setting out the ingredients for the potion they were brewing--Amortentia. 

She tried not to make it too obvious that she was staring at his left arm, but there was nothing on it like Harry had told her. It was just pure, unblemished pale skin that shimmered under the light. Before he could catch her looking, she quickly sat down and started pulling out her own things. After a short pause, she decided to take out the silver quill. She’d left his box back in her room--she wouldn’t be caught dead with something that had the Malfoy crest on it--but she’d wrapped it in a pouch with her own family’s emblem on the front, shimmering in gold and red.

“Why don’t you just buy your own charmed quills?” asked Malfoy after they had chopped all of the gillweed. 

“You already know. We’re an abomination to the French. We aren’t allowed entry.”

“That’s not what I mean.” His tone was meant to read as exasperated, but his words still seemed good-natured.

“I...well.” She frowned. She’d never confessed this to anyone, but she supposed that Malfoy wasn’t going to find a way to use it against her. “I don’t like to flaunt my family wealth. I think it makes people, at least in Gryffindor, like me less. I learned that pretty early on.”

He hummed something in response before sliding all the gillweed into the cauldron, turning the clear liquid into a bubbling forest green. 

“Why are you being so nice to me all of a sudden?” she asked. 

He took his time finishing the note he was jotting down before he answered. “I’m not being nice. It’s just called being civil. You said it yourself, we see each other at balls sometimes.”

“We probably won’t anymore, though,” she mused. 

Malfoy’s eyebrows shot up, but his voice remained low and steady. “No. I suppose that we probably won’t. Is your family part of the Order?”

“Hm. Are you a Death Eater?” she asked brazenly. He had no business asking her something like that, and he knew it. Especially not with his family connections.

“What do you think?” he drawled, waving his bared left arm in front of her face.

“Bullshit. That doesn’t mean anything after we learned Glamour spells last year.”

“Guess you’ll just have to trust me, then,” he responded, focusing intently on the bubbling liquid in front of him instead of her face. 

“I guess so,” she replied. The weight of her Glamour comment began to sink in--she was right, after all. How had she not thought of it before? 

But he was right when he told her she just had to trust him. Could she? Y/N rested her chin in the palm of her propped hand as she watched him work. A piece of disobedient moonbeam blonde hair dangled over his forehead as he diced up the unicorn tail, his eyebrows furrowed in focus.

“Is this why you want to be my partner?” he finally asked after a few moments of silence. “So you can just stare at me while I do all the work?”

“There’s the vain Draco I know,” she said, grinning as she leaned over to punch his shoulder. 

He rolled his eyes again, scooting out of arm's reach before flipping back to Amortentia in his book. “You’re insufferable. And it’s Malfoy to you.”

“Fine, fine, Malfoy,” said Y/N. “What do you want me to do, then?”

He shoved his cutting board towards her, the half-diced unicorn tail staring up at her. “Finish dicing this and then stir it in. 9 times clockwise. I did almost all of the work, but it should be finished after that.”

Y/N sent him another glare before doing as he said. The glittering quill kept catching her attention from the corner of her eye, and she couldn’t help but notice that Malfoy was writing with just a plain white quill for the time being. HE really did just give it to me. 

After the final ingredients were diced, she began to stir, each rotation around the cauldron turning the potion to a different color. It began as the bubbling green, then a deep sea blue, then a royal purple, a crimson blood red, a glimmering gold--before settling into a pale silver.

“Wow. It’s beautiful,” she breathed. “It’s like...liquid starlight.”

“All thanks to me,” said Malfoy. “You didn’t even have to crush the Mandrake root.”

“You’re such a gentleman, Malfoy.” Her voice dripped in fake sincerity. “So, what do you smell?”

Y/N was expecting him to scowl at her and tell her that it wasn’t any of her business, but he actually leaned over the cauldron and shut his eyes. 

“I’ve never been good at explaining what things smell like.” 

“Fair.”

Once he leaned back, she took his place, shutting her eyes and breathing in a tendril of the beautiful potion. “Whoa.”

“What’s it for you?”

“I don’t...know,” she admitted. “It’s not something I can describe note by note. It kind of reminds me of something, though.”

“Something with Potter, I presume?” he said, casually twirling his generic white quill around his fingers.

“No,” she answered, surprised at how honest she was being. “It’s…I’m trying to think. Er, it’s very lavish. It reminds me of when I was younger and my parents would drag me to galas and balls and whatnot.” 

He stared at her in silence.

“What about you? Does it remind you of anything?”

“Yeah.” Malfoy reached forward to put a lid on the cauldron, effectively shutting out the steam from reaching either of them.

“Ooh, have you figured it out yet?” she teased, crossing her legs and turning to face him head on. “Let me guess. Is it someone like…”

She paused, a wicked smile stretching across her face. “Oh my god, is it Hermione? Or Luna? Or...help me out here!”

“No.” His voice was sour. 

“Ah, it’s Parkinson then, isn’t it? Tell her I’m sorry for throwing food at her if you ever have the chance. Make sure to add the part where I’m more sorry that I missed.” 

“Y/L/N!”

“It’s okay. I’d be a little let down, too.”

“Can you please just…” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Please just stop. I haven’t figured it out. Okay? Happy now?”

“I’ll leave you alone,” said Y/N. “Under one condition. You give me a hint. I’ve given you everything I know! This isn’t fair.”

“This doesn’t have to be fair,” he hissed.

Y/N kept the easy smile plastered on her face while she waited, her eyebrows raised in anticipation.

“You’re not going to let up until I tell you, are you?”

“You’d be right on that,” she said, sugary sweet.

“Fine. It’s something kind of floral.” 

“How descriptive,” she snorted as she slumped back in her stool, thinking hard. Where had she smelled it before? Y/N shut her eyes, leaning her head back and trying to immerse herself into the memory that had surfaced. It smelled like grandeur, like an open ballroom full of guests wearing expensive perfumes. She could feel spinning, spinning like she was with a dance partner. Who was it? She couldn’t quite remember--the last ball she’d been to had been years ago--but after she leaned forward and smelled the Amortentia once more time, she came to a conclusion.

“I had to have danced with him at a gala before,” she announced to Malfoy, who was looking quite unimpressed. “So I know it’s no one from Gryffindor.”

“Interesting,” was all he said before turning to his parchment and jotting something down.

Late that night, while Y/N was settling into bed, a strange idea struck her. Sure that the thought that was nagging her was completely fruitless, she had no trouble with reaching into her desk and pulling out the Malfoy box. She just had to check if she wanted to sleep well.

Here goes.

She closed her eyes, imagining the expensive scent of her Amortentia. Then she opened it, stuck her nose into the fabric, and breathed in.

Well, fuck. 

~

The internal debate going through Y/N the next day at the breakfast table was intense. On one hand, she really, really wanted to just tell Hermione that Malfoy had been in her Amortentia and she was completely fucked, but on the other…

She glanced at the witch next to her as she methodically sliced her toast into perfect, equivalent squares before dunking them in jam. Y/N liking Malfoy was not going to fit into her toast cubes. If she said anything, she would lose her excuse to talk to her about him. And her excuse to try and get close with him. 

Perhaps I can figure it out tomorrow. 

When tomorrow came, she still hadn’t made progress. Y/N was beginning to think that her so called “revelation” after they brewed Amortentia was truly just complete and utter bullshit. So what that his quill box smelled like it--all rich people kind of smelled the same at some points, and so did their houses. There was a reason why she couldn’t immediately pin the scent to anything--it wasn’t like she even knew what Malfoy smelled like.

But the truth remained that she was still attracted to someone who happened to be a rich Slytherin--so naturally, her mind began to wander. There’s no way it was Zabini--his mother owned a fragrance line, and she would’ve instantly recognized the cologne that she knew Mrs. Zabini made him wear--and there was absolutely no way that it was Crabbe or Goyle, so the only other Slytherin it left was...Nott? But that didn’t make sense either--she’d never spoken to him before in her life, even less than Malfoy. So perhaps it would be better if she didn’t think on it.

The next day of potion brewing came on a stormy Wednesday. Malfoy and Y/N worked silently together to brew a Draught of Dreamless Sleep. She was surprised to see how practiced his movements were--he didn’t even have to reference the book to recite the exact measurements and directions.

“Do you have bad dreams or something?” she asked, mostly as a joke. He didn’t seem to pick up on the light-heartedness and stiffened up.

“No?”

“Gee, you’re talkative today,” Y/N said, trying to ignore how her hand brushed his by accident when she added the scoop of anjelica. 

“Excuse me for not entertaining you,” he drawled. “I wasn’t expecting to have such a needy potions partner today.”

“I am not needy!” she gasped, smacking his arm. “I’ve sat in silence for a full hour!”

He rolled his eyes (he was always rolling his eyes) and gave the potion one more final stir before setting the lid on the cauldron. “Think you can do that again? It needs to simmer for that long.”

“Just because you’re so sweet to me,” crooned Y/N before pulling out a heavy book from her satchel. Her Charms exam was tomorrow, and, naturally, she had decided to save all of her revising work until the night before. The textbook stared back at her as she jotted a few notes onto a previously blank sheet of parchment. The quill in her hands was light and glided across the paper like the tears of Merlin, something that she had forgotten quills could do. All of her familiar basic quills were okay, but they were prone to skidding and breaking. This nib hadn’t worn down in the slightest, still at a smooth and defined peak.

Y/N couldn’t believe that, out of all people, the person to give her such a thoughtful gift was Draco Malfoy. She tried to sneak a glance at him then, moving her curtain of hair away from her face. It took all she had in her to not be startled at the fact that he was already looking back, a slightly concerned expression etched into his face.

“Is something wrong?” 

He snapped out of it the moment the words left her lips, his face hardening. “No.”

“Forget I ever asked,” she responded, turning away from him for good and focusing on her textbook. No, there was no way he could be what she smelled in her Amortentia. She liked to think that her subconscious wasn’t secretly a masochist.

~

Friday evening swung around again, much to Y/N’s dismay. She’d had a talk with Hermione later on in the week, confirming that no, she did not smell Malfoy in her Amortentia, and that yes, she was still abiding by the plan that Hermione had so carefully laid out for her. It did bother her a bit that she could be lying to her on both fronts--but at the end of the day, she was going to get the answers that Harry wanted, no matter what. 

She just had to get through the scary ass castle first. She’d forgotten how spooky Hogwarts was after her previous sprint to the door, and this time she was positively trembling by the time she turned another dark corner on her way to McGonagall’s office. Yet another cursed item had been found in the girl’s lavatory on the 3rd floor, right by some of the classes that she had taken earlier in the week. The fact that whoever was out there was capable of dark magic and actively wanted to hurt people terrified her, all that Gryffindor bravery be damned. 

So when she heard footsteps suddenly right beside her, it was no wonder that she jumped feet in the air.

“Fuck!” she sputtered, turning to see a very familiar blonde in Slytherin robes. He was frozen in place, curiously looking her up and down.

“Am I interrupting something?”

“Malfoy,” Y/N said, resisting the urge to melt into a puddle of relief at the sight. This wasn’t right--wasn’t he a suspected Death Eater? “You scared me.”

He scoffed, digging his hands into his pockets. “You’re supposed to be the brave ones, right?”

“Huh?”

Malfoy motioned to her Gryffindor jumper. 

“Oh.” Heat rushed to her cheeks as she realized what he meant. “I dunno. I just get jumpy around the castle at night.”

“No shit.” They’d begun to walk now, side by side. Y/N couldn’t remember ever walking with him before--she’d always been late. “Do you think I forgot the way you screamed when you saw me at the tower?”

“Shut up,” she grumbled, reaching over and giving him a healthy shove. 

They walked in silence together. Malfoy moved noticeably slower than he normally did so he wouldn’t leave Y/N’s shorter legs in tow. McGonagall seemed pleasantly surprised to see Malfoy hold the door open for her.

“I’m glad to see you two getting along,” she said, giving Y/N a hesitant nod before grabbing the stack of papers on her desk. “I’ll be back momentarily.”

After she exited the room with a swish of her deep maroon robes, Malfoy turned to her. “Are you scared of the dark or something?”

She turned, ready to send a biting retort his way, before she noticed how gray his pallor looked...and how big the circles under his eyes were. “You look like shit, Malfoy. Is everything okay?”

He rolled his eyes. “Don’t change the subject.”

“Oh. Um…” Y/N pause before deciding that the little tidbit of information she was about to reveal wasn’t that important anyways. “I’m just on edge at night at Hogwarts is all. Especially with all that weird shit going on with all the cursed objects. So I kind of hate walking to and from detention.”

Malfoy let out something that sounded like a strained laugh.

“You didn’t answer my question. Is everything okay?”

“None of your business,” he snipped. “I just had a bad night.”

“Do you have trouble sleeping?” she asked, unable to keep herself from prying.

“Something like that.”

“Have you tried lavender?”

“I’m sorry?” He frowned.

“Lavender. Like the essential oil. It’s nothing magical,” she explained. “I just like to spray it in my bed sometimes before I sleep. Or I’ll use a few drops in a diffuser. I have trouble sleeping too, all the time, actually.” She shut her mouth before she had any chance to ramble further.

“It sounds a bit too floral for my taste.”

“Here.” Y/N dug around in her satchel, searching for the tiny spray bottle she kept with her at all times. “Borrow this and spritz your pillow with it before you sleep, and then tell me it’s too floral. I promise it helps.”

He glared at her. She extended her hand with the white bottle that was covered in purple decor, raising her eyebrows expectantly. “I won’t tell anyone that you have it if that’s what you’re worried about or whatever.”

“Fine,” he snapped, snatching it from her hand and dragging his fingers over her palm for just a second. “Don’t expect me to actually try it, though.”

“Just give it a sniff.” 

He huffed, but to her surprise, he actually uncapped the top and held the spray hole up to his nose, inhaling in once.

The effect was immediate. Malfoy’s face completely drained of color, becoming even grayer than he’d been when she first saw him under the light. The briefest expression of surprise fleeted over his face before he wiped it off, replacing it with something unreadable and tossing it back at her. “I’m not using this.”

“Why not?”

“Not quite my taste,” he spat.

Y/N was shocked by the sudden outburst, watching as he continued to glower at his desk. “I don’t understand. It really does help you sleep. I know it seems stupid, but I...really think you should try it. Just once, if anything.”

“Why does it matter so much to you?”

“Because I--” Y/N stopped herself before she let her mouth run without check. “I know what it’s like is all. I feel like shit if I don’t sleep. Plus, I have to spend time with you every Friday. I imagine that you’ll be slightly more tolerable if you sleep more.”

“Hm.” He sent her a particularly venomous glare. “Thanks for your concern. Consider me uninterested, though.”

“You break my heart,” she teased, pulling back her hand and placing the bottle on the corner of her desk. An idea struck her.

“And just what are you smiling about?” Draco said. His lips were turned into a sour frown. 

“Nothing, nothing,” she responded, her voice adopting a sing-song quality. All she had to do now was wait. 

He exhaled, a deep and exasperated sound. Then he turned back to whatever was in front of him.

McGonagall entered the room a few minutes later, nodding cordially at the comfortable silence the two students were in. What she didn’t know was that Y/N was waiting, just waiting for Malfoy to dig through his satchel and stop paying attention to his quill.

She got her opportunity a few minutes later, when McGonagall called him up to look over his latest Transfiguration homework.

“Mr. Malfoy, I’m happy to see that you’re taking more initiative in getting your assignments done...I have to say that you had me a bit concerned…”

While her professor kept Malfoy occupied, Y/N darted over and grabbed his quill. 

Ha.

Malfoy frowned down at his desk when he returned, giving Y/N a suspicious look.

“What is it, Malfoy?” she said, hoping her voice conveyed nothing that might hint that she took something of his.

“Nothing.”

“Hm.”

The rest of detention passed without any more discussion. Y/N was eager to run up to her dorm and set up her plan to be carried out the next morning, but she calmed her bouncing leg and forced herself to keep a straight face when McGonagall dismissed them.

“Got somewhere to be, Y/L/N?” Malfoy’s voice called after her as she sped down the hall towards the Gryffindor tower. 

“What’s it to you?” she fired back.

He didn’t respond. Instead, he picked up his pace until he was walking next to her.

“Aren’t the Slytherin dorms the other direction?” she asked.

“I don’t know. Are they?” 

She allowed herself to be amused by the way words flowed out of his mouth when he was slightly out of breath. “Why are you walking with me?”

“You said it yourself.” He kept his eyes cast on the cobblestones below them. “You don’t like walking alone at night.”

“Uh...oh.” Against her will, her feet froze and she was glued to the ground. “You’re joking, right?”

If the lighting wasn’t so dim, Y/N would have good reason to believe he was blushing with how intently he was studying his fingernails. “By all means, I can be.”

“No! No, I didn’t mean it like that,” she said, the words tumbling out of her mouth. “Er...I’d like you to. If you want to, that is.”

He shrugged, an elfish expression spreading across his face as he took in how nervous she was. “Well, come to think of it, you didn’t ask me to. I suppose I better get back to the Slytherin dorms anyways. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near the Gryffindor Tower right now.”

“Why?” she squeaked.

“Oh, you know, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that most of the cursed things showed up on your side of the castle, yeah?”

She gulped.

“I gotta get going. Don’t want to stand around here too long. This place gives me the creeps.” With that, he turned and began walking away.

“Malfoy?” She hated how timid her voice sounded. “Consider this me asking you to walk with me.”

He slowly faced her, a sly grin plastered all over his face. “Oh? Did I hear that correctly? Do you want me to?”

“I’m only going to say this once,” she said, putting her hands on her hips and trying her best to look intimidating. “Walk with me. Please.”

“I guess I’ll take it.” Malfoy glided down the hallway to her in just a couple steps, sending her yet another smug look.

“You made up that whole ordeal about Gryffindor Tower being targeted, didn’t you?” asked Y/N as they rounded the corner to reach the staircase leading up to the common room.

“You bought it, didn’t you?” 

“Who says I didn’t just want you to walk with me?” pushed Y/N. This was as close to flirting as it would ever get for her--but it looked like, somehow, things were falling into place. The heat in her cheeks must’ve been from the excitement of making progress. 

Malfoy’s toe caught on the first stair and, if it weren’t for Y/N’s steady grip on his arm, would’ve made him go sprawling across the stone steps. 

“Merlin, Malfoy,” she said, immediately dropping her grip from his shoulder. “What’s gotten into you?”

He responded with an unceremonial snort and a withering glare. The rest of the walk was done in silence, and Y/N noted how careful his footwork became around the Gryffindor steps.

“This is me,” she finally said once they reached the tapestry for the Gryffindor dorms. He seemed surprised, and only then did it strike her that he’d probably never seen the entrance himself before. “Thanks for being such a gentleman.”

“I live to serve,” he drawled.

And just like that, he was gone.

~

Her plan was simple. She had located an extra monogrammed pouch in her cabinet, a rich mahogany color with her family crest in a vivid gold, and placed both his quill and the lavender bottle. She would corner him after breakfast or follow him out of the Great Hall and show him then.

However, it was becoming increasingly obvious that Malfoy was not coming to Saturday morning breakfast. Many people didn’t, but Y/N had never known him to miss it. His normal spot was vacant, and it certainly wasn’t a house-made decision as all of his Slytherin friends were present and accounted for. Y/N couldn’t say for sure, but she could see Parkinson turning her head to the entrance every time the doors thudded open before glancing back to Malfoy’s empty seat when it turned out to be someone else.

Where was that loser?

“Excuse me,” she said to the trio as she stood up and brushed off her skirt. “I think I’m going to go get some fresh air. I have a bitch of a headache.”

Hermione and Harry expressed their sympathies while Ron gave her a characteristic mumble through his mouthful of bread, and she was off with the pouch secured in her cloak pocket.

It was a clear November morning, clearly Mother Nature’s attempt to slowly move the world from the crisp autumn to a cold winter. The sky was clear and the sun’s rays warmed her skin at a slanted angle, casting weak shadows across the courtyard.

If I were Malfoy, where would I go to sulk?

The obvious answer was either the Slytherin common room or his own dorm, but that was without a doubt out of question for her. She wasn’t even sure if she possessed the knowledge to guess which corridor the entrance was in, much less work out the password herself. Beyond that, just getting into the common room and waiting would be...She shivered. It would be a terrible idea while she was clearly wearing a cloak in Gryffindor red and gold trim. 

As she continued her aimless wander around the castle, she heard the slightest sound from the girl’s bathroom on the second floor. It wasn’t ever really in use--no one came in there to actually use the loo unless they wanted Myrtle to materialize and tell them her supernatural troubles while they were in the middle of their personal business--but it was often the source of strange happenings. 

Like the cursed objects she thought to herself, her nails digging into her palms. But did she care about that right now? Surely cursed objects seemed somewhat...suspicious. Dark magic was difficult to hide, and to a pureblood eye that grew up around magical objects, cursed things shouldn’t be impossible to spot. 

And, plus, it was Malfoy she was looking for. None of the students had died from the curses so far, and if she was able to break through and learn something, or at the very least gain his trust, the reward to the Order would be more than worth it.

She stepped in, expecting to see an entirely empty bathroom with perhaps a ghost rattling around at the sink. Instead, a different sight awaited her.

Draco Malfoy was clutching the edge of the cracked sink basin in front of him, rocking himself back and forth and shaking. From her vantage point, she could see that he was dressed in his normal garb--a black ensemble--but his hair was unruly and messy, sticking up in the back like he’d hurriedly tugged something over his head.

A strangled gasp grounded her and halted her curious observations. Malfoy began to make these awful sobbing sounds, like he could barely manage to breathe. 

Y/N was frozen in place as she surveyed her options. If she stayed and tried to talk to him, he might react in anger or hurt her. But if she just left him, like this, all alone...She swallowed once before stepping forward.

“Malfoy? Are you okay?” Obviously he’s not, you bint said a voice deep in her brain. She pushed it aside as he swung around, his wand raised and his eyes blazing. “Whoa! I’m not going to...Put your wand down!”

He stared at her, his eyes wide with horror as he continued to shake, so much so that his wand slipped out of his hand and clattered to the floor. Without thinking, Y/N reached into her pocket and flung her wand away, holding her hands up.

“I’m not going to try anything. I promise.”

As she drew closer, she could see the remnants of tears on his wet cheeks and the way that his silver eyes were rimmed with a bloodshot red. 

“You shouldn’t be here,” he hissed, his voice weak and cracking. 

“Neither should you. This is the girl’s bathroom.”

final a/n: ok so lmk if you guys wants me to continue. i really did not edit the last half fjkdsal;f also kinda made this an au where malfoy tried to assassinate dumbledore. with more than one cursed object but dw it’ll all make sense ill clear that up 😭

[writing-in-april]

Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde (1/?)

Part One: The introduction

Spencer Reid x Female Reader

Summary: Reader meets a mysterious stranger at the library during a book club meeting.

Part Two, Part Three

Series Masterlist

A/N: Hey Heyyy! This is my first Dom!Spencer fic in so long!!! My last one was also funnily enough for a fic swap as is this one! I had @aperrywilliams for the fic swap organized by @imagining-in-the-margins. I had so much fun writing this one- it’s based on a prompt that I got from @andiebeaword and @spencers-dria helped me by guiding me with the book club idea- with a little twist! I am considering making this a series, if y’all are interested PLEASE let me know- I really want to because I had so much fun writing this. Thanks to all y’all for reading and requests are open!!

Warnings: 18+, Dom Spencer, Public Sex (is anyone that surprised??), Impact Play, Post Prison Spencer, Use of the nickname Doctor during sex, Spencer is a brat tamer, Spencer is morally ambiguous but doesn’t do anything explicitly immoral

Main Masterlist Word Count: 3.0k

As soon as you walked in through the large wooden doors it felt like history hit you over the head with a book. Even though it was on the small side for a library it still probably held more books than a normal public library, almost every wall was adorned with built-in shelves stacked from bottom to top with old books. They ranged in every subject you could think imaginable, from every point in history imaginable, and from every point of view that was imaginable. When you had first discovered this place it had felt like you had been transported to another world. You were surprised that more people didn’t know about this old library nestled in the corners of D.C, it was just sitting there idly watching as history passed by day by day, while it sat writing down all its secrets.

A meeting of the classics was scrawled on the standing white board you saw right when you walked into the library. A meeting of the classics from 7pm to 11:30 in reading room C were the exact words, you didn’t even really need to read them as you had been looking forward to this event for weeks.

You made your way down to the reading room that was specified, only encountering a few stragglers similar to yourself on the way down. You were somewhat new to the events that this library ran, only coming to the past four months. It was quickly becoming your favorite thing to do every month.

There was always a theme to each of the parties, ranging from different eras of history, specific novels, and including things that were open to interpretation. Tonight’s theme was as stated on the white board, a meeting of the classics, which had been described as “Pick your favorite literary icon from a classic novel and dress up as them.”

You had decided to not pick a character from a classic novel, but rather an author, Mary Shelly. You based your entire look on the iconic writer of Frankenstein (with a twist of course) because it had been your favorite novel as a child, it still was your favorite novel.

Once you had made it into the large reading room you took in the full room like you did every week. People were dressed as many outlandish characters, with some being more difficult to decipher than others. As you walked around the reading room you could feel the eyes of another on you.

You could feel his stare following you intently as you walked around mingling with the others that you had met before. The eyes belonged to a man you hadn’t had the pleasure of meeting yet, a man dressed as someone instantly recognizable, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. What other iconic character would be split down the middle, half innocent doctor and half evil alter ego.

Even behind the costume you could tell how attractive the man was. He was extremely tall and lanky, with deep brown eyes and the fluffiest brown hair you had ever seen.

“Who’s that?” You asked the married lady and gentlemen dressed up as Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. Maybe it was shameful that you didn’t know their actual names, but you guess that’s what some people want when they come to an event like this

“That’s Dr. Spencer Reid, he hasn’t been here for a while and he sometimes misses things because of work. You didn’t hear it from me, but I heard he got in trouble with the law, that’s why he hasn’t been here for almost six months.” Her gossipy voice was drenched in fake sugar that made you gag on the inside. You still did appreciate her information as it gained you the name of the man who couldn’t stop staring at you like he was trying to figure you out.

“Must not have been that bad if he’s already out now, or maybe he’s innocent.” Ms. Bennet shrugged her shoulders at that. You may have even been naive to not heed her warning, but the idea of getting to know the mysterious fluffy haired man that had been staring at you all night was too intriguing for you to ignore.

“Who are you?” The mysterious man asked when he finally decided to approach you instead of staring at you from across the room.

Trying to maintain the same level of mystery as the man had you dodging his question with a simple redirect, “Who’s asking?”

“I thought it was quite obvious who I was.” He was right it was obvious, but why would you let him know that despite the fact that you knew what character he was you could tell the man underneath was the real mystery of it all.

“You’re the one who is not obvious.” The back and forth you had already picked up with him was thrilling, you sensed the fact that in most conversations you would have with him it would be a kind of battle that you would have to win.

“If you must know, kind sir, I am dressed as Mary Shelly, author of Frankenstein, with a bit of a modern twist.” You made sure to call him sir instead of his earned honorific this time, to see if it would poke any buttons.

“I am not a sir since my name is Dr. Spencer Reid. I can see now who you are dressed as, but I would still argue that it is not what the intentions were when they set this up.” You could tell that he was only teasing you with the way the inflections of his voice sounded, you were glad your teasing had been a moderate success.

You did also provide him your name before deciding to poke his buttons once more,“But, isn’t she a classic, Dr. Reid?”

“But, you have not made her a classic anymore by putting as you say a ‘modern twist on things’ though I must say it does look well made.” You would’ve been offended if you could not tell that it was all in jest, though you still got the sense that you still were not seeing what all this man was about.

“Thank you, Doctor I made it myself. However, you still haven’t answered my question yet, Dr. Reid.” You asked the next question hoping he would get what you were implying, “Who are you?”

“I suspect you may already know, but I am dressed half as Dr. Jekyll and half as Mr. Hyde.” At least he started to somewhat catch on to the hidden meaning in your words, though you still had not dug up the real answer you were looking for. He was too intriguing to persuade you to stop digging, you wanted to find who the doctor really was, not the partial mask he was still using.

“Yes, I suspected as much, but aren’t you breaking the rules by dressing up as technically two characters?”

“Were there rules that said I couldn’t dress up as two characters?” He fell nicely into the small trap you had set for him, retorting quickly without thinking. Which you found odd for a man that was clearly intelligent.

“No, but were there rules that said I couldn’t dress up as a classic author with my own twist?” The look on his face had let you know you had won the debate. You smirked with triumph as you glanced over the man, taking note of each of his handsome features in case you would never see him again.

You decided to pivot the conversation to another question that was on the forefront of your mind,“Do you have a dark side, Dr. Reid?”

“Doesn’t everyone?” He was deflecting, but he didn’t seem agitated by your question, simply amused by your dogged curiosity.

“I am curious though, what are you exactly underneath it all Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde?” Your coy smile was most definitely not lost on him, he could see right through your facade. He could see right through Mary Shelly to find the true you underneath. You only wished you could figure him out as well, you wondered how he got so good at being able to read people in an instant.

“I haven’t figured that out yet.” Well, at least you got the answer to what you were looking for, even if the answer wasn’t as straightforward as you may have been expecting. But, you were realizing that Dr. Spencer Reid was probably anything but straightforward.

Your heart was pumping fast, his words had a bigger effect on you than he had probably expected, your panties hidden underneath your long dress were dampening quickly. Though as you saw the smirk on his face grow as you fidgeted in your chair you realized that maybe this was intention all along.

You excused yourself for a moment with a veiled excuse of going to the bathroom. You hoped he’d follow right behind you, to see that you were going to one of the empty reading rooms. If you had read his intentions correctly the heavy doors on each of the rooms should significantly squash any noises he or you would make.

Sure enough after an appropriate amount of time had passed so as to not raise suspicion, the good doctor (that may or may not be good at all) entered the empty room.

He brought you into a dominating kiss that made you want to cower at the same time as be completely defiant. You fought with valor as he tried to consume you entirely with the kiss, not letting his tongue slip into your mouth for as long as you could hold off. In the end you still lost the fight when he lifted you up onto one of the large wooden desks in the room, causing a gasp to fall from your lips that finally gave him full access to your hot wet mouth. He suddenly pulled away to pinch your cheeks together with his hand to make you look at him which made you whimper pathetically at first, but you appreciated his next question immensely.

“Do you want this?” You nodded as vigorously as you could with his hand pinching your cheeks.

He however was not satisfied with my eager nod and prompted you to confirm once more with an even harsher tone, “Speak up when you’re talking.”

“Yes, Doctor.” You replied with his honorific instinctually and you were pleasantly surprised with the eager groan that came from his lips in response. Plus, you were slightly rewarded with being able to feel his lips on your collarbone, sending even more shivers down your spine.

“Let me know immediately if that changes.” The contrast of his sweet meaning words with his hand gripping your jaw was jarring, but you couldn’t deny that you enjoyed it. It just made you want to be as bratty as possible because even if he was harsh there was still the underlying care in everything he did, you felt safe.

“Maybe I should just call you Mister instead, since that’s clearly your dominant side.”He growled into your neck that was quickly getting covered in hickies, next thing you knew he flipped you around to face the desk closest to you with your back to his chest.

“Bend over.” He commanded, to which in response you opened your mouth to retort. Instead of letting you run your mouth as you had done before he wound his hands through your hair and pushed you down to take the position he wanted. He then pulled up your dress to uncover the panties you had soaked through. You thought maybe he was going to give me some relief of the ache in my core, but you were given a harsh slap on your ass instead.

A whimper involuntarily came out from your lips from the harshness of the slap that you assumed was revenge for not following his commands. He then spoke with deadly conviction, “I want you to say thank you, doctor after every time I spank you.”

You only agreed because you were afraid that if you did not comply now he may not give you what you wanted. So, as soon as the next stinging slap came down on the same spot as before the phrase fell from your lips, “Thank you, Doctor!”

He continued his repeated hits onto your ass and you made sure to never miss thanking him with a cry. Once he was satisfied with how much you were punished for your sassy remark he rubbed over the inflamed skin of your ass with his large, unbelieving hands. He moved your panties to the side to dip his deft fingers to run through your folds, collecting some of your wetness. You whined loudly and perhaps pathetically in response to him only lighting touching you instead of obliging the heat you felt everywhere.

“Be patient, you’ll get what you want since you decided to start listening to me.” He snapped which caused your knees to buckle again.

“I can be patient, Doctor.” He definitely appreciated the continued use of his honorific in this scandalous situation as he let out a groan almost every time you said it. Instead of answering you he started to undo the pants of his outfit, a pair of slacks that were also equally as split as the rest of his costume. You didn’t look back to see his cock because you did not want to be punished by him twice in one night. But, you certainly felt it.

You could tell just as he was running the head of his cock through your folds and pulling your panties to the side again that he would be the biggest you had ever been with. What should have worried you slightly only ended up sending a shock through your core instead. He was at least somewhat gentle when he finally started to enter you, letting you get somewhat adjusted before sinking in all the way to the hilt.

As soon as he sensed that you had adjusted he started a rough brutal pace, not that you were complaining as he hit all of your most sensitive spots as his cock dragged through your walls.

He made no effort to stifle the loud moans that were coming from your mouth, maybe he thought the thick wooden doors would stifle the noises. But, there was no way no one would be able to hear the unintelligible wails that were coming from you.

“You like bringing out this side of me don’t you?” He rasped out after he pushed your torso back down to flat on the desk once you started to lift yourself up on your elbows. When you only answered with a noise that was not understandable he prompted you to speak up with another slap on your ass and said, “I said earlier to speak up when you’re trying to talk to someone.”

“Yes, Doctor!” You finally were able to cry out with a few more slaps to your ass from him.

Each time you kept getting close to the edge he’d pull away from you slightly dashing your orgasm away from you cruelly. Each time you decided to whine out loud to voice your displeasure even if it was involuntarily he would just prolong edging you for even longer. You were babbling incoherently when he pulled you by the hair so your back was pressed into his chest and after a few more moments of hearing you beg nonsensically with tears in your eyes he finally gave you the command,

“You can cum.”

“Thank you, Doctor!” You wailed as your orgasm washed over you in devastating waves, you were sure no other man had made you finish so hard in your life. You kept repeating, “Thank you, Doctor!”over and over until you had completely come down from what was arguably the best orgasm of your life. Your own orgasm helped propel his forward, and you made sure to confirm out loud that you were ok with him cumming inside you. The warmth that filled you as he pumped into you a few more times caused one last groan to come from you that was weirdly harmonious with the groan from the doctor.

Normal aftercare wasn’t really applicable in this type of situation, you hardly knew him and the added fact that you were in an old library with a party down the hall didn’t help either. He still cleaned you up with a softness you had yet to see from him during your short encounter. Aloe probably would’ve been the best option to soothe your raw bottom, but he did massage you for a few minutes after he cleaned the rest of you. He had even made sure your clothes that were not period accurate, as he had pointed out earlier, were neat before you both left. There were no cuddles and soft loving words exchanged, but you still felt immensely cared for by a man who claims he might not be a good man. He was a strange case.

“You still never answered my question, Doctor.” You stated as you stood on the steps of the library after you two had slipped out to leave.

“That’s because I still don’t have an answer.” And, with that you parted ways into the cool air of D.C. You hoped he had the same feelings as you when you had both parted ways, you wanted to see him again. There was another meeting next month, maybe then you would get your chance again.

The thrill that ran through your veins whenever you interacted with him, whether he was fucking you or having a rousing conversation about classic literature made you want him no matter whether he was Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde. You’d take them both.

Part Two, Part Three| Series Masterlist

———

Tag list (message me if you want to be added):

All works:

@shotarosleftpinky @90spumkin @kyra-morningstar

Spencer Reid/CM:

@calm-and-doctor @destiny-tsukino @safertokiss @slutforthegubes

Dom Spencer (new tag list):

[lokiskitten]

Will you do a sequel of the Valentines Day fic like you mentioned at the end of part 4?

Loki Laufeyson | affliction pt1

Loki Laufeyson x fem!reader

A/N : this imagine is meant to follow the events which occurred in my previous series :”Valentine’s Day”!! You can find it lower on my page.

plot : A couple of weeks have passed since you’ve first slept with Loki. However, after learning that you are pregnant, you find yourself forced to reveal it all to your partner. Unfortunately, his reaction doesn’t turn out to be the one you expected.

warnings : very light smut, angst, fighting/arguing.

Loki and you had been seeing each other since a couple of weeks now. You had managed to keep it a secret, and that from anyone in the kingdom which obviously- and certainly- included your parents. You couldn’t truly explain why and how Loki never failed to make you feel so good, but you knew that you did not wish for those sensations to end any time soon. You two were meant to be together, wether the royal family wanted it or not. Though, shortly after your little unprotected frolics occurred, you had progressively started to become sick here and there. Your doctor had easily established a diagnostic which he promised to keep to himself for now, and that no matter if Loki was Prince. You were pregnant.

Pregnant with Loki’s child. What worst could potentially happen? Now, it was sure that you would have to annonce that to you respective families- something you didn’t feel ready to do. Or at least, certainly not alone. Therefore, you felt like the young man should be the first person to learn about it, especially as he was the father and you trusted him more than anyone else. Little did you know, there was still a lot of things you needed to learn regarding your boyfriend.

[ ... ]

It was a lovely spring afternoon. You and Loki had decided to reunite in his room in order to spend some time together. As you laid down on top of the young man, lovingly grinding your hips against his in order to make sure that his member would be coming in and out of you at a pleasurable pace, Loki had his arms wrapped around your back. His hands were soon to move down to your bum, digits digging into the soft flesh as if he wished to guide your hips through the intercourse. His thick thighs tensed upon sensing his nearing orgasm, soles now resting against the mattress instead of being on the loose.

It didn’t take long for white sperm to spray out of his urethra, staining your walls and cervix as both of you moaned in harmony. It was nothing too intense, but you always enjoyed spending time with him in that way no matter what technic or pace you two used. You allowed Loki to fully wash out his orgasm before you could get off him, your silhouette slipping underneath the covers as you pulled the sheets all the way up to your chest. Your breasts were now covered, as well as everything which came underneath.

Turning around, the male’s arm wrapped around your body as his chin rested onto your shoulder, his lips pressing delicate kisses against your warm flesh in order to let you know that he loved you. As his eyelids closed, yours remained clearly open as your brain wouldn’t stop thinking about how you were meant to annonce such a tragic piece of information to him. “Loki?..” you finally found the strength to speak up, though it would probably take you a large amount of time to finally arrive to the point where you would annonce your unwanted pregnancy.

Opening his eyes upon hearing his name, Loki was now ready to dedicate his entire attention to your seemingly tired self. You turned around and allowed your body to face his, the tip of your fingers nervously tracing shapes against his bare chest. “Yes?” He asked face to your lack of constructed sentence. “When we make love.. what happens?” You asked shyly, hoping that he would understand that you were hinting towards the natural fertilization process. Ending face to face with such a peculiar question didn’t seem to disturb the demigod who, instead of answering you right away and as seriously as he could, simply lowered his body in order to rest his head against your chest. A smirk displayed on his features.

“A lot of good things~” Loki purred, hand squeezing your waist in a possessive manner. You couldn’t help but sigh face to his answer, though you remained aware that getting mad at him so soon probably wasn’t such a wonderful idea. Instead, you tried to explain the matter in another way. “No. Look, when two persons make love, what happens to the woman? Inside of her body.” You asked him on a determined tone, hoping that he would understand that you weren’t joking around. Though Loki remained silent, cluelessly looking up at your face. Again, this sight managed to irritate you.

“Jesus. I’m pregnant!” You announced on a frustrated tone, staring right into Loki’s eyes to make sure that he would understand that it was an absolutely serious matter. An awkward silence settled in the room, the two of you making eye contact as you desperately waited for your boyfriend to say something. But instead of speaking up about the matter, he calmly turned around and sat down on the edge of the bed before getting up and walking over to the window. Face to this peculiar yet thankfully passive reaction, you sat up and frowned. “Loki?..” you solicited him shyly, scared that any of your words could now cause an outburst.

“It’ll kill you.” He ended up affirming, back still facing your silhouette. You frowned even harder. “What do you mean?..” you answered hesitantly, suddenly becoming scared of the situation due to your partner’s remark. You couldn’t seem to understand how a fetus could be responsible for your death. “It’ll kill you, freeze you from within.” Loki explained further, causing chills to appear on your back face to this terrific announcement. However, you decided to carry on fighting his statements. “Loki this is our child... Nothing will happen to me.” You affirmed softly, hoping that this would manage to make him change his mind about all those rather creepy thoughts and suppositions. You obviously had no idea that he was a frost giant.

Loki knew that in order to prove you wrong, his only remaining option was to show you what he truly was. A monster. Turning back around, his eyes were the first part of his body which switched from green to red, skin and hair soon following as the young man turned into a frost giant before your bare eyes. It was an unexpected, impressive, and intimidating sight all at once. You didn’t know how to react, fearing that any negative remark would cause the young man to get offended. “See me as I am. The monster your mother used to tell you about back when you still were a child.” Loki spoke sternly, which betrayed the fact that he felt ashamed of what he truly was.

Gasping anxiously, your hands gripped onto the bedsheets in order to contain the amount of fear which travelled through your organism. However, your brain was soon to remember that the man who stood before you, and who you loved, would never do anything to hurt you. Meanwhile, Loki made sure to regain a normal appearance as himself felt ashamed of his true nature and didn’t wish to remain in that form for too long. Now this managed to reassure you entirely. “Get rid of it. And try to stay discreet. I wouldn’t want the entire kingdom learning about our frolics.” He finished, words as cold as his birth specie.

Those statements broke your heart. You could barely believe that such cruel words had escaped Loki’s lips- though little did you know it all came from the personal and internal sufferance he was forced to deal with. Instantly you got up from the bed, taking decisive steps towards the man who found himself backing away out of surprise. Your hand harshly landed against his cheek, his head turning to the side in a rather violent manner. “How dare you! You’re talking about our child..” you spoke, tone turning from angered to saddened. Your voice was filled with sorrow.

A harsh sigh escaped Loki’s lips, his green eyes landing onto your face again as he barely managed to find the words to express himself face to such unexpected violence. “You’re acting just like your father.” You ended up adding whilst taking a step back, body soon crouching down in order to reach for your clothes as this statement managed to pull Loki out of his shocked state. He was now as angered as you were. “He’s not my father, and I’m nothing like him! How dare you-“ the demigod began, though only to be stopped in his track by your silhouette which moved back up on its feet.

“Then why are you acting like him?” You responded sadly, pulling the straps of your dress over your shoulders before turning around and beginning to take decisive steps towards the door. Again, the raven haired man was left in a state of shock before he finally managed to get back to reality face to your departure. “Where are you going?” He questioned calmly, muscles flexing underneath the sun of Asgard which penetrated through the large window. “To see your mother.” You answered, hand reaching for the door knob before you opened the door and exited his room.

You believed that if Loki refused to understand, his mother surely would manage to feel empathy face to your distress. The young man was left alone with nothing but his own distress as painful company, stomach growing knots due to anxiety taking possession of his organism. He didn’t fear his mother’s reaction at all, and expected her to be happy for her son. However, Odin surely wouldn’t appreciate to learn that the girl who was formerly meant to go to the ball with Thor had been stolen by his youngest son, and that on top of that she was pregnant.

I hope y’all enjoyed this! Feel free to let me know what you’d like to see in part 2! Sorry for being kinda inactive. Love y’all ❤️ requested tag : @delightfulheartdream

[procrastinatingsapphictrash]

Shy

Word count: 2165     

Genre: Fluff

Pairing: Natasha x fem!reader 

Warnings: I don’t think there are any but let me know if I need to add something

Request: heyy! can i please request a natashaxfem!reader fic where the reader is shy? i don’t care where you take it, i’m just in need of some fluff with soft nat 🥺 like maybe she finds her shyness to be adorable and cute even though the reader is extremely insecure? no worries if you don’t want to write it!

Summary: Reader is super shy and has a huge crush on Natasha although she can barely talk to her until they spend some time alone together.

A/n: This request was for @rail-me-romanoff so I hope you enjoy it because I had a ton of fun writing this one! Obviously I hope everybody else likes this as well and my requests are always open if anyone has any ideas. To anybody who has already requested something, don’t worry, I’m working on them. Also sorry if this fic has too much dialogue because I just realized it might have a lot. 

You are just heading out of the training room when you bump into Natasha. You’re about to apologize when she speaks first.

“Y/n! I was just looking for you! A few of us are planning on watching a movie in a few minutes and I was wondering if you’d like to join us?” You blush at the thought of spending more time with Natasha, even if the rest of the team will be there. 

“Um, sure, that would be great-what movie? You ask stammering the entire time.

“I don’t know the name,” she responds, “Tony said something about it being a really good horror movie.” You hesitate at the thought because you don’t like horror movies but you decide you want to because it is a perfect way to spend time with Natasha without having to actually talk to her.

“Ok, that sounds good.” You say nervously, before blushing and scurrying away from the training room. Natasha sighs. She doesn’t know what she did wrong because you were perfectly friendly around everyone else but always avoided her and ran away before you could have a proper conversation. She was determined for you to spend time with her, even if that meant her lying about movie plans that she now has to create. She quickly makes her way down to Tony’s lab and bursts in without knocking. 

“There’s been a breach, call security.” Tony says sarcastically as she enters. 

“Tony…” Natasha says while fixing him with her stare. He just gazes back at her, one of the only people that is not easily intimidated by her. “I need you to organize a team movie in less than half an hour, and it has to be horror. Also you have to pretend you came up with this idea days ago.”

“So you’re telling me that I have to gather the team to watch a horror movie in half an hour?” Tony asks and Natasha nods. “No can do.”

“Please Tony!” Natasha practically begs. 

“First of all, that was weird, never do that again. Secondly, why do you care so much?” He asks, very curious and always looking for more gossip. 

“I lied to Y/n and told her that some of us were going to watch a movie because I wanted her to stop avoiding me.” She responds. “But I need you to help me out here.”

“Ooohhhh, someone has a crush!” Tony sing-songs in a very obnoxious tone. 

“I do not,” Natasha defends herself, “I merely wanted to make sure I get along with everyone on the team so missions run smoothly.”

“Sure,” Tony tells her as she starts to walk away, “whatever lets you sleep at night, but I know you have a heart in there Romanoff.” Natasha doesn’t reply and continues walking away, throwing up her middle finger on the way out. 

“Why did I think he would be helpful?” She mutters to herself as she makes her way to her room. It doesn’t take her long to get there but by the time she does she already knows what she’s going to tell you so you didn’t know she was lying before. 

You’re just finishing up giving yourself a quick pep talk in the mirror when you hear a knock on your door. 

“Hey,” you say softy when you open the door, trying to force the butterflies in your stomach to go away.

“Hi,” she replies in a tone that sounds much more confident than yours, “you ready to head over to the living room?” You nod your head as an answer because you don’t trust your voice to speak and follow her as she walks down the hallway. 

“Are you just going to walk behind me?” She asks when she notices that you are trailing behind her. You mumble no under your breath and blush while doing an awkward half jog/half walk thing to catch up to her. You continue the rest of the walk to the living room in silence, every so often looking over at Natasha and then quickly turning away when she thought she might see you. 

“I forgot to mention but Tony is busy and the others decided not to watch either, so it’ll be just you and me.” She says just as you enter the deserted living room. Your whole body tenses up and you feel super nervous. You already were nervous about watching a movie with Natasha when the others were around, so you can’t imagine it without them. 

She seems to pick up on your tense state and asks, “That’s ok with you right?”

“Um, of course, why wouldn’t it be?” You say, trying not to let her catch onto the self doubt that fills your head. You can barely say a few sentences to her but now you have to spend a whole movie together. You’re so caught up in your thoughts you don’t notice that she smiles slightly while letting out a small sigh of relief. 

“Ok great,” she replies with a bigger smile that you notice this time, “you can sit down on the couch and I’ll be there in a minute, after I make some popcorn.” You sit down awkwardly and take a few breaths trying to calm yourself down. The fact that you are going to watch a horror movie is not helping because even though you are a badass superhero while on mission, horror movies scare you very easily. You decide to grab a blanket to wrap yourself up in when the movie gets too scary. In the kitchen you can hear the microwave beep and not long after Natasha comes over to the couch and sits beside you, with only a popcorn bowl distance between you. 

“Are you still ok with watching a horror movie?” She asks you. You technically don’t want to watch a horror movie but you know Natasha likes them and you don’t want her to know how much of a wimp you are when it comes to them. 

“Yes”

“Great, I was hoping you’d say that,” she says while smiling brightly at you. You turn your head away from her to hide your blush and she frowns. She gets up to put the movie on and glances back over to you, but you’re still avoiding her gaze. She doesn’t know what she did wrong because it seemed like you were starting to want to spend time with her but now you’re closed off again. You intrigue her for some reason she can’t quite put her finger on and she just wants to have you open up to her. 

She sits back down on the couch just as the movie starts to play and you swear she’s sitting slightly closer than before. She doesn’t say anything so neither do you, both of your eyes locked to the screen. You can already tell within the first minute that the movie is going to be scary because it looks really well done and those are always the creepiest kind. 

After half an hour, you know for sure that your suspicions are confirmed and this is the scariest movie you have ever watched. You try to appear calm but Natasha can tell with just one glance that you are terrified. She can’t help but smile at how cute you are; trying to put on a brave face but failing miserably and burrowing yourself deep into the blanket. You look over to her, noticing her eyes on you, and blush and her heart practically melts at the sight. As much as she hates it when Tony is right, his point from earlier about having a little crush on you was more spot on than she wanted. Especially with how cute you are while blushing around her. There is a jumpscare in the movie and you jump slightly. Not one to shy away from anything, Natasha takes her chance to get closer to you and moves the popcorn bowl out of the way before scooting over. 

“Are you scared?” She asks you. You’re embarrassed that you are but there is no point in lying to her because she already knows. 

“Just a little.” 

“Only a little?” she teases, “you looked scared out of your mind.” Your face turns bright red and you move to turn away from her but she stops you by gently grabbing the side of your face. 

“Don’t worry, I was just teasing, although it is true.” She says. “But in all seriousness we can turn the movie off if you want to.” 

“It’s ok, I’ll just turn my head at the scary parts because I know you want to watch it.” You tell her, hating how weak your voice sounds. 

“If you don’t want to watch I’m turning it off,” she says, getting up to do so, “besides as much as I wanted to watch this movie, I don’t think I could have focused on it much with someone as cute as you next to me.” She winks at you after she says the last part and you avoid looking into her eyes while burrowing even further into your blanket, like it would help you disappear and take you away from the embarrassment. It seemed like she was flirting with you but you didn’t understand why. 

When she sits back down this time there is no popcorn bowl between you so she sits super close, close enough that you can accidentally lean against her if you so much as shift. Your whole body tenses up and you don’t know what to do because you are afraid to move and touch her. Natasha has no such thoughts and puts her arm around your shoulders, pulling you into her. Much to your embarrassment you let out an undignified squawk at the unexpected contact. 

“Is this ok?” She asks, worried by the noise you made. You don’t fully trust your voice right now so you nod, blushing for what must be the thousandth time today. 

“Good.” She states before pressing a light kiss to the top of your head. If you weren’t already absolutely in love with her, you would be now because she is being so sweet and your heart can barely take it. Gathering all your confidence you swing your feet from the ground onto the couch on the other side of Natasha’s legs so you can cuddle in a bit closer. Although that move made you so nervous you could barely breathe, your fears are calmed when Natasha helps to pull you in closer.  

“You know,” she speaks again, “I used to think you hated me.”

“I don’t-” Natasha shushes you. 

“I know now,” she says slowly, “that you were just shy around me. But why were you more shy around me than everyone else?”

“I-I, well, I don’t really know, just I don’t know.” You stumble over your words, not wanting to own up to your not very small crush on her. She laughs at your obvious embarrassment. 

“It’s ok, I think I’ve figured it out.” she tells you and your heart pounds. “I think you had, and still have, a bit of a crush on me.” Once again you feel your whole body freeze but you start to relax again when you feel her hand slowly start to run through your hair. You force yourself to calm down by telling yourself that although this situation was embarrassing, she obviously wasn’t mad at you for liking her. Still wanting to stay on the safe side you decide to apologize. 

“Sorry.” 

“Don’t be,” she pauses to kiss the top of your head again, “I’m glad, I like holding you like this. And I want to be able to do this.” She slowly tilts your head up to face her and gently presses her lips against yours. You haven’t kissed many people but even if you had you were sure that this would still be the best kiss of your life. It was just so gentle and sweet and you were definitely way too in love, your only complaint was that it ended way too quickly. Even after she pulled back your lips are still only a few inches apart and you study her face, for once not feeling shy.

A wolf whistle diverts your attention and both of you turn to look over at Tony who is in the doorway. 

“Get lost Stark.” Natasha practically growls. 

He smirks, “I don’t know how seriously I can take you when you’re cuddling Y/n, who’s literally on top of you.” Natasha’s glare intensifies and you almost feel bad for Tony but can’t quite bring yourself to because you hated how he interrupted you. 

“Ok, fine, I’m leaving,” he says before turning and walking away, “treat her well Romanoff.” 

Natasha rolls her eyes with a small smile, “Of course I will,” she responds even though he is out of earshot, turning back to look you in the eye, “what do you say we go on a date?”

[laurentspup]

I saw your fluff prompts! They are adorable 😍 Would you consider writing 41 for Damen and Laurent? 🥰

AAAAHHH You have no idea how happy your ask made me because you're one of my favorite people in this fandom!!!!!!! I hope you enjoy this little fic!!!! sorry it took foreeeverrrr hehe

Fluff Prompts from this list. Asks are open if anyone still wants to send prompts. It will take me forever but I will get them done!

41.

“Darling I love you and all, but please step out of the kitchen.”

There was a loud, sad sigh that immediately came out of Damen’s mouth. He had been trying –so, so hard– since this morning to make some french vanilla macarons, Laurent’s favorite dessert. He was now preparing to bake the third batch of macaron shells, cracking eggs to separate the whites, because the first two batches failed. The first batch did not rise, while the second batch were discolored and rough.

He wanted to surprise Laurent with these macarons when he came home, even though Damen had never baked a single batch of anything all his life. He was great at cooking, amazing even, why the hell were these damn macarons not working with him?

Damen was very close to giving up before Laurent arrived, but he couldn’t. He wanted to do something nice for his boyfriend. He believed he could do this. The Youtube tutorial from Tasty made it look so easy. The comments made it look very possible, but alas, he had not been able to bake a picture perfect batch yet, one that was worthy of Laurent.

“Damen—” Laurent began as Damen cracked another egg on his hand to keep the yolk from falling into the bowl. “Stop— What are you doing?!”

“But I— I wanted— ”

“I know, baby. But it’s not working.”

“It was working! I was baking.”

“No, love, you were making a mess.”

“I was baking!”

Laurent looked around the once clean and organized kitchen. “Where? The whole kitchen?”

Damen, despite the rather insulting comments and lack of belief of his boyfriend, had a big, goofy grin plastered on his handsome face. He would take these miniscule teasing everyday if it meant he could spend every single second with the love of his life.

He sighed loudly. “Fiiiine, I’ll step out.”

“What are you making anyway?” Laurent asked as he started sorting out and cleaning up the mess Damen accumulated. He picked up the measuring cups, somehow all were out of the drawers when Damen only needed three of them.

Damen, not wanting to leave Laurent to do everything, started putting all the dirty and empty bowls inside their dishwasher. How had there been so many? He only needed two mixing bowls for this recipe. Hell, he didn’t even know they had this many bowls.

“I was trying to bake macarons.”

Laurent stopped from picking up a bowl of almond flour to laugh out loud.

“You don’t even know how to bake! That’s such a technical recipe!” He was so amused, tears came out of his eyes.

Damen tried to look annoyed at him —tried, being the key word. He couldn’t, when Laurent was so amused and happy at his predicament.

“Yeah…” Damen dramatically sighed. He placed down a bowl of egg yolks to walk closer to Laurent and hug him from behind. He put his head on top of Laurent's, knowing it would annoy Laurent when he reminded him how much taller he was.

“But I wanted to make them for you. They’re your favorite. I had time. I thought, why the hell not?”

“You wanted to make them for me?” Laurent stopped shaking from laughter and turned too fast in Damen’s arms to look at him, face unreadable. He had to crane his neck because of Damen’s height and their proximity.

“As a surprise.”

Laurent couldn’t contain the warmth that threatened to burst out of him. “For what?”

“Nothing. I just wanted to do something nice for you.”

“Damen…”

“Well, I failed so.” Damen left the hug.

“So?” Laurent asked.

Damen stopped in front of the counter –the remaining clean counter– near the sink. On top, a small plate with an uneven color and size of macaron rested. Damen lifted it and turned to Laurent, a little startled when he saw him right beside him.

“This was my best one.” Damen showed Laurent the plate with the single macaron he thought was perfect from his second batch. “I think.”

The macaron was discolored. Damen attempted to produce a lavender color, but it burned to a weird green on the edges. The feet rose, but the shells were not as smooth as the pictures on the internet. It was clearly homemade by a novice, but Damen was proud of it. Hopefully the buttercream filling and the flavor overall made up for its appearance.

Laurent looked at the macaron with an expression Damen did not know how to decipher. He looked like he was in deep thought, eyebrows furrowed, mouth pursed. Damen was getting nervous every second Laurent did not utter a single word. He knew Laurent was vicious and picky with the things he liked, and Damen did not want to spoil macarons for him.

“I’m sorry—” Damen blurted out nervously, just as Laurent said, “I love you.”

They looked at each other for a few seconds. Laurent’s face was flushing a deep red, with a small smile and adoration painting it.

Once Damen got over his shock and nerves, the biggest smile broke out of his face. He lifted Laurent from the ground with one hand, careful not to drop the other that held the plate, and kissed Laurent with all the love he could offer.

“I love you too, Laurent.”

“You do?” Laurent asked shyly, as if attempting to bake him macarons wasn’t enough proof of how much Damen felt for him. As if Damen hadn’t said it to him three weeks into their relationship.

Damen laughed and put Laurent back down. He cupped Laurent’s face with his empty hand and looked him in the eye. “Yes. Yes, I love you so much, Laurent.”

Laurent smiled —the sweetest, greatest expression Damen would never dare to forget for the rest of his life. That same smile Laurent gave him when he said he loved him the first time.

Damen was so gone already. He loved this man with every part of his body, every sliver of his soul.

Laurent kissed him again.

“Alright, I hope you remember that, because I’m tasting this macaron right now.” Laurent said, grabbing the plate from Damen’s hand.

Damen laughed. “Don’t worry, I’m pretty sure you’ve said worse to me.”

Laurent smiled, looked Damen in the eyes and took a bite out of the macaron. His eyes widened.

“That good?”

“Damen, you used salt!”

[aimmyarrowshigh]

Hey.

You should totally talk about your fic. IN FACT. I challenge you to post your favorite 3-sentence snippet and then tell us why it's your favorite.

Repeat as necessary until you've talked about all your favorite fics.

Thanks to anonymous and to @lazaefair, @morethanonepage, @buckyisdisabled, and @sky-full-of-sparks for being kind of supportive of my whining post yesterday, lol!

As for picking out a favorite 3-sentence snippet of my longfic WIP, I don't really have one... it's 90,000 words long now, so trying to find one favorite little part is kind of hard, but in general I think it's the best thing that I've ever written (including stuff that I did for my MFA, whoops). And if people don't read it once I start posting it I will be Lit'rally Devastated, but that's a me problem.

Ummmmm... I'll randomly pick a 3-sentence bit, though, and say what I like about it? (And I'm cheating by picking three paragraphs, technically, but whatever.)

Steve was one of six renters with two empty rooms left for more to come. Because of the nature of secrecy, there wasn’t much chatter over breakfasts—fluffy scrambled eggs, hearty oatmeal, and even some cutlet of meat each day except Fridays when there were sardines on toast—but Steve did befriend a tall, rangy omega who lived two rooms over down the corridor. His name was Scott Lang, and Steve knew that he was working with some kind of weaponized technology at Pym National Laboratory, but he knew this only because he happened to see Scott getting off the bus and heading into the labs one day, not because Scott had loose lips. What Scott actually told him he was doing for the war effort, the reason he was in D.C. and not back home in San Francisco, was “security consulting.”

Steve said that he was working in supplies, which was what Agent Carter instructed them all to say if anyone asked what they did up at Stark Mansion.

He got the idea that what they were doing was even more secretive than whatever was being cooked up at Pym Labs.

I like this section because... I'm particularly pleased with how much I'm able to write in this fic about the relationships that Steve (the MC/POV character) has with people besides Bucky, and the first full half of the fic is building those relationships and building the mystery behind the codebreaking and discovery of the Asset. I always have a weird need in longfics to give the protagonist a lot of life outside of the romance plot and I like writing and fleshing out the characters besides the main couple, and I think this is the fic where I've done that in the most organic way.

I'm also trying SO HARD TO HAVE AN ACTUAL PLOT when it comes to the codebreaking and ~mystery~ aspects (even though obviously the reader knows what/who the Asset is and that Hydra is behind it all) and I feel? mostly? like it's working? But I'm also worried that the "crockpot romance" level slow-burn before Bucky even appears in the story will turn people off, and that's making me #fret and start to prepare to kill my darlings to speed things up. But I LIKE how much of the story is Steve's life before Bucky? Like, it matters to me a lot that he HAS a life before Bucky and is a full character and not just a hole for Bucky to fill? IDK.

I JUST WANT IT TO BE INTERESTING TO PEOPLE BESIDES JUST ME and I have FEELINGS. And I'm also soooo determined to Actually Finish A Thing For Once In My Goddamn Life but I also want The Validation so I'm constantly just. vibrating with feelings.

[dandelionflower]

(Some salt fic september)

Francois DuPont was an artistic school. With talented students varying from designers, to journalists, to DJs, to comic artists and writers. The art room of the school was always the busiest, the loudest, and the favorite room of the school.

So it would make sense for the school to have a yearly showcase. It was called a talent show once upon a time, but eventually the staff and students agreed that ‘talent show’ didn’t suit the talents the students were bringing to the table. Thus, the Francois DuPont showcase was born.

Students worked for months on their piece for the showcase. More than fifty percent of the works in the art room were pieces for the showcase.

It wasn’t mandatory by any means, but most students with a talent in the arts would participate. But with almost all the students participating and some having more than one piece to showcase, the show usually lasted a few days.

Lila, of course, didn’t know any of that so when asked if she was participating in the showcase in a few months, she grinned and said “Of course!”

Alya lit up. “Great! It’s going to be my first showcase too, and I want someone who knows what I’m going through. C’mon, we have to sign up.” And she dragged her into the halls.

Sign up? But it’s in three months. Lila shrugged and allowed herself to be pulled to the sign up sheets.

Alya immediately wrote her name underneath the ‘verbal’ column, putting a ‘journalism’ next to it.

Lila surveyed the options. The easiest thing to fake would probably be photography, so she marked her name under ‘media’ and wrote a ‘photography’ next to it.

“Ooh, photography? What do you take pictures of? Because I know Mari’s been looking for a partner to take pictures of her designs with her.”

Lila bit back a grimace. “Thanks, but I prefer to take pictures of...” Art? Buildings? “Nature. I find that taking pictures of people is narcissistic as a society.”

“Aren’t you a model?” A judgmental voice came from behind her.

“I- well-“ She stuttered.

“It’s completely different, Felix! Lila doesn’t think her photo shoots are art worthy, she’s just doing it as a job.” Alya snapped, throwing an arm out to almost shield Lila from the chill radiating from Felix’s entire person.

“Very well.” Felix stepped around the two and signed his name in perfect cursive beneath Lila’s name and walked away without another word.

“That guy gives me the creeps.” Alix remarked as she scratched her name under the ‘performance’ column, then the ‘piece of art that cannot be moved’ section.

“And he’s doing photography too! Don’t worry Lila, there’s no way he’s better than you.” Alya grabbed her arm reassuringly and began walking with her back to class.

“Yeah, right...” Lila held in a wince as she found her way back to her seat.

Surely photography can’t be that hard.

—

It was that hard.

Lila had waited one week before the showcase to start taking pictures on her phone. She walked to the park and snapped a few pictures, called it a day, and went home.

They were terrible. Blurry, ugly, terrible.

The next thing she tried was looking up stock images and photoshopping the watermark off.

She was awful at photoshop.

Finally, she resorted to her escape plan.

“Sorry, Alya. But I completely forgot that I’m volunteering at the elementary school all day on the day of the showcase, and I can’t just cancel on them. I’m so sorry.”

“Girl, it’s no problem! Marinette told me that the showcase is going to go on for four days. We’ll just reschedule your slot. It’s no problem at all.”

“Great.” She muttered through gritted teeth. “See you then.”

...crap.

She had only one plan now.

And it was risky.

—

Lila walked into class on Monday, prepared for her showcase.

She explained to Alya that when she explained what was going on to the leader of her organization, they gave her a rain check.

“I’m just so thankful.” She brushed away a tear. “I really wanted to make sure I could see everyone’s talents.”

“That’s so sweet!” Rose cooed. “I can’t wait to see your pictures either!”

“I just hope they correctly portray the beauty of my subject...” Lila pressed a hand to her chest in modesty.

“Students, I need all of the media students to come to the art classroom with your flash drives and cameras.” Miss Bustier put her phone down and smiled. “And anyone who paired with a media student for their talent please also join the students in the art room.”

Lila stood and gave everyone a hug. “Wish me luck!”

She noticed Sabrina stand as well and accept a half hearted hug from Chloe and a nod of support from Max. Juleka stood too and hugged Rose tight.

“Bye Alya! Wish me luck.” Marinette appeared from seemingly nowhere and hugged Alya tight. “And don’t be worried about your presentation. We’ll find some time to rehearse before tomorrow.”

“Thanks girl. Look after Lila for me? She’s just as new as I am.”

Marinette’s eyes darkened for just a second, but she quickly broke into a grin. “No problem. And don’t be worried, Lila. I’m sure your photos are just unimaginable.”

“Thanks Marinette. That’s just so sweet of you.” They linked arms and waltzed out of the room.

The moment they were out of eye shot of any of their classmates, they stepped aside.

“You don’t even have pictures, do you?” Marinette growled.

“What do you mean Marinette? Of course I have pictures.” She smirked. Or at least, I will in just a minute.

—

The art room was bustling and chaotic. Perfect for a camera or flash drive to go missing.

Marinette was bombarded by a group of kids from Felix’s class.

“Ready to see the product of our hard work?” A girl with two dark buns on the top of her head asked.

“I hope so.” She gave them a bashful smile.

Lila stopped paying attention. She had a goal in mind.

Her eyes landed on an expensive looking camera sitting on a desk at the side of the room. A sitting duck.

With a side glance for witnesses, Lila walked right by the camera and slipped the memory card right out and into her awaiting palm.

With her goal met, she sat primly in her chair, waiting for them to be called to the stage.

“Alright, photographers, models, actors, directors!” The art teacher stood. “Let’s go!”

Lila skipped up to him, a look of concern on her face. “Sir?”

“Yes Lila?”

“My camera broke on my way here and all I have left of it is my memory card; is there still a way for me to present my photos?”

“Of course there is. Don’t you worry a bit.”

“Perfect!” She grinned.

Once backstage, each student needed to give the teacher their SD cards or cameras and wait to be called onstage to describe their works to the audience.

Lila spared a quick glance towards the onlookers. Talent scouts of every kind were sitting in plush, reserved seats, notebooks and pens at the ready.

She was the first one up, the first one they would see and, unless she used all of her charisma and improvising skill, the first one they would forget.

“...and now, Lila Rossi with her photography!”

Lila strutted out to the greetings of applause.

“Hello, and let me just say I am so honored to be here today, especially considering that a year ago I wasn’t expected to be able to walk to school every day. Photography was really the only thing that got me through the day.”

A murmur of pity rippled through the crowd.

“Pictures like this one.” She pressed the clicker and a picture appeared on the screen behind her.

A picture of one Marinette Dupain-Cheng, mid-twirl in a beautiful hand-made dress.

Lila heard Alya gasp.

“I wanted to show simultaneously the mundanity of walking and the undeniable splendor of it. My dear friend Marinette had some designs she was willing to model for me to help achieve my goal. Marinette, come on out!” She held a hand out, daring Marinette to come out from where she was waiting to go next along with her other friends.

Felix stood behind her with a look of horror and disgust on his face; and a particularly fancy camera hanging around his neck. A very familiar camera.

“No? Okay then.” She turned back to the crowd. “She’ll be out with a different group; Mari doesn’t want me to have to share the spotlight, isn’t she sweet?”

The crowd applauded and Lila continued making up technical terms and thought processes for each photo, all of which were of Marinette in different designs.

“Thank you.” She bowed deep before walking off the stage.

Now to hold her breath and hope that Marinette, Felix and all their friends were too chicken to call her out onstage.

—

“Now, with their short film; ‘solving love,’ please welcome Bridgette Cheng, Claude Lambert, Mercury Bernard, Allegra Harthorn, Felix Culpa, and Marinette Dupain-Cheng.”

“Hey everybody!” A boy with brown hair and a blue striped shirt grabbed the mic and shouted. “How are we doing today?”

A scattered amount of applause.

“Nice! I’m Claude, and this is Bridgette.”

The girl with the buns waved.

“We were the main idea folks for this video; but the idea only came after the filming.”

Bridgette grabbed the mic. “We asked out friends if we could film them, and then a few weeks ago, we reviewed the film and noticed something... interesting.”

“Allegra here,” a girl with a long blonde braid waved, “did the music and Mercury,” a boy with dark glasses and a green beret, “did the narration. You’ll be seeing more of them soon. My cousin Mari,” Marinette waved, “and Felix are the main subjects of the film. You would have seen more of them, but for some reason Felix’s memory card went missing.”

Lila swallowed, this wasn’t great. The seeds of dissent were planted and now she had to risk either spinning another fake story or hoping that it all went well.

It’s not like they had any proof though; she should be fine.

“Anyway, here’s ‘Solving Love.’”

They all stepped to the side and the video began with a smooth piano.

“Love.” The screen showed couples going up to Andre’s and sharing ice cream. “The answer to everything. To ourselves, to the meaning of life, to the questions we cannot ask.”

“But how? How do we get from complete strangers, to people so close they are the same person?” The video changed to a showing of Marinette and Felix shaking hands, both with sardonic smirks. “People rarely get to see the entire process of when people fall in love; there are always pieces missing, hidden moments only for the people in question to recall. Love is left for the investigator to discover for themselves, when the time is right.”

“But maybe,” it showed Marinette talking animatedly, as Felix yawns beside her, “maybe one day, we’ll be lucky enough to see most of the picture.” Felix’s eyes droop and his head falls to rest atop Marinette’s, in the beginnings of a nap. Marinette flushes red.

The rest of the video shows the stages of Marinette and Felix’s relationship, from sarcastic rivals, to peers, to friends, to partners. The narrator described different relationships and how love is a constant through all of them.

The video showed Marinette dancing, twirling in a brilliant dress as Felix kneels and snaps pictures. “Ah, but is this all of it?” They lean down for a swift kiss. The image pauses there. “The full picture? Or is it only a snapshot,” the screen lights up white, “a minor clue, to solving love?”

The auditorium was quiet for what seemed like minutes. Then, the room burst into uproarious applause; a standing ovation.

Lila growled as she turned to sulk and maybe get her makeup so she could fake an injury and get some pity points to heal her bruised ego.

She ran face first into the grey suit of Mr. Damocles.

“Oh, hello sir.” She beamed. “Is there a problem?”

His eyebrows furrowed. “Yes Miss Rossi, there is. Did you take those pictures of Miss Dupain-Cheng? Because that video tells a different story.”

“Yes sir, I swear it.”

“You swear it, huh? Well you best come with me to the office. Miss Dupain-Cheng and her friends will join us when they’re done.”

“What?”

“Miss Rossi, you are accused of stealing Mr Culpa and Miss Dupain-Cheng’s creative work. We will be calling your mother to discuss this.”

Back on stage the crowd of students and talent agents alike had taken to shouting questions to the group of students.