#one of my earlier fic ideas was him purposely pissing her off by breaking her mask for the first time on purpose

[notnights]

I've been wondering how common it is that Jax actually purposely breaks Gangle's comedy mask. The most we have is in her character teaser where Jax pushes her and she falls over and it breaks, but there's no telling yet if he did that with the effort it'd break her mask or just shoved her for the fun of it and her mask just happened to break.

He steps on her mask in the pilot but it was already broken by then and at most shows he's not afraid to kick someone while they're down but as for specifically breaking her mask it gives no evidence. (Notice how Gangle says "they broke my comedy mask," either blaming the group effort, or blaming Pomni who she didn't know the pronouns for yet. It's a really interesting choice in dialogue if it wasn't a caption error.)

And it’s a reason I don’t really lean into the whole idea of he breaks it on purpose or very often. Maybe he does maybe he doesn’t but I’m so unsure of it I debate or not to ever utilize it in depictions of the two of them.

[amor-immortalem]

Replaced

Genre: Heavy Angst, Angst with a somewhat happy ending.

Warning: The following piece is my take on the replaced! au with Arella. Dark themes lie ahead. If you are triggered by feelings of abandonment, suicidal ideation, or outright suicide, this mini fic is not safe for you to read. Please continue at your own discretion.

A/N: I did it guys! I actually managed to break myself with this mini fic by digging into my own abandonment issues. It was fun- cathartic almost. Please enjoy! Also, spoilers for the lesson 16 incident.

What does it feel like to be replaced? If you were to ask Arella, she’d say it felt bitter and painful. Like someone was holding a white-hot branding iron to her stomach and pushing it in to the point it ate through all the layers of her skin and was now searing through her stomach or like someone was rubbing salt into a open, festering wound.

When Diavolo had announced to the other student council officers that a new exchange student would be joining their ranks, Arella was excited- especially when she found out the new student was a female- there was only so much Arella could talk about in a house full of men and one genderless individual that they would understand, all of them having been assigned male at birth and whatnot. So, another woman among their ranks would be a breath of fresh air for her. And it was for a time being- until the brothers had taken favor to this new human.

It started within months of this new exchange student arriving. One by one, her favorite demons started hanging around her more often. It wasn't like Arella could be mad at them. This human was novel and oh so different from Arella. She was everything Arella was not, from her blonde hair to her well-developed body- even her height, which matched closer to the brothers. She was everything human world media told a girl she should be. She even looked like she fit in with them- having taken to the Devildom like a duck to water even without being able to use magic.

Arella wants to be angry with this girl, but she can’t. This girl, named Melissa, was so sweet it was almost enough to make Arella sick. She was smart, innocent, and -above all else- selfless. It was apparent the boys adored her immediately. One by one, Arella was losing them to the charms of this new girl. The first to go was Satan, clearly smitten by her love of books and knowledge of obscure but very talented authors. The second to go was Asmo, often taking her out to clubs or on long shopping trips that often lasted well past curfew. And just like that the other brothers started to follow suit. Game nights between her and Levi? Gone. Drawing up budgets with Lucifer? Not anymore. Going out with Beel to cafes? Not in her wildest dreams. Naptimes up in the attic with Belphie? Hah! Fat chance. The last and most painful to pull away was Mammon- her first man. The one who swore he would always be there for her when she needed him. And oh how she needed him.

Just like when Arella had first come to the Devildom, Mammon was given the task of watching over Melissa by Lucifer. At first Arella tried to justify it as Lucifer worrying about the girl’s safety as even though his brothers had gotten better at controlling themselves, they still had their moments.

As time went on however, she started to notice the little things. Missed movie nights between them, date nights often forgotten about in favor of showing Melissa his favorite spots around the city, the loss of any physical intimacy. Soon, he stopped seeing her all together. Things that she and Mammon did together were now reserved for Melissa: casino trips, movie nights, pranks on Lucifer that would have the eldest chasing after them, running around the city until it was nearly what could considered to be the Devildom’s equivalent of dawn. She knew he was completely gone when she walked down to the dining room for supper one evening and overheard them just casually flirting. Mammon didn’t even make any attempts to dissuade Melissa’s advances. He remembered he actually had a girlfriend, right? Right?!

Or were they even a thing anymore? It had been months since they’d spent any substantial time together outside of classes and even then, he’d moved seats to sit closer to the new human. He’d either ignore her texts or straight up just ghost her altogether. As she listened to them, she had to push down the possessive tendencies that tried to force their way out of her. She pushed them back down into the flimsily locked box they had always been contained in and burying them down in the deepest parts of her mind, forcing herself to accept that she was no longer wanted- no longer loved by the family she thought she’d found. She returned to her room for the rest of the night and for the first time since the initial weeks after arriving here on her first visit, cried herself to sleep.

The next time she interacted with any of the Avatars, it was Lucifer ordering her off to school telling her that she had better not be late and tarnish the good name Lord Diavolo and the exchange programme. Arella only nodded and promptly left the house, not even bothering to finish her morning cup of tea. The walk to school was lonely, Mammon had left earlier with Melissa and it was then, with a broken heart, Arella decided she would leave them all to their new toy. They wouldn’t bother her. They didn’t need her. At least she had Solomon and the angels, didn’t she? No, it didn’t seem to be the case either judging by the mass of unanswered texts.

As she entered class, Arella took her usual seat only hoping Mammon would choose to sit with her for once, would just choose her for once in general. But it wasn’t meant to be. Of course, it wouldn’t. Why would he bother to choose her when there was someone who was much better for him than her? Someone who wasn’t selfish or possessive or... or... worthless... She subtilty looked over her shoulder to watch as they cracked jokes and laughed together and she felt tears pool in her eyes- heart aching at the thought that she would never have that again and the sweet memories she’d made with the demon. The spot she once saved for him was now taken by another demon.

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

Two months more of this- it had been eleven since Melissa joined them. None of the brothers even looked Arella’s way anymore- often forgetting she lived in the house with them in the first place. When she tried to reach out to any of them it was Melissa needs this or Melissa and I are doing this, so she just stopped. She stopped eating, stopped taking care of herself save for basic hygiene needs. No one came to check on her. There were no texts, no calls, nothing. They’d gotten all they wanted out of her and now she was like a cast aside doll. She thought about reaching out to any of them but decided against it. They were demons and she was just an insignificant human. It's not like they actually cared and Arella was a fool for allowing herself to entertain the thought.

She should just go home. But where was home? The human world held nothing for her to return to. Sure, she had that degree in biochemical engineering to fall back on but after having a taste of true happiness, would she even enjoy a life doing that? Maybe she could just go back to her original plan. The plan she had made when she first signed on to the exchange programme. 23 years was certainly long enough to experience everything life had to offer, right? She always did tell herself if the year on the exchange programme didn’t work out, she’d end it all. The idea was sounding more and more appealing by the minute.

With her mind made up, Arella swung her legs over the side of the bed. A smile was painted on her face. Her cheeks stained with tears; emerald-green eyes bleary from all the crying she’d done over the past two months. No one would miss her. They left her- abandoned for the better human like she was an unwanted pet. What did she expect though? No one ever stayed. No one ever cared. No one ever loved her enough to begin with. She was always thrown away like the trash she was after her purpose was fulfilled.

With what little strength she could muster, Arella stood as she uttered a spell and a portal opened. She gladly stepped through it, finding herself in her childhood home as it closed- a place filled with nothing but suffering and pain for her. What a fitting place for her own painful end.

“Hello, Mum, Myles... I’m... home... Isn’t it lovely... that you were right after all? I’ll be with you... soon...”

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

Missing his call on her D.D.D. was the first thing that Mammon noticed. He knew he hadn’t been the best boyfriend ever since the new human arrived and the demon felt guilty for that. He’d put so much energy into helping Melissa get a date with his younger brother that he hadn’t realized how much time had actually passed- how it had been almost a year since he’d done literally anything with his girlfriend. She was probably pissed at him and rightfully so. Now that he had actually looked at his calendar, there had been so many planned dates and movie nights he had missed with her and all he wanted to do was make it up to her somehow. She probably thought he didn’t want her anymore which couldn’t have been further from the truth. He missed her- missed hanging out with her, missed the dumb jokes they would crack and the laughter that followed, missed the pranks they would play on Lucifer that often ended up with them strung up from the ceiling together. He missed the late-night cuddles and having her tucked up under his arm at night as he held her close. The bed they had once shared was considerably colder now that she was no longer there.

Mammon made his way down to her room. That was the only place she could be. Arella never left her room anymore. She always left for school earlier than anyone else too, choosing to skip breakfast outright, so Mammon couldn’t even catch her to talk then. He thought about reclaiming his seat next to his human but every morning he found her chatting up another demon that had taken his old seat. He often felt his possessiveness spike most during those times but did he even have the right to feel that way after neglecting her for the past eleven months?

As he drew closer to her room, he could see Beel knocking at her door, asking if she’d like to go visit that new café she had mentioned a couple weeks ago. When there was no answer, the Avatar of Gluttony would frown, unsure if she was just asleep or just actively ignoring him. That was the second sign something was wrong. No matter what happened, at the end of the day, Arella was always happy to entertain their whims.

“She’s not answerin’ ya, is she?” The second-born asks as the sixth-born shakes his head, looking like an abandoned puppy on the side of the road. “I’ll go in ‘n see if she’s awake. I have to talk to ‘er anyway.”

Beelzebub nodded as he left back to the kitchen- likely to eat his hurt feelings away. None of them really had the right to feel this way after they’d just ghosted their favorite human though. As he opened the door, Mammon stopped dead in his tracks. She wasn’t there, her phone lay on the bed lit up with missed texts from Asmo and Levi.

Immediately, he took off for Lucifer’s study. If anyone would know her whereabouts it would be Lucifer, right? The family patriarch had the uncanny ability to know exactly where every resident of the House of Lamentation was at any given time so long as they were still in the Devildom.

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

After considering her options, Arella was left indecisive. There were a number of ways she could end her own life. She wouldn’t lie, before the exchange programme she would fantasize about the many ways she could kill herself. Would it be by hanging like she found Myles? Or perhaps she could slit her wrists like her beloved mother. If the car in the garage still worked, carbon monoxide poisoning was a valid option too. There were sleeping pills up in the medicine cabinet- a large handful of those would definitely do the trick... Ah choices, choices. As she smiled to herself, the human wondered if any of the brothers had noticed she wasn’t in the house anymore. The chances were unlikely as they were all too busy with their new human but if they had, who was it?

Would it be Asmo, Levi, Belphegor? Surely, it wouldn’t have been Mammon. He’d long since moved on, probably enjoying the start of a new relationship with Melissa. It hurt that he couldn’t have been bothered to even break up with Arella in the first place. What happened to forever? Had it all been the honeyed words of a liar?

She shook her head. It was best not to think too much on it but she still couldn’t help it. Once she was gone- once their pact faded away- would he regret this? Would he regret losing the person who loved him so unconditionally that it was almost embarrassing?

With her mind made up, Arella grabbed a knife from one of the drawers in the kitchen and carried herself up to the master bedroom where she had found her mother four years prior. As she lie on the bed, she pressed the knife to her wrist deep enough to cause substantial bleeding. She drags the blade up her arm, watching as the crimson liquid gushed from the from the wound. She thinks it’s beautiful- a fitting end for a vile creature such as herself.

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

“Lucifer!”

“What, Mammon?” The eldest didn’t even bother to look up from the ever-growing stack of paperwork on his desk.

“Did Arella have plans tonight?” The Avatar of Greed asks as his brother finally looks up at him.

“Not that I’m aware of, but I also haven’t seen her all day. As her mate, you should know, shouldn’t you? As far as I’m aware, Arella hasn’t left the house and is still in her room probably practicing her mag-”

In that moment, both demons felt a sharp pain shoot up their arm as if someone had taken a knife and was drawing a line up the inside of their arm. The same pain was radiating from the places where their pact marks were located. Mammon clutched at his chest as he fell to his knees, the symbol representing his girlfriend radiating with pain that reached down to his heart. If the screams of the others were anything to go by, they felt the same thing.

“She’s not in her room!” The white-hair demon manages to gasp out. What scares him most is that he can feel their pact fading away.

Lucifer’s heart leapt up in his throat as the realization hit him. It wasn’t her practicing magic that he had sensed earlier, it was her casting a spell. She opened a portal to the human world and had gone through. He now realizes the mistake they’ve made as he remembers back to the confession she had made to him over a year ago one night when neither of them could sleep and opted for a late-night cup of tea. She had told him that he and his brothers had saved her life that first year during the exchange programme. That if things hadn’t worked out so well, she had planned to take her own life. Back then, he thought nothing much of it since the problem had resolved itself. But with how they had essentially pushed her aside in favor of Melissa, she would have felt unwanted bringing the suicidal thoughts back full force. They had to get to her and fast before it was too late.

Always fast on his feet the eldest, opens a portal of his own, knowing of only one place she would go to take her own life. Both brothers would hop through, landing in the dusty house with a thud. The smell hit them faster than either of them could process it. Blood. And a lot of it at that.

Mammon was the first to scramble for the stairs while Lucifer made a break for the phone, having forgotten his D.D.D. on his desk in the rush to get through the portal. The second-born knows the layout of Arella's house too well, having been here with her multiple times before this. Back in better times when she knew just how much he loved her. As the smell of fresh blood grows stronger, he finds her resting on the bed, a smile on her face as the knife lay between her body and the arm that was still slowly losing blood.

Faster than a flash of lightning, the demon tore his belt off and was on the bed immediately. He took her arm, fastening his belt around the upper part in a tourniquet to stop the blood flow. He shook her frantically, tears spilling down his face freely.

“Arella! Arella! C'mon, baby, wake up! Please!” His voice came out in a scream and he could only vaguely hear his brother speaking on the phone with emergency services. “We’re sorry! Don’t leave us! Don’t leave me!”

With every passing second, Mammon could feel her life slipping away through the pact that was still searing his heart. This was the price of his actions- of all their actions. Her blood was on his hands, literally. He should have done more. He should have been there. He could have called or texted or even just picked up the damn phone when she had called him, but instead just like the blood that had slipped from her arm, the Avatar of Greed let her slip through his fingers. She was gone and there was no bringing his human back this time like they had when Belphie threw her body down the stairs after he’d strangle her to death. He and his brothers had spent all that time protecting her from other demons but they couldn’t protect her from themselves.

Once the EMT’s got there, the demon stepped back from the blood-soaked bed in a state of shock- a state of disbelief. There was nothing they could do for her now. She had no pulse, no signs of life. He dropped to his knees unable to believe that his human was truly gone. His throat felt tight as more tears came. He was only just able to register the feeling of the Avatar of Pride’s embrace as they cried together- something they hadn’t done since the fall, since Lilith passed.

The two demons were informed that the coroner would arrive to collect her body shortly as they left the room. Slowly they got up, Mammon taking her body in his arms as he fought back the urge to sob. The pair returned to the House of Lamentation with Arella’s body in tow, cradled carefully in her mate’s arms. As they stepped through, they were met by their brothers and Melissa. Even the Angels, Solomon, and the Royals were there waiting.

“She’s gone,” The eldest’s voice cracked as a pained grimace formed on his face, more tears slipping down his face. Mammon couldn’t even lift his head to look them in the eyes as the crying, wailing, sobbing started.

“We didn’t deserve ‘er.” The second-born chokes on his tears, feeling utterly broken inside. “We did this to ‘er. All... All seven of us did this... She reached out to alla us ‘n we ignored ‘er.” He’s the angriest with himself.

The prince and his butler only watch on, tears in their eyes. Diavolo remembers all the good times they’ve had with Arella. The way she made the lives of the Avatars better, the fun she brought to the student council meetings, the beautiful light she’d brought to the Devildom. She’d made such an impact on the lives of all of these demons and angels. As selfish as it was, Diavolo didn’t want to let any of that go.

“Bring her back, Barbatos.” He orders and his loyal servant steps forward.

“Place her on the ground, Mammon.” Barbatos says calmly, almost as if he’s done this a thousand times and for some reason the Avatar of Greed obeys the order.

Once she’s on the ground, the green-haired demon pulls open her mouth and takes Mammon’s hand in his, producing a dagger and slicing the white-haired demon’s palm tipping it to side and allows the blood to drop into Arella’s mouth. As the crimson liquid flows down her throat, the effect is immediate- Arella's body convulsing violently before she gasps for breath as the gash along the inside of her arm heals.

Everyone- demons, angels, and humans alike- stare wide-eyed at the scene. Lucifer looks up to his longtime friend in disbelief. He had just...

“Let this teach you all a very painful lesson. I’ve given her life as a demon, do not take this chance for granted. You will not get it again. She needs rest for now, but in a day or two, Arella will reawaken.” The prince’s voice is stern as he peers down at the former human who would now become a very powerful demon. “Treat her right this time.”

It’s with that that Diavolo and Barbatos take their leave. The rest was up to the brothers now to care for her and right the wrongs they’ve made.

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

Next

The Bad Ending

Find more on my masterlist

[phantomphangphucker]

Phic Phight: [REDACTED] “Oh Goddamnit. DANNY!”

Prompt Creator: @mr-lancers-english-class

Even Danny’s school projects cause ghostly issues and Lancer really should have seen this coming.

Alright fine, Lancer knew this was a bad idea. He knew it. And yet... here they all are, with each of his students doing their self-chosen presentations. And as he should have expected, Every. Single. One. has been on Phantom. Sure at least there’s been some variety. Star’s piece on his fashion and how that reflects on his personality and the era he died was actually fairly interesting (if it wasn’t for the fact that Phantom spiced up his jumpsuit with t-shirts and whatnot sometimes then this would have been a very boring one). Kwan also surprised him some, apparently he’s spent the past year or so sneaking photos of Phantom eating and did a piece on Phantom’s rather peculiar food tastes (who dips their pickles in milkshakes???) as well as effectively providing proof for the existence of ectoplasmic food (there’s no way any earth apples are neon green on the inside). Dash’s wasn’t even correctly calculated, trying to figure out how far Phantom could throw footballs based on his known strength and if he could kill someone by tackling them (disturbingly the answer -regardless of Dash’s bad math- was decidedly yes. Daniel seemed particularly disturbed). And Paulina’s was quite literally a badly written self-insert ship fan fic; the added drawings of what their child would look like only made it worse (Daniel left, not that Lancer could blame him. Lancer’s also glad for the ghost fight interrupting the presentation). Emilie’s was... disturbingly about ghost hunger and purposed the thesis that Phantom, for the good of the town, should eat the aggressor ghosts (he actually had to cut her off for getting too graphic).

But the single most interesting thing was that a ghost apparently caught wind of this and literally Every. Single. Presentation so far had words that were permanently replaced with [REDACTED], which, needless to say, caused some chaos when Samantha gave the very first presentation.

-

Lancer clicked his pen, crossing his legs and resting the evaluation sheet on his thigh, “alright, Samantha. Feel free to start whenever you please, though soon would be preferred”, by ‘preferred’ he had meant required, but no need to be mean. He chooses to ignore the goth teen's eyeroll.

Predictably the projected screen doesn’t work when she opens her file so Lancer has to spend ten minutes fiddling with the outdated tech that they wouldn’t give the school funding to replace. Eventually, he does get it up and running showing Ms. Manson’s title screen reading ‘Phantom And Hate Crimes Against Blood Blossoms’. Lancer’s positive ‘blood blossoms’ are a type of flower, figures she would do something nature-focused. She’d make for a great herbalist or botanist someday. He does catch Daniel and Tucker giving her ‘death glares’, as the kids call it, though; Samatha doesn’t look any less smug. The second page has what he thinks was supposed to be a detailed drawing of a flower but it’s severely pixilated, almost as if it been blurred; Samantha looks visibly upset so he’s going to assume something when wrong with the file or pasting format. He’s not marking on artistic capabilities though, so effort is effort there.

She quickly clicks to the next page, where the actual writing of the assignment is and looks decidedly pissed; Lancer even quirks an eyebrow since at least two-thirds of the words are a very bold noticeable [REDACTED]. Lancer watches her yank out her physical copy while glaring with murderous intent at Daniel -Lancer will have to dock him marks if he messed with another student's project- before looking at the physical copy in bafflement for a few seconds. Half the class shrieking when she drops the papers and basically launches herself over the desks at Daniel, “OH YOU LITTLE FUCKER!!!! HOW THE FUCK!”.

Lancer’s sighs and stands, “language, Ms. Manson”, moving to pick up the papers and quirking an eyebrow over them looking the same. Sighing again and eyeing Daniel, who’s being choked -or throttled perhaps?- by Samantha yet is grinning innocently. “Daniel, messing with other students' work is against student policy”, sighing yet again, “and I’ll let Star go while Samantha fixes her document”, summoning up the blonde while glaring at Daniel. Some days that boy was more trouble than he was worth but he was also insanely bright and had a heart of gold. Lancer knows he’ll do good things someday, and that’s why he still tries with him.

Half the class is snickering or laughing now and Star is very clearly trying not to laugh as she sets up.

However, as soon as it opens up the class is met with a very familiar sight. [REDACTED] litters every single page; he checked. And Star’s physical copy was in the same state.

Kwan blinks, “okay seriously, what is going on”, before scrambling to grab out his own physical copy; the rest of the class going wide-eyed and following suit. Lancer just puts his head in his hands and sighs very audibly while shaking his head. Why could nothing go right? Sighing again as the class erupts into noise.

“Mines all weird too!”.

“Same here!”.

“Okay there is no way Fenturd messed up everyone’s work”.

“And I actually tried on mine! It was about the merits of Phantom getting armour!”.

“Oh damn do we just get auto hundreds now? Please please please say yes”.

“Oh damn, Phantom would actually look awesome in armour”.

“I know right”.

“Can we just skip class entirely now?”.

“Oh my Zone a ghost messed with or work”.

“Holy Shit”.

“Wait! Wait! Wait! You don’t think Phantom did do you?”.

“Why the heck would he do that? How would he even know??????”.

“Oh I hope Phantom was inside my computer. That would be so hot”.

“Oh I don’t know, maybe someone told him or he overheard shit. He’s a ghost, he can be invisible. Heck, he could be here, right now, invisible”.

“Invisible and laughing at us”.

“No! No! Hold up! What if he doesn’t want us writing about him or maybe someone wrote some sus shit and he just nerfed us all for good measure”.

“That would mean Phantom totally read my stuff, aw Hell yeah man. That was some boss shit”,

Lancer sighs and stands up, “alright that’s enough”, sighing again because why did this have to happen to him, “and I apologies for blaming you earlier, Daniel”.

Samantha snaps, “oh no, I still blame him”, and continues glaring at the teen. Lancer suspects Samantha would continue blaming the boy even if it was firmly proven he wasn’t at fault.

Addressing the class again, “here’s what we’re going to do, you’re going to read off what of your projects you actually can and allude to the rest. Please reframe from repeating what you know was there beforehand as I’d rather not have whatever ghost responsible -Phantom or otherwise- come here pissed off”, glaring at few students who look slightly encouraged rather than discouraged by that prospect, “anyone who does will receive automatic zeroes”, ah and the encouraged looks have deflated. Good. Gesturing at Star, “you’re already up here, so do continue”. Better to not bring the clearly infuriated Samantha back to the front until she’s had some time to calm down.

Star nods and clears her throat, thankfully everyone quiets down. “O-okay, well, um”, gesturing at the screen, “I did my piece on Phantom’s sense of fashion and the cover image was one with him dressed in one of the Spook Sense stores meme shirts....”.

-

Lancer shakes away the memory, he honestly slightly regrets giving this project. But regardless right now is Daniel’s turn and Lancer is honestly slightly fearful of what his file is going to look like. Thankfully all their files were saved to his computer before the [REDACTED] debacle, so no one could go back in and edit theirs to add [REDACTED]’s for an easy grade. Lancer’s still not exactly sure how he’s supposed to mark assignments that were anywhere from one-fifth to one-third [REDACTED]. That word will be burned into his head after this grading period.

Lancer moves to find the boys file, but stares when clicking it crashes the computer. Not once. Not twice. But thrice. The fourth time rebooting the computer he inspects the file and is a bit dumbfounded, “Daniel, your entire file’s corrupted. The file type has even been changed to redacted, which I’m fairly sure, isn’t actually any possible file designation”. Everyone’s silent for a bit before bursting out into laughter.

“Just what the Zone did you write, Danny!”.

“Oh we so have to know what this is now”.

“Danny has the forbidden knowledge! We haft found him! The keeper of things forbidden and Ghostly! Haza!”.

“Ha! It was probably so lame that Phantom wanted to save him the embarrassment”.

Lancer sighs, but Daniel gestures Tucker up, “hey Tuck, feel like trying to fix the file”. Tucker chuckles and walks up, though apparently glaring at the boy. Based on Daniel’s smirk he finds this quite amusing.

Tucker does manage to make the file viewable at least. Lancer nods and leans back in his seat, “thank you, Mr. Foley”, while the file loads on screen.

Tucker sits back down with a head shake while Daniel stands at the front and gestures to the screen, “aight, as you can see from my not redacted title-”, that earns a couple laughs, “I did mine on Phantom’s portfolio of crime. Every single time our dear Phantom broke ghost law. Including such wonderful things as, that time he caused not one, not two, not even three, but five, prison breaks in one day. Or that time he invalidated a Observant spectator duel by bringing an inflatable sword”. Samantha slams a hand on her desk, “IT IS YOUR FAULT YOU DICK!”.

Lancer has some serious questions as Daniel clicks for the next page, the entire class going dead silent as a screen comprising of almost nothing but the word [REDACTED] shows. Lancer sighs very audibly. Eventually the class starts up again.

“Fenton... actually has forbidden knowledge”.

“If it wasn’t for the teacher computer saved thing I’d think he was fucking with us”.

“I mean... he is a Fenton, right?”.

“Okay the fact that this entire presentation is on ghost crimes is concerning alone. But they’re forbidden ghost crimes at that”.

“Shit I wanted the tea. Damnit”.

“Better question, how does Danny know?”.

Daniel clicking the button to go forward is very audible. And, Chicken Soup For The Soul, every single page is [REDACTED] to the point of being completely and utterly unintelligible. There are occasional lines pointing out how Phantom apparently ate confetti at a ghosts third wedding (which is apparently illegal for some reason) or that time he beat someone up with a violin that had a pie inside it (Lancer can see this one, Lancer himself has smacked a ghost with stranger).  Literally the only photo that isn’t blurred beyond recognition is one of Phantom in a prison uniform (Paulina was very vocal about liking men in uniform here). Lancer is absolutely positive the end of his conclusion ‘[REDACTED] are a bunch of [REDACTED]’ is an insult.

Samantha chucks a boot at his smirking face, “YOU IDIOT. Of course they were going to block you from talking about them. Ancients, I can’t believe you”. Tucker’s busy laughing into his hand.

“Oh my Zone, they know too”.

“They’re really earning that weirdo trio title, huh”.

Daniel snickers as he sits back down, “they broke into my room and wrecked that epic puzzle I was working on. They shoulda seen this shit coming. Literally”. Tucker snorts, “they probably did but couldn’t do anything else about it. They can’t stop you and your endless bullshit”.

“Damn fucking straight”.

Lancer isn’t going to claim to know what exactly they’re talking about but apparently Daniel effectively orchestrated this entire fiasco just to annoy some ghost. Lancer is honestly more impressed than disturbed. A for effort but an A- for making everyone's work nigh unusable.

End.

Prompt: For the last project of their senior year in high school, Mr. Lancer is letting his class do presentations on literally whatever topic they want. He is very, /very/ sure that this is going to go poorly, but that's a problem for later...

[sunflovverharry]

Sweet Time

a/n: soo, I took the liberty of changing the pov in the song to be from harry’s perspective instead of the oc’s, but i’m quite happy with how it turned out. i recommend you listen to the song this fic is inspired by while reading as it might give some more depth to what’s going on inside harry’s head than what i already give throughout the story. Thank you for reading and please reblog if you enjoy it xx

This fic is a part of @harrystylescherry playlist fic challenge which i’m super excited to be part of! Remember to read the rest of the entries and show your support <3

Pairing: Harry x OC Delilah Warnings: Angst, fluff, language Word count: 4.7k

It seems bad luck runs through all of Harry’s relationships. The three he’s had that lasted long enough to be considered serious all ended because of the same reason - Harry’s fame. Mixing their jealousy of the women media connected him to; and anger that he couldn’t be with them every time something important happened made him exhausted. His girlfriend was supposed to support him in every way possible, just as he would support them and know that if he could spend more time with her, obviously he wouldn’t be flying to god knows where for who knows how long. It clearly wasn’t enough for his exes to know that if he could, he would, but his life isn’t run only by himself. He has managers and a record label who tells him what to do and when.

**

Lucie had been ringing his phone for the last hour without any answer and it surely must have pissed her off because the texts she sent after weren’t pleasing to say the least. Harry had been in the studio for a while and his phone had been silenced so he could solely focus while creativity was rolling through him. He had told his girlfriend that he would be unavailable for most of the week with writing and recording as much as possible, but he’d call or text whenever he was free. Thinking she had understood, he didn’t care to text her right before entering the studio to tell her she wouldn’t be able to get a hold of him for a while, but after seeing the texts he thought to himself he should’ve texted her.

“Why the fuck aren’t you answering??” “Harry you better answer your fucking phone this instance or we’re over!” “Seriously Harry what is more important than me, your girlfriend!!” “Are you with another woman???? ANSWER ME YOU FUCKING DICK”

No, it wasn’t the first time Harry had been subject to her angry texts, probably drunk off her ass and having no one else to be mad at. He knew he shouldn’t put up with the way she’s treating him, but when they’re together she acts completely different. She never raises her voice at him or asks who women he’s seen with are. They always enjoy their time together, cuddling on the sofa while watching a movie or going to her parents’ for a Sunday roast. Though she’d never be seen cleaning or cooking, telling Harry that it wasn’t her job to do so when he could have maids and chefs.

Even his mum had told him she wasn’t what he needed in a girlfriend. A snobby, gold digger who has jealousy and anger issues ultimately wasn’t someone he had time for. Those texts were what made him decide that he had to end the relationship now, before it’s too late.

A week later he made it home from Los Angeles and he wasn’t surprised to see Lucie running towards him after hearing the car doors slam outside. She always acted as if nothing happened while he was gone. He couldn’t believe he had wasted almost a year on this girl and before she could get any closer to him he told her they were done. Yes, it sucked to tell someone they weren’t wanted any longer, but it was the right decision in the end and his mum would surely be happy he got rid of her.

**

A year after breaking up with Lucie, his third girlfriend (who honestly might have been a little too into his fame and money than he realized at the time), he met Delilah. To be honest, Harry had told himself that he wanted to stay single and focus on himself and his upcoming album, but Delilah threw his plans out the window after only a month of dating - or what he called “just friends getting to know each other”. Delilah on the other hand called them dates and could only hope it would expand into something greater than that.

**

Harry had been sat in the restaurant they were meeting at for half an hour, hoping Delilah wouldn’t be much longer. He was grateful she had texted him to let him know she’d be running later than expected as the traffic was crazy and she had to stay at work an hour longer than anticipated. If she hadn’t let him know, he’s sure he would have cried from the embarrassment.

Not knowing how much longer she’d be, he called his mum. Her voice had always calmed him down and that’s exactly what he needed at this very moment - sitting alone in a restaurant at a table for two in a secluded corner waiting for what might be the prettiest girl he’s laid eyes on.

“Hello my sweetness. How are you?” They got into talking about Harry’s surprise trip home for his sister's birthday in a couple of months. Anne and Harry were planning a surprise birthday party for her and it wasn’t something he’d ever want to miss. After minutes of talking about the surprise and anything else popping up into the conversation, Anne asked what he was doing. It wasn’t that he had hidden the fact that he had a new friend on purpose, but he supposes that he wanted to keep this one private - even from his mum who knows everything going on in his life.

“Just having dinner with a friend who’s running a tad late which is why I called you.” He wasn’t sure he was able to keep the excitement out of his answer. Though Delilah was only a friend and he certainly wasn’t looking for another relationship that would end up breaking, he already liked her more than he probably should.

“Oh, I see. A friend friend perhaps?” Anne snickered, knowing that if she pried long enough, he’d have no choice but to spill. This time it wouldn’t happen though as he saw Delilah walking towards the back of the restaurant and the table where he was seated waiting patiently for her.

“Sorry, mum, my guest has arrived. I’ll call another day, love you.” Harry didn’t hear the ‘love you’ his mum said back to him before pulling his phone from his ear and hanging up. Pocketing his phone while standing up, he smiled at Delilah who looked stressed but beautiful in her very classy outfit paired with some killer heels and Harry didn’t even want to think about how much they hurt her feet.

When they both finally sat down, the chatter never died down and the wine never stopped pouring.

**

It took a while before she earned Harry’s trust, but it was proof that he did trust her when he invited her over to his house for the first time after five months of dating. She had proved to Harry that she took his privacy seriously and she, too, wanted to keep whatever it was they had going on between only the two of them. Almost as if it was something sacred, and really it was.

Harry had been over for movie nights and dinners at Delilah’s plenty of times, even going as far as staying over a handful of times. She gave him complete reigns of what they did and never pressured him into going out in public and there wasn’t a suspicion (that Harry knew of at least) of why he didn’t want to go any further than light groping and making out before pulling away. When he wanted to talk to her, she would be there for him.

**

Delilah had her legs thrown over Harry’s thighs and his hands were lightly massaging her feet tired from a long day at work. They had ordered pizza from what Harry called ‘the best pizza place he’s ever been to’ and when Delilah took her first bite she couldn’t help but moan at the explosion of taste in her mouth. It really was the best pizza. This was only her second time hanging out at Harry’s house, only wanting to come when he invited her as to not invite herself into his most private space.

Harry had shot her a message earlier in the day asking her if she’d like to come over after work seeing as it was a Friday and therefore the night didn’t have to end as early as a weeknight. Of course, he didn’t tell her that, but he wanted to have the option open for her to stay the night if he felt comfortable enough by the end of the night to ask her.

Delilah could Harry’s head was spinning in all directions while mindlessly continuing to rub her feet, up to her legs. She could positively say none of her exes had ever given her a foot massage, making Harry look even better in her books (though he didn’t need it, he was already better than any of her expectations and she could only hope she reached his expectations).

“What’s wrong, sweets?” She had taken up the nickname for him after hearing his mum call him something similar, but not wanting to steal her nickname for him. Harry smiled every time she called him that, loving the feeling he got in his stomach from how it sounds coming off of her tongue.

“Just thinking and going in circles round my head.” It didn’t give away anything other than he was stressing or worried about something Delilah had no idea what it could be. Sitting up, she planted a kiss to his cheek before smashing their cheeks together in a tight hug - all she wanted was to be there for him if he wanted to talk, or just sit in silence together. Hopefully he’d have the guts to throw her out if he wanted to be alone.

Harry giggled when she didn’t let up her strong hold around his neck, not nearly enough to choke him, but enough to hold him in place. He turned his head to look at her quickly before melting their lips together in what can only be described as an expressive and intense kiss. Delilah didn’t know what he was trying to express, but it must be something good with the way he’s pulling her onto his lap, their lips never separating more than a second.

“Would you want to stay the night?” He had gone through every pro and con in his head, but Delilah showing him she was there for him without trying to pull anything out of him made up his mind. There was no doubt he wanted her to stay at his place for the night and he’d drive a hard bargain for her to even think about saying no.

There was no need for a bargain though, Delilah nodding her head quickly before pulling him in for another kiss, or two, or three. She wasn’t worried about not having pajamas here or her toothbrush or her trusty face cleanser. None of it mattered even slightly, when all she could think about was how much trust Harry was putting in her. For a minute there she was the happiest she’s ever been and as Harry’s nerves subsided he was the happiest he’s ever been.

The couple went for a short drive to Delilah’s apartment to pick up some essentials, as well as the supermarket to buy ingredients for breakfast in the morning (and new bathroom essentials to keep in his bathroom for times when she would stay the night). By the time they got back to Harry’s, they were ready to hop into bed - a bed she had yet to try out, but was sure would exceed all her expectations.

Harry was tucked into his bed on the side he regularly slept on when Delilah walked out of his ensuite, ready to lay down right next to him. Knowing from the past times they’ve shared her bed that he’s a big cuddler, she was excited to see how much more comfortable and cuddly he’d be in his own bed.

**

Though Harry felt safe and trusted Delilah enough to share his house with her and have her sleep over, something was still holding him back from asking the big question that they both probably knew should have come earlier. Even his mum was unsure why he hadn’t asked her yet or let her meet the woman he’s spending all his time with.

By the seventh month of dating, she was starting to question herself. If she wasn’t doing anything wrong and he still trusted her, why would he not have asked her to be his girlfriend already? She thought it was pretty clear to everyone that knew about their ‘relationship’ that she wouldn’t say no.

**

“So, Delilah, how’s it going with Harry?” She was out for drinks with her best girlfriends and the only ones she had told about Harry - except her parents, of course. It was an unwritten rule to not talk about boy trouble or anything of the sort on their nights out, but it was clear Delilah’s head wasn’t in it. Something had to be up with her and the only thing her friends could think of, was Harry.

“We’re good. He’s feeling safe and comfortable with me. We’re going to his mum’s next weekend to relax before he leaves.” Her voice was definite and if her friends didn’t know her they wouldn’t think anything was wrong with their relationship. Delilah spends a lot of time with him and the past month she’s slept over most nights, even on the days she’s had work the next. Harry had cleared out more space for her in his bathroom vanity and closet - which he knew was way larger than what he really needed, but had still managed to fill with no problem.

Delilah sipped on her drink as she went back into her head, thinking about how tonight was just like any other day. Harry will pick her up exactly ten minutes after she calls to tell him the night is over, he’ll hold her thigh on the drive back to his home while she talks his head off about nothing. When they arrive home, they’ll do exactly what they always do when she stays the night - wash their faces together, brush their teeth and while Delilah finds her outfit the next day Harry goes to get a water bottle he always keeps in the fridge that they will share throughout the night. It’s become routine and the domesticity around it makes Delilah’s heart flutter.

“Have you had the talk about going official? Becoming boyfriend and girlfriend? I thought maybe he’d asked by now with how you’ve been. I mean, you basically live there by now.” Lyla tried to pull out the thoughts swirling around Delilah’s head without being too invasive if she really didn’t want to talk about it.

“I don’t know honestly, I think we’re doing great and I’m so happy with him. I don’t want to force him if he isn’t ready, but it’s been seven months and he hasn’t said anything about making it official no matter how much it feels like it already is. I can’t imagine he doesn’t feel the same. It’s pretty obvious what we’re doing is exactly how it’s like being in a serious relationship.” She braced herself and let it all out - all her thoughts about not making it official yet or how domestic their relationship has become over the past couple months. She would be indescribably sad if Harry wasn’t to actually feel like she thinks he does and that might be the reason why she hasn’t had the guts to be the one to initiate the conversation.

**

The next couple of weeks went by smoothly for the pair. With Harry being gone for most of it, she had a lot of time for herself to go through her feelings and get the chance to figure things out. She tried to hide her - what felt like crushed - feelings from Harry, not wanting him to pry for her to open up and ruin everything. She agreed with herself that if they had to do things slower than normal because Harry needed the time to get there, then that would be okay as long as he actually would get there one day. There was also no way she could leave the man behind just because he’s been hurt in the past and is now - overly - precautious. The very least she could do to save what they had was to try and help him realize that she wasn’t going anywhere and didn’t want anything but the best for him, and she wanted to be the best.

Delilah came home from work to Harry cooking a storm in the kitchen late one afternoon after he came back to London. It wasn’t that she didn’t know he could cook that surprised her, no, he was always making them dinner - with or without Delilah’s help. What did surprise her though, was the romantic set up in the living room that she had never seen before.

**

Harry was in deep concentration standing over the stovetop where he had vegetables boiling, along with the chicken he’s grilling. It’s getting close to done when he heard his front door open and he didn’t bother turning around, knowing it could only be one person - Delilah. The girl he’d been obsessed with for the past eight months. But, fuck, he was terrified of getting infatuated with someone again, only having been burnt by it in the end previously.

There was something so raw and new with this one, though, such a breath of fresh air for him. It was like he was supposed to go through those bad relationships to end up here - with the perfect fit for him. She never took it to heart when he couldn’t be there for some things, having to leave the country for weeks at a time, but encouraged him to go, have fun, text me when you land. The first time she told him so, he was speechless and couldn’t move his feet for seconds before he got back to earth.

The first time he slept over at her place was pivotal for him and him realizing where this could go, and that was over six months ago. He had told himself to take it slow, enjoy the moment and not do anything because he felt it was the right time. The right time was usually never right in the end because he still wasn’t ready. If he were to lead a relationship with Delilah it would have to be on his terms, mostly because he didn’t want this one to go wrong. This potential relationship with the girl of his dreams was something he needed to get right. If that meant waiting a little longer to make it official, move in together or start a family - now he’s really thinking far into the future - then he would do so because he knew in the end it would save them both from heartbreak.

Ever since him and Delilah got closer his mum saw a change in him, though the insecurities and unease he had from former relationships were still haunting him. The first time he voluntarily spoke to his mum about her, she told him to follow his heart and only time could tell if she was the one for him. The last time he spoke about her, Anne told him he had to do something, because even though they act as if they’re together, she doesn’t have the security blanket of love that she needs to stay with him. That really set fire to his plans - knowing he had to do something about it before it was too late.

Therefore he ended up deciding on making her dinner and putting in effort to show his romantic side that she hasn’t seen a lot of was the way to go. He wanted to go all out for her to show that this is what he wants and he feels safe and secure enough in himself and them as a couple to make it official. It’s what he craved.

He heard Delilah’s feet softly moving on the hardwood flooring to get from the entry to the kitchen. He also knew she had smelt his cooking and seen the rose petals, candles and blankets scattered all over the living room. There was no doubt she was suspicious over the reason for his doings, but at the same time she held back and waited for Harry to make the first step.

“Hi lovey, dinner is almost ready. You want to change into something comfy before we eat?” Harry only turned around for a single second to try and see if her face could tell him anything about how she’s feeling.

“Smells delicious. Be back in a tick, sweets.” The grin creeping out from his lips couldn’t be stopped after hearing her call him his favorite nickname. He hopes it means she’s happy with him. While Delilah changes upstairs in their - pretty much - shared closet, Harry dishes up the plates and finds her favorite red wine to drink with the meal. Right as he finishes putting everything in its place, she descends from the staircase and Harry finally takes a moment to admire her. He finds her beautiful in a pair of leggings and one of Harry’s hoodies she decided to steal. Before getting completely lost in her beauty, he coughs and reaches his hand out to tell her to come sit with him on the floor in front of the sofa.

Harry wanted to wait until they had finished their meal to bring their relationship up, hoping to enjoy their little impromptu - on her end at least - date night before getting serious. Delilah was smiling and wouldn’t stop gushing over his surprise making him feel better about what was to come. He was sure she would say yes, but the little doubt he had left in him wouldn’t go away until he got his answer and knew for sure.

Later in the evening, they were still sitting on the floor, talking about their days and upcoming events. Harry’s hand was running along her legs thrown over his lap and hers were holding the wine glass recently filled up again when he felt the need to get everything off his chest.

“Darling. I know I’ve taken things slow with you, slower than we both probably wanted, but I hope you know I haven’t been stringing you along for nothing. Tonight I wanted to show you how much you mean to me and how much I’ve grown to care for you. I hope you knew that anyway.” Harry was smiling at her while coming clean with all his thoughts and feelings.

“I’ve loved the naturalness of how we’ve moved through our friendship. Nothing with you has ever felt forced or uncomfortable, maybe because you let me take my time and have control over what I can. I can’t tell you how much that has meant to me and I want you to know that it hasn’t gone unnoticed. The domesticity around us feels so easy and I hope that doesn’t ever change. Because we’ve been acting as if we’re together, it kind of slipped my mind that we’re not, but tonight I wanted to ask you, finally, if you want to make it official and be mine?”

**

After making it official, there was nothing holding them back from each other. They were together as much as their lives allowed them to be and Delilah even surprised Harry by going to his first show on tour in Los Angeles. He thought she didn’t get the time off of work to be able to come, but Delilah knew he wouldn’t be upset with her lying about it when in the end it would make him happy. They had been official for six months at the time and were practically inseparable. Neither of them knew how they would do with the distance over a longer period of time compared to the two to three weeks he was usually gone for before coming home. Sure in themselves and what they had, they knew they’d get through this, too.

**

Delilah hadn’t gotten the chance to surprise Harry much over the past year since she got to know Harry, unlike how he had managed to surprise her quite a few times. They were often small, but thought out and always showed her how much he appreciated her. For the longest time; she had been thinking about how she could surprise him without him finding out - and her chance came landing right into her hands with him going on tour. She called Jeff the minute she thought of it, the day after Harry asking her if she would be able to come out for a couple of days during his tour, preferably the first show.

Jeff and Delilah had managed to keep the secret from Harry for over a month with Jeff buying her a plane ticket for the day his first show was. She got picked up by a driver at the airport and drove straight to the Forum to catch him on stage singing his heart out. Though she was only able to see him for the last fifteen minutes of his first show, it was exactly what she imagined - Harry dancing around the stage, singing to a crowd so loud she thought her ears might lose hearing.

Right before Harry was set to come off stage, Delilah was guided through the backstage area to Harry’s dressing room where he would finally see her and hopefully get surprised. She was sitting on the black leather sofa with her hands fiddling in her lap as she waited the short while. It was clear he was getting closer as the loud screams got quieter. Excitement, nervousness, happiness, restlessness. They were all feelings running through her, the anxiety easier to feel when she finally heard his laughter moving through the hallways and she knew he was only meters away from her.

Only seconds later she saw the door handle jiggle before the door opened just a crack as he was still standing in the hallway talking to someone Delilah couldn’t quite distinguish. Finally, he pushed the door further open and he was turning toward her, no idea someone would be waiting for him, nevertheless, his girlfriend he thought was stuck at work back in London. His eyes landed on her and for a while, he just stood in front of her still in the doorway thinking he was seeing things. When he understood that she was actually sitting in front of him his eyes couldn’t help but glaze over while shutting the door - he wanted this moment to be between him and his girl, no one else. Harry practically ran toward her, thinking he couldn’t get to her fast enough, and Delilah just about managed to stand up before he threw himself at her.

For a long time they stood on his dressing room floor, Harry’s arms around her neck and Delilah’s around his waist as they held each other close. Both of them had tears rolling down their cheeks, not from the three weeks they had been away from each other, but the sentiment of her actions. All the small things she had done for him since day one, waiting for him to feel comfortable and ready to dive into what they hoped would be a future together, always asking before doing something he might not be okay with, being too kind and gentle with him, always, and lastly her surprising him on tour. Something suddenly clicked in his head as he smelled her cherry blossom perfume he loved so much - this was it; Delilah was it for him, it was she he had been waiting for to come into his life after going through too many shitty relationships and breakups. There was no way he would let this one go when she understands him and loves him for everything he is (though they hadn’t said that yet - Delilah being afraid to scare him away and Harry wanting to wait until one day it slipped and came naturally).

Delilah, too, felt the same. She knew he was it for her - showering her with the affection and tenderness she needed from someone she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. They were perfect together and if taking it slow was the way to go with Harry then she would continue to do so forever, making sure he is always comfortable and safe with her.

**

Thank you for reading, will hopefully be back with another chapter of my fwb series soon <3

[oppabimbab]

are you mine? | jeon jungkook

genre: smut, fluff

starring: jungkook x reader

synopsis: jungkook knows how to shut you up and make you scream nothing but his name

words: 3648 words

tags: jealousy, daddy !kinks, handjob, riding! humping! car!fuck, slight dom jungkook, clit tease, unprotected s*x

side notes: this is originally from jinyoung’s fic but i changed the character to jungkook to fit the bts version. ignore this im bored.

**

You sip the remaining champagne inside the tall glass that you have been swirling for god-knows-how-long. Just as much as you love that alcohol, today it tastes like a motherfucking poison in your throat. It’s burning your tongue every time you swallow a drop—like a fire. Just like your heart.

From afar, You look at your boyfriend, Jungkook ,who is talking casually to bunch of his friends that he bumps to at the bar counter, not too far from your seats.

He looks as majestic as he always does—broad shoulder, long and toned legs, long and wavy hair, muscular arms and delicious torso.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with how your boyfriend behaves with his friends but what bothers you the most is that one bitch, who is always clinging to him from the first minute you come here to the party. And you had no idea why would you witness that in the first place.

Rose. That beautiful bitch. She always stands there beside him, chuckling at every words that come out from his mouth like he is some kind of comedian—moving her ass and exposing her boobs just to brush them against him while she gives the endless refilled wine to him. Let alone, staring at him while he smiles and laughing, like you don’t exist here. Fucking annoying.

Damn, is that a friend should do? You know for the fact that she is one of Jungkook’s acquaintances. He has been chanting that to you and you’re convinced enough but you can’t remember that, a friend should grind her body to her colleague like she wants to fuck him—that much. You’re positive until today when you clearly can’t hold the anger anymore.

When the last drop of the champagne touch your throat, you met her eyes. Her bitchy eyes along with the foxy smile, plastering all over her face before she scoots closer to Jungkook and on purpose, she ‘accidently’ makes herself fall on him—making her exposed boobs slightly brush on his arms.

Just how gentleman your boyfriend is, he looks shock and immediately helps her to get on her feet. Making her smile becomes wider, at you.

Seeing that, you can’t help but feel extremely intimidated and pissed. Not sure if it’s solely on that bitch Rose or your boyfriend. You inhale some air to calm yourself from the sight. You try to look unbothered by not giving any piece of damn at her, who is having fun drooling at your man.

For a matter of fact, Rose is extremely gorgeous. You can’t deny. She is a famous model that have her face plasters everywhere across the country. You know people swoon over her because of her beauty and sexiness every time she passes by, doing the bare minimum—or to simply said, she is the main star of this party. Everyone loves her. Everyone worships her. She is the definition of perfections. Just like him.

Now, that thought bothers you the most.

**

The ride is filled with silences from both of you and him as he drives back to the apartment that you have been sharing with him for the past 9 months. You’re not very keen to know whether he notices the changes in your behaviour ever since 30 minutes ago.

Well, You don’t feel like talking to him. At all. He asked you to come along to this party but why the fuck did he make you feel less—like you don’t belong there, as his girl. You’re not sure what he did wrong but when you saw him walking back to you at the table after almost touching other girl’s boobs, you immediately feel upset. Extremely upset. You’re pissed, annoyed, jealous and angry. You can’t bring yourself to talk to him at this moment.

And he seems like he doesn’t care about that. Good thing because all you want to do is to go back to sleep with this anger. You stare out of the window, completely silent.

“You’re giving an attitude,” he breaks the silence between you and him as the silence happens way too long. You cock your eyebrow and glance at him slightly before looking back out of the window.

“Excuse me?” you reply—trying not to sound annoyed or pissed even honestly, you want to scream at him.

He exhales some air before tilting his head at you, looking at your obvious frustrated face. You can feel his big hand snake on your exposed thigh, giving it a slow rub while the other hand is on the steering wheel.

“Mind to explain why you’re acting like this?” he sounds calm and serene—unlike you. You push his hand away from your skin without looking at him.

“Focus. I’m not in the mood, Jungkook,” you stop calling his pet names that he likes the most.

You see his face changes, from the corner of your eyes but you don’t care. The least thing he can do is stop being such an asshole at this moment. You don’t want to talk, not to him.

“Why are you always acting up without reason at times like this?” he says as he clenches his jaws. His voice sounds hardened and tense. You can’t believe he just said that.

“What? Me?”

“Yes, you,”

“Are you serious? I said i’m not in the mood. Just drive us home and leave me alone, Jungkook. You’re such an asshole,” you can’t help your anger anymore when he is pointing the arrow back at you. Sure, he said something harmless but at times like this, everything pisses you off. You’re fucking pissed when he stares back you like he did nothing.

“Wow, that’s rude,” he scoff.

“Whatever,” you did something he hates the most. Rolling your eyes.

Before he could say anything, he stops the car at the side of the road. Your eyebrow furrowed at his gesture as you look at him, confused and pissed. Jungkook looks back you, completely mad.

“Alright. Why don’t you tell this asshole, your problem? For fuck sake baby, I don’t know if you don’t tell me,” he runs his hands through the hair, sounded frustrated at your moody ass tonight.

You shrug.

“I don’t know. Ask Rose,” now, you know you sound like an immature bitch but you don’t care. He is being such an asshole.

“Rose?” he raises his eyebrow.

You don’t reply anything.

“What does Rose has to do with this topic?”

God, He is dumb.

“That’s fine, Jungkook. I want to go home. I’m tired. Let’s talk about this later,,” you heave a small sigh, rubbing your head as you ignore his question because you don’t feel like explaining shit like this. Or both of you will get into a serious fight. Both of you know how severe it can be once it happens. You just don’t want him around at this moment.

You look at him and his eyes changed. They are darkened and hooded—piercing in fire as he glares at you. They are the same eyes when he is mad and pissed.

“Fucking sit on me now,” he commands. Your jaw drops at him as he unbuckle the seat belt around his body. Which part of going home that he doesn’t understand?

“Jungkook! I don’t wan—“

“I said sit on me. Make me repeat and I’ll make you regret,” his eyes burn with fire, you can see the popping veins along his jaw and neck. He really needs to show his dominant side at times like this, huh? You’re not sure why and you shouldn’t feel this way but he looks fucking delicious when he is mad.

You heave a frustrated sigh as you unbuckle the seat belt before you climb all over him and sit on his lap—facing him with your back only few inches away from the steering wheel.

Both of you stare at each other before you look away from his eyes when you can’t content with the jealousy and anger in yourself every time you think of what happened earlier. It upsets you so much that you can feel your heart is aching.

“Now, tell me why you’re behaving like you miss my cock,” he utters the words as he brings both his hands on your hips—looking up to find your eyes. You hiss at his touch, making his eyebrow lifted.

“I’m so pissed,”

“You can’t be pissed in this dress. Definitely not in this dress that makes me want to fuck you hard,” his voice is so deep and low that it makes your heart races like crazy. Jungkook trails his eyes to your neck, your exposed chest and to your ass. You know he is good at dirty talk because you can feel butterflies all over your stomach.

You scoff at him.

“Sure but I think Rose wants you to fuck her harder than me. Sure, Jungkook,” you can’t look at him on the eyes as your heart hurts at the thought. You try to get off from his lap before you feel his grip tightened around your hips. His bites his lower lip.

“I see,” he nods.

“Baby, are you jealous?” he looks at you, hiding his beautiful smile behind his bitten lip.

“Yes. Very much,” you stare back at him—telling him how the pain and jealousy have made you like this. A whiny and jealous bitch.

His grins gets wider—showing off a small dimple under his cheeks. Probably satisfied enough that you finally admit something you’ve never done before.

The silence starts to build between you two before you speak up again.

“Everyone can see that she wants you. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice that,” you roll your eyes, annoyance starts to build when you think of her. Jungkook chuckles.

“Do you believe that?” he asks and you had it enough. You squeal at him, to let you go back to your place and end this night but he wouldn’t budge as he grabs your hips tighter to keep you on his lap. He is so strong that you barely make any inches of move.

“How do I make you realise that I’m all yours?” he squeaks, rubbing your clothed ass along with your inner thigh, causing you to whimper softly.

“Fucking you here, in this car, hm?” he hums before he leans closer to your body and starts to trail sloppy kisses on the sweet spot while he chants the dirty words. You can’t help but squirm at his touch as you bring your hands to hold on to his shoulder.

“Jungkook, don’t,” you whimper at his touch even deep inside, you know you want this more than him. A mocking chuckle leaves his mouth, your words.

“I can feel your juices on my thigh, then you’re telling me no? Should we stop, kitten?” he bites the soft skin on the collarbone as he calls your favourite pet name. When you no longer can hold the sudden adrenaline in your body, you start to grind on his thick and muscular thigh, rubbing your pussy on nothing but his thick muscle.

Thanks to all the work out sessions and sports, they make this grinding feels like a heaven on earth.

It makes him groans in raspy tone while staring at your pussy. He grunts in frustration when the thin underwear covers your throbbing cunt.

“Jungkook....,” you moan his name and he hums at your calls while biting his lips—completely amazed at the throbbing clit under such thin clothe. He must be thanking God for letting you to wear such a short dress so it makes it’s easier for him to hover the pussy.

“Come here,” he grunts as he pulls your hips, to make the move becomes faster and wilder, eventually growing the huge bulge that is starting to touch your throbbing clit. You moan out loud at the touch, throwing your head to the back while keeping the same pace on his lap as he pulls your closer with his big tattooed hands.The feeling—oh so fucking good. The car is filled with hot breath from both of you as sweat starts to prick.

“Ah! Ah!” your breath hitched as you feel a familiar knot inside your pussy and lower abdomen—making you to look at him while moaning his name. He likes it when his name comes out from your mouth when he is abusing the pussy. He feels like a sexy dominant and he will make sure the scream gets louder when he finally pumps his cock inside you.

“How the hell I want to fuck her harder when I have this pussy, wet and juicy—just for me? Tell me how, baby,” he grunts through gritted teeth, rubbing his index finger on your clothed clitoris, circling and pinching it while looking at your moaning mess face, when you’re coming to the climax.

He hisses—completely mesmerised at your beautiful cunt.

“Ah! Daddy!” as he rubs your clit and forcing you to grind on his huge bulge, you let out a small squirt on his jeans—soaking it wet with the juices. He hums in approval at your submissive reaction—licking the sticky liquid around his finger while staring at you, like a provocative beast.

“Sweet cunt,” he says while chuckling.

“Is that enough?” he adds, cocking his eyebrow at you. You pant on his shoulder, slightly confused at his question. Isn’t he going to fuck you?

“I want more,” you whisper, looking breathlessly into his lusty eyes. Needy and desperate, completely different than you were few minutes ago.

“Again,” he commands.

“I want more, daddy,” you whine like a real kitten.

“Good girl,” His chest vibrates as he giggles.

Before you could say anything, he lifts the hem of your mini dress and pulls it above of your chest—leaving your boobs bounce to his sight. You squeal in surprise. In just a blink of eyes, he unclasps and throws your bra to the back seat. You look outside—you sure don’t wanna let anyone see you this erotic.

“Fuck,” his eyes darkened when he brings his eyes to your boobs—chanting a trail of curses and compliments before he gropes them, roughly. Your body jerk at the touch, making the boobs bounce.

“You’re fucking beautiful, do you know that?” he says under his breath before taking one of your nipples into his mouth—sucking the bud hungrily. Your chin is up—moaning even louder than before, as you press your body closer to him—deepened his mouth to your hardened bud. Your run your hand through his hair while the other one, holding on the car seat.

Every words that come out from his mouth, sounds like an ecstasy and it’s making your cunt pools with liquid. Skin tingles a lot and all you wanted is to feel him inside your body. He hums, biting the nipple, causing you to fill the car with his nothing but his name. His warm and playful tongue—goddamn it feels like heaven.

“Ju-Jungkook, get inside me,” you whine when he stop abusing your nipples. 

“Hm?”

“Daddy, Please....uh ah!” you repeat.

You can see a boyish grin all over his face as he stares at you like a motherfuckinh predator. Your pussy clenches at the sight. What a view.

You can’t say anything when he trails his fingers to the strap of your panty before he rips it—exposing the raw pussy to his eyes.

“Babe!” you scream. He giggles, throwing the panty to the passenger seat as he slaps your ass.

“I’ll buy you a new one later,” he says, impatiently while staring at the pussy as he gives it slow stroke. You whine at the touch. It’s slow and addicting, now you suddenly miss his big cock.

Impatient, you push him against the car seat before you unbuckle the belt around his jeans and slightly pull the jeans to his knees—leaving his boxer alone. He says nothing as he watch you get the touch of his cock by yourself. When you see the throbbing bulge, you immediately pull the boxer—making his dick slapping your lower abdomen. You moan at the contact.

“Come, baby. Do whatever you want to do,” he gives a small kiss on your neck before he leans against the seat to let you take over. You catch his eyes for a few seconds before you look down and starts stroking his member from up to down, smearing the pre-cum all over the veiny cock. He groans at your soft touch, making you look at him while bitting your lower lip—seductively.

Jungkook throws his head to the back while slapping your ass over and over again as you please him. His dick is damn big and hard—you wonder how would he feels like inside this tight pussy of yours? Your cunt is screaming for the fill.

After few more strokes, you stop. Lifting your ass up while you rub the tip of his cock on the wet entrance, increasing the sensitivity. Both of you and him moan like crazy. Slowly, you sit down on him—completely burying his dick inside your tight and slippery pussy and making his dick disappear from the sight—causing you to scream to the air. Your man hisses, breathing hard as he looks down where his dick get buried.

“Goddamn, baby,” a breathy moan leaves his mouth—gripping your juicy ass so you can move in sync with him. You hold on his exposed muscular arms while the other hand is palming his chest before you start riding on the hard shaft. For the fact, you know Jungkook has been really big since day 1 but why the hell he makes the sex feel so damn good even you already had hundred sex with him? You open your mouth and moan while staring at each other’s eyes.

“Are you mine?,” you whisper, bouncing up and down on his dick—slapping his balls with your ass like tomorrow won’t come. His eyes pierce into yours.

“Yeah, kitten. I’m all yours” he bites his lower lip, grabbing your breast with his big hand and squeeze it roughly. The cold metallic from his ring increase the pleasure to all over your body. A gush of air leaves your lungs at the sensation. You scream his name.

“Da-daddy. Uh oh,” your body jerk. The sound of slapping skin fills the car, you’re very sure the car is shaking like hell. But, your mind is too busy to think about that. His big cock in your tight cunt. What a perfect combination.

“Fucking sexy. You’re the sexiest woman I’ve ever seen in my life,” he grunts through gritted teeth as he gropes the breasts while he watches you humping on his dick. His eyes never leaves yours like his life depends on it. Your system goes error that you barely can process what he just said. Throwing your head to the back, know nothing but his touch. When he notices your move becomes slower, he grabs your hips and quickened the pace up and down. Letting your wet pussy coating his member with white substances. A wet sound fills the space.

“Ah! Ah! More, more,” you lean forward and breathe on his neck, moaning, whimpering while he takes over the pace. Jungkook grunts in every thrust. He will make sure your pussy will be swollen.

“Fuck me harder, baby. Harder,”

“Of course,” he grunts. The pace quickened and the thrust deepened—making he hits your G-spot over and over again with no mercy. You clench around him just to hear his hot moan in your eyes. Tears prick on your eyes when the head is reaching your walls several times. It feels so good. So damn good being in his embrace while he is pumping inside you.

“Good, isn’t it?” he finds your eyes.

“Y-yes. Ah! Please, don’t stop,” your body twitches.

“You’re the only one who can make my cock becomes this hard,” he whispers to your ears.

“You make me want to bang this pussy harder every time I see you,”

“So,” thrust

“Fucking” thrust

“beautiful,” thrust

“and,” thrust

“hot,” thrust

He grunts in every words. You scream erotically and pant heavily on his sexy neck. Eyes rolled back, making you blind. Your legs becoming weak and shaky that you have no idea who are you going to walk.

“Even Rose can’t make me this horny. Only you. I’m all yours, baby girl. I’m yours,” he kisses your shoulder, still taking your pussy while chanting endless I love you’s. You can’t help but feel extremely loved. Sex is great but his words and reassurance—oh it brings you to another wonderland. You moan his name, moving your hips to reach the climax.

Breath hitched, endless moans, steamy car and rising chests.

“Daddy...” you calls him. He hums in shaky breath.

“Cum inside me,” you beg.

He chuckles, staring at you as you pulls away from his neck—pumping for few more times as you can feel his dick is twitching inside you. You clench around him—making him groan like a beast.

“Oh fuck, fuck, fuck,” he moans and growls when your pussy clench around his cock. His breath hitched and shorten.

“Ah! Ah!” a lewd moan escapes your mouth when he pumps his cum inside you, making your body bouncing and jerking at every shot. Your nails claw on his chest , biting down the lower lip while you stare to his darkened eyes. The eye contacts—so sexy. You scream as you reach the intense climax. Jungkook grunts as he keeps grinding your ass on his cock to fill every part of your pussy with his warm semen, making it drips out of the pussy and stain the seat.

You bury your face on his neck, nuzzling his strong scent from the perfume and sweat while panting hard—to let yourself calm. That was amazing and intense.

“I think I have my favourite kink now,” he says, stroking your head.

“What is it?” you squeak, tired from the intense fuck.

“Car fuck. I should fuck you at the back seat next time. Let’s see how loud your scream is,”

“Asshole,” you slap his chest playfully and it receives another sweet laughter from him. He knows you’re joking.

“Wow, that’s rude,” he mocks.

When you both finally calmed down, you clean the mess on his seat before you climb back to your seat, looking completely mess. Smudged make up, missing panty. Jungkook is indeed a beast when it comes to sex.

As the car starts to move, he glances at you. His raspy voice starts to fill the car.

“Keep the pussy wet. I can’t wait to eat your sweet cunt when we get home,”

“So, you know nothing but my name and dick,”

**

side note: send me requests and i’ll make it happen (no pressure)(also sorry for any errors and typo)

[dessarious]

Guilt and Consequences

Okay, so this is just something that wouldn’t leave me alone. It has absolutely nothing to do with my other fics and may actually be a one shot. (We all know that’s not something I do but hey I can hope). Anyway, I’ve always hated the way Lila’s character was done. For so many reasons. The biggest issue I had was that there’s never any explanation for her personality. Sure, there is a small percentage of people that are straight up evil, but not many and it’s lazy writing to make a character, villain or otherwise, with absolutely no reason to be the way they are. If you’re not going to flesh out a character don’t make them a focal point period. Okay I’ll stop ranting now. This is in no way canon, nor is it meant to be.

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

AO3   Next

“You told her what?!” Adrien flinched as Lila yelled in his face but she didn’t care. This idiot had completely destroyed all her plans with no thought what so ever. How had things gotten so bad?

“It doesn’t do any good to put more pressure on the situation. I told Marinette that you’d come around once you got the attention you wanted, so she should just let it go. Take the high road.” She was dangerously close to punching him in his sanctimonious face. The only thing stopping her was that getting arrested for assault wasn’t something she wanted to experience right now. Not to mention she now had to try and fix this insanity.

“That is quite possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. Ignoring things may work with paparazzi but that is not how you should deal with anything else. More often than not ignoring a problem just makes it worse.

“I’ve been ignoring Chloe’s bad behavior for years and she’s getting better.” Lila felt like her head was going to explode. As good as Adrien was in science he apparently didn’t understand causal relationships. The boy was far too dense to survive in the real world.

“As I understand things, Chloe didn’t start improving until Marinette stood up to her and Ladybug called her out on her bad behavior. Your enabling simply allowed her to continue what she was doing without consequences. People don’t change without a reason Adrien. Most need a pretty enticing incentive to do anything out of the norm.” She couldn’t deal with this anymore. Lila knew that she wasn’t going to make him see the error in his thinking. Everyone thought of Adrien as a ray of sunshine but she’d seen first hand how hard he held onto ideas even when all the evidence pointed to the opposite conclusion. Instead she turned and walked away as he yelled justifications at her back. She knew he wouldn’t actually follow her because his ride should be there any second. He wouldn’t risk getting in trouble, no matter how much he wanted her to agree with him.

She didn’t even know where she was going at this point, just wandering randomly while she thought. Everything had gotten so out of hand. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before and she had absolutely no idea how to fix it, or even if it could be fixed. She didn’t think so. It’s like the perfect storm of stupid, incompetence, and compliance had coalesced into this mass of insanity that she couldn’t see a way out of. Why did everything have to be so complicated? She’d done the same thing dozens of times with the exact same result. Why did things have to turn out so differently this time?

Before she knew it Lila was standing in front of a building she had no wish to enter. She knew she had to, but honestly she would rather step into traffic. Still, if there was any hope of salvaging things this was where she had to start. She just hoped she’d be able to get out some sort of explanation before they threw her out. She took a deep breath before opening the door.

“Good morning! What can I do for you dear?” Lila hesitated. Surely Marinette had told her parents about what was going on, right?

“Madam, my name is Lila Rossi. I was hoping to talk to Marinette.” There was absolutely no recognition in the woman's eyes. What the hell kind of alternate reality was she in? From everything she could gather Marinette had a great relationship with her parents. Even if she had let Adrien talk her into staying quiet at school, why would she hide what was going on from them?

“Of course, and you can call me Sabine dear, no need to be so formal.” She followed as Sabine led her up the stairs at the back of the bakery and into a little apartment. Lila had lived in a lot of places, but not one of them had ever said home the way this tiny space did. “Marinette’s room is up there. I have to get back down to the bakery, just knock before you go in.” Lila could only stare at the woman’s retreating back in panic. There was no way Marinette wanted her of all people anywhere near her room. She’d expected Sabine to get her to come out here. She looked back at the trapdoor with no idea how to proceed.

Eventually she worked up the nerve to climb the stairs. A few minutes and many attempts later, she managed a timid knock. There was a muffled ‘come in’ and Lila almost had a heart attack. Now what? Against her better judgement she slowly opened the door and poked her head up. She saw Marinette hunched over her sewing machine, not paying any attention to who had entered. But what caught her attention was the bruise on Marinette’s cheek and a strip of gauze around her forehead. Lila’s anger from earlier reignited with a passion and before she knew it she was in the room standing directly behind the girl.

“How could you listen to that moron’s advice?” She winced the moment the words came out of her mouth. That was not how she wanted to start this. Marinette jumped and actually fell off the chair. Lila flinched back at the fear in the girls eyes when they registered who she was.

“Wh- What are you doing here?” Marinette’s eyes were darting every which way, looking for escape routes or something to defend herself with most likely. It hurt knowing that this was all her fault.

“I… I didn’t mean to scare you.” Then why did you yell at her dumbass? “I’m here because…” Why exactly was she here? She really should have planned this out, or at least had any idea of what she was going to say. “I’m here because I need to apologize to you, and I think you deserve an explanation for why I apparently destroyed your life.” Marinette’s eyes widened in shock and disbelief. Lila couldn’t blame her.

“You want to apologize to me?” The skeptical tone caused her to break eye contact. It was well deserved but Lila didn’t even know where to start. She was a selfish creature by nature so apologies didn’t come naturally, but this was something that needed to be done.

“Yes. I’m sorry for everything that’s happened to you because of me. I never thought…” She couldn’t continue. No apology and no explanation was good enough for what Marinette had gone through because of this mess. Lila didn’t even know everything because apparently the class had been bullying Marinette for over a month but they’d kept it from her because she was too ‘nice’ and wouldn’t have approved. How did you even begin to make up for something like that?

“You never thought what? That your plan to take away all my friends would affect me? That you making my school life a living hell would hurt me?” The girl sounded pissed and Lila couldn’t blame her but the tone sent her into her defensive mode anyway.

“I never thought anyone would believe the garbage coming out of my mouth!” Marinette blinked at her in confusion, all the fight suddenly gone.

“What?” Lila sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. Where did she even start? None of this was going to make sense to Marinette. Honestly she wasn’t certain it made sense to her anymore either.

“I should probably start at the beginning.” Marinette motioned her to continue. “My mom is a diplomat, that wasn’t a lie. She’s something of a fixer. Basically when a situation has escalated too far they bring her in to smooth things over. Because of that she gets moved a lot more often than most. I think the longest we’ve lived in one place is about nine months.”

“And that makes it okay for you to lie and bully people for no reason?” Bully? She hadn’t considered that before. From Marinette’s perspective she understood why she said it though. Especially after the bathroom incident. Lila winced.

“I didn’t mean to… The lying has a purpose but I’ve never had to escalate things before. It’s not an excuse, I should have considered things better. I just…” She just what? She’d just been so focused on her goal that she hadn’t bothered to look at the collateral damage. Hadn’t even considered that there would be. “Look just let me explain, then you can yell at me.” If she didn’t get this out now she wasn’t sure she’d be able to.

“Fine.” Lila shifted nervously as Marinette’s full attention was focused on listening to her. Having that much animosity directed at her was extremely uncomfortable.

“So when I was little the moves were more frequent. Because of that my mother hired tutors and enrolled me in online classes rather than try to attend school. There didn’t seem to be any point in having me adapt to a new place and teachers every couple of months. About three years ago things slowed down a little and she decided it would be good for me to socialize with other kids. Despite my best efforts, I was enrolled in school. I hated it.” That was a vast understatement. The curriculum wasn’t advanced enough and the kids were all immature and annoying. The teachers were boring too. Not to mention that she was used to learning at her own pace and having the ability to choose subjects that actually interested her. School was basically torture.

“I wasn’t happy and told my mother so but she thought I just needed time to adjust so she basically told me to suck it up and deal with it.” She’d had a perfectly researched and reasoned argument but her mother wouldn’t even listen to her. “A couple days later a boy was annoying me. He refused to leave me alone after I’d told him many times to stop and eventually I snapped and punched him in the nose.” It had felt really good at the time.

“Really?” Marinette sounded somewhere between horrified and amused and was obviously trying to keep a straight face.

“Really. I was sent to the principal and he called my mother. I was expelled because they had a zero tolerance policy for violence. My mother was not happy with me and lectured me about solving my problems in a different way, but she let me homeschool again because she wasn’t certain how long we’d be there and didn’t want to go through the effort of finding another school. I thought I’d won, until the next time we moved and she put me in school again.” Once again she’d argued to be allowed to stay with homeschooling. Once again her mother had ignored her.

“Let me guess, you just walked up and punched someone the first day?” Lila let out a snort of amusement and shook her head.

“No. Mother made it very clear that physical violence had far too many repercussions, so I had to get creative. I read the school rules trying to find the easiest way to get thrown out. I tried disrupting class constantly, but that just landed me in detention. So then I tried stealing. That got me thrown out quickly enough, but it also could have had legal ramifications that I didn’t understand at the time. My mother made it very clear to me after though.” Yet another fun conversation where her mother talked at her and wouldn’t let her get a word in edgewise. Lila couldn’t understand how she could be such a good diplomat and still have no idea how to listen to her own daughter.

“So you got to homeschool again?” She blinked at Marinette for a moment before nodding. She’d gotten lost in her own thoughts. “But I’m going to assume it didn’t last.”

“No. Every time we move she tries again. I don’t understand why she bothers. The next few schools I refined my technique. I found out that lying was the easiest and least complicated way to get thrown out quickly. They just don’t want to deal with it. Each school has slightly different thresholds but I found that obvious misinformation coupled with lying about medical conditions usually got me back home within a week. I thought I had it down to a science, until we moved here.”

“So wait… you’ve just been trying to get expelled this entire time?” Marinette was looking at her like she’d grown another head. Lila wasn’t surprised. To anyone else what she did sounded insane and maybe it was a little. But it worked and she was a very results driven person. “What about the Akumatizations?”

“What about them?” Lila couldn’t figure out what that had to do with anything.

“If you wanted to be found out, why were you so upset you became Volpina and Chameleon?” Lila winced. She’d watched the limited footage and remembered how she’d reacted after. She’d been disoriented and confused and had just lashed out.

“I was expecting Adrien to call me out. The necklace I showed him came from his father’s line after all. I misjudged how involved he was in the industry apparently. I wasn’t expecting or prepared for an actual Superhero to call me out. I’ll admit I reacted badly, but in my defense I didn’t know then how little it took for Hawkmoth to Akumatize someone.” That had been a less than pleasant realization. Maybe she should try and apologize to Ladybug after this as well. It wasn’t the hero’s fault that Lila couldn’t deal with normal social interaction and lashed out when she felt threatened.

“And Chameleon?” Lila winced at the soft question. She still didn’t know what she’d been thinking when she’d threatened Marinette. Well that wasn’t completely true but she didn’t realize how far she’d gone until she saw the Akuma.

“You were the only person who seemed to have a spine and didn’t believe the bullshit I came up with. I was trying to push you into reporting me to the teacher or convincing everyone else that I was lying. I’ve never been in a situation where people actually thought that my lies were real before. Looking back it was a stupid thing to do.” And wasn’t that an understatement. “After I left I realized how harsh I’d been and was coming back to make sure you were okay when the Akuma phased through the wall and straight into me. Apparently my being mad at myself for overreacting was enough to let him in, again.”

“Why keep lying though? You had to have realized it wasn’t working at some point so why keep doing it?” That was a really good question and she didn’t have a good answer. Lila ran a hand through her hair in frustration.

“At first I thought that I just needed bigger lies. I also expected the teacher or principal to call my mother and verify the ‘disabilities’ I said I had. Other than that I guess it was just habit. It’s what I’ve always done in that situation and I didn’t know what else to do if I’m being honest. Everyday I’d tell myself that today was when everyone would see through the bullshit. That’s also why I started lying about you.” Once again, in hindsight it was an extremely stupid move. Marinette looked confused.

“You’ve been lying to the class about me thinking it would make them realize what you were doing?” Yeah, it was a really stupid plan.

“Yes. I did my research. Everyone loved you. You were the class rep for crying out loud! I thought that lying about you would get them to at least think things through. I mean they’re supposed to be your friends. They’re supposed to know your character well enough to question it when someone says you’re doing something so completely off track from your normal. I didn’t expect them to believe me without question and I absolutely didn’t expect them to retaliate and hide it from me.”

Marinette’s head snapped up in shock. She was looking for something in Lila’s eyes but Lila wasn’t sure what it was. The girl's expression softened suddenly and before she knew it, Lila was on the receiving end of a crushing hug. What the hell?

“If you’re trying to suffocate me there are easier ways to do it.” The words just popped out and Lila winced again. So maybe her mom had a point about her needing more social interaction. It still didn’t mean she should be forced to endure school. She felt Marinette let out an amused huff and pulled back.

“So what brought on this need to come clean?” Lila’s eyes automatically went to Marinette’s injuries before snapping away to the wall.

“Alya slipped and told me what they did last night. I went to Adrien first since he knew Ladybug called me out to try and get him to make the others see sense, or at least help you protect yourself. That’s when he told me what he said to you.” She felt her anger resurfacing just thinking about that conversation.

“That’s what you meant.” Lila just blinked at Marinette in confusion. “When you first got here you yelled at me about taking a moron’s advice.” Lila winced at the reminder but nodded. “Apparently you’re not the only one prone to making mistakes and snap judgments.” Her tone was dry but still held a trace of amusement. Lila wasn’t certain what to make of it.

“I’ll text my mother and have her come here after work so I can explain what’s going on to her and your parents.” It was the least she could do. There was no way to fix this, but at least she could come clean.

“You can’t do that! What if one of them gets Akumatized over it?” Lila just frowned at Marinette. She couldn’t be serious. Her worried expression said otherwise.

“You can’t keep letting people hurt you because you’re scared how they’ll react. Hawkmoth is going to keep using people and that’s not your fault. It’s not your job to make everyone happy, especially not at the expense of your physical and mental well being. They need to know what’s going on so you can get out of that toxic school environment.” Marinette actually rolled her eyes.

“Just because you don’t like school doesn’t mean it’s a toxic environment.” Lila stared at her in shock. Marinette was serious. The phrase ‘what the hell’ was quickly becoming her new mantra.

“You’re kidding right? Your teacher avoids her job at all costs by making the class police itself. She blames the victims for things they have no control over because it’s easier than actually confronting someone. The principal hasn’t once tried to call my mother to verify absences or illness. That’s not even including your classmates who have gone full Lord of the Flies over a bunch of lies.” How could she possibly think any of this was okay? Marinette seemed confused as she mulled over Lila’s words. How long had this shit been going on?

“I suppose it may seem that way to someone walking into it, but I think your prejudice against school in general is part of your viewpoint. Things have always worked themselves out before and I’m sure everyone will come around eventually.” She was going to have an aneurysm. Apparently Marinette was just as bad as Adrien at holding on to things despite the evidence. She reached out and gently touched the gauze on Marinette’s forehead.

“They could have killed you. Alya especially is prone to acting without thinking things through or caring about the consequences. It’s why she posted all those ridiculous interviews. Honestly I’m surprised she hasn’t been sued yet. I took care of the site though.” She wasn’t even paying attention to the words coming out of her mouth, too focused on where Marinette’s blood was seeping through. This was all her fault.

“What do you mean you took care of the site?” Marinette’s tone was off but she couldn’t place the tone.

“Hacking is one of the things that I actually like doing. I took down everything with me and purged it from her harddrive. I also took down that stupid picture of Ladybug and Chat kissing after Oblivio. It’s not much but it’s as much of an apology I could manage to Ladybug even if she never knows who did it.” Alya had ranted for days about the Heroine’s denial. It was beyond annoying at the time.

“Why do you want to apologize to Ladybug?” Lila blinked at her before letting out a sigh.

“After my Akumatizations I said some things… let’s just say I wasn’t in a great headspace. I tend to go feral when I feel threatened. Add that to the whole lying and keeping in character to get expelled… She has enough to deal with without hormonal teenagers mouthing off at her.” Marinette was studying her again and Lila couldn’t read her expression at all. It made her more nervous than she would have thought.

“I still don’t think we should tell our parents. Maybe we can turn things around ourselves.” Damn it. The girl was out of her mind.

“That school is a breeding ground for bullies and narcissists. The administration needs to be held accountable for their neglect or who knows how many others could get hurt. There needs to be consequences or things will never change.” There was no way they could fix this themselves. She wasn’t even sure teams of lawyers and therapists could fix this at this point. Marinette was frowning again. Lila wanted to convince her this was the right thing, but if push came to shove she would tell the Dupain-Chengs the truth so they could do something about this. Her mother would just want to bury it to keep Lila out of trouble. Marinette’s parents would do what they had to to protect their daughter, at least she hoped they would.

“I don’t want anyone else getting hurt… Maybe we can talk to the principal. If we say we’re going to look into a lawsuit or call the police, maybe he’ll change.” Lila rolled her eyes.

“He won’t take anything seriously coming from two teenagers. Look, I realize your self preservation instincts aren’t very strong but you need to tell your parents what’s going on. If nothing else you can transfer schools. Honestly, you probably should.” She looked devastated at the thought and Lila’s guilt came back full force. She knew that she couldn’t control the actions of others, but if she hadn’t worked them up they never would have gone after Marinette of all people. They say ignorance is bliss for a reason. Marinette probably would have been perfectly happy not knowing what her classmates were capable of.

“I can’t just leave my friends.”

“What friends? The only person who has bothered to tell me to back off is Chloe. Something about you being more fun to square off with when you actually have a spine.” That girl was at least what she seemed. Lila could respect that far more than Adrien’s fake personality. In his defense she didn’t think he was doing it out of spite, he’d just been playing a part most of his life and probably had no idea who he was, let alone how to be himself.

“They didn’t mean it. I’m sure once they understand the situation they’ll calm down.” There had to be a way to get through to her, but Lila was getting far too frustrated to think things through properly. As usual, her mouth went into gear before her brain.

“If we tell them what’s going on now they’ll just transfer all that anger to me, assuming they don’t think you threatened me into backing up your story that is. Sadly, I have a feeling that it’ll be the second.” She would be fine with the first honestly. It would give her a reason to have her mother pull her out of school. Unfortunately given the class’s track record she couldn’t chance it. Alya could easily whip everyone else into a frenzy if she decided Marinette was forcing Lila to back her version of events. The girl hadn’t been able to find the truth yet so there was no reason to think she would come to her senses now.

“I suppose you’re right. I wouldn’t want them going after you.” She couldn’t have heard that right.

“What?”

“What you did was wrong but you don’t deserve to be bullied for it. I don’t want to be part of the reason that would happen.” Her supposed friends attacking her didn’t phase her at all, but the thought of those same friends bullying the person who’d set them on her in the first place caused her to pause. Lila would never understand that mindset.

“So can we at least talk to your parents about what’s happening? This has gone way past too far and I really don’t think we’ll be able to stop it by ourselves. Please.” Marinette finally nodded and Lila felt a tightness in her chest loosen. It wasn’t enough, but it was a start. 

AO3   Next

[bisexualstevierogers]

To Be Young and in Love in New York City (Peter Parker X Reader) {Fake Dating AU}

Fandom: Marvel/Spider-Man: Homecoming Pairing: Peter Parker X Reader Word Count: 10,119 Author’s Note: Peter and the reader are both juniors, so they are 16/17!! Loosely based off/inspired by To All The Boys I’ve Loved Before!! Peter and Ned are bi and _y/n_ and Ned are bros (: Feat. some of the other Avengers because they all get along in this (Civil War happened but they’re all friends again now)!! also...there are so many cliches and this is SO self indulgent lmao I'm sorry!! Infinity War didn't happen in this fic 💖 I started this literally five months ago...and finally figured I should edit it and post it :^) This is the longest thing I’ve ever written so I really hope you guys enjoy! A semi smutty part two can be found here, for anyone interested in reading that! 

“You want us to fake date?” You asked, staring at your friend Peter in disbelief.

Peter had dropped by after school to help you with some homework, but after working diligently for twenty minutes the words that left his mouth were not what you were expecting at all.

Peter nodded.

“Why?”

Peter scratched the back of his neck sheepishly. “Mr. Stark has been trying to set me up with the daughter of one of his co-workers and I'm sure she’s nice, but between school and being Spider-Man, I just don't have the time or energy to date somebody.”

“And you can't just tell Mr. Stark that?”

“I tried!” Peter said with a frown. “Mr. Stark won't listen to me. He's not going to stop trying, and even if I go on one date with her then end it, I'm sure Mr. Stark will try to set me up with someone else. He thinks that a relationship would be good for me.”

“I actually think he might be right.”

Peter looked at you, the betrayal evident on his face. “Huh?”

You rolled your eyes at him playfully. “Maybe if you were in a relationship you'd use that big brain of yours and think a little more before throwing yourself into dangerous situations.”

Peter had told you a while back about what happened last year with Liz’s dad, and you were understandably pissed. He had been reckless and put himself in serious danger more times than you could count.

“_y/n_…” Peter whined. “I just don't want to be in a real relationship right now.”

“But you can handle being in a fake one?” You questioned with an arched eyebrow.

“There's no real commitment with a fake relationship! And I already hang out with you anyways so it's not like it'll be adding stuff to my schedule.”

You sighed before locking eyes with Peter. “Why me?”

Peter looked at you in confusion. “What do you mean?”

“Why me? I'm not your only friend. You could fake date MJ or Ned just as easily as me.”

“We both know MJ would never agree to fake date me, and Ned said he'd be fine with it except he didn't want things to be weird with him and Aunt May when we broke up.”

“There's gonna be a break up?”

Peter shrugged. “At some point, yeah. I don't want to be in a fake relationship forever.”

You nibbled on your lower lip subconsciously as you thought it over. “How long do you think this fake relationship will last?”

“Not sure, probably just a couple of months.”

You nodded in understanding. “So...what do I get out of it?”

Peter raised an eyebrow at you. “What do you want?”

You thought about it for a moment. “I want to try on the suit.”

“My Spidey suit?” Peter asked in disbelief.

“Yes, and-”

“There's more?” Peter interrupted.

“I'm making myself unavailable from a real relationship to be in a fake one, and believe it or not some of us are tired of being single, so yes, there's more.”

“Go on.”

“If we're still fake dating by the time prom rolls around, you’ll go with me.”

“Deal.”

“And…” You paused, feeling embarrassed.

“What else, _y/n_?” Peter asked gently.

“If either of us end up...actually liking the other we won't let it ruin our friendship.”

Peter’s eyes were wide. “Do you think that'll happen?”

“I don't know.” That was a lie. You had developed a crush on Peter only recently, but you were pretty sure that fake dating each other wasn’t a good idea when you actually did want to date him. “If we have to kiss each other a lot then maybe.”

“We, uh, have to kiss?”

Your cheeks flushed. “I mean, I don't know! I don't know what kind of convincing Mr. Stark will need. It's up to you.”

Peter paled suddenly. “I totally didn't think this through.”

“We don't have to kiss, Peter, I just wasn't sure if you thought we should.”

You were both silent for a moment.

“Maybe we shouldn't do this.” You offered when the silence became unbearable. “Maybe you could have Aunt May talk to Mr. Stark.”

Peter ran a hand through his hair anxiously. “The problem is that I don't want to hurt his feelings. I know he's just trying to help.”

Peter looked at you oddly before scooting closer to you. “Besides, I don't have anything against kissing you. And you said you were tired of being single, so it would be kind of nice to have someone you can kiss, right?”

“Right.” You admitted, feeling your heart flutter in your chest as Peter's eyes met yours.

“Can I kiss you?” Peter asked gently, bringing a hand up to cup your cheek.

“Yes.” You answered hesitantly, and Peter carefully leaned in and brushed a feather light kiss across your lips.

When Peter pulled away and smiled at you, you realized just how screwed you were. You already wanted to kiss him again.

“So, _y/n_, you wanna be my fake girlfriend?”

You plastered on a smile even though you felt like frowning. “Of course, Peter.”

----------

“You totally did this on purpose, didn't you?” You hissed into the phone after Peter had gone.

“I don't know what you're talking about, _y/n_.” Ned answered easily, and you wanted nothing more than to hang up on him. 

“You are the only person that knows that I like Peter and now he wants me to fake date him because you said no!”

“Well I obviously couldn't say yes.” Ned replied and he sounded offended.

“Why not?”

You could hear Ned’s muffled chuckle through the phone. “You'd be totally jealous if I was fake dating Peter and I couldn't do that to you.”

“I would...not.” It fell flat even to your own ears.

“I rest my case.”

“You didn't tell him that I...you know...right?”

You could hear Ned rolling his eyes. “Of course I didn't. I would never tell him that _y/n_, you know that. I gotta go, he's coming over to work on some stuff.”

“You can say that he's coming over to play with Legos, Ned.” You answered back with a chuckle.

“Talk to you later, _y/n_. Love you.”

“Love you too, Ned. Bye.”

After the emotional day you had had, you decided it was time for bed. As you drifted to sleep, your last thought was of how good a certain fake boyfriend’s lips felt against yours.

----------

“I think we need to set up some rules.” You announced as you took your seat next to Peter at lunch.

“About what?” Peter asked, and you were startled momentarily as his arm wound around your waist.

“About, um, boundaries. What are you doing exactly?”

“Well, since you're being so gracious in deciding to fake date me, it only seems fair that we do some of the stuff couples do, right? I am stealing you away from someone you could actually be doing that with.”

“I wouldn't say you're stealing her away from anybody.” Ned said with a chuckle as he sat down across from you. You kicked him in the shin and shot him a look that said ‘Please be quiet’.

Luckily for you, Peter didn't seem to notice. He was too busy reading the list of guidelines you had written out earlier when you couldn't focus in first period.

“‘_y/n_ gets to try on the Spidey suit whenever she wants.’ I didn't agree to that.” Peter said with a chuckle as he turned to look at you.

“It's a rough draft.” You said sheepishly. Ned reached across the table and grabbed your notebook before you could stop him.  

“‘Kissing is fine whenever both parties are in agreement.’ You guys are actually going to be kissing? I thought you just had to make Mr. Stark believe that you were dating.”

Peter shrugged nonchalantly. “Mr. Stark has people everywhere.”

“‘Peter will hold _y/n_’s hand as often as she likes.’” Ned read, laughing as he did so. “You're gonna be holding her hand literally all the time, Peter.”

Peter smiled at you and slipped one of his hands into yours, giving it a squeeze. “I don't see a problem with that.”

As your cheeks flushed, Ned shared a look with MJ, who had finally joined your table. They were both suddenly realizing that this could either go horribly wrong or incredibly well. Ned hoped for your sake that it would be the latter.

----------

“What should I tell my parents?” You and Peter had stayed after school got out to finalize the list and finish up some homework before the weekend.

The list now looked like this:

-_y/n_ gets to try on the Spidey suit when Peter says it's okay -Peter will hold _y/n_’s hand as often as she wants -Kissing is fine whenever both parties are in agreement -Peter and _y/n_ will go on one outing a month unless Peter is really busy -Peter and _y/n_ have to act VERY couply in front of Mr. Stark -Peter and _y/n_ can tell anyone they want about the relationship being fake except for Mr. Stark or anyone super close to Mr. Stark -If Peter and _y/n_ are still in a fake relationship during prom season, they will go to prom together -If Peter or _y/n_ end up liking the other, they will not let it ruin their friendship

Peter glanced up from his homework. “What do you mean?”

“Should I tell them that we're just pretending to date? Or should I tell them that we're actually dating?”

“Depends. Do you think your parents would understand if you told them we were just pretending?”

You thought about it for a moment. “No, probably not.”

Peter nodded. “May either. I told her this morning.”  

“You told her already?”

“Well yeah, I can't keep anything a secret from her for long.”

“What'd she say?” You asked curiously.

“She said she was happy for me and that she thought you'd be good for me.”

You grinned. “I love her.”

“She invited you over for dinner tonight, do you wanna go?”

“Of course.” You answered automatically. “Just let me text my parents and we can head over.”

Peter smiled at you and began putting his stuff away while you typed out a quick text.

Heading to Peter's for dinner. Not sure when I'll be back, I'll text you later. Love you!

You sent the same message to your mom and your dad before shoving your phone in your pocket and following Peter out of the school.

----------

“_y/n_! I'm so glad you could join us for dinner. Peter told me the good news, I'm happy that Peter finally pulled his head out of his-”

“Mayyy,” Peter chimed in, giving her a look that you didn't understand. Finally?

She rolled her eyes before flashing you an apologetic smile. “Peter told me that mac and cheese is your favorite, so that's what we were going to have.”

“Were going to?” You asked in amusement.

Aunt May chuckled and pulled a pot off the stove, showing you the contents. A majority of the pasta was overcooked and inedible, but some of the cheese hadn't even melted at all. It looked like Aunt May had also maybe added too much pepper.

“Don't worry, there's a Panera just down the street we can walk to.” Aunt May said cheerfully.

“Are you sure? I don't want to be a burden.”

Peter wrapped an arm around your shoulder and pressed a kiss to your forehead. “You could never burden us. Besides, we probably would’ve ended up getting takeout anyway.”

Aunt May glanced between the two of you with a huge smile on her face. It made your heart sink. This relationship with Peter was all a lie. Sure, you really did have feelings for Peter, but your fake relationship would end at some point and Aunt May would be heartbroken.

You forced a smile onto your face as Aunt May bustled you out of the kitchen. You remembered as she opened the door that it was starting to get cold, especially in the evening. You were wearing a long sleeve Midtown High shirt, but you knew it wouldn’t help much in fighting the chill outside.

“Can I borrow a jacket, Peter?” You asked quietly, and Peter nodded immediately.

“Of course, one sec.” He ran into his room and came back out a moment later with a grey zip up hoodie. “Here you go.” Peter helped you put it on and zipped it up for you. His fingers lingered on the zipper for a moment.

His eyes met yours, and he raised his eyebrows, silently asking you for permission. You gave him a small nod along with a smile. Peter smiled back before leaning in and giving you a very quick peck on your lips.

May looked like she was about to faint, she was so happy. Peter slipped his hand into yours and pulled you out the door.

The walk to Panera was short, but on the way, you noticed that Peter’s jacket smelled like cinnamon and candy. It was kind of an odd combination, but not a bad one. Peter and May chatted quietly while you just listened contently.

You arrived at Panera within the next few minutes, ordered your food, got your drinks, and found a table.

You were all chatting idly when your waiter showed up and began depositing the food on the table. When he got to your order, he hesitated to hand you your plate, allowing his fingers to brush against yours.

“Enjoy your meal, beautiful.” He said, smiling widely at you before he left. You could tell your cheeks were flaming red.

Peter was sitting stone still beside you, glaring at the waiter’s retreating form, while Aunt May was chuckling to herself.

“Get used to that, you two. For some reason, women become a thousand times more attractive when they're unavailable.”

Peter was a much better actor than you previously thought; he actually looked pissed that the waiter had flirted with you. You placed a hand on Peter's thigh and gave it a reassuring squeeze. He smiled weakly at you and began to eat his food, so you did the same.

You were finishing up your meal when the waiter came back out and started grabbing empty plates and bowls. He also dropped a napkin right in front of you with his name and phone number on it.

718-783-5687 Call me sometime, cutie? -Harry

You could feel Peter once again tense up beside you. You thought about taking the napkin and just throwing it away, but you didn't want to be rude. You grabbed the napkin and walked over to where the waiter was dumping garbage and stacking the dirty dishes to be brought to the kitchen.

“It was very sweet of you to give me your number, but I'm in a happy relationship so I think you should save this for somebody else.” You tucked the napkin into one of the pockets on his apron and gave him a sweet smile, trying to let him know there were no hard feelings. “Have a good day, Harry. It was nice meeting you.”

He smiled back, a little sadly, and you made your way back to your table.

“You guys ready to go?” Aunt May and Peter nodded, so you walked out of the restaurant with Peter’s hand once again in yours.

Peter gazed at you on the walk back to his and May’s apartment like he couldn't quite figure you out.

----------

You and Peter decided to spend some time in his room when you got back from dinner.

Peter shut the door and took a seat on his bed before gesturing for you to do the same.

“What's up, Pete?” The expression on his face was much more serious than what you were used to.

“Did you think that guy was cute?”

“At Panera? Yeah, I guess he was cute. Why?”

Peter frowned. “Because I feel like a jerk.”

You raised an eyebrow at him. “How so?”

“I'm making you be in this fake relationship with me when there are people out there who want to be in real relationships with you. I'm being selfish.”

You rolled your eyes. “First off, you're not making me do anything. I make my own choices. Second, who says I want to be in a real relationship?”

“You said you were tired of being single.”

“Yeah, I was.” You agreed with a shrug. “But I have you now to kiss and hold hands with, don't I?”

Peter turned to look at you fully, and you realized for the second time that Peter was a much better actor than you gave him credit for, because the way he was looking at you almost had you convinced that you were actually his girlfriend.

The moment was cut short when your phone chimed with a text.

“I should check that.” You said, breaking eye contact as you dug your phone out of your pocket.

We’re going to a party and won't be home until late, do you have a key to get in?

You checked your backpack before you remembered that you left it in one of your purses at home.

No, I must've left it in one of my purses. Is the spare under the mat?

You received a response only a few seconds later.

Your dad’s been using the spare because he lost his and we haven't made a new one yet. Is it okay with May if you stay at Peter’s? We've already left and if we turn around now we’ll be late.

You groaned in disbelief, and Peter looked over at you curiously. You showed him your phone instead of trying to explain.

Peter chuckled. “I'm sure it's fine with May but I'll go check anyways.” Peter padded out of the room and you flopped back onto his bed, making yourself comfortable.

It was getting kind of late, and you were almost asleep when he came back into the room.

“May said I can sleep on the couch or in here with you. It's up to you.”

You mumbled something unintelligible. Peter grabbed your phone and typed out a quick response.

may said it's fine if she stays over tonight! have fun at your party (: -peter

Peter put your phone beside you and snagged a pillow off his bed, preparing to go sleep on the couch.

“Where are you going?” You asked sleepily. Peter looked down at you curiously. “Stay.”

“Okay.” Peter put the pillow back but left the room anyway to go brush his teeth. When he returned, you had migrated to the left side of the bed, leaving him enough space to climb in on the right.

Peter thought you'd be dead asleep, but as soon as he laid down, you curled closer to him, resting your head on his chest.

Peter wondered vaguely if you would remember how fast his heart was thumping tomorrow.

He pressed a kiss to your cheek before realizing that you were practically asleep and no one was watching you. He hadn't needed to kiss you. Peter eyes grew wide as it clicked that he had kissed you because he wanted to.

Oh, he was so screwed now.

-----------

The shrill ringing of your phone woke you up. At least, you thought it was your phone. You blindly reached around towards the sound before reluctantly opening your eyes and swiping to answer the phone.

“Hello?” You asked, mind still fuzzy with sleep.

“You're not Peter.” The voice on the other line said in surprise.

You looked down at the phone in confusion, and your eyes widened when you saw the contact name.

Mr. Stark AKA Iron Man 😎

“Mr. Stark, I'm so sorry. I thought this was my phone. Just gimme a sec and I'll wake Peter up.”

Peter looked so peaceful when he was sleeping that you hated to wake him up. But Mr. Stark was waiting, so with a sigh you started gently shaking his shoulder.

It took only a few moments before he blinked sleepily up at you. “Good morning.” He said sweetly.

You smiled at him, resisting the urge to give him a good morning kiss even though you wanted to. “Mr. Stark is on the phone.” You said apologetically, handing him his phone. “I answered it thinking it was mine, sorry.”

“No worries.” Peter sat up as he pressed the phone to his ear. “Hi, Mr. Stark.”

You grabbed your phone from beside Peter and started scrolling through your various social media apps while trying to not eavesdrop on Peter’s conversation with Mr. Stark.

Their conversation went on for a couple minutes with nothing too important being said. You looked up when you heard your name.

“_y/n_ slept over.” Mr. Stark said something you couldn't hear. “What? No, I didn't sleep with her!” Peter hissed quietly into the phone, his cheeks flaming.

Your cheeks flushed too at what Mr. Stark was implying.

“I, uh, I gotta go Mr. Stark.” You didn't miss the way Peter’s voice had gone up several notches. “Yes, I'll ask her about the party.”

“Love ya, kid.” Was the only thing you had distinctly heard through the phone, and it made you smile.

“Love you too, Mr. Stark. Bye!” Peter looked relieved and embarrassed as he hung up the phone. He looked over at you cautiously. “Sorry about Mr. Stark.”

You chuckled. “No worries, Peter. Anyway,” You raised an eyebrow at him. “What's this about a party?”

“Mr. Stark wanted to know if you'd be coming to his Christmas party with me.”

“Of course! I'd love to meet Mr. Stark. And I love Christmas. It's a win-win for me!” You answered cheerfully.

You glanced down at your phone to respond to a text from Ned, so you missed the sweet smile that Peter shot you, as well as the semi-sad look in his eye.

----------

Almost three months had passed since you and Peter had begun fake dating, and the day of Mr. Stark’s party arrived. It was a Christmas party, but he had decided to host it on New Year’s Eve so his guests could spend Christmas day with their families.

You were currently video chatting with Peter as you tried to decide what to wear.

“Are we supposed to match?” You asked curiously. “Like is that a thing couples do for parties?”

Peter's eyebrows knitted together adorably. “I don't know, honestly. Do you think we should?”

“If we can find stuff that matches, sure.” You stopped pawing through your closet as you heard a knock on the door. “Be right back, Pete.”

You opened the door, expecting to find a neighbor or delivery person or something, but you were instead surprised to find a box with your name on it on your doorstep.

You glanced around curiously before shrugging and bringing the box inside.

You dropped it on your bed and began to open it. When you saw what was inside, you gasped.

It was a beautiful sparkly red dress, and as you pulled it out, a note fell onto your bed.

Hope you don't mind, I had May pick this out. Tell Parker to wear something nice. -TS

Aunt May had done a great job picking it out; the dress was absolutely gorgeous. It had thin spaghetti straps and the neckline was v shaped. The dress was a little shorter than what what you would normally wear, but it was a party and you couldn't turn down Mr. Stark’s gift. The dress was flowy, but nipped in at the waist for some definition.

“Do you have a red button up, Peter? Or a red tie?” You asked when you remembered that your call was still connected.

“I think I have a white button up and I can check for a red tie.” Peter responded after a moment of thought.

“Great! You responded, smiling at Peter. “I have to change, you're picking me up at 7, right?”

“Right.”

“See you then!” You pressed the button to end the video chat. Or, rather, you thought you did. You had actually just muted Peter. He could hear you, but you couldn't hear him.

Peter chuckled when he realized that the call hadn't ended.

“Hey, _y/n_, I think you hit the wrong button.” Peter said politely. You made no move to suggest that you heard him, and in fact, as Peter saw you begin to lift your shirt over your head, he realized you definitely hadn't.

Peter's mouth dropped open as he saw that you weren't wearing a bra. Your hands moved to your pants, and Peter finally snapped out of the trance he was under and ended the call.

He immediately felt guilty for not ending the call sooner. He had tried, but he just couldn't get his hands to move.

Feeling like the biggest jerk ever, Peter started to change too, deciding that he would tell you later about what happened and apologize.

----------

Any thought Peter had about his accidental peep show was quickly wiped from his mind as you walked towards his car.

Your _h/c_ hair was down in loose waves, your lips were painted red and looked incredibly kissable, and your dress. Wow.

Peter considered himself to be a gentleman and he knew that looking a woman up and down could be rude, but that didn't stop him from doing exactly that.

The dress was red and sparkly, and it was shorter than anything Peter had seen you wear before. There was also more cleavage showing than usual, and Peter had to purposely drag his eyes up as you sat in the passenger seat beside him.

“Don't you look handsome,” You said, only a little teasingly. And he definitely did. Peter was wearing black slacks, a white button up, and a red bowtie. His hair, which was usually adorably messy, was slicked to one side. You reached a hand out to adjust his bowtie, but it was really just an excuse to touch him.

It was times like these where you wished you were really dating. He looked so good that you wanted to tell him to just forget about the party so you could spend the evening kissing him instead.

“Thank you,” Peter said shyly. “You look stunning.”

You blushed, pleased at the compliment. “Thank you, Peter.”

----------

The drive to Mr. Stark’s party took almost an hour, but neither of you minded. You were having fun singing along to the radio with Peter and watching the city as it passed by you.

Peter, meanwhile, was having a hard time keeping his eyes on the road when all he wanted to do was watch you.

When you arrived at last to Mr. Stark’s party, Peter parked and then got out to open the door for you.

“Thank you,” You said, smiling at him as you took his hand.

You made your way to the entrance hand in hand, and you couldn't help the pang it sent through your heart. Being with Peter felt so natural, so right, that sometimes you forgot it was all pretend.

You were greeted at the door by none other than Pepper Potts.

“Hi Peter, _y/n_.” She greeted you both with a warm smile. “The main party is on the first floor, but if you need to take a breather or want to go somewhere quiet, the second floor will also be open. If you want a snack, just flag down a waiter. I've also already told the waiters that you're underage, so they'll have sparkling cider for you both.”

“Thank you, Pepper.” Peter said politely.

You were still staring at her in awe. “Ms. Potts, I'm a huge fan of yours.” You admitted. “I think you're doing an amazing job with Stark Industries. You have been a huge inspiration to me for so long.”

Pepper looked very flattered as she patted your shoulder. “You're very sweet, _y/n_. Peter got very lucky with you, didn't he?”

“I sure did.” Peter responded with a smile, turning and pressing a kiss to your forehead.

You and Peter made your way into the party, and you were immediately waved over by Mr. Stark himself.

“Peter!” Tony said, smiling widely as you approached him. “And you must be _y/n_.” Mr. Stark turned to look directly at you as he offered you his hand to shake. “It's nice to finally meet you. Peter has told me so much about you.”

You raised an eyebrow at Peter curiously. “He has?” Mr. Stark nodded. “Only good things, I hope.”

Mr. Stark chuckled. “Of course. He told me that you're in honor society and you have a 3.9 GPA.”

“You told him that?” You turned to Peter with a whine. “I'm still so mad at myself for losing my 4.0.”

Mr. Stark looked surprised. “A 3.9 is still amazing, _y/n_.”

“That's what I'm always telling her!” Peter chimed in with a chuckle.

Your cheeks flushed. “Thank you, Mr. Stark.”

“Please, call me Tony.” He responded with a smile.

You smiled back. “Alright, Tony.”

“Do you mind if I steal Peter for a minute?”

“Of course not.” You pressed a kiss to Peter's cheek, chuckling at the red stain it left, before he and Mr. Stark walked into a private corner of the room.

You flagged down a waiter for a glass of cider, sipping it as you milled about. You had thought that this party was mostly Stark Industries staff with a few of Mr. St-Tony’s friends, so you nearly fainted when you spotted Bruce Banner having a conversation with Steve Rogers.

Luckily, Peter chose that moment to rejoin you. You steadied yourself by placing both your arms on his shoulders. “Peter,”

“_y/n_,” Peter said teasingly back.

You glared at him. “You didn't tell me the Avengers would be here!”

“I'm an Avenger. I thought you knew this was an Avengers thing.” Peter said apologetically.

“I thought it was an Iron Man and a Spider-Man and a Pepper Potts thing.” You glanced over at Steve and Bruce again, and Peter felt you sway against him.

“Are you okay?” Peter asked gently.

“I've been in love with Captain America since they pulled him out of the ice.” You admitted. “This is so surreal.”

“Do you want me to introduce you?”

Your eyes widened. “Yes. No.” A beat of silence. “Maybe. I don't know.”

Peter chuckled, leading you over to the couch where they were sitting.

“Hey Steve, hey Bruce.” Peter interrupted quietly. They both looked up at him and smiled.

“Peter!” Bruce said cheerfully at the same time Steve said “Hey, Pete!”.

Peter gently pulled you so that you were in front of him. “This is my girlfriend, _y/n_. She's a huge fan of you both.”

“Oh, is she?” Steve asked teasingly, standing up so he could shake your hand. “It's very nice to meet you, _y/n_.”

“It's nice to meet you too.” You managed to get out, even though your voice was shaking.

Peter's hand moved to the small of your back, rubbing soothing circles against your skin.

Dr. Banner stood up so he could shake your hand too. “Peter has told me a lot about you. He said you're considering a career in biochemistry?”

You tucked a strand of hair behind your ear nervously. “Yes, I'm thinking about it. Your work with biochemistry is incredible. So is your work with nuclear physics and gamma radiation, but I was always much more interested in lessons about you when they were focused on the biochemistry aspect of your career.”

You turned to look at Steve once again. “I also loved learning about you in my history class! I hate those stupid videos of you that they play for every single thing, though.”

Steve chuckled. “I hated filming them.”

You raised an eyebrow at him. “No way!”

“I'm going to go talk to some of the others,” Peter chimed in softly. “I trust you two can handle her?”

“What's that supposed to mean?” You asked, arching your eyebrows at him defensively.

Peter held his hands up placatingly. “Nothing. I'll come find you in a bit?”

“Okay.” You wrapped a hand around his neck and pulled him in for a quick kiss. “I love you.”

Peter looked startled but only for a half a second. “I love you too. Keep her out of trouble!” Peter shouted as he walked away.

You rolled your eyes at him. Steve and Bruce made space for you on the couch so you could sit between them.

It wasn't until ten minutes later when you and Steve were having a rousing discussion about truth, honor, and patriotism that you realized you had told Peter you loved him.

You hoped that he would just assume it was you playing your part as his girlfriend, but you knew that that wasn't why you said it.

While pretending to be Peter’s girlfriend, you had fallen in love with him for real.

Oh, you were so unbelievably screwed.

----------

You didn't see Peter again until about eleven. After talking with Steve and Bruce for almost an hour, you had wandered around the party and accidentally bumped into some of the other Avengers.

Natasha Romanoff was even more beautiful in person, and she tried several times to get you to let her make you a drink.

You declined each time, but you admired her persistence. She also had told you that Clint Barton was spending the new year with his family, which surprised you because you hadn't known that Hawkeye had a family.

You heard through the grapevine that Wanda Maximoff and Vision were spending the holiday together in Scotland, which you thought was sweet.

You nearly got knocked over by Sam Wilson, who was engaged in a heated debate with none other than Bucky Barnes about who was really Steve Rogers’ best friend. They both apologized immediately, and you enjoyed chatting with them for a while.

Shortly after that, you had witnessed Tony and James “Rhodey” Rhodes arm wrestling each other over what you thought was the last eclair, which had made you laugh.

You were lost in thought when you felt a pair of arms wrap around your waist from behind, and you turned your head immediately.

“Hey, Pete.” You breathed out, realizing suddenly just how close he was to you.

“Hi.” Peter responded, and he sounded just as breathless as you. “Are you enjoying the party?”

You nodded as you leaned back, relaxing into his arms. “It's been fun. I missed you, though. And I haven't met Thor yet.”

“Do you want to? We can go look for him.”

You smiled at him. “Only if you want to.”

“Are you kidding me? I love Thor. Let's go find him.” And then you and Peter were holding hands and squeezing through the crowd until, at last, you found the God of Thunder. He was so much larger in person.

“Hi, Thor!” Peter said brightly.

“Ah, Peter, man of Spider, good to finally see you.” Peter gently pushed you in front of him. “And who is this?” Thor asked, giving you a charming smile.

“This is my girlfriend, _y/n_.”

“I didn't know you had a girlfriend. Is she an arachnid too?”

You chuckled nervously. “Nope, I'm just a normal, boring human.”

“There is nothing normal or boring about you humans. It is very nice to meet you, Lady _y/n_.” Thor took your hand but instead of shaking it, he pressed a kiss to your knuckles.

“It's nice to meet you too.” You responded, and Peter smiled to himself when he noticed that your cheeks were red. He had the same reaction when he met Thor for the first time.

“You know, if I still had Mjölnir, I think that your beloved would be able to wield it.”

You turned to look at Peter with a soft smile. “I think you're right.” You agreed.

You noticed then that everyone was counting down the seconds to the new year, and Thor excused himself, murmuring something about looking for Bruce.

You were only half paying attention to him, your eyes locked on Peter since you realized it was almost midnight.

3

You and Peter took a step closer to each other.

2

Peter’s eyes flicked down to your lips, and you knew you weren't mistaking the look in his eyes. Peter wanted to kiss you.

1

Your arms wrapped loosely around his neck as you allowed your own gaze to dart down to Peter’s lips.

Happy New Year!

You heard people shouting and cheering and then Peter's lips met yours and the background noise quickly faded away. Peter brought a hand up to cup your cheek, deepening the kiss, and you felt like you were floating. Kissing Peter, really kissing him, like you were doing now, was everything you had dreamed of and more.

His lips were so, so soft against yours, and when you felt him smile into the kiss, you thought your heart was going to burst. Peter was everything you had ever wanted, and he was currently kissing you like he couldn't get enough.

When you finally broke apart, you pressed your forehead to his as you caught your breath. You felt dizzy, in a good way, and your heart felt warm and fuzzy.

You heard a whistle to your right, and you looked over sheepishly to see Tony giving Peter a thumbs up.

You rolled your eyes; you weren't upset, just a little embarrassed, before resting your head on Peter’s chest. You were suddenly overcome with sleepiness.

He stroked your hair gently. “Do you wanna go home?”

You nodded.

“There’s a guest room on the second floor if you don't want to drive all the way home.” You hadn't even heard Tony come over, but apparently he had because he was in the middle of handing a key card to Peter when you lazily blinked open your eyes. “Morning, sunshine.” Tony said teasingly.

You straightened up and grabbed the key from Peter. “Thanks, Tony. C’mon Peter.” You were dragging Peter towards the elevator before he could protest.

You seemed much more awake once you were in the elevator. “Sorry to rush out of there.” You murmured sheepishly. “I was a little embarrassed. Not because of you!” You said quickly. “The kiss was great, I just felt embarrassed because of how many people saw it.”

Peter brushed his thumb across your cheek gently. “I understand, _y/n_. It's totally fine.” To emphasize his point, he leaned in and kissed you again.

Which, of course, made you ten times more confused. It was easy to say that for your New Year’s kiss, Peter had just gotten caught up in the moment. But kissing you when there was no around to see? That was hard to ignore.

“Peter-” You wanted to ask if he liked you back, but the elevator dinged as you reached the second floor, and the moment passed.

You made your way to the room that matched the number on your key card, swiping it and entering the room easily.

The room looked like it used to be an office, but it had since been turned into something reminiscent of a hotel suite. There was a large bed that looked like heaven, and you wanted nothing more than to flop down on it.

But Mr. Stark had given you the dress you were wearing and you didn't want to ruin it. You hadn't thought to bring any extra clothes with you.

“Hey, Peter, can I please borrow your shirt? This dress will be super uncomfortable to sleep in and I don't have anything else.”

Before you even finished your question, Peter was unbuttoning his shirt and tossing his bowtie on a nearby chair.

“Here you go.” Peter said sweetly, letting his fingertips brush your hand as he handed it to you.

“Thank you, Petey.” You moved to unzip your dress before realizing that you couldn't reach the zipper. “Can you do me one more favor?” You asked sheepishly, gesturing to the zipper on your dress.

Peter moved behind you, his hands trailing down your shoulders then to your back as he carefully unzipped your dress. His breath on your neck made you shiver.

“Thank you.” You said quietly, stepping out of your dress and pulling Peter's shirt on. You didn't notice the longing look Peter shot in your direction as he took his pants off.

Your heart caught in your throat when you turned around and realized that you'd be sharing a bed with Peter, who was wearing only a thin white tank top and a pair of boxers. He looked gorgeous.

You pushed those thoughts out of your head and climbed into bed cautiously, and Peter followed. You were pleasantly surprised when Peter placed a hand on your waist and gently pulled you closer to him.

“Good night, _y/n_.”

“Good night, Peter.”

----------

When you woke up, you were alone in the bed. You were a little disappointed, as Peter was even more adorable than normal when he was sleepy.

You lazily climbed out of bed and checked your phone, surprised to see that it was almost eleven thirty. You saw that Peter had texted you twenty minutes ago, telling you that he had gone out to get breakfast.

Just as you read the text, Peter pushed open the door. He was carrying two cups of orange juice, a box of donuts, and a box of muffins. He also had a bag on his shoulder.

“Here, let me help you.” You took the cup carrier from him gently.

“Thank you.” Peter deposited the boxes on the bed while you set the drinks on the nightstand. He then shyly handed you the bag from his shoulder.

You raised an eyebrow at him as you opened it. There was a white t-shirt that said Manhattan on it in curly script along with an outline of Manhattan’s skyline and a pair of leggings.

“I thought this might be more comfortable for the ride home than your dress or my shirt.” Peter said teasingly. You looked up at him with a smile and noticed that he was wearing the same shirt he got you. You also noticed that his hair was tangled and much curlier than usual, and you had to fight the urge to run your fingers through it.

“Thank you, Peter.” You brushed a light kiss to his cheek, which made his cheeks darken, before going to the far corner of the room so Peter could start on breakfast while you changed.

When you came back over, you sunk down on the bed next to Peter. You sat with your leg pressed against his so he could balance the donut box between you, and you immediately noticed the pleasant warmth radiating from the contact.

You ate in comfortable silence before packing up the remaining muffins and your clothes and heading down to the first floor.

Tony and Pepper appeared to be waiting for you.

“_y/n_, it was so nice to meet you. If you ever want to go out for brunch or you just want a girls’ day out, feel free to call me.” Pepper said, pulling you into a quick hug.

“I definitely will.” You promised. “It was lovely meeting you.”

Mr. Stark gave Peter a hug before moving in front of you. You were a little surprised when he pulled you into a hug, too.

“Keep him out of trouble for me, please.” He whispered so that only you could hear him.

You smiled conspiratorially at him. “Of course I will.”

You and Peter waved goodbye as you walked out the door of the building and made your way to Peter’s car.

You offered to drive home since he had driven you up the night before, but he insisted it was fine, so you decided not to argue.

Once again, you and Peter sang along to the radio together, laughing and smiling with each other. With his shirt that matched yours and his messy hair, he had never looked more handsome, and you couldn't help your gaze from landing on him every so often.

The drive was over too soon, and you were actually quite sad when Peter arrived at your house.

Peter parked and opened your door for you, so you reluctantly you got out of the car. He walked you to your front door.

“I had a lot of fun last night. And this morning.” Peter murmured quietly, his eyes locked on yours.

“Me too.” You responded softly. Peter brought one of his hands up to cup your cheek before leaning in and kissing you gently. You kissed him back just as gently, and you decided to give into your urge from earlier, running your fingers through his hair.

“_y/n_, I-” Whatever Peter was about to say had been cut short as your father opened the door. You sprung apart from each other immediately.

“Thank you for driving her, Peter. How was Mr. Stark’s party?”

“It was good, really good, Mr. _l/n_.”

“That's good to hear.” He clapped Peter on the shoulder as you walked into your house.

“Bye, Peter.” You waved at him, and he waved back before turning around and getting in his car. He was gone before you could ask what he was going to tell you.

----------

Almost four months had passed since Mr. Stark's party. Neither of you brought up what you were going to say to Peter in the elevator, or what Peter was going to say on your porch.

You had avoided bringing it up because you were scared. At Mr. Stark's party, you had been almost positive that Peter liked you back, but after the party, your relationship had gone back to holding hands and cheek kisses and the occasional peck on the lips.

You hadn't really kissed Peter since the morning after Mr. Stark's party, and it was starting to make you sad.

You didn't know what to do about it. Your relationship, despite your ever-growing feelings for Peter, was fake, whether you liked it or not, and you didn't feel like it was your place to ask for longer kisses (even though you wanted to).

And then Peter started acting really weird and secretive around you. He started spending more time with MJ and Ned, which was fine, except you were never included. And it hurt.

“Hey, Peter, you wanna go get dinner today?” You asked cheerfully as you sat down beside him at lunch.

“I'm busy, sorry.” Peter said shortly, writing something down in a notebook.

“Oh. Okay.” You were silent the rest of lunch and ended up excusing yourself early to go to your next class.

Ned and MJ shared a look.

“Peter, you can't keep blowing her off.” Ned said gently, which made Peter look up at him.

“Huh?”

MJ rolled her eyes. “She asked if you wanted to get dinner tonight, and you said you were busy.”

“I am busy. I want this to be perfect.”

“I understand that you want your promposal to be awesome,” Ned chimed in. “But it doesn't matter how awesome it is if she doesn't want to go with you.”

Peter's eyebrows furrowed. “You don't think she'll want to go with me?”

“Not if you keep brushing her off. Just go get dinner with her tonight and finish up your invite this weekend or something. There's not a time limit to asking her.” MJ said reasonably.

Peter nodded in understanding. “Alright, thank you both.”

----------

You were mindlessly watching TV in your room when your phone buzzed against your thigh.

dinner tonight? my treat :P

You rolled your eyes before sending a text back.

I'd rather just stay home tonight, but thank you.

You were startled when only a few moments later you heard a knock on your window. Turning your head, you were surprised to see your very own fake boyfriend, Peter Parker.

You climbed out of bed and opened your window to let him in. He was wearing his Spidey suit, but that wasn't what intrigued you. You were much more interested in the box of pizza he was holding.

“I didn't say we had to go out for dinner.” Peter said, smiling at you as sat down on your bed.

“What kind of pizza did you get?” You asked as you cautiously sat next to him.

“Your favorite, of course.” He flipped the lid open to reveal it to you.

You inhaled the rich scent of cheese and tomato sauce and various other toppings.

“You sure know the way to a girl’s heart, Parker.”

You were too busy eying the pizza to notice the blush on Peter's cheeks at your words. You ate in companionable silence until you decided to bring up the elephant in the room.

“Why have you been so secretive recently, Petey? I know I'm not really your girlfriend, but it hurts when you don't tell me things.” You were embarrassed to ask, but you needed to know the truth.

“It's easier if I show you.” Peter said, standing up and making his over to your window. He held a hand out to you. “Do you trust me?”

“Are you quoting Aladdin at me right now?” You asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Maybe.”

You chuckled and took his hand. “Of course I trust you.”

“Hold on tight.”

“What? Where are we go-HOLY SHIT PETER!!” Peter had stepped onto your roof, which wasn't that bad, but then the next thing you knew, you were soaring through the air as Peter used his webs to swing you from building to building.

It was absolutely terrifying at first, but after you got over the fear, you realized just how fun and exhilarating it was. You were flying through beautiful New York with your beautiful fake boyfriend.

You kept your arms wrapped tightly around Peter's neck as you admired the city that surrounded you. Your hair whipped around your face, and the chilly evening air nipped at your skin, but you loved it. You were kind of jealous that Peter got to do this all the time.

“Wow.” You murmured quietly. “This is so beautiful, Peter.”

“Yeah, it is.” Peter definitely wasn't looking at the cityscape when he responded.

After about an hour of swinging around the city, you and Peter ended up stopping on top of a building that was significantly taller than many of the buildings in New York.

There was a picnic blanket for you to sit on and some candles, meaning that Peter had picked this building specifically.

You and Peter sat down next to each other, Peter catching his breath and you trying to regain some feeling in your arms.

“Hey, you never answered my question!” You announced indignantly when you remembered the conversation at your house.

Peter chuckled and stood up, gesturing for you to follow. You did so curiously.

“Look.” Peter was at the edge of the building, and he nodded with his head for you to look down.

It didn't take you long to figure out what he wanted you to see. Strung across at least thirty buildings were giant letters. P R O M

You turned to look at Peter, who was holding a piece of paper with a question mark on it.

“You did all this...for me?” You asked softly as you felt your eyes tearing up. Peter was the sweetest person you had ever met.

Peter shrugged like it wasn't a big deal, but it was, it was a huge deal. “Yeah. I wanted it to be special.”

“And that was why you've been so secretive with me.” You murmured in understanding. “You wanted Ned and MJ’s help in figuring out what route you should take and what buildings you should use.”

Peter nodded before he spoke. “Am I forgiven?” Peter asked, holding his arms out for a hug.

You rolled your eyes as you stepped into the embrace. “I wasn't mad at you, Pete, just sad. But yeah, you're forgiven.”

Peter smiled and tucked a strand of hair behind your ear. “So?”

“Of course I'll go to prom with you.” Peter's smile widened at your words, which you thought was odd, because going to prom together had been on your list.

“Did you like it?” Peter asked after a moment of comfortable silence. You were still locked in an embrace so you tilted your head up to look at him.

“Like it? Peter, I loved it. It was so thoughtful and seeing the city with you was amazing and-” Peter interrupted your sentence as he covered your mouth with his.

You were momentarily startled before you began kissing him back. His hands slipped down to your waist, pulling you closer to him. You fisted a hand in his hair, tugging gently, and when Peter moaned softly, you slipped your tongue in his mouth.

His tongue met yours, playfully dancing with it, before you needed to catch your breath so you broke the kiss.

Your eyes met Peter’s, and they were so soft and warm and full of love, and you were positive that Peter could hear how loudly your heart was hammering in your chest.

“I'm in love with you.” You whispered, and you were relieved when Peter gave you a huge, blinding smile.

“And I am so in love with you.” Peter murmured back, and you sagged against him in relief.

“Thank god.”

“How long?” Peter asked curiously, but you were a little distracted by the hand that was stroking through your hair.

You felt your cheeks flame. “I've had a crush on you since about a month before you asked me to pretend to be your girlfriend. And I realized I was in love with you at Mr. Stark's party.”

“So about the same, then. I think I had a crush on you before you agreed to fake date me, but when you spent the night at my house and you curled up next to me, I knew for sure that I did. And I also realized that I was in love with you at Mr. Stark's party when you told me you loved me and kissed me.”

“So what I'm hearing is we could've been dating for real this whole time?” You asked with a chuckle.

Peter started laughing too. “Yeah, I guess you're right. For a couple of geniuses, we're pretty dumb.”

“The dumbest.” You agreed before kissing Peter again because you finally could.

----------

Peter was late for dinner, which wasn’t all that surprising, except that he hadn’t called you first. Usually if he got hung up on something, he would give you a call.

Your fingers was hovering over the call button when you heard rapid tapping on your window. You immediately opened it, and you were surprised to find Peter there, dressed in his Spider-Man suit and holding a very smelly dog.

“I’m so sorry I’m late for dinner.” Peter said apologetically, climbing in the window and moving to sit down on your bed.

“You are not putting that dog on my bed.” You said immediately, and Peter’s face fell.

“But Sandwich-”

“Needs a bath first.” You said firmly, scooping the dog out of his arms and carrying him to your bathroom. You plugged the drain and started to let the water fill up the tub. “Where did you find him?” You asked curiously, digging around under the sink until you found the half full bottle of dog shampoo.

“He was in a box in an alley when I was on patrol. I gave him a sandwich I found in the dumpster so he would let me pick him up. We can’t have dogs at our apartment, so I thought maybe he could stay with you for a bit.”

Peter knew that you already had a dog (Dozer, who he adored) so he was hoping you’d be able to convince your parents to let you keep Sandwich. It would break his heart to have to give Sandwich to a pound.

You chuckled as you carefully put Sandwich in the tub, spraying him with some lukewarm water and beginning to wash the dirt and grime from his fur. “Once he’s all cleaned up, there’s no way mom and dad will be able to say no.”

Peter chuckled and moved to help you bathe Sandwich. You stopped him with one arm.

“Nuh uh, you’re still wearing your suit and you’re gonna get it all wet.” Peter frowned.

“But I wanna help.”

“There’s some money on my desk, why don’t you go get us some subs? Sandwich deserves a good sandwich, not a dumpster sandwich.”

“It was all I had!” Peter said indignantly.

“I know, Pete.” You said, pulling him towards you with your dry hand to peck his lips. “But he wants a fresh one now, doesn’t he?” You asked, scratching Sandwich’s chin. His tail was wagging furiously and splashing water everywhere, but you couldn’t find it in you to be mad.

“Okay.” Peter agreed reluctantly. “I’ll be right back. Don’t do anything cute while I’m gone!” Peter said, pointing a finger at Sandwich.

You chuckled to yourself as Peter walked out of the bathroom, grumbling to himself. You shampooed Sandwich until the water ran clear, draining the dirty water and beginning to wrap Sandwich in a towel.

You hadn’t realized that Peter had left the door open, and you gulped as your dad walked by, peeking his head in.

“Whatcha got there?” He asked curiously, raising an eyebrow at the dog in your arms.

“This is Sandwich. He’s a stray Peter found.” Your dad’s expression was carefully blank, so you decided just to go for it. “Can we keep him?” You asked hopefully, and you were surprised when Sandwich jumped out of your arms and ran to your dad, the towel draped over him like a poncho.

Your dad smiled and picked up the damp dog, chuckling when Sandwich licked his nose.

“He can stay if he and Dozer get along, and if you and Peter start walking him and Dozer everyday.”

“Of course.” You agreed immediately. You were sure Dozer and Sandwich would get along great, and you and Peter walked Dozer almost everyday, anyway. “Thank you thank you thank you!” You wrapped your arms around your dad’s neck, pressing a kiss to his cheek.

“You’re welcome.” Your dad said, handing Sandwich back to you. He gave you another smile before making his way downstairs.

You grinned as you brought Sandwich back into your room, drying him off as best you could with the towel. “Did you hear that, buddy? You get to live with me.” You said excitedly, and Sandwich barked happily and licked your cheek.

You tossed the towel on the floor when you thought Sandwich was sufficiently dry, allowing him to roam around on your bed as you waited for Peter to get back with the sandwiches.

You found Dozer’s brush and began carefully using it to brush Sandwich. He arched towards it, clearing enjoying the attention. By the time Peter crawled in through your window, Sandwich looked like a completely new dog. His brown fur was shiny, and his eyes were bright and happy.

“Sandwich can stay!” You cheered as Peter handed you a sub.

“Really?” Peter asked in excitement, immediately beginning to pet and stroke Sandwich’s fur.

“Dad said yes as long as you and me walk him and Dozer everyday.” You said, taking a bite of your sandwich while Peter began feeding a meatball sub to Sandwich.

“That’s all?” Peter questioned in disbelief. “We already walk Dozer all the time anyway.”

“I know right? Isn’t this awesome?”

Peter nodded in agreement as Sandwich happily licked his fingers clean of all the remaining marinara sauce.

You finished your sandwich and flopped down on your bed, smiling as Peter curled up across from you, and Sandwich wiggled in between you.

“I love you, you know that?” Peter said quietly, and your heart swelled.

“I do, but it’s always nice to hear it.” You leaned over and kissed him sweetly, laughing as Sandwich started licking your chin. “I love you too.”

Peter smiled at you, and you turned on Netflix so you and Peter could relax with Sandwich snoozing contently in the middle of your bed. You had never been happier that Peter had asked you to be his fake girlfriend than you were in that moment.

In addition to getting a real boyfriend, you had met the Avengers and ended up with one of the cutest dogs on the planet. Life was good. 

End. <3

[doctorsorders-deathboy]

Of All the Nights

lmfao i guess i’m back from the dead bitches. (this wip has existed for so long. i could not tell you why i decided to finally finish it tonight but AAA im so excited to be posting a fic again omg) amusingly, my last fic also involved late night baking. i hope you enjoy!!

Word Count: 1941

Read on ao3

It was 3:07am on the third of January and Nico di Angelo was dressed in nothing but a too-small fuchsia bathrobe, soaking wet, and about ready to commit bloody murder.

It was very possible, he thought, that the bathrobe contributed to his fury.

This was the kind of disaster that he’d recount to Jason later, with countless creative swears thrown in, though as he stood shivering and fuming outside a stranger’s apartment, it occurred to him that this might be one of those stories that would get more laughs from Jason than shared anger. Asshole.

Speaking of assholes, the door finally opened, revealing a very flustered looking blond man around Nico’s age. For a moment, Nico almost backed off on his prepared rant upon seeing how miserable the blond looked, but when another draft of winter air hit Nico’s still dripping legs, his scowl only deepened.

“What the hell were you doing baking at fucking three in the morning?”

The blond blinked once, twice, three times. He opened his mouth, closed it, and Nico was about ready to break his damn nose when he finally said, “Sorry… Do I know you?”

Nico had never had height to his advantage but hell if he didn’t know how to make himself intimidating. The blond shrunk back as Nico reared himself up to hiss, “Luckily, I was able to make it through 21 years of my life without meeting you before you had to go and nearly set the damn building on fire because of your insomniac cooking. Do you have any idea what kind of night you’ve caused for me? Did it ever occur to you that maybe you should save your incompetence for the waking hours when most people will be out at work anyways? Honestly, what kind of bullshit did you pull to make the fucking fire alarms go off? Did you pull this shit on purpose? Is this some kind of a joke to you?”

The man took much too long to answer again and Nico was collecting every bit of self control he had to keep himself from wringing this jackass’s neck when the response finally came. “Why are you wet?”

Nico must have reared up spectacularly that time because the man quickly amended, “I mean―! I’m sorry, that’s not the point here, um…” He peeked out of his apartment and looked around the deserted hallway. “If you want to yell at me, can you do it in here? I don’t want to wake anyone else up.”

“Like hell, you care,” Nico grumbled but willingly stepped into the man’s apartment. In hindsight, this really wasn’t Nico’s wisest move considering this guy was a stranger and Nico was nearly naked, but the blond seemed about as threatening as a frightened mouse. A tall, blue-eyed, frightened mouse who somehow had a tan in the dead of winter.

“Sorry, who are you again?” the blond asked, closing the door behind a fuming Nico.

“Your pissed off neighbor from two floors up,” Nico snapped. Unfortunately, the blond visibly cringed, looking like a kicked puppy, so Nico muttered, “Nico. Di Angelo,” as a reconcilement.

“Will Solace,” the blond introduced himself in return. He held his hand out to shake but quickly drew it back when it was clear that Nico’s arms were not moving from where they were crossed against his chest.

They stood in uncomfortable silence until Nico repeated, “How the hell did you set off the fucking alarm?” in as dangerous a voice as he could manage.

“I, well…”

Nico shot another fierce glare and Will didn’t waste anymore time in getting to the point.

“I was making pizzelles for my sister’s birthday and the iron must’ve broken because it was making a lot of smoke. It set off the fire alarm which went off throughout the whole building and… yeah. It was a mess. I’m really sorry. I feel awful.”

Nico didn’t doubt Will’s sincerity. The poor man was hunched in on himself with bags under his hands and his hands firmly stuck in his pockets. That didn’t make his story any less ridiculous, though.

“I’m sorry,” Nico said without a hint of remorse, “I think I missed something. Why the hell were you baking at three in the fucking morning?”

Will frowned at him. “You curse a lot,” he muttered.

“Why the fuck were you―”

“I was working until 1am!” Will exclaimed, which was the first indignant comment he’d made. “And I have classes at ten in the morning, but I promised to meet my friend for coffee at eight so I figured I’d just power through and bake when I got home but―” His voice broke off.

Nico’s cheeks tinted with embarrassment upon seeing Will’s face crumple a bit. God, please don’t cry. Nico hadn’t ever been very good at comforting crying people.

“Sorry,” Will said, his voice hoarse. “I should probably… I’m just going to clean up and go to bed. No more smoke. I promise.” He attempted a laugh to lighten the mood but it came out strangled and pitiful.

Nico was about ready to leave Will to mope when he spotted a picture hanging on the wall across the room. Will stood in the center, looking much happier than he did standing in front of Nico. The Will in the picture had a smile that made you want to smile back and had each arm thrown around a friend, pulling them close. He looked jubilant; the kind of person who you felt certain you could approach without fear. It was a painful contrast to the melancholy man Nico had met.

It felt very wrong to Nico that someone so happy could look so broken.

“What about your sister’s pizzelles?” Nico asked quietly.

Will shrugged. “I’ll have to buy her something on my way over tomorrow. Hopefully she won’t mind. I just feel bad, I promised I’d bake for her. Those pizzelles are her favorite.”

Nico considered this for a moment before internally rolling his eyes at himself. “Then we’d better make some pizzelles, shouldn’t we?”

~*~

“You still never explained to me why you showed up at my apartment soaked and nearly naked,” Will said conversationally, as he stood washing the dishes while Nico carefully arranged pizzelles in a tin.

Nico cleared his throat. “That’s a conversation starter I haven’t heard before.”

“Seriously,” Will said, grinning. “Were you swimming?”

“Why would I be swimming in the dead of night?”

Will shrugged. “I dunno, that’s why I was asking.”

“I wasn’t swimming.” Nico put the lid on the tin and turned around, pulling his fuchsia bathrobe tighter around himself.

Will turned towards him, too, eyebrows still raised.

Nico exhaled very slowly before admitting, “I was taking a shower.”

Will blinked. “At… three in the morning?” When Nico’s expression darkened, he added quickly, “Not that I’m judging! Obviously. I’ve taken many middle-of-the-night showers. I just… So, are you a med student, too, or what?”

Nico scuffed his shoe across the floor and grumbled, “No.”

“Okay.”

Silence.

“So…”

“I had a dream,” Nico blurted, probably due to a combination of his lack of sleep and the way Will’s eyes had this kind, dreamy quality to them that made you feel like you could tell him anything.

Will’s eyebrows furrowed. “You showered because you had a dream?” His eyebrows shot upward. “Oh.”

“Not like that!” Nico said quickly, heat rushing to his face. “No, oh my god, no, that’s not…” And then he was laughing harder than he had in a long time and Will was laughing with him and he hardly felt embarrassed anymore. “No, it was a nightmare, not…” Nico tried to catch his breath. “Not that.”

Will tsked. “That’s a shame.”

“Yes, very disappointing.”

“So the shower was, what, to calm you down?”

Nico shifted, his mind flashing back to the dark, blurred images of a few hours ago. Bianca’s smile melting off her face, his mother screaming for him, a packed, dark room where people were crying and disappearing one by one, and he was next, he was next―

“Yeah,” he said, clearing his throat. “Basically.”

When he’d woken up, he’d had to spend what felt like eternity reminding himself how to breathe again. He’d been having more nightmares recently, ones so bad that he almost considered Jason’s advice to start seeing a therapist. I mean, shit, he knew college wasn’t doing much for him in the mental health department but things hadn’t been this bad since he was thirteen.

He tried different things each night to get himself back to sleep―whatever it took. One night he didn’t manage to properly get back to sleep afterwards; he just lay in his bed with the lights on and music playing, counting the beats of his heart as he dozed on and off. That night, after waking up, he couldn’t stand his own skin, couldn’t stand being trapped in his body any longer, couldn’t stand the way he could still feel cold, dead hands from the dream clutching him―

So he’d gotten in the fucking shower and made the water as hot as he could stand and then the goddamn fire alarm went off. Jesus Christ, of all the fucking nights.

“Must have been a pretty bad dream,” Will murmured.

Nico shrugged. “Yeah, I mean… Yeah. I was… Sorry for being so harsh on you earlier. I was still kind of shaken up, I guess. I probably wouldn’t have marched to your apartment for a stupid mistake on a normal night.”

Will grinned. “Probably?”

“Maybe.”

Will laughed. “Oh, here!” He handed a small tin to Nico. “You helped make em, you should get some for yourself.”

Nico opened it to see that it was crammed full of pizzelles. “Thank you.”

“Yeah, of course. I love the bathrobe, by the way―I never said.”

“Oh god.” Nico groaned. “It’s not mine.”

“Your girlfriend’s?”

And then Nico was laughing again. Christ, that was twice in one night. Something must be wrong with him. “Yeah, no. It’s my sister’s.”

“Ah. Well, for the record, my next guess was that it was your boyfriend’s. I don’t mean to assume anything.”

Nico sucked his teeth. “I don’t have one of those, I’m afraid.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Yes, very disappointing.”

Will smiled softly to himself and Nico noticed that he had a dimple on one side of his face. God. Nico really wished he smiled more.

“Well, thanks so much for the baking help. You really didn’t have to,” Will said as they walked towards the door.

Nico waved him off. “I’m the one who came to your apartment in an angry rage. I needed to make it up to you somehow.”

“Do you frequently get in angry rages?”

“Yes, but mostly just for the aesthetic. Usually I’m too tired to be properly angry.”

Will laughed.

“I’ll return the tin to you, by the way,” Nico added.

“Will you be showing up at my apartment nearly naked again?”

Nico flushed and laughed nervously. “No, I promise I will be fully clothed.”

Will hummed disappointedly. “Well, I suppose I can’t have everything,” he murmured. He smiled then, full and warm, and his eyes crinkled at the corners, and yes, Nico definitely wanted to see that smile more. “Goodnight, Nico,” he said cheerfully.

The door shut before Nico could figure out a way to respond. He stood there staring at it for a solid thirty seconds before turning and heading back to his apartment. When he got back, he decided, he’d put the pizzelles in a different container. He wanted to return the tin to Will Solace as soon as he could get away with.

[fictionerd]

Backlog Post: MG Spec-Ops Asuka Ep 4

Good to see you, friends!

I’m glad you stopped by. You see I think I’ve uncovered the secret as to why I’m so torn on this series, particularly in the writing department.

That’s right, Squeenix is involved. Don’t get me wrong I like a fair few of the Final Fantasy games. I really need to finish Bravely Default one day, and FMA is one of the godfathers of anime, but we all have to admit that Squeenix has a troubled history with good stories. Granted, they’re just the manga publishers so it’s not like they’re directly responsible for the writing, but the fact that their name is attached to a product where I’m iffy on the writing just makes too much sense to me.

Now at this point you may be wondering, “Fic, don’t you research the shows you plan to watch?”

To which I can only respond: “I’m a dragon living in an extra-dimensional library in need of occasional maintenance or else other realities start bleeding in,” followed swiftly by, “Of course I do research on the shows I want to watch. Would you like to see that research?”

And that’s how I came to watch Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka.

Synopsis: This episode is basically all about the world-plot all the time. Even in so far as the character plot is concerned so no extra synopsis this week. Essentially we pick up where we left off with Sporty having been kidnapped by the Babel Brigands. Things seem like they’re going to get right down to the action, but first we get a flash-back nightmare sequence!

[Cue Wayne’s World Flashback transition]

During the war Magical girl’s actually died. Including the original leader of the Magical Girl team who was named Francine. She actually died in Asuka’s arms since the group hadn’t found her in time for Stalker Nurse to do anything to help. She told Asuka to take over the team and remember that no matter how much horrible shit is in this world it also has beautiful things in it. It’s a really touching scene… Too bad the show doesn’t remember the “there are beautiful things too” bit.

[Flash forward]

So, you want to know what the response of the Police Brass’s response to the kidnapping of a high-ranking officer’s daughter happens to be? What with all the Magical nonsense going on and all you’d think maybe they’d have a response team for this sort of thing. Or maybe they’d open communication with the offending party and offer an exchange of hostages seeing as Mophead Mcterrorist is still kicking around. Or, you know, anything? They are Police even if they do have a different name. I presume they’re still there to protect and serve in some capacity even if that idea isn’t associated with the Japanese police the same way it is in the states. No, that’s not what happens at all.

When the concerned father comes to his superior about the situation concerning his kidnapped daughter what does she tell him?

Allow me to elaborate just a bit. Boss-lady here tells Sporty’s dad that they can’t go up against Mophead’s organization because of the risk they have more killer mascot kaiju which, fair enough, that makes sense. However, she then goes on to say that they can’t go running to the JSDF for help because this is too small an issue. BUT if they let this man’s DAUGHTER DIE then they can get a massive budget from the government which should somehow allow them to overcome giant killer plush-toys.

NO! BAD SHOW! You JUST got done telling us there was beauty in the world worth defending. Oh, right, my mistake you DIDN’T get done telling us that I skipped ahead a bit. No what really followed on the heels of the PTSDream was a scene of Sporty all trussed up while “I need Scissors 61” talks about ‘grilled meat’ a whole lot, and basically works to creep Sporty the fuck out.

Back to the failure of Bureaucracy: At the same time or very nearly to the meeting at the police headquarters, Asuka is being told about the situation and how the Police won’t be intervening. She asks what the super-special-magic combat squad for the SDF is going to do and Cyborg Dude’s all like, “Nothing we can’t act without a police request. BUT if a magical girl were to JUST HAPPEN to SHOW UP OF HER OWN VOLITION and a MAGICAL FIGHT were to break out then the incident might escalate to a point where we would be called on to intervene. HINT. HINT.”

So Asuka and Stalker Nurse say they’re going to head out and OH YEAH this is what I’m talking about. Give us half an epis-

What?

What!?

WHAT!?

Oh yes, friends, we get to spend 4-5 minutes of the episode in the basement with Heckel, Jeckel, “I need scissors 61”, while Sporty is tortured. I suppose I should be fair and say that a large portion of that time is filled with exposition on the villains. The most important tidbit being that this whole operation was aimed at luring out magical girls to take one captive in order to create what ‘I need scissors 61’ calls “A Girl of Mass Destruction”. HOWEVER, we’re still getting all this information while Sporty is stripped down to her… Sporty wear, tied to a wooden horse, and BEING FUCKING TORTURED! Even if it is in small bursts it’s still freaking chilling.

So yeah, we don’t get half an episode of the Magical Girls kicking terrorist ass to rescue their friend. Instead we get to see them take down a grand total of one doorknob, one wire trap, and three guards before they get to the trussed up Sporty.

‘I need scissors 61’ is all like, “Hello my dears I’ll be your transparently evil sadist for the evening. By the way I hope all the bondage and guro fetishists in the audience are getting off on what, for them, must amount to softcore.”

Asuka’s fires back with, “Okay, dirtbag, let our friend go and I won’t kill your ass then send the rest of you to kiss it in hell.”

“Let her go,” Says Scissor-bitch, “Why certainly.”

And she CUTS OFF SPORTY’S LEFT ARM! What grinds my gears the most is that she even makes the stupid fake-cutesy. “Woops I totally meant to cut the chains and missed. Tee-hee.”

So official psycho bitch orders the magical girls to put down their weapons or she’ll straight up decapitate the hostage, and at this point I’m SO happy that these are Magical Girls and not gritty Nineties military characters who would be like “go ahead, princess, make my day”. So Asuka makes a show of dropping her Karambit…. At which point the pair proceed to kick ass. Kurumi fires the massive needle-point on her primary weapon through ‘I need scissors 61’s shoulder pinning her to the wall and through a combination of swift action and a magical flashbang theys coop up Sporty sans one arm and make their getaway.

Naturally Runs-With-Scissors is pissed so she and the Ruski’s (Oh yeah the two people helping her torture an adolescent girl are Russian Mercenary Sorcerers) go and chase after the fleeing magical girls. Asuka stayed behind to try and hold them off, but of course Scissor-girl sics the Ruskis on her and chases after War Nurse on her own. We get a teensy bit more action and expository dialouge and that’s where the episode ends. Now I’ve got some serious…

Thoughts: Now to devil’s advocate it’s not wholly inappropriate that the torture scene take place. I’m bringing prejudice to the table based on what I expect out of a usual Magical Girl Show which is made for a MUCH DIFFERENT target demographic. Honestly along with more fanservice one should go into a Seinen show expecting more grim or edgy aspects to take the forefront. My problem is that those sorts of aspects don’t necessarily make a show more mature.

I guess I’ll never get over it, but Madoka was a perfectly mature take on the Magical Girl template that didn’t need a lot of edgy gory content or blatant spank material. This show seems to not know what the audience for it would want. I came into this thinking “Military Magical Girls in a series whose rating might allow them to actually show the horrors of war? That seems neat.” What I got was a post-war series that doesn’t seem to know if it wants to be about the trauma endured by what effectively child soldiers; a story about a war hero fighting to live a somewhat normal live while realizing the responsibility they have to keep fighting the good fight; pandering to the various circles who would find under-dressed young women attractive; softcore fetish porn; or any of a number of other things.

At the end of the day what did the torture scene serve? What purpose did it have? Was it important to the narrative that we see it? No… No it wasn’t. All it did was show us that one of the Ruski’s has a water Persona and the other likes to heat metal implements and is referred to as a chef. These are things that could have been exposited in combat, and I get that’s more a shounen thing but it doesn’t make the point any less valid. As for the explanation of what Babelfish wanted a Magical Girl for they could have moved that up to when Scissor-girl was tormenting Sporty with grilled meat earlier, or moved back to the classic villainous monologue after our heroes had arrived. If there had been even an iota of reason for the torture scene. Then I probably wouldn’t be this mad, because strong emotional reactions are what I look for to see if a piece of media is doing its job well. Getting angry at a story doesn’t immediately indicate that it’s bad. It’s when you’re mad for reasons other than those specifically written that we have a problem.

I didn’t see the torture scene this episode and think “Those monsters! I want to wring their necks!”

… Okay yes I did, but the problem is that I also asked a question: “Why is this here?”

Having a villain do an evil thing because they are wicked makes sense. SHOWING us them doing said evil thing has to have a narrative reason beyond just “Oh they’re the evil villain!”

Okay… I think I’m starting to repeat myself on that point so let’s talk about the other concern I have. The Flashback PTSDream implies that Asuka is driven to fight by the fact that despite how bad things can be there are still things worth protecting in the world. The problem, as I said in the synopsis, is that the show seems to have missed the memo on that. On the contrary the world is a place where young women get kidnapped and tortured, war heroes can’t get a good night’s sleep, and even the people who SHOULD be the good guys come across as evil schemers.

I know I skipped over the fact that the Police Lady and Cyborg-Scarface were actively manipulating Asuka and Stalker-Nurse into action, but so far as Sporty’s dad knows his boss is someone who’s willing to sacrifice a subordinate’s daughter to get a BUDGET BUMP!

If you’re going to stand on the premise that there are things worth protecting in the world you need to actually SHOW US THOSE THINGS!

“But, Fic, There’s Sporty and Bookish! They’re worth protecting!”

Yes, how very astute. Innocents ARE worth protecting. However, what about the WORLD makes it worth the Magical Girls’ efforts? Where is the beauty that Francine loved? We should have seen at least a sliver of it in this episode.

[Sigh] I stepped away from this post for a while to clear my head and I can’t come up with a positive note to end on. Oh well. I suppose we’ll just have to look forward to other things. Hopefully the future of this show will balance things out, but I know I’ll have fun digging my claws into it regardless.

That said: Until next post keep talking fiction, friends! I’ll see you soon.

P.S.: This week’s Spec-Ops will be posted later this evening. I need to take some time to myself first.

[dcbicki]

“Out of the blue, to my doorstep she came.”

Basically an AU, with some major canon plot points thrown in for good measure. A sneak peek of a new Mike/Eleven fic I’m working on, so let me if you want more.

When a random girl shows up on his doorstep, covered in blood and dirt, sixteen year-old Mike has no idea what to do. But the girl seems to know who he is, and she isn’t willing to let him call the cops.

-

The party hasn’t even been gone that long when someone knocks on the basement door. Max had been the last one out the door, but not before giving Mike some half-hearted apology after eating the freshly baked cookies his mom had left him.

He hadn’t minded, mainly because he was more excited at the prospect of his parents being gone on some three-day convention than the idea of fresh cookies. He had the house to himself, as Nancy was off at college and Holly was staying with his grandparents for the weekend.

An empty house meant he had time to watch whatever he wanted whenever he wished, and he could have dinner without the constant earache of his father telling him to just join a freakin’ sports team already.

The guys had come around earlier, almost as soon as his parents’ had left. They brought snacks and tapes and games to entertain themselves with. The gang hadn’t had much free time to themselves lately, because of schoolwork and extracurriculars, but it was Christmas break. So, deciding to take advantage of an empty Wheeler house, Mike had invited them around.

But, and he wouldn’t admit it out loud, when the door had closed behind Max and he was alone in the silence… he kind of liked it. He enjoyed his own company sometimes, probably more often than he’d actually care to admit to anyone. It was nice to just sit down, and not do anything.

(Plus, he doesn’t have to watch Lucas and Max swapping spit on his sofa anymore, or listen to Dustin curse a whole lot when Will beat him at Monopoly.)

So, when there’s a fist hammering against his basement window, and Mike’s peace is being disturbed, he isn’t exactly thrilled.

If it turns out Lucas just forgot his binoculars, he’s going to be pissed. His parents are gone for three days, so it’s not like the guys couldn’t come back over tomorrow. How urgently did he need them anyway? What, was he gonna go creeping through girls’ windows with Dustin like they did last month, before he finally convinced the redhead to date him? If so, gross. Mike wants no part in it.

Tossing his walkie back down on the sofa, the boy groans, brushing his hands down his pants as he stands up to unlock the door. He walks over to it with slow steps, taking his time in undoing the lock.

“Lucas, I swear, if you just want to perv on cheerleaders again-”

It’s not his friend on his doorstep, instead it’s a girl who looks lost.

“Oh.” Mike frowns, and his eyebrows dance up and down in confusion. He grips the doorframe with one hand, eyeing the girl carefully, “Can I help you?” His nose crinkles at the cold air breezing in, and he hopes to God she isn’t going to take long.

She doesn’t speak, but her mouth opens as though she’s going to. All that escapes is a short breath, almost like a sigh of relief.

The tall boy feels his lips curl into a small smile, and he thinks it’s because his mom has drilled it into his head to be nice to strangers who knock on their door. So, he’s nice, and he’s polite.

“Do you,” he starts, and he looks her up and down, taken despite himself, “do you need help?”

She just looks… odd.

Rather than the long hair he’s used to seeing teenage girls sport, her brown hair is cropped short – soft chestnut curls that fall just past her ears, unbrushed and slightly disheveled. He thinks she might actually be pretty if it weren’t for the dirt on her face.

Mike can feel his face heating up as he continues to stare at her, because he doesn’t want to seem like a creep. But her lips are chapped, there’s a small cut just above her cupid’s bow, and he’s almost certain her nose has been bleeding.

She can’t be much younger than him, maybe a year at most. She doesn’t look any older than fifteen, but maybe her petite height and his freakishly tall legs aren’t much to go by. (Dustin always says he grew too quick.)

It’s then that he remembers the girl is still staring up at him, all wide-eyed and moony. It’s almost as though she knows him, recognises him, knocked on his door with purpose. Her eyes are brown, and slightly lighter than his, though they aren’t as kind, and she radiates something Mike can’t quite put his finger on.

He notices her attire then; the way her socks are pulled up unevenly, one just below the knee as the other is scrunched around her ankle. The whiteness of the fabric looks as though it’s dirtied over time, and the yellow stripes are darker than they should be, several shades browner than their usual bright tone. Her skin isn’t pale though, and she doesn’t look unwell, sickly; only exhausted.

Her dress hangs just to her thighs, the frayed pink satin swaying in front of her bloody kneecaps as she steadies herself, arms dangling by her sides with unease. The white collar of her costume dress is still pretty neat, Mike notes. But the ribbed part of the clothe’s bust is mucked with dirt and what he can only assume is dried blood.

She has a deep blue windbreaker covering her shoulders, but the sleeves are much too long for her small figure, and she looks drowned by it. For a moment, he thinks he might recognise the jacket, but the suspicion passes all too quickly when he takes in her stance.

Her back is arched, as though she hasn’t slept for awhile, and he has half a mind to reach out and grab her before her knees buckle. He doesn’t though, and he keeps his distance – mainly because she’s some strange girl who just knocked on his basement door and she looks like she’s been dragged through hell and back.

Maybe she’s been abused, and ran away.

Shit!

Shit. He should totally call the cops because they’ll know what to-

“Mike.”

[thefanficmonster]

Oblivious

Valkyrae (Rae) x Reader (Gender Neutral) ft. Corpse Husband

Warnings: None

Genre: FLUFF, Humor, RPF (Real Person Fic)

Summary: In the most desperate of times, we may or may not be used to hearing the phrase ‘Beggers can’t be choosers’ which is exactly why Y/N’s found themself asking the most hopeless of cases when it comes to love and romance - Corpse, for help.

Requested by Xara. Hi darling! Thank you so much for this wonderful request you’ve sent me - I love writing for Rae (excuse my bi excitement, I’m just a HUGE simp) and I can’t thank you enough for giving me the opportunity to do so. Sorry it’s been two months since you requested this but here it finally is and I hope it makes up for the wait. Love, Vy ❤

“Corpse, I’m in desperate need for help.“ I don’t even bother with a friendly or even polite greeting. Being best friends for as long as we have, Corpse and I excluded the politeness that comes with phone calls a long time ago, especially when calling with an emergency. Though, let’s be honest, if I’m calling him on the phone and not on video chat like I usually do, it is an emergency.

“Given that you’re asking me, I can imagine how desperate you are.“ He has the audacity to laugh in response, causing me to roll my eyes. 

Now, don’t get the wrong idea - I love Corpse with all my heart. Him and I have been through A LOT together considering we know each other since we were teenagers. However, there are some instances in life when he simply doesn’t get me. Not that he doesn’t try to, he does and does so very hard, but he rarely succeeds. Trying is what matters, of course. Given that he is my only close friend, I can only ever turn to him with my problems though I try my best not to bother him too much, but when things get REALLY tough, I can’t help but go and vent to him. Luckily, he’s always been very understanding, but it may be because he feels like he owes me for all the times he has turned to me with his problems. I’ve tried to explain that he shouldn’t feel such a way, but that’s rather hypocritical of me cause I feel the same way.

Alright, enough digressing, back on track!

“Desperate doesn’t even begin to summarize how I feel.“ I sigh, plopping down on the couch in my living room, kicking my feet up on the coffee table as I cover my eyes with my hand. “Brutally miserable is, I think, the correct term to use here.“

I hear Corpse let out a quiet ‘oof’, one I think he hoped I wouldn’t hear. “And what led you to finally give in and ask for help, not that I can offer you much?”

I can’t help but snort at that, a snort that serves as a replacement to slapping myself across the face. “Rae texted me yesterday asking if I’d like to play Minecraft with her and I took THREE HOURS to respond! Not on purpose, I just couldn’t think of something good to say!” I know I sound like a whiney kid, but I think I’ve passed that threshold LONG ago. Of course, this whiney kid version of me only surfaces around Corpse and Corpse only. No one else is allowed to see me like this or that would legit be the end of any sort of pride I may have left in me.

“You mean you couldn’t choose between ‘Sure, I’d like that!’ and ‘Of course, I’d love to!’? Please say yes.“ Corpse already sounds disappointed and he hasn’t even heard the worst of it yet.

“No and sit tight, it gets worse. I...“

He cuts me off, “Wait, no, don’t say it. Let me guess - you turned her down? Keep in mind if you say yes I’m hanging up on you.”

I remain silent, pinching the bridge of me nose and cringing as hard as my facial muscles are willing to allow. I can’t say yes, not cause he’ll hang up but because admitting it makes it more real, and the more real it is the more depressed it’ll make me and I will go back to being a self-deprecating mess that refuses to be productive or properly functioning - aka ‘Whiney Kid Maximum’.

“I’m hanging up.“ Corpse says after waiting five seconds for my response that only comes in the form of dead silence which is more than enough of an answer in and of itself.

“No, please don’t!“ I squeak out despite my agony, “I’ll never break the cycle if you don’t help me, Corpse! I’m a hopeless case!“

“You’re a hopeless case with or without me, Y/N.“ He states, angering me ever so slightly. “Not only cause you really are, but because I have nothing useful to offer you. Not even a single advice. Even if I did, giving it to you would by hypocritical when considered how bad I am on this field myself. Hell, the very person you’re head over heels for is my personal matchmaker. If anything, you should be asking her how to swoon her...“ He pauses.

So does my brain.

For a second we’re both quiet, the silence on the line suggesting big plans are being developed - well, not on my end but still.

“Now there’s an idea...“ He mutters more to himself than to me.

“No!“ I shriek fearfully, “Please, if you love me even the tiniest bit, Corpse, don’t put me in a situation where I have to be alone with Rae! Not IRL not in a Discord call - not in ANYTHING. I close up and end up seeming unfriendly and rude because of my inability to talk to her like a normal human being! I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I just can’t do it! So please don’t make me.“

I maybe can’t read minds, but hell if I can’t at least have a rough guess of what’s on my best friend’s mind - I know he’s already scheming and coming up with odd solutions to my problem - some of which will cause me more problems but let’s not even mention those. That being said, I need to prevent him from actually carrying out any of his absurd schemes, otherwise it’s game over for me.

“Hmm, ok fine, but only cause I wanna spare you your own awkwardness. Consider it charity.“ He sighs, the disappointment even more evident now.

I sigh too, but I do so in defeated relief. It’s bittersweet, to be honest. “Thank you.”

“Don’t.“ He says sharply, “Don’t thank me. It’ll make me feel like I’m encouraging your behavior.“

Well, screw my feelings, I guess. I’m left on this battlefield alone, aren’t I?

Corpse hanging up the call confirms that I am, indeed, alone.

                                                             *  *  *

“Hello?“

“Are you still in bed, for the love of God? It’s noon!“ Not only did he have the audacity to wake me up with his phone call, but now he has the audacity to judge me on my sleeping habits as well. Some darn nerve he has.

“What do you want, Corpse?“ I grumble out, groggy and now grumpy too. The last thing I need is the only person I can turn to turning on me. Especially not now. I don’t need his or anybody else’s judgement of me or my life, it’ll hurt too much.

“I want to know how long you haven’t showered, Y/N.“ He barks back, causing me to roll my eyes. “And when’s the last time you actually ate something healthy and nutritious and not just greasy takeout?”

“I showered last night!“ I straighten up and frown, feeling offended despite his questions being justifiable. I think that’s exactly why I’m pissed off, to be honest - he knows me and my habits too well. “And you’re just being hypocritical on the eating part!“

“Whatever.“ He mutters, allowing me to feel at least a tiny sense of victory for having proven him wrong, “Get your ass up and come play Minecraft with me, you need to be cheered up asap.“ He continues, much to my dismay. “And don’t even think about saying ‘no’. If you do, just remember, I have your address and a strong will to kick your ass into shape.“

“Into shape? We’re going to the gym or something?“ I’m honestly confused and intrigued now. Maybe the gym isn’t such a bad idea, I’m sure I could become really good friends with the punching bag.

Corpse sighs exasperatedly in a way I can basically hear him roll his eyes as well, “Not that kind of shape, Y/N. Just get on Discord, seriously, I’m worried about you.“ 

That sentence strikes a nerve. Something about that genuine concern in his voice reminds me that I still need to move on from focusing so strongly on just my failures, no matter how big or small, and keep pushing forward, if not for myself then for the people who care about me. For Corpse especially, seeing as how he’s sort of been my babysitter ever since my feelings towards Rae started to consume me whole and suffocate me. I don’t know how or when it happened, in fact I can best describe it as the Titanic: I was doing ok and then instead of hitting an iceberg the iceberg of feelings hit me and I started sinking. Corpse was there to offer me a hand to help me keep at least my head above the surface. He can’t pull me out of the water but he’s not willing to let go either. I’m afraid holding on like that will tire him out to the point of letting go of me completely, but I’m afraid of sinking too. You see my dilemma here, no?

“Ok, give me twenty minutes.“

I would have probably continued sleeping or just chilled on social media, refusing to get out of bed for at least another hour, but the debt I feel towards Corpse is stronger than the desire to be a slob so I motivate myself with every power my fragile mind can fish out of the void and push the covers off me, shivering at the drastic change in temperature around my body now that I’m exposed to the rather cool air in my room, my pajamas hopeless at providing me with any warmth.

Twenty minutes later sharp, I’m seated at my desk, in front of my computer with my headphones on, taking one last encouraging breath before entering the call where Corpse is waiting for me.

“Yo.“ I greet him half-heartedly, drawing invisible abstract patterns on my desk with my finger as if I’m avoiding eye contact with him IRL.

“Glad to see you haven’t lost your sense of punctuality at least.“ He chuckles, sounding a lot more pleasant and a lot more like my friend Corpse and less like sergeant Corpse Husband who was speaking with me on the phone earlier.

“Very funny.“ I murmur in my now common brooding manner, “Anyway, enough about me, how are you doing? Anything interesting happen since we last spoke?“

“You mean in the past ten hours? No, nothing interesting apart from that I managed to catch a few z’s.“ He replies as I join the Minecraft server, managing to get a smile out of me.

“Hey, that’s nice to hear! Good for you, Corpsie.“ I say, honestly proud and happy for him.

“Yeah, and just so you’re not calling me hypocritical on the topic of eating, I’m currently cooking myself lunch.“ He points out, now just straight up peacocking, “On that note, I got a pot on the stove so you’ll have to excuse me for a sec.“

“Please go. Don’t set your apartment on fire the first time you cook” I snicker, leaning back in my chair and fetch my phone to kill the time while he’s gone to tend to whatever attempt at a meal he has prepping in his kitchen. I feel bad for his stomach, and his kitchen, already.

“Corpse? Hi!“

Oh no. No, no, no, no, no - tell me that was an auditory hallucination and I didn’t actually hear that just now! TELL ME!

“Rae?“ I blurt out, almost falling backwards out of my chair, eyes wide, jaw hanging slightly.

Just then I get a text from Corpse:

Consider me dead and carry the convo. I know you’ve got this, Y/N

Oh that prick is gonna get it!

“Y/N? Hi! Sorry, Corpse didn’t mention you’d be playing with us, but it’s so nice to be hearing from you! It feels like it’s been forever.“ Rae replies, cheery and enthusiastic as ever, just like the absolute sweetheart she is.

With Corpse absent from his position, without his metaphorical hand holding mine, I’m metaphorically sinking and drowning. Maybe the drowning part isn’t so metaphorical after all, considering I actually am drowning in all the thoughts produced by my mind at the moment. A mind that’s going completely haywire, might I add.

“Hehe, well, funny thing, he didn’t tell me you’d be playing with us either.“ I chuckle anxiously, already breaking out in a nervous sweat. I solemnly promise to kill Corpse first chance I get, that way he’ll at least be dead for real.

“He set us up, huh? What’s his game, where even is he?“ Rae asks, properly confused as she should be.

All on-point questions, hun. And I can’t answer any of them logically.

“Um, you know, he’s off doing...something.“ And there go my conversational skills out the window, I hope they send me a postcard one day.

“Whatever, enough about Mr. Ominous. Tell me, what’s been keeping you busy?“ Oh crap, this is the question I’ve been fearing. Mostly cause I’m not prepared for it. “Actually no, let me rephrase: Why have you been avoiding me recently?“

‘Oh crap’ squared. Tripled.

“Whaaat? Avoiding you? Where’d you get that idea?“ I’m aware of my high pitched voice, but it’s not like I can do much to tone it down. Every part of me is in critical panic mode and rationality has accompanied my aforementioned conversational skills out the window.

“I don’t know, Y/N. Ignoring my texts, leaving me on ‘Seen’ and then declining my offer just to accept the same one coming from Corpse - can’t really blame me for finding it shady.“ She replies, her words making me wince and hide my face in the palms of my hands as though it’ll shield me from Rae’s brutal honesty and forthrightness. 

“I’ve been...bad at replying to everyone lately, nothing personal, I swear.“ Yeah, that sounded convincing, good gosh-darn job, Y/N!

“Why’s that?“ Something about her tone suggest she knows I’m lying and is just humoring me and my agony. I don’t know if to thank her for it or wish she’d just rip off the band-aid and confront me head-on. In that case I’d have only one of two options: freeze up or spill my guts. Honestly, I don’t know which is worse. “I thought you’d reach out to me, given you’ve found yourself in a pickle.”

I frown, confused and wary like I’m walking on thin ice over a pool of sharks, “Pickle? What pickle?“

“Corpse mentioned you needed dating advice.“ She replies simply as though it should’ve been obvious and as if it’s the most casual, regular and normal thing. Little does she know...

“Um, yeah, I guess you can call it that.“ I murmur sheepishly, my cheeks reddening.

“Who’s the lucky girl?“ She asks, the excitement now replacing the previous suspicion she was fronting, making me nervous as hell.

My heart skips a beat, “How’d you know I’m crushing on a girl?“

“Uh...“ She stumbles over her words, pausing to collect her thoughts and formulate a response, “Corpse told me!“ When the reply finally arrives it’s as high pitched as mine was earlier, suggesting something ain’t right.

I stay quiet, my mind and heart racing which is quicker. My leg is bouncing, my fingers are tapping the keyboard rhythmically as I rack my brain, pushing it to put the pieces of this enigmatic puzzle together, connect the dots.

When it finally does, I’m left with a horrific end-result, a realization that makes me go pale as a ghost, “He told you who said girl is too, didn’t he?” I say, my voice barely above a whisper. I keep the tone low so she doesn’t notice how shaky it is.

It takes her a few seconds to reply, but when she does I kinda wish she hadn’t, “Maybe...”

My first instinct is to excuse myself from the call, pack all my kitchen knives and drive to Corpse’s house but with my limbs having lost any and all feeling in them that is practically impossible. So, I settle for my second instinct which is hiding my face in the palms of my hands as though they can shield me from the immense embarrassment Corpse has set me up for.

“Listen...“ I start, not sure where I wanna go with this, “You don’t have to say anything, I get the hint. No need to bother with a gentle reje-“

“I like you too, Y/N!“ Rae cuts off my rambling with a melodic laugh, “I’m sorry, but you can be very oblivious sometimes, and I just wanted to give you a taste of your own medicine for a bit. Sorry if I freaked you out.“ Judging by her tone, she’s not sorry at all. In fact, she’s one step away from bursting out into laughter.

“Trust me, ‘freaked out’ doesn’t even begin to describe it.“ I sigh, exasperatedly, sinking into my chair alike a deflated balloon. “You and Corpse are gonna pay for that heart attack you led me to the brink of!”

This time, she doesn’t hold back, letting out the laughter she’s been holding back this whole time, “I don’t know how Corpse will do that, but could I pay my dues with a brunch on Friday?”

My eyebrows shoot up, “Miss Valkyrae, is this you asking me out on a date?“ I ask teasingly - aka with more confidence than I feel.

Please say ‘yes’. Please say ‘yes’. Please say ‘yes’.

“I don’t know, what do you think, Y/N?“ She asks, tone just as teasing as mine.

“Hey, I’m not as oblivious as you claim I am!“ I argue light-heartedly, “Does 2PM work for you?“

“Any time works for me.“ Rae replies, a smile blatantly evident in her voice. A smile that unleashes a flock of butterflies in my stomach.

And just like that, I have a date with the girl I’ve had a crush on for the longest time. It happened so fast it’s practically a blurred part in my mind, but one thing I’m sure will be crystal-clearly imbedded in my mind forever is that brunch on Friday. Just then, I get yet another text from Mr. Schemer himself.

That wasn’t so hard now, was it?

Some nerve he has, I swear to God.

[mittensmorgul]

I'm shook. Dean actually admitted that Chuck doesn't care, that Chuck just left and ignored all of his responsibilities. I thought Dean was pro-Chuck, I mean, he called Chuck a bestie, didn't he? I'm not sure if he really resents Chuck or he was just too depressed to think straight. I'm still shook though. (Oh, and if you're feeling unwell I hope you recover. I wish you luck. May October be kind to you.)

Aahhh, thank you. :P And yeah, I’ve been sick since Walker-Stalker Philly a few weeks ago, stupid con crud that turned into bronchitis because I am a weakling with no immune system. :D

I’ve also been debating whether I should write tonight (fic, which I have a deadline of december 2 on and I’m not even close to finished on), or if I should write a long meta on Fathers, or if I should just go to sleep and try again tomorrow. But this bit about Chuck, and how Dean feels about Chuck as an absent father figure, would factor into that meta.

I mean Dean’s always held a grudge against God since… ever probably, but at least in text as far back as 5.02 when Cas set out in search of God to help stop the apocalypse. Chuck never really grew into anything Dean could really respect any more than that, you know? Even the burden Chuck laid on him at the end of s11 wasn’t what Dean wanted. Dean had his ENTIRE LIFE ruined because of Chuck’s inability to clean up his own mess, and then suddenly Dean fixes it FOR him, and Chuck just sashays off into the sunset with Amara and again lays the entire burden for taking care of EVERYTHING at Dean’s feet… but Dean’s still just a guy doing a job. He doesn’t have Cosmic God Powers to just fix stuff when it goes wrong. How the hell is he meant to take care of the entire world?

He does try, though. Oh, how he tries. Until it crushes and breaks him.

(and whoopsie this is actually shaping up to BE that meta on fathers I’ve been thinking about, so guess how I’m gonna spend the next hour! WHEEE! *tosses fic writing plans out the window*)

I’ll start with the easiest one: Dean referring to Chuck as his bestie. In 12.04:

Gail: Do you know God, gentlemen?Dean: Oh yeah. Yeah, we’re- we’re besties.

Said with about 9 tons of sarcasm. I’d find a gif to demonstrate just how done Dean was in that scene, but he was pretty much done with EVERYTHING in 12.04. I think that nicely sums up his attitude going into that conversation.

But yes, I 100% do feel like Dean resents Chuck– for laying this burden on him and not giving him ANYTHING else. He laid this out to Chuck’s face in 11.21:

Dean: Here’s the thing, um…Chuck… And I mean no disrespect. Um… I’m guessing you came back to help with the Darkness, and that’s great. That’s, you know – It’s fantastic. Um, but you’ve been gone a – a… long, long time. And there’s so much crap that has gone down on the Earth for thousands of years. I mean, plagues and wars, slaughters. And you were, I don’t know, writing books, going to fan conventions. Were you even aware, o-or did you just tune it out?Chuck: I was aware, Dean.Dean: But you did nothing. And, again, I-I’m not trying to piss you off. You know, I don’t want to turn into a pillar of salt.Chuck: I actually… didn’t do that.Dean: Okay. People – People pray to you. People build churches for you. They fight wars in your name, and you did nothing.Chuck: You’re frustrated. I get it. Believe me, I was hands-on – Real hands-on for, wow, ages. I was so sure if I kept stepping in, teaching, punishing, that these beautiful creatures that I created… would grow up. But it only stayed the same. And I saw that I needed to step away and let my baby find its way. Being overinvolved is no longer parenting. [Sighs] It’s enabling.Dean: But it didn’t get better.Chuck: Well, I’ve been mulling it over. And from where I sit, I think it has.Dean: Well, from where I sit, it feels like you left us and you’re trying to justify it.Chuck: I know you had a complicated upbringing, Dean, but don’t confuse me with your dad.

And that’s it, really. The crux of Dean’s feelings toward Chuck. And that never really changed. Dean still had to take the burden of sacrifice on HIMSELF (carrying the Soul Bomb to Amara) because Chuck didn’t or couldn’t or just wouldn’t. It wasn’t Chuck that saved the world there, it was Dean using his words with Amara, dragging Chuck kicking and screaming into the conversation.

Okay, not kicking and screaming, more like whimpering and huddling… whatever… :P

But Chuck told Dean not to confuse him with John, and mistake his own “complicated upbringing” for Chuck’s “parenting” of the entire universe. And yet… as above, so below. And Chuck himself “chose” Dean as his mirror.

Then we have Dean’s own complicated Father Issues, from how John raised him, to how he was forced to raise Sam. As he said in 12.22 to Mary, he was forced to not only be a father to Sam, but a mother as well. And it wasn’t fair to Dean, and he hated Mary for her deal that put him in that position in the first place. What was unsaid there, but plain as day anyway, was that he hated John for it, too.

Lizbob and I were talking earlier about how Jack was describing the fact that he WAS his mother for a while before he was born, and how the very act of his birth sucked the life out of Kelly, and how that was a horrifying metaphor for motherhood, but Dean has said it himself, of Sam. Back in 10.03, when Sam was curing him of being a demon:

DEAN: You notice I tried to get as far away from you as possible? Away from your whining, your complaining. I chose the King of Hell over you! Maybe I was just … tired of babysitting you. Or always having to yank your lame ass out of the fire since … [Dean laughs.] Forever. Or maybe … Maybe it was the fact that my mother would still be alive if it wasn’t for you. That your very existence sucked the life out of my life!SAM: This isn’t my brother talking.DEAN: You never had a brother! Just an excuse for not manning up. But guess what: I quit.SAM: No. No, you don’t. You don’t get to quit. We don’t get to quit in this family! This family is all we have ever had!DEAN: Well, then, we got nothin’.SAM: Would you say that to Dad?DEAN: Dad? Oh, there’s a prize. There’s a man who brainwashed us into wasting our lives fighting his losing battle!

Sam’s “very existence sucked the life” out of Dean’s life, just like Jack literally did to his mother, just TWO EPISODES AFTER Dean broke through to Mary with his confession about the horrors of his life, and his anger over having to be both mother and father to Sam.

And this was about the point I hit my EUREKA! moment over why the idea of Dean being forced to be a parent to Jack just pushed every NOPE NOPE NOPE button in my entire body. Because he’s JUST NOW finally letting go of feeling like his entire life had been one long forced obligation to be a parent to Sam, and now here’s this new pseudo-manbaby with frightening and potentially Dangerous Magical Abilities who needs parenting and looking after that was foisted on him against his will AGAIN.

I mean, it’s like the ultimate in Cosmically Un-Fucking-Fair.

And even the notion that Cas should be responsible for “parenting” the giant nougat-loving nuke in lost-and-found clothes just… sits so wrong with me for the exact same reason. How long has Cas been a guardian to Dean? How big was the whole “You aren’t our babysitter” theme last season? That Cas never really had time to internalize before Jack hijacked Cas’s “babysitter” instincts for his own purposes?

Yes, it’s sweet and I can see that the parallels between Jack and Cas are being written really well so far, but the cutesy Cas-as-Jack’s-Daddy stuff just physically sickens me (which is saying something considering how physically sick I am as a baseline here…). I don’t think it’s “cute.” And I’m saying this as someone who LOVES Jack as a character.

Kelly (who was literally already “dead” at the point she met Cas, and was technically– according to Jack himself– already “Jack” at that point) had sized up Cas and decided that he would make a good guardian for Jack, and that Dagon would make a bad guardian for him, and took matters into her own hands in order to make that happen. Literally took Cas’s hand without his permission, after he’d declined to touch her stomach, and then forced his hand again after literally hijacking Baby and driving Cas to the scene of her “vision.” Then literally taking Cas’s hand again to force events to unfold as they had in the vision, without regard to any of the other horrors that played out as a result– such as Joshua having been killed by Dagon, the Colt being destroyed, Sam and Dean being hurt, Cas nearly getting killed, and then zapping enough power through Cas to kill Dagon, a being of a type we’ve only ever seen harmed by the Colt and the Lance of Michael. It was clear early on that Jack had Serious Power and yet we see he has practically NO CONTROL over it.

I am soooo tempted to apply a little bit of Miriam’s description of Becky to Jack… 

He sees something he wants and just takes it without a thought for who it might hurt. He took candy from the vending machine in 13.01, but… he kinda did that to Cas, too. Even before he was born, he saw the sort of devotion Cas had to the people he cared about and even if he didn’t understand WHY, he understood through Kelly that this was something he would need for himself. So he took it, even if it might hurt other people.

Just like he flung his power out at the sheriff when she touched him while he was being assaulted by angel radio. He didn’t intend to hurt her, but he was already in pain and frightened and that’s just how his power works for him right now… as if it’s “him but not him.” Almost like it’s an independent entity that’s in Extreme Self-Protection Mode.

That’s how Miriam described Dean, as someone who takes things and breaks things no matter who it hurts. But really… that’s not Dean, and that’s not Jack either– or at least not what Jack would CHOOSE to be. But from the outside, it kinda looks that way.

So, yeah, I LOVE the idea that Sam is finally getting a turn at forced parenthood from the other side of the equation. It fits beautifully with his own arc toward self-forgiveness and acceptance of his own powers and feelings of whether or not he was inherently evil because of what had been done to him as a baby. I LOVE the idea that Sam will get to experience being a father and mother to someone going through much the same things he did all his life (albeit as an adult, which was not a luxury Dean had when he was forced into a parental role at the age of almost five).

But for Dean? I’m horrified that this has been forced on him again. And for Cas? The fact it’s not something he chose of his own free will, nor gave informed consent to before he was sock-puppeted into becoming Jack’s babysitter… yeah, I find it moderately to seriously disturbing…

And for the sake little baby Jesus, I AM NOT IMPLYING THAT JACK IS EVIL. I AM NOT IMPLYING THAT JACK IS NOT “GOOD.” Good and evil are entirely irrelevant to this conversation.

But Jack’s power did something to Kelly. And it did something to Cas. It wasn’t done with malicious intent, but IT WAS DONE TO THEM. And it’s something that severely limited their free will. We’ve seen how Jack’s power works, without his active CHOICE to make stuff happen. He’s on a fight or flight sort of level with it right now, and it just happens to be set to overkill, you know? I’m sure he’ll get a better handle on it eventually, but I think it’s also going to be a vulnerability that others may try to exploit (enter Asmodeus, or potentially AU Michael, and possibly eventually Lucifer… this isn’t going to be an easy journey for Jack).

Anyway I think I’ve wandered so far off topic of your original question, but congrats, you won the Which Question Will Result In Actual Meta award this week! :P

I think it’s been more than an hour. *checks clock* *what even is time anymore* It’s definitely been more than an hour.

[shakespearedidnothavecumsh0ts]

Freaky Monday

Maleo Week Day 3 // July 18th → Body Swap This is part one of  a two part fic! It’s a collab with @lilshitwayne for the #maleoweek. 

Once again, Malia was running late. Nothing seemed to go right for her. Her dog took forever to return when she let him out, her car broke down and despite rushing out of the house with her wet hair in just a braid, her uber driver manage to drop her three blocks away and she had to walk to the office. Her asshole boss was going to murder her.

“Sorry I’m late,” Malia sighed stepping into her boss’ office.

He held up a finger, signaling her to be quiet before he trailed off in Mandarin. That’s right, they were expecting ambassadors from the Chinese branch of the company later that day and everyone knew Theo Raeken was even more of a dick when he was expecting foreign visitors. Great. She was twice screwed.

Theo hung up and shot her a pointed look, raising his brows. He was pissed.

“Why are you late THIS time?” he asked with a scoff.

“Do you really want to know?”

“No exactly, I’m more concerned as to why you look like a wet dog.”

“My-”

“I don’t care. Look Melanie-”

“Malia,”

“Melinda, we have important visitors coming here later,” he sighed. “I trust all your work has been completed?”

“I sent you the email last night sir.”

“Right,” Theo chuckled before reaching into his wallet. “In that case, take the company card and go to the salon around the corner. I can’t have you looking like a mess in front of my potential investors.”

“Wow, want me to get a new dress too?” Malia scoffed rolling her eyes.

“Actually, I took the initiative and had one made for you. I estimated the measurements if that’s okay.”

“No problem sir.”

“Good, now get going.”

Malia scoffed as she eyed the dress on the hanger. She was all for looking for the part and making their guests feel comfortable, but judging from the large split on the side of the dress, she would probably be less than comfortable.

Sighing, she shimmied into the dress and let out a swear at how tight it was.

“Perfect fit Matilda,” Theo had said when she’d walked into his office.

“It’s Malia. And the dress is actually a bit snug.”

“That’s the style,” he smirked.

“I’m sure it is,” Malia replied, sneering when Theo turned his back.

She soon found out that it was also damn near impossible to sit in the dress. She had to wonder if Theo had made this tight on purpose or if her friends were right in their campaign to get her to wear more form fitting clothing.

It didn’t seem to matter as all Theo seemed to require of her was to smile and look pretty whilst he greeted his associates. This fact coupled with her intensive knowledge about his schedule and preferences made her wonder why he didn’t just marry her instead. She cleaned up most of his messes anyway.

She’d zoned out most of what he was saying because of how insufferable he was but suddenly became alert when he shaked his head profusely and chuckled before uttering something in Mandarin.

“I’m sorry did you say something?” Malia asked politely.

“Mrs Lee just asked if you were my wife,” Theo chuckled.

“If only he could be so lucky,” Malia scoffed.

“He would be,” Mrs Lee replied, shocking Malia. She had no idea the elderly woman could speak English.

“Well luckily for us both, I’m just his personal assistant,” Malia smiled.

“Malia, why don’t you show Mrs Lee around?” Theo asked.

“It would be my pleasure,” Malia smiled, genuinely this time before guiding the older woman on a tour of the office.

Mrs Lee went on about how beautiful Malia was before handing her a beautiful jade necklace. It looked ancient and had to have been centuries old.

“I- I can’t accept this,” Malia gaped.

“Nonsense dear.”

“It’s beautiful and-”

“Would bring out your eyes. Please accept it or I’ll be deeply offended.”

“Well…. I wouldn’t want that.” Malia replied with a small smile before putting the necklace on.

“See? Beautiful”

"Thank you,” Malia sighed, nodding politely.

~*~

Malia stared at the email on her phone for the longest while. The offer seemed really tempting, always had. Even more so after the day she had. Theo seemed to have no use for her other than to look pretty and smile. She was wasting her talents. She needed a new job indeed.

They had emailed her back. It wasn’t better than the promotion she had envisioned on the Alpha Industries, but it was better than being stuck as Theo’s PA forever. The catch? She had to be there in ten minutes, and she still had one more hour before her expedient ended.

Taking a deep breath and resolving to be brave and quick, Malia walked to Mr. Raeken’s office and knocked.

Malia sighed after getting the go ahead to enter. She had no idea what to tell Mr Raeken, but decided that she was well deserving of a day off.

“Nice necklace,” she scoffed, hoping to dissipate some of her nerves.

“Malia, hi…” he looked up with a smile and for a second - just a tiny second, okay - she melted in her heels.

“Mr. Raeken, I-” she bit her lip, maybe she shouldn’t tell him about the interview, maybe “I’m not feeling very well, may I go home earlier?” Malia lied.

“Oh?” Theo asked with a raised brow.

He wouldn’t object to her leaving because lord knows the girl worked too hard. But of course, the email he received from his friend gloating about possibly poaching his assistant made him believe otherwise.

“Yeah, it’s- it’s the time of the month and I’d really like to lie down” Malia fidgeted under his glare. She knew just from the way he was looking at her that there was no way he would let her go. She was hoping the overshare would make him uncomfortable enough to dismiss her earlier.

“You can take some pills here and take a break. Your work day still hasn’t ended and regardless of the fact, you still need to work,” Theo shrugged.

The bastard. If looks could kill, Theo would be dead by now. Malia bit down on her lip not to curse him and Theo internally sighed. He probably wasn’t doing his crush on Malia any favors, but at least it would stop her from going to work somewhere else. Call it jealousy, but she wasn’t just an amazing girl, but also the best personal assistant he had ever had. He wasn’t letting her go that easily.

“You have a point,” Malia sighed. “But I’d really feel much more comfortable in my own bed,” she addes. “I can make it up tomorrow….”

“Malia. Period or no period, you still have got to work. Go lie down in the lounge for a few” he scoffed, knowing very well that she was lying. Maybe he paid a little too much attention on her, but hadn’t she called in sick just three weeks ago? And then appeared next day pale as a leaf popping painkillers and having more bathroom breaks than normal?

“Right.” Malia scoffed. “I’ll just take whatever advice you give me because you know exactly what I’m going through.” she replied with a sarcastic nod.

He let out a sigh and thought that maybe she really wasn’t lying and wasn’t feeling well, instead of trying to sneak to a job interview. Theo opened his mouth to reply, but Malia rolled eyes.

“Save it, Mr. Raeken” she said, before storming out of his office.

Theo sighed and lowered his head, using his fingers to comb his hair and toying with the necklace hanging on his neck, a recent gift from Mrs. Lee. Maybe this time he had crossed the line.

~*~

Malia let out a sigh and sunk deeper into the silk sheets of her bed before realising that she didn’t own silk sheets. She looked over at the clock on the bedside table and flew up. She was going to be late. She had no memory of the night before. Did she hook up with some random stranger?

Rushing to the bathroom, she realised that she was topless, which was weird, she knew she wearing pants. Silk boxers? Still, she had no time to debate that. She rushed to the bathroom and didn’t know how she felt about using a strangers electric toothbrush so she opted for gargling with mouthwash and went to open the medicine cabinet for something to soothe her headache. She instead found herself screaming when she noticed her reflection wasn’t her own.

Theo had a similar experience, he enjoyed the softness of the blankets he was wrapped in; they were perfect for how insanely cold he felt. Naturally- he cursed the invention of alarm clocks when he looked over at the time, six thirty am? That was bizarre. Reaching out he tapped the irritating thing before sweeping long brown hair from his face. Long brown hair was something he’d never had throughout his life neither were dainty hands and small wrists. And was that a triskele tattoo on the inside of said small wrist? Theo had no tattoos, in fact- he was terrified of needles.

He rushed over to the mirror and let out a small gasp when he noticed who was looking back at him.

Theo touched the mirror, shaky fingers following the contour of his - her - nose… Her soft mouth, the cheekbones. He had to be dreaming.

“Wake up. Wake up now” Theo closed his eyes and pinched himself.

He wasn’t. How was this possible? He ignored the urge to do whatever the dirtiest parts of his mind were telling him to do and instead found himself distracted by the jade necklace around her neck. It was identical to the one that Mrs Lee gave to him the day before, minus the fact that the chain on hers was more delicate.

“Fuck” Theo whispered under his breath. “I can’t be Malia …” just as he mentioned her name, the phone rang across the room.

Theo leaped for it, grabbing her cell phone and picking up just in time to hear his own irate voice “What the fuck did you do Raeken!” she yelled, rough voice and spitting fire.

“Me?! How is- wait- are you me?” Theo asked in a hushed yell, almost as if this was some dirty secret.

It was, wasn’t it?

“You stupid bastard! If this is some joke- you know what, I quit! You can stop the prank now, idiot!” Malia yelled even louder. Surely she was scaring the crap of his uptight neighbors.

“How could this be a prank? You’re delusional! And you can’t quit, I’m in your body!” Theo yelled back.

“You what!? There’s no way this is possible, I- fuck” Malia let out a small gasp. A small woman was standing on the doorway of her- Theo’s room. She was holding her coat and looking completely horrified.

“What? What happened?” Theo asked, growing frantic. He needed to know what was going on.

“Theo” Malia said softly, trying to open a plastic smile to the horrified old lady “Your mom is here”

“That’s impossible. Last I heard she was in Paris sipping mimosas with some Brazilian model who’s half her age.” Theo scoffed rolling his eyes.

“Well, then I’m being robbed by the world’s most ancient thief!” Malia cried, throwing a dirty glare to the lady “Who are you? What are you doing on Theo’s house?”

“Shit,” Theo groaned. “That’s Daisy, my housekeeper. And she’s about to smack you in the head with a newspaper and ask you what the fuck you drank last night.”

As upset as Theo was about Daisy being riled up he had to admit that it would be funny for Malia to get hit by Daisy.

Malia gulped down. She did feel hangover, so maybe Theo deserved to have his head smacked after all. Maybe this was all nothing more than a horrible acid trip.

“Hi… Daisy” she let out an uneasy smile “Theo- I’m fine”

The woman crossed arms “Theodore.”

Malia’s fake smile dropped “Look, I didn’t drink anything, in fact I-”

“Theodore” she cut Malia out sternly “Shut up”                        

“Yes ma'am.” Malia replied, causing Theo to snicker on the other end of the line. It was nice to be the safe one once in a while.

He now understood why all his friends enjoyed watching him get into it with Daisy.

“What was it tonight?” Daisy scoffed, putting her coat on the big vanity that Theo clearly used as an office table and walking towards Malia. “Was it the job again?” her voice was softer now, but Malia didn’t trust this woman. She sounded way too much like Malia’s dad.

“That horrible girl?” Daisy tried once more, picking up the dirty clothes on the floor and throwing Malia a glare for leaving them there.

“What horrible girl?” Malia asked with a scoff and raised brow, she had a suspicion Daisy meant her.

“Oh baby” Daisy let out a small sigh, walking closer and tiptoeing to cup Malia’s face. It showed just how tiny she was, since Theo wasn’t exactly tall to begin with. “You gotta let go.” she patted Malia’s cheek gently.

“Uhm…. I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about,” Malia replied with a blank expression.

“Enough is enough, Theo” Daisy sighed, walking away “Go shower, you stink. And you have work soon. Come have breakfast”

Malia was left there, stunned and trying to figure out what had just happened and then she remembered “Theo!” she grabbed the cellphone forgotten on the bed and pressed it to her ear.

“Now you remember me, uh? So while you were trying to pry information from my housekeeper, I made a game plan. Meet you at work.” and easily like that, he hanged up.

~*~

Malia let out a scoff and crossed her arms as she sat across from Theo.

“Mind running that plan by me again?” she said, raising her brow, shocked by the sight of her cleavage in that dress she never wore.

“Okay, so- I got us coarse salt, holy water from the church across the street and I paid 50 bucks for the priest to come here. We’ll sit on a circle made with the salt and let him pray for us and we’ll be fine” Theo answered. He had decided quickly that there was only one way to explain the body swap: demons.

Malia let out a scoff “It sounds even more ridiculous now than it did ten minutes ago” and then she added with a glare “By the way - Did you used fifty dollars of my money?”

This was honestly such bullshit and she couldn’t believe he’d used her money for it.

“I’ll pay you back” Theo rolled eyes “In fact, I don’t want to use your economies, so we should switch credit cards.”

It did not have anything to do with the fact that he had spent forty minutes that morning to get dressed. Her closet was a fashion disaster and more importantly - hid her angelic curves. Seriously, Malia needed a reality check.

“Good. And yea, we should,” she said “I need to stay on top of the medication for- shit- Coyote!”

“You do realize that sentence made no sense, right?” Theo crossed arms.

“My dog! Did you feed my dog?!” Malia gasped.

“You have a dog?” he genuinely stunned. Theo wouldn’t say he hadn’t snooped around her house, much like he was sure she did with his. Still, he had seen no dog. Perhaps it was really small “Is it tiny? Because I didn’t see any dog.”

"No. But he was probably out with that slutty French poodle again.” Malia scoffed. “She gave him fleas.”

“Oh-” Theo couldn’t stifle a laughter this time “Okay, uhm- I guess you should go home earlier and feed the dog?” he glared at the clock and paced around “Where’s the fucking priest?!”

Just as he said that the door of his office opened and a reluctant young priest came in.

“Morning, I’m Father Corey…” the man sighed, obviously not wanting to be there and holding his bible like a shield “I’m here to exorcise Malia Tate-Hale and Theodore Raeken, despite the fact that I was not blessed by the Roman Church to do so and this is absolutely ridiculous”

“Thank you. Please tell him that this absolutely ridiculous,” Malia scoffed rolling her eyes. “And how old are you anyway?” she asked, taking a look at the priest, who seemed like more of an altar boy if she was being honest.

“Eighteen but she refuses to believe I’m not a priest” the boy said tiredly.

Theo - in Malia’s body - let out a yelp “No, I paid you fifty bucks for this. Let us sit in the circle and you do your mojo”

Malia rolled her eyes before catching a glimpse of the jade necklace around his- her?- neck. She realised that Theo had one identical to it.

“Wait,” she scoffed.

“No time to wait” Tho mumbled, doing a big circle on the floor with coarse salt and pulling her to sit next to him. “Father, please begin”

“Look dumbass. We have the same necklace.” Malia scoffed.

“So?” Theo hugged his knees - Malia truly had bony knees he realized - and closed eyes “Shh, the exorcism has started”

“I know having you inside my body is like…. Equivalent to having a demon- but this won’t work.” Malia scoffed. “We should talk to Mrs Lee.”

“What? Why?” Theo said, without opening his eyes. Corey - the altar boy - seemed to be truly mesmerized by the amount of bullshit he was experiencing in first hand.

“Uhm…. She gave us matching necklaces and we wake up in each other’s bodies the next morning?”

“Oh…” he seemed to be thinking, before his - Malia’s - face lighted up with glee “Then we could simply swap the necklaces!”

“I don’t think it’s that simple… But, sure,” Malia shrugged, pausing a little before taking it off. Was it wrong for her to be awe of how pretty she looked? It was strange, she’d never really seen herself as beautiful. She hadn’t for years.

“Here” Theo took off his necklace and handed her, practically beaming with happiness. Sure, it hadn’t been all that bad to be stuck inside Malia, but it hadn’t been a walk in the park either and he was eager to go back to his body.

She handed him the other necklace and he put it on, waiting for the sparkles and the magic to happen.

“Uhm?” Malia scoffed. “This isn’t working. Here, take it back. It doesn’t go with my suit.”

Theo sighed. Of course life couldn’t go the easy way. “Then the exorcism it is. Father Corey?”

~*~

Theo turned his back around to the mirror. Yes, he was in a changing room. Yes he had picked revealing clothes. However, he didn’t feel in any right to see Malia’s body naked without her permission. He had been with women enough to know his way with a bra even with closed eyes and while showering was awkward, he could get it done without seeing much.

It was a temptation all the time, but her knew the girl would appreciate.

“Ms. Tate-Hale? Everything alright?” called the girl who was helping him around the store.                        

“Everything’s fine,” Theo called back. “Do you have this in a red?” he asked poking his head out. “I think it’d look great with my necklace.”

~*~

Malia sat in Theo’s home office, going over his accounts. It was a lot easier now when a lecture from Daisy revealed to her that Theo wore glasses. She’d never seen him in them, maybe that’s why she always had so much extra work cleaning up loopholes and loose ends.

To say she was living the dream would be an understatement, there she was- not bringing Theo coffee or using her degree to organise a schedule so all his lady friends would be appeased without finding out about the others.

Of course, nothing lasted forever and she let out a groan when Daisy crossed the threshold.

“Yes Daisy?” Malia scoffed, removing the glasses.

“Don’t Yes Daisy me, Theo” she said, crossing arms “Your credit card bill is here.”

The old lady put the piece of paper on the desk and Malia seriously questioned what kind of housekeeper opened their bosses bills. Daisy did.

“What’s this, Theodore? Four hundred dollars in a dress? Shoes of two hundred dollars each!?”                 

“Wait what?” Malia scoffed, putting the glasses  on and looking over the bill. “That bastard,” she scoffed dialing his- her- number.

“I’m worried about you, Theo!” Daisy cried “Since morning you’ve been acting weird, now you’re spending money on girls… What’s wrong, baby? I thought it was getting better?”

“Thought what was getting better?” Malia scoffed dialing the number again. She didn’t trust Theo anywhere near a salon with her body. Or anywhere for that matter. God only knew what the misogynistic prick was doing with her body as they spoke.                        

“Who were you buying a dress for, Theodore? ” Daisy threw Malia a cold glare “Was it for that horrible woman? ”

“What horrible woman?” Malia scoffed, frustrated. “I tell you I don’t understand and all you do is start consoling me.”

"Lydia! I thought we had an agreement to not bring up her name!”

“Who- oh…” Malia sighed. She’d remembered the redhead. How could she forget? She’d walked in on them in his office a few times. Not the highlight of her job experience.                        

“Yes. Oh” Daisy gave Malia a look full of pity “Maybe you should start therapy again…”

“Again? Theo was- I mean- I was in therapy?” Malia asked, shocked.                        

Daisy frowned and looked confused “Don’t tell me you don’t remember. I remember you whining non stop when I dragged you there”

“I just don’t remember why exactly…. I haven’t been remembering a lot ever since I had a drink off with my Chinese dignitaries. I got drank under the table by an old lady, not my finest moment,” Malia spoke, improvising.

Daisy flinched “It’s the same all over again” she sighed “All you need is for her to step on your life again and the drinking starts all over. I’m calling your therapist. Please don’t spend that much money anymore”

She tiptoed to press a kiss on Malia’s cheek and walked away, worn out.

Malia softened, she needed to know what had happened between them. Was that why he was such a dick to her?

“Hello?” Theo’s voice was bubbly on the other side of the line and Malia realized she completely forgot about the phone still dialing.

“You took my body to a salon? Are you insane?!” she whisper yelled, though Daisy had successfully calmed her down.

“You had some split ends love. I didn’t do anything dramatic Melissa.” Theo scoffed rolling his eyes.

“Mel- alright. Thanks bye” Malia fumed, hanging up without thinking. She was going to make sure he remembered her name. Grabbing her wallet, she walked to the door yelling after her “Daisy, I’m going out, don’t wait me up!”

~*~

Theo was sitting on Malia’s couch, relaxed. He’d finally gotten the dumb dog to like him, at least stop trying to bite him. Malia’s DVR content showed she needed some serious help. Seriously, who watched that stuff?

The phone buzzed and he threw a look at the screen. They had changed phones too, thankfully. He didn’t need Malia to snoop through his messages.

“My name is Malia” said the text, with a picture attached. Theo let out a yelp of horror. She had tattooed her name on his ribs!

He gaped as he stared at the image on the screen and angrily called her and was less than happy to hear her speaking so smugly on the other end.

“You like? I was going for classy yet edgy with the font.” Malia spoke smugly.

“What the fuck, Malia!? It’s permanent! And my body!” Theo yelled, cursing the way Malia’s girly voice didn’t come out rough like he wanted it to.

“Tattoos can be removed, I mean- they take forever and hurt like a bitch to remove but no worries, you’re the boss you can get time off to recover.”

“You’re fired!” Theo yelled, furiously.

“Actually, I think I’ll give you that raise you asked for Malia.” Malia chuckled smugly.

“Why the fuck are you doing this!?” Theo screeched “You know what- I’ll sell your dog. Goodnight” and he hanged up.

Malia growled, she didn’t trust him one bit. She grabbed his car keys and drove like a madman to the other side of the town.

It was late already, but Malia was growing scared. Her poor puppy.  Grabbing the spare key from under the mat she barged in angrily.

“I’ll kill you if you touch my dog you son of a bitch!”

“You’re the one who tattooed my body” Theo said. He was lounging on the couch, in an over sized shirt he had found on Malia’s mess of a wardrobe and socks. He made sure his voice sounded utterly bored.

“What are you wearing?” Malia asked, her eyes widening at the sight of the garment on her body.

“This ugly thing? You should know, I found it in your closet” Theo shrugged “But the socks are comfy, I’ll give you that”

“Take it off.” Malia glared. “Take it off right now.”

“Then I’ll be just in my underwear! I mean, yours- No!” Theo pouted “Also, if you stopped by to see Coyote, is too late. Sold it already”

“JUST TAKE IT OFF!” Malia snapped.

[paxohana]

How Yuri!!! on Ice Changed My Life

I asked you guys the question earlier today, now it’s my turn to explain.  I’ve been thinking about this for a week now as I’ve had to come to terms with some events from the past year.  Life has changed a lot and most of it I’m happy about.  I’ve had some reminders of things I don’t like, but that’s part of life.  I’m going to throw a keep reading link as this is going to more than likely be a very long read.  Just stick with me. 

The past seven years have been a living hell for me, but none more so than last year.  I started the year out with a manic episode that lasted four months.  The euphoria was great but it didn’t last long. I did get a ton of writing done, but when I crashed I fell hard.  It wasn’t the sad mania, it was constant anxiety.  I have never had a manic episode that bad.  Ever.

I pretty much stopped writing.  I had enough money to live off of for a while, so I didn’t work.  I played video games and slept.  That’s all I did.  I didn’t talk to anyone.  I didn’t really care about anything.  I’m really good at keeping a wall up and a facade, so no one really noticed.  I did this for months.

I started writing a Tokyo Ghoul fic about my journey with PTSD.  It was and still is difficult to write.  I have to take breaks often as the chapters rip my soul out.  I’ve been working on one about hyper vigilance, but it still hits me hard and brings back a lot of memories.  

October 21 started hell on earth.  I lost my friend, Terri, to breast cancer.  She had been ill for a while and I knew it was coming, but it still hurt.  I think about her a lot.  I miss her.  I became more depressed.

November 8 was a pretty shitty day in America since the great orange gorilla won the presidency (though through shady reasons).  He’s going to destroy this country.  I hope I get out before he does.

The next day shattered my world.  

I got a text around 3 in the morning November 9.  I was pissed since I wasn’t on call that night.  I had fallen asleep a couple hours before, spending most of the night talking with my best friend.  She was struggling with cystic fibrosis and fibromyalgia.  She was constantly in pain and always felt horrible.  Though she lived in Seattle, we hung out playing video games or just chatting.  We shared everything.

She was terrified of Trump taking office.  His campaign rhetoric scared her to death.  She thought life was going to be so much worse for her, thought her disability would be taken away and she’d have no insurance.

Well, she literally was scared to death.  She killed herself that night.

It hurt. It hurt so bad.  It still does.  I do get why she did it, but I’m still so sad and angry!  I’m slowly coming to terms with it.  I wrote a fic to deal with the pain of losing her.  It’s called ‘Warmth’. If you want, check it out.  I wrote it the day she committed suicide.

There was something I never told Jade though.  She knew I had been having a hard time was well.  She knew I was rock bottom and tried to support me the best she could. 

She didn’t know I had a plan. I had given myself two weeks left to wrap up my affairs and then I was checking out.  Permanently.

Jade threw me for a loop, though.  I spent the next two days in a daze.  I knew by Friday I needed a distraction desperately or I was literally going to end it that night.  I couldn’t deal with the pain anymore.  I couldn’t deal with the anger.  I couldn’t deal with the hopelessness.  

I was scrolling through my Facebook account and saw a gif that caught my eye.  I had been meaning to watch YOI but really didn’t give a shit at that point.  The GIF was the one where Yuuri told Viktor to never take his eyes off him.  I decided what the hell, it’ll give me something to do so I can fall asleep..give myself a little more time.

I fell in love at the opening credits.  I smiled for the first time in months.  I cried tears of joy, not tears of grief.

The next week was rough.  I had to fly to Seattle for the funeral on Sunday, leave that night and be in Atlanta Monday morning at 9 am for a contract I had that week.  It was rough work, but YOI made it so much better.  I told the guys I was working with I would literally kill them if they bothered me from 3-4 that Wednesday.

I converted 4 guys to YOI that week. It was spectacular.  I was still hurting, but I loved the feeling YOI gave me.  I loved the hope.  I knew I had to write about it. So I started Metamorphosis.  It did well, I was happy with the response it got.  I got a tumblr and looked around.  I saw a couple prompt events that intrigued me so I decided to check it out.

The AU prompt on January 13 for YOI Week 2017 pretty much changed my life.  I started Met by Accident that day.  Most of you know it was supposed to be a oneshot, but I kept having “What if...?” Thoughts kept flooding into my mind, I saw the movie.  I had changed my writing style that week and wanted to see how it would do.

Oh my sweet Baby Jesus I was not expecting the response.  I’m still amazed.

It went slow at first, but I was happy.  Most of the comments I got were very kind.  I kept having ideas of how I wanted it to go.  More readers started to check MbA out.  Subscriptions, kudos, comments and tumblr followers trickled in.  I was over the moon.  

When I found out I had my first fic rec I freaked out! It was insane!  I was like “Why?  How?  It’s nothing special! I’m nothing special!  There are so many better writers than me!”  I still feel this way.

But more readers followed, telling me how much they loved it and how much it’s touched them.  I have readers telling me how much it changed their life or how they relate to the reality of it.

I feel as if I have a purpose for the first time in about 16 years.  Seriously.

I have met so many wonderful people through YOI and writing MbA.  I have had so many readers message me, sharing pieces of their life or telling me about their day.  I’ve had asks for my advice or help.  I’m so glad you guys are reaching out.  I love it.  You’re not just readers anymore, you’re friends.  All of you.

I mean it when I say MbA readers are the best.  YOI brought me back from deep despair and literally impending death.  You guys gave me life and love.  I’m sorry if this sounds cheesy, but it’s the truth.

The only downside of this is I can’t read YOI angst fics.  It brings back the feelings I had before I started watching it.  I don’t want that ball of wrong in me anymore.  I need to hold onto the positivity and hope this anime gives me.  I really apologize to those writers that ask me to read their fics, but I just can’t do it.  

So, that’s how Yuri!!! on Ice changed my life.

~Pax

[taimebangchan]

so for some ungodly reason i wanna write this fic

title: unknown (haven’t come up with one would appreciate suggestions!) summary: jimin's the school's badboy with a secret kept under lock & key. taehyung's the school's troublemaker and jimin's closest friend. jungkook's the school's newest transfer with an obvious love for photography. what happens with the 3 of them clash? pairing: jikook mainly with platonic vkook with the aspect of jimin and tae as basically jungkook’s personal bodyguards but jimin’s the boyfriend (eventually) + bodyguard morphed into one warnings: there are hints of bullying and racial slurs, so I just want to warn you. Jungkook moved from Busan to the USA shortly after his mother died (his father’s identity will be revealed later if I do end up writing this) and moved in with his grandparents. Other than that, from my ideas about this, it’d be a rated m fic which means - yes, smut ;)

this would be a visual for jimin. except his hair is pink like in ynwa (speaking of that i ded) and minus that piercing on his nose, it’s just a regular piercing instead of that plus he has a tongue piercing (wink wonk did i mention SMUT ;) ;) ;)) and ofc tattoos on his arms.

sneak peak???

“I-I’m s-so-sorry! I- It was an a-accident!” Jungkook pleaded, pressing himself against the wall even more. The poor boy was shaking like a leaf in the vicious wind; all because he accidentally bumped into someone and caused them to spill their fresh coffee on their favorite shirt.

Give the poor boy a break, it’s his first day in a public school for god’s sake.

The other male student growled and grabbed Jungkook by the collar, making the boy gasp. “Bullshit.” He hissed. The guy was about Jungkook’s height and lean, built with muscle - just like Jungkook was - but he was very intimidating and judging by that varsity jacket he had on, he’s a jock.

“You bumped into me on purpose! You bet I’d let that slide just because you’re near here?! Now listen here you fucking Asian twat, you’re in the States. You better learn some respect.”

“Oh?” Someone cooed and it caused the chaos to halt. Jungkook didn’t know if he should be thankful for the racial slurs to stop or scared because if the intimidating jock spitting fire at him froze, then that means there’s obviously someone else whom is much scarier than him.

“Look at this, Jiminnie. They got the poor boy cornered.”

Oh no. Not them. Anyone but them.

Jungkook slowly looked to his right and saw the infamous duo standing at their side, fitted in all their tattoos and their black clothes and their tight leather glory. His heart thrummed in his chest.

Jimin, though, did not look amused and he instead snarled angrily. “I’m from Busan, too, you asshole. Tae here is from Daegu. Are you going to call us an Asian twat, too?!”

“N-No of course not-”

“That’s what I fucking thought.” Jimin hissed and charged forward. “Scatter,  before you piss me off even more.” The group of jocks quickly then scattered like ants, leaving Jungkook a shaking and crying mess as he knelt on the ground and gingerly picked up his camera - or what was left of it anyways.

In the jock’s fit of rage, he had snagged Jungkook’s camera and smashed it to bits.

“Aww, they broke his camera.” Taehyung cooed but it didn’t really seem like he truly cared. “How sad!”

There was a beat of silence before someone lightly tapped his knee with their foot. “Hey. You’re from Busan, from what I heard, right?” The voice spoke in Korean, specifically Busan satoori, and Jungkook’s head snapped up immediately. Even satoori would make him feel at ease, thought he didn’t know if he should feel at ease because Jimin was squinting down at him.

“I’m not going to ask twice, idiot.” Jimin growled softly, still speaking in the same language. Jungkook gulped and quickly nodded. Slowly, Jimin bent down and flicked his gaze down to Jungkook’s camera. “...What kind of camera is that?”

“I-It’s a..” Jungkook’s voice trailed off for a moment as he adjusted himself to speak in satoori as well and wiped his tears away. “Canon EOS 1DX.”

Taehyung whistled and stepped to Jimin’s side. “Those are damn expensive.”

Jungkook nodded solemnly and looked at his camera. “...My mother gave it to me.”

“Then ask her to buy you a new one.” Jimin scoffed and stood up.

“...I c-can’t.” Jungkook weakly replied and felt his lip quiver.

Jimin perked an eyebrow. “Why not? It’s easy. I’m sure your mom would buy you another one.” He snorted and folds his arms across his chest. “Yah, why the fuck are you crying like a baby?!”

“...I-I can’t a-ask my umma to b-buy me another one.”

“Why not, little bun?” Taehyung hummed and bent down to Jungkook’s level. He was at least talking without any menace.

Jungkook fell silent as he continued staring at his broken camera, sobbing more as he started to speak. “S-She’s dead.” He wept. Taehyung froze and his eyes slowly widened before he glanced down at the camera. “L-Leukemia.. s-she died on.. m-my birthday- t-this was her gift.. S-She used w-wh-whatever money s-she had saved up b-because she k-kn-knew I’ve always w-want to have this camera.” Taehyung swallowed thickly and sneaked a glance at Jimin. Jimin, who shows no emotion other than rage, stood there with a poker face as he stared at Jungkook. But even Taehyung saw his clenched jaw, his tightening fists, and how his eyes had softened with an unreadable emotion (maybe more than one) as he watched Jungkook cry.

“Well, damn, I.. I’m sorry.” Taehyung apologized in a soft voice as he turned his attention back to Jungkook. Jungkook said nothing and just continued to cry. No one moved for a minute before Jimin sighed. The younger of the 3 paused briefly in shock as he felt a hand running slowly through his hair. Jungkook sniffled and raised his head to look up at Jimin with doe eyes as Jimin gently pushed his bangs away from his forehead to see his eyes.

“...Stand up, little bun.” Jimin spoke, an odd kindness to his voice. He was speaking so soft and gentle - the malice and anger completely gone. “Stand up.” Jungkook shook the shock off of him a little bit, enough for him to stand up shakily with the broken camera in his arms. Jimin glanced down at the camera before he looked at Jungkook, tentatively wiping away a sole tear with his thumb slowly.

“Can I have it?”

“T-The camera?”

“...W-Why do you want it? It’s... broken now. There’s no use for it.”

“I’ll give it back to you tomorrow.” Jimin silently promised and kept his eyes on Jungkook’s. They stared at each other for a moment before the younger slowly nodded, handing the camera to him. Without a word, Jimin took it then glanced at Taehyung before he walked away. Taehyung ruffled Jungkook’s hair before running to catch up with Jimin, leaving a flustered but still emotional Jungkook behind.

When he awoke the next day and went to school, he noticed the jock that attacked him earlier was now sporting a broken nose and a black eye. When he opened his locker, he noticed a box sitting inside. Curious, he took it and began undoing the small bow then opened the lids. Taking the card out, he began reading the neat hangul to himself.

You owe me was all that was written.

Furrowing his eyebrows, he glanced up and noticed that, down the hall, Jimin was leaning against a wall smoking a cigarette (fuck how is he not suspended yet) as he watched Jungkook with hawk eyes. Taehyung was leaning against the wall beside him, also watching but with a small smirk and arms folded. Jungkook swallowed and turned his attention back to the box, reaching into it hesitantly. His fingers landed on something solid and smooth. So he grabbed a hold of it and slowly pulled it out. His eyes widened and his hands to began to shake, resulting in him dropping the box entirely. Quickly turning on the camera, he immediately began to short through the documents on it.

Everything was there. All the pictures, all the videos he took - they were still there.

“Oh my god.” Jungkook’s voice trembled as tears filled his eyes.

Suddenly, there was a voice at his ear. “So, baby bun,” Jungkook whipped his head around only to come face to face with a smirking Jimin. “What do you have to say, hm? After all, I fixed your camera - and it was pricey, too - and saved your memory chip.”

“T-Thank you! I- T-This means a lot to me.” Jungkook replied gratefully and bowed his head quickly. Jimin’s smirk deepened.

“Of course, it comes with a price.”

Jungkook froze and looked at him with wide eyes. “A-A price?”

“Mhm.” Jimin hummed and reached up, slowly rubbing his thumb across Jungkook’s bottom lip before he flicked his piercing eyes back up to Jungkook’s. “You just gotta do what I say for the rest of the school year.”

“B-But that’s 9 months away!”

Taehyung tutted. “He fixed your camera, bun. You owe him.”

Jungkook bites his lip and looked down at his camera for a moment. “O-Okay...”

“Just like that? Really?” Jimin chuckled and watched him with an amused glint in his eyes. “Mmh, you gotta seal the deal, though.” Jungkook looked up at him in confusion. “Seal it with a kiss, that is.” Jimin grinned and backed a sputtering and flushing Jungkook up against the lockers. He laughed low and grabbed Jungkook’s jaw, pressing their lips together and - fuck, Jungkook forgot how to breathe. As he closed his eyes and kissed back without much thought or fight, Jimin shoved his hands into Jungkook’s light brown locks and gripped gently; their lips slotting together in sync. Jungkook couldn’t even feel the camera slowly getting taken away from him by Taehyung, who side-stepped a little bit and aimed the camera so the shot was just over Jimin’s shoulder with the side of Jungkook’s face visible. He took the photo and smirked. While lowering the camera, Jimin had pulled away from the kiss before humming in delight.

“You have such nice lips - I couldn’t resist.” Jimin chuckled and eyed Jungkook’s lips before glancing up at him. “Meet me up on the roof during lunch and we’ll discuss what you’ll need to do.” He winked and blew a kiss before he sauntered away. Taehyung snickered and handed him the camera back before following. It took several minutes for Jungkook to calm the fuck down before he looked at his camera, gasping as the photo that Taehyung took came into view. Whining loudly, he turned around and banded his head against the lockers; cheeks scarlet.

“What did I just get myself into?”