#people have stolen authors medication before

[cherry-pop-elf]

S.P.E.W For Werewolves

Abigail Grey x Reader

Can be read as platonic

Ever since the HogsHead became a safe heaven for Abigail’s pack, she’s been busy with trying to help make the place more liveable and better for them. Along with bringing awareness to werewolves as well. As if you would refuse to help her!

Warnings: Werewolfphobia, Renka, disabilities, medical issues, small acts of violence

“Oh! Hey-!” Abigail would adjust her ever present scarf, as to make her words more audible. “I was looking for you. I don’t mean to bother, but do you think you can help me with something?” She asked you, with another fiddle to her scarf.

“Course, what’s up?” You asked, as you looked her over. She seemed to have her messenger bag stuffed with papers, and one was in hand even. Said paper was quick to be handed to you, as if it would explain it all.

The paper itself looked to be an advertisement of sorts. A means to ask the public to donate old books, clothes, what have you, to the likes of The Hogs Head In. A donation to the ‘local pack’ if you will.

“Werewolfism can affect anyone, of any age, as you are well aware of. Not a lot of my pack went to schooling of any kind. Would be nice for them to learn to read and write. More than just their name, ya know?” Abigail explain to you, as you kept looking over the flyer. Such a noble cost it was. How could you refuse?

“Where to first?” You asked her. The way her eyes lit up just had you beaming. It was a noble cause, after all. It’s also her family. Who could say no to family? Well, family you love anyway. As if anyone wanted to dive into that complicated mess.

Onwards you two went. Going through out the halls, and into classrooms that permitted you both to enter. A adventure of simple nature. Hanging up flyers on the hallways, talking to fellow friends to hang them up in their designated hang out spots when they weren’t all busy with whatever adventure the year brought them. Asking teachers if they would be ok with hanging them up. Noble cause. It was all going well. To well, and you both knew it would change. Change, it did.

“Donating to the HogsHead-? For one, why would a student need to donate anything. Second off, why such a place as that?” She scoffed, and that scoff was what you two knew so well. Cassandra.

“Because, not everyone gets an education like us. A lot of witches and wizards can’t read.” Abigail was quick to say, with a spin on her feet. Silvery eyes meeting those hypnotic emerald.

“Sounds like a them problem-“ The blonde scoffed, making Abigail bubble. She took a deep breath, before being more direct with her. Helped that you held her hand, so she could have support.

“Yeah, it’s them who are the issue. Not the fact they were cursed, and can’t do anything about it. Do you know what it’s like to not be seen as human, because of how you were born? How you’ll never be seen as equal, all because your blood isn’t ‘pure’ and is ‘tampered’ with. That you just will never be seen as anything more than inhuman?” Abigail asked, and….Cassandra paused.

You never seen Cassandra think so hard before. Her eyes avoiding both of you. Why was Cassandra not smarting off at you both? Why isn’t she scoffing, and calling you both some insult? What was she thinking?

“…..I’ll talk to Colby about this. He’s the poetry writer. I’m sure he has some old books he has no use for.” And she turned, with a snap of her dress, and left. You two were jaw dropped at the kind gesture. The hell? Cassandra? Kind?

“What was that about?” You whispered, as the two of you begun to head outside. A plan to hang them up around Hogsmeade. “Beats me. Maybe she has inhuman blood in her family as well. Maybe like Veela. Would explain how she seems to escape getting suspended, with all the crap she pulls.” Maybe. Maybe….

You tried not to stress over it, and instead focused on carrying all the flyers for your friend. Letting her skip in-front of you, with such pep in her step. So excited to make that old tavern way more friendly, and enjoyable. She was just so excited, she hardly could hear you call her name. The moment it dawned on her you called her, she crashed into the worse person to bump into. Renka.

Abigail would give a squeak, and was quick to run back to you. She’s no scardy cat, but Renka is the exception. Especially when it dawned on her who had crashed into her pink coat. Had her out right cast a cleaning charm on herself, as if Abigail would infect her. That had you glare, and the woman glared back.

“And what are you two doing here? Shouldn’t you be in that useless school, learning useless things?” She scoffed, as you would hold the flyers closer to your chest. Renka was quick to notice this, however, and was quick to Accio them away from you.

“GIVE THOSE BACK-!” Abigail shouted, throwing her fear aside. For her Pack. “Those are ours!” She added, as she tried to grab one of the papers, only for it to fly higher. Made her slip on the ice, and fall on her butt.

“Let’s see what you two gremlins are doing-“ She huffed, as she adjusted her glasses to read the paper. Meanwhile, you helped Abigail up. Dusting off the snow, and giving her respect and dignity.

“You are trying to scam people! Of course you two would! Trying to scam people out of what they rightfully earned, so you freaks can get a meal ticket!” She gasped, as that had Abigail pink in her face.

“None of that-“ You two gasped, as the papers were now engulfed in flames. “NO-!” Abigail shouted, as she tried to grab said paper. You tried to stop her, but her cry of pain said you were too late. She now held a burn on her hand, and stumbled back. You swore Renka smirked.

“Rabblehauser-! That’s enough-!” The three of you would look over, and see a sight. One being Mr. Weasley, with an older man. Worse for wears, that’s for sure. With a face that was scary to you, but nothing abnormal to Abigail. With his cheek missing, exposing teeth. Scars that cut into his brilliant red hair line, and an eye clearly blinded. The attire made it clear he was a curse breaker. Leather vest, white dress shirt, and a cloak over his shoulders. Fur edging for warmth. Quite the classy attire, compared to Mr. Weasley’s G sweater.

“Deal with her, I’ve got the kids-“ Mr. Weasley said, as he hurried over to you two. “Come here love, let me have a look at your paw-“ He tried to joke, to get her to smile through her tears. Of course, it worked. She smiled, you calmed down, and he worked on applying a palm to her burnt flesh. Something of his own invention, given it smells so sweet.

“Renka, you can’t just keep doing this-!” The curse breaker would shout at her, as he would steal one of the posters from the air. The moment his working eye fell on it, he gasped. Made his scars stretch out even farther. Made your stomach twist.

You had no idea what he said, but it was in a string or another language. One you didn’t know. Seemed Mr. Weasley did, as he snorted. Saying something about how ‘that must have been where Ginny got her potty mouth from-‘ or something.

“Thats Billy. He works at a little ole bank, called Gringotts-“ He explained, before Abigail was soon in his arms. Comforting her, as he would hold your hand as well. Her on his hip, and you close to his side. Comforting you both, while Bill and Renka were screaming at each other.

“He’s normally super calm, but he’s sensitive when it comes to werewolf stuff. That’s the face of someone who was attacked by Greyback. Because of his curse breaking skills, he didn’t get entirely infected. He still has side effects, but he doesn’t transform or infect.” He explained, as that had both of you light up. He was kinda like Abigail, but was still living a successful happy life. Hope. That was hope.

“I’ll bite you-!” Bill warned, and that had Renka run. Let her own stupidity chase her away. The man would shake his head, as he looked so exhausted. Seems it’s not the first time those two fought. With a brush of his cloak, he would return to his brother.

“Everyone ok?” He asked, as you just couldn’t stop staring. You wondered so many questions. How does he eat? How does he still have teeth? Is he actually blind? What happened?

“My posters….” Abigail sniffled, which caused Mr. Weasley to kiss her head. Comforting her. That’s when Bill offered his own arms, and Abigail was handed over. The moment she was handed over, it was like a switch. She seemed to instantly calm, and nuzzled his neck. The bond of wolves.

“Hey, don’t worry. I’ll talk to my pal, Ragnok at Gringotts. See if he can pull any strings on trying to help out the HogsHead. I know Georgie will, by seeing on making wolfsbane to supply the tavern.” That had you both gasp. You were confused. You were told goblins were greedy monsters. Was that a lie? A stereotype?

“They’ll listen to him. Billy is pretty much their kid there. Just a bunch of old men, and their favorite grandkid.” Mr. Weasley laughed, as Abigail had stars in her eyes. There was hope. So much hope for the future.

“Just leave it to us. Now, let’s get you two back to Hogwarts. Hm?” Mr. William said, as you two nodded. That was enough adventure for one day. Even for the likes of Hogwarts kids.

Through a secret passage way, that Mr. Weasley knew, you two were back in the castle walls. Sent away with a few sweets to calm the burns, and show your good deeds deserved compensation.

“He’s like me-!” Abigail couldn’t stop bouncing, as she bit at her Bloodlollipop. “He’s like me-!” Was her chant, as she bounced. He was just like her, and that had you smile.

There was hope for her, and her pack. People who actually cared about them, and wanted them to succeed. To be equal, and have as much of a life as they did. Help did exist, and not everyone thought like Renka. There were people who were even like Abigail, and could still live fulfilling lives.

The future looked bright, and damn. You wanted to keep seeing Abigail smile.

[sayruq]

Police in the Turkish city of Adana detained 11 suspects, five Israeli and two Syrian, on allegations of organ trafficking, the Daily Sabah reported on 5 May. The Provincial Directorate of Security's Anti-Smuggling and Border Gates Branch began investigating after examining the passports of seven individuals who arrived in Adana from Israel about a month ago by plane for the purpose of health tourism. The two Syrian nationals, ages 20 and 21, were found to have fake passports. Further investigation revealed that Syrian nationals had each agreed to sell one of their own kidneys to two of the Israeli nationals, ages 68 and 28, for kidney transplants in Adana. During searches at the suspects' residences, $65,000 and numerous fake passports were seized. Israel has long been at the center of what Bloomberg described in 2011 as a “sprawling global black market in organs where brokers use deception, violence, and coercion to buy kidneys from impoverished people, mainly in underdeveloped countries, and then sell them to critically ill patients in more-affluent nations.” The financial newspaper added, “Many of the black-market kidneys harvested by these gangs are destined for people who live in Israel.” The organ-trafficking network extends from former Soviet Republics such as Azerbaijan, Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova to Brazil, the Philippines, South Africa, and beyond, the Bloomberg investigation showed. Accusations of Israeli involvement in organ trafficking also apply to the occupied Palestinian territories. In 2009, Sweden's largest daily newspaper, Aftonbladet, reported testimony that the Israeli army was kidnapping and murdering Palestinians to harvest their organs. The report quotes Palestinian claims that young men from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip had been seized by the Israeli army, and their bodies returned to the families with missing organs. "'Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,' relatives of Khaled from Nablus said to me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin as well as the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who all had disappeared for a few days and returned by night, dead and autopsied," wrote Donald Bostrom, the author of the report.Bostrom also cites an incident of alleged organ theft during the the first Palestinian intifada in 1992. He says that the Israeli army abducted a young man known for throwing stones at Israeli troops in the Nablus area. The young man was shot in the chest, both legs, and the stomach before being taken to a military helicopter, which transported him to an unknown location. Five nights later, Bostrom said, the young man's body was returned, wrapped in green hospital sheets. Israel’s Channel 2 TV reported that in the 1990s, specialists at Abu Kabir Forensic Medicine Institute harvested skin, corneas, heart valves, and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians, and foreign workers without permission from relatives. The Israeli military confirmed that the practice took place, but claimed, "This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer." Israel’s assault on Gaza since 7 October has provided further opportunities for the theft and harvesting of Palestinians’ organs. On 30 January, WAFA news agency reported that the Israeli army returned the bodies of 100 Palestinian civilians it had stolen from hospitals and cemeteries in various areas in Gaza. According to medical sources, inspection of some of the bodies showed that organs were missing from some of them. On 18 January, the Times of Israel reported that the Israeli army confirmed reports that its soldiers dug up graves in a Gaza cemetery, claiming its soldiers were trying to “confirm that the bodies of hostages were not buried there.”

[unabashegirl]

Enticing 49 — ceo hs

Harry, a private billionaire and devoted father, hires Y/N as his son's nanny. Her kindness stirs unexpected feelings. Will love overcome his guarded life, a jealous girlfriend, and the mystery of Oliver's mother?

Author's note: Yesterday, I thought I hadn't posted chapter 48, but I noticed I had posted the same chapter twice after a fellow follower pointed it out. Thank you for letting me know.

⭐️ I'm still trying to gather $1600 to pay for my medical school. Please consider donating it. I'm desperate. I would really appreciate it. --> Ko-Fi ☕️

⭐️ I’ve created a Patreon collection with ALL the chapters of Enticing available for $15 (54 posts). This is an option for those who are tired of waiting and want instant access. Otherwise, the usual $3 subscription is still available with access to the other one shots.😊 ----> Patreon

⭐️ --> enticing masterlist <---

It was a damp and chilly day in the heart of New York City, a late November afternoon pregnant with the promise of impending festivities. Christmas lurked just around the corner, casting its enchanting glow over the city that never sleeps. Harry, having just ventured home from the office, found himself stepping into an apartment that echoed with the quiet hum of transition.

The majority of their possessions lay encased in cardboard, snugly packed away, anticipating the journey to a new residence. Y/N's apartment, a temporary sanctuary, had been earmarked for a new role as a vacation rental property. The couple was poised to relocate to their new abode before the advent of Christmas, and certainly before the arrival of their imminent bundle of joy.

Harry, as he traversed the threshold, observed the in-between state of their living space—a tableau caught between the echoes of the past and the whispers of the future. The walls, witnesses to laughter and shared secrets, seemed to murmur tales of times gone by.

The living room, bereft of its usual assortment of trinkets, projected a curious amalgamation of unfamiliarity and warmth. A solitary chair, adorned with a throw that had borne witness to countless movie nights and stolen kisses, beckoned in solitude. The room, now devoid of life's chaos, stood as an expectant canvas, yearning for the brushstrokes of a new chapter.

In the kitchen, once alive with the aroma of shared meals, the dance of packing materials and neatly folded dishcloths unfolded. The refrigerator, once a tapestry of joyous memories held in place by magnets, now stood bare. Yet, within this emptiness lay the promise of a blank canvas, ready to be adorned with fresh memories.

Harry, feeling a sudden yearning for connection, reached for his phone, dialing the first contact in his favorites. A single ring later, her melodic voice spilled through the receiver.

"Hi honey," she sang, her words a comforting melody.

"Hey. Where are you?" Harry inquired, his eyes wandering to the cityscape outside.

"We're out for a stroll in the park," she replied. "Thought it'd be nice to enjoy the crisp air. And, uh, we might've stopped for some hot chocolate. Oliver insisted.”

"Oliver insisted, huh?" Harry playfully retorted, a smile gracing his lips. The sound of their voices, a lifeline in the midst of change, offered him solace. "I had no idea that Oliver could form full sentences.”

"Alright. It might have to do something with me and his sisters' cravings," she explained, laughter lacing her words.

“How come I wasn’t invited?” Harry asked as he began wrapping a scarf around his neck.

“I thought you would be coming from work late,” she replied. "We're still at the park, wandering around. Would you like to join us?”

“Already on my way.” Harry ended the call, donned his coat, and embarked on a journey to join the two most important people in his life.

As he navigated through the park, the cold air nipping at his cheeks, Harry scanned the surroundings, searching for the familiar figures of his girlfriend and son. The chill seemed to fade in significance against the warmth that swelled within him at the prospect of joining their spontaneous escapade.

Finally, he spotted them near a quaint Christmas market, Y/N cradling Oliver in her arms as they admired the festive decorations. Harry approached with a grin.

“There you are!” she exclaimed, Oliver reaching out towards him with a delighted grin. Harry scooped him up, planting a tender kiss on his rosy cheek. "Hey, little man. How was the hot chocolate?” he inquired after a quick peck on Y/N's lips.

“Yummy. Even though I slightly burned my tongue.” Harry chuckled and reached for the stroller. “How was the office?” Y/N initiated small talk as they navigated the bustling streets.

“Good. I finally had the chance to set up a visit to the office in London, but after our trip to Anguilla.” Harry had orchestrated a week away from the New York hustle before the impending move and the holiday season. Work had taken a toll on him, and he needed a brief respite. “Did you pack already?”

“I did. I even checked that you had packed everything too. You hadn’t packed a swimsuit.”

“That’s insignificant. Could have skinny-dipped,” he quipped, winking at her as she took charge of the stroller. “You ruined the fun.”

“Harry!” she exclaimed, laughter dancing in her eyes. "Let’s stop at the deli. I want to get some things for my mom."

"What time is your mother getting here?" Harry inquired, trailing behind her as she led the way into their local grocery store. Y/N’s mom was set to stay for a week, graciously offering to look after Oliver during their travels. Harry welcomed the gesture with open arms, recognizing it as a chance for Mrs. Johnson to indulge in a well-deserved vacation.

"In about two hours or so. I just want to fully stock the fridge, so she doesn’t have to venture out or do any unnecessary walking," Y/N explained, pulling a shopping cart into position.

With their shopping complete, they made their way to the checkout counter. The cashier greeted them with a friendly smile, scanning each item before placing them in bags. Harry paid for the groceries, and they exited the store, the bell chiming softly once more.

The night air was crisper now, and they huddled together, the warmth of their shared breath creating a cocoon against the cold. Bags in hand, they started the short journey back to their apartment.

As they walked, the city sounds surrounded them—the distant honking of a taxi, the muffled conversations of pedestrians, and the occasional rustling of leaves caught in a gentle breeze. The weight of the bags added a comforting sense of purpose to their steps.

Reaching the apartment building, they rode the elevador, the bags swaying with each movement. Unlocking the door, they stepped into the warmth of their home, the scent of groceries mingling with the familiar fragrance of the apartment.

"Mission accomplished," Harry declared, setting the bags on the kitchen counter. As they unpacked the groceries, the quiet simplicity of the moment settled over them—a shared task, a cozy home, and the promise of moments yet to unfold.

The clock was ticking towards nine in the evening when the security intercom buzzed, signaling the arrival of Elizabeth and Delilah, Y/N's younger sister. Elizabeth had chosen to take the latest train, and a mix of excitement and nerves accompanied her journey. Bringing her daughters together was an endeavor that had tugged at her emotions.

The elevator doors chimed, signaling their arrival on the top floor.

"Y/N?" Elizabeth's voice echoed through the foyer. Y/N swiftly untangled herself from Harry and Oliver, walking briskly to her mother. "Look at you!" Elizabeth exclaimed, enveloping her oldest daughter in a warm embrace. "You are absolutely glowing!"

“I’ve missed you!” Y/N said as she pulled away and then turned to look at her sister.

"Delilah, it's been too long. How have you been?" Y/N's voice carried a genuine sweetness, As Y/N greeted Delilah at the door, there was an undeniable warmth in her eyes, a genuine attempt to bridge the gap that time had created between them.

"Busy, you know how it is," Delilah replied vaguely, avoiding eye contact. The air in the room hung heavy with unspoken tensions, as if the weight of their past differences loomed large. Y/N tried to steer the conversation toward more neutral ground

"Well, we're so glad you could make it. How's school?”

“Fine” Y/N struggled with the tangible discomfort of trying to reconnect with a sister determined to keep an emotional distance. "Is this your house?" Delilah inquired.

"My boyfriend's," Y/N replied.

"I've told you it's just as much yours as it is mine," Harry chimed in, approaching with a drowsy Oliver cradled in his arms. "I am very pleased to finally meet you, Mrs. Y/L/N."

"Please call me Elizabeth, Harry."

"I would shake your hand, but I'm a bit tied up with this one," he said, motioning to the almost one-year-old sleeping in his arms. “Thank you for coming. I am sure it’s not easy to drop work and school for a favor. I’m very grateful”. Elizabeth smiled, “You must be Delilah. It’s nice to meet you too”.

“Thanks” Delilah couldn't help but feel a sense of surprise as her eyes inadvertently lingered on Harry's features. His natural beauty struck her, catching her off guard. The way his curls fell effortlessly, the strong jawline, and the warmth in his eyes all seemed almost too perfect. She had seen her sister with attractive partners before, but there was something distinctly captivating about Harry. It left Delilah momentarily stunned, her initial coldness thawing as she found herself acknowledging the genuine charm of Y/N's boyfriend.

"Come in, please. Dinner is served in the dining room," Harry welcomed them into the living room. "I'm just going to put him to bed, and I'll be back."

"Mom, please leave that there. Harry and I will take it upstairs," Y/N said, observing her mom struggling with her purse, a carry-on, and a duffle bag that appeared to belong to her younger sister.

"Harry and I? You better not be carrying heavy things, Y/N," Elizabeth warned as she placed all the bags beside the staircase.

"I am not," Y/N smiled, gently grabbing her mother's hand, a reminiscent gesture from her childhood. Elizabeth's face lit up with memories as she marveled at her oldest daughter. "I promise," Y/N added, reassuring her mother.

"Pregnancy is really suiting you, honey," Elizabeth commented.

"Are you excited to be a grandma?" Y/N asked, throwing an arm over her mother's shoulders as she guided her towards the dining room.

"I can't wait. Have you guys set a name?"

"Isn't it too soon?"

"You look big enough to have her tomorrow," Delilah remarked under her breath, intentionally hurting Y/N's feelings and confidence. Elizabeth glanced at Delilah with a disapproving look, silently urging her to be more considerate. Y/N, though hurt by the remark, maintained her composure as they all gathered at the dining table. The room was filled with a warm glow from the flickering candles, creating a serene ambiance.

As they settled into their seats, Harry reappeared, having successfully put Oliver to bed. He took a moment to appreciate the sight of Y/N and her family. He was at peace that it had finally happened and that he had been given a second chance, but more importantly that he got the change to finally meet her family.

Dinner was a mix of casual conversation and catching up on the time they had spent apart. Elizabeth, despite her initial reservations, couldn't help but be drawn to Harry's genuine charm and warm hospitality. Delilah, on the other hand, seemed to have a small crush on her sister’s boyfriend.

"So, where are you guys off to?" Elizabeth inquired, savoring a bite of the dark chocolate pie that Y/N had expertly prepared.

"Anguilla. Eastern Caribbean," Harry replied, a warm smile accompanying his words. "Thought it'd be nice to take a little break before the hectic months ahead."

Elizabeth's eyes twinkled with delight. "That's a wonderful idea”.

"We leave tomorrow, but don't worry, the fridge is fully stocked, and I made sure to buy all your favorites," Y/N chimed in, casting a reassuring glance at her mother. Elizabeth chuckled, appreciating the thoughtful gesture.

As the evening progressed, everyone ascended the stairs to the apartment. Harry, gracious and understanding, bid his goodbyes, excusing himself to provide Y/N with a private moment to reconnect with her family.

Y/N, her heart filled with a mix of nostalgia and anticipation, led her mother, Elizabeth, to the guest bedroom overlooking Central Park. "This will be your room, Mom," she announced warmly, pushing the door open to reveal a freshly cleaned space with a picturesque view. "This is the room with the best view. You just wait and see tomorrow." Harry had efficiently brought up the luggage Elizabeth arrived with, and Y/N continued her considerate tour. "There are fresh towels in the bathroom and a robe in case you want to get cozy," she shared, patting down the feather duvet. "Your room is right across, Delilah."

The room Y/N had selected for her sister held a special significance, as it was the very room she once occupied during her time as a nanny. Every detail had been meticulously arranged, with freshly cleaned linens and neatly folded blankets. Elizabeth followed behind, observing her eldest daughter as she removed the numerous decorative pillows from the bed.

"I picked this room for you because the sunrise is from the back, you won't be disturbed by the early sunlight. And, of course, the blackout curtains make it even more comfortable." Y/N explained, gesturing to the window that framed a peaceful view.

However, as the atmosphere settled into a semblance of peace, Delilah seized a moment alone with Y/N to express her disdain. "You seem to be enjoying this domestic scene quite a lot, playing house with your rich boyfriend," she sneered, her tone cutting through the otherwise serene atmosphere. Caught off guard by the sudden hostility, Y/N took a deep breath, collecting her thoughts before responding to her sister's unexpected critique.

As Delilah's sharp words lingered in the air, Y/N felt a wave of discomfort wash over her. Despite the celebratory occasion of her family's visit, Delilah seemed determined to cast a shadow over the reunion. Y/N tried to keep her composure, offering a soft smile and attempting to steer the conversation toward a more positive direction.

"Well, it's not about playing house or being rich," Y/N responded, her voice steady. "Harry and I are building a life together, and we're excited about the future." She chose her words carefully, hoping to diffuse the tension that hung in the room.

Delilah, however, remained unyielding. "Building a life or being carried away in someone else's?" she retorted, her skepticism apparent. Y/N could sense an underlying resentment, a sentiment she hadn't anticipated. The transition from their childhood dynamics to this newfound reality appeared to be a source of contention for Delilah.

“Carried away? I have a job and a career. Sure, Harry probably makes more than me, but that doesn’t mean that I am just a trophy wife or girlfriend in this case”

Delilah's expression remained skeptical, a visible furrow on her brow. "Career or convenience?" she challenged, her tone biting. Y/N took a moment to collect her thoughts, not wanting to escalate the situation further.

"I'm not sure why I'm bothering to explain this to you. It's clear you're too immature to understand or be happy for me. I thought after all this time, you might have changed a bit," Y/N shook her head, frustration evident in her tone. "It's obvious this isn't about me and Harry. This is about what happened a few years ago. It's time to grow up and move on.”

---> Chapter 50

[sev-on-kamino]

sev 🥺🥺🥺 “that really does make you hard. i can feel you pulsing inside me” with cody? playing with fire and making him mad? 👀👀i love you

kit @corvod I need you to know that this quote with Cody of all people really altered my brain chemistry. I hope you enjoy this lil spicy morsel! prompt is in orange this time!

word count: 621 (my hand slipped, but I caught it)

warnings: unprotected piv sex, biting, the world’s shortest predator/prey chase, Cody being Cody, MINORS DNI

dividers by the homie @dystopicjumpsuit

Cody was the patient one from his batch. No one knew that necessarily because no one ever tested his patience. His orders were followed immediately without question by everyone under his command. Even your natural aversion to authority didn’t make you immune to Cody’s will. He spoke, you listened. He said jump, you said how high?

Inversely, Cody respected your position as a medical officer, and didn’t give you shit when you laid out a treatment plan. This typically made both of your lives far easier than they had any right to be given that you were usually in active war zones.

So the current standoff between the two of you was fully uncharted territory. You’d given your orders as the medical authority aboard the *Negotiator* and Cody had less than respectfully declined.

Your eyebrows shot up, accompanied by several confused blinks.

“Excuse me?” you asked, as though you hadn’t heard him properly.

“I have shit to do, saraad,” He replied, picking up his helmet from the side table. “Don’t give me that look.”

“Yes, you do have shit to do…following my orders,” you said, eyes darting towards the helmet. It was a split second decision to snatch the bucket right out of his hands.

Cody’s eyes widened in utter shock before narrowing dangerously.

“I give you a lot of leeway because you’re good at what you do, and you fuck like an angel.” His voice was low, calm, and steady. “Don’t let that go to your head and get you in trouble.”

He held his hand out for his helmet, but you clutched it to your chest, your chin raised defiantly. The marshal commander released a humorless laugh, and took a step towards you.

Fear and arousal jockeyed for position, and ultimately settled side by side low in your belly, as you took a step back.

You made to exit the medbay with the stolen equipment, but Cody was like lightning. One powerful arm looped tightly around your waist, holding you against his armored chest, while his free hand easily tugged his helmet right out of your grip, tossing it onto the table once more.

“Oh, fuck,” you whispered nervously.

“Oh fuck is right,” he replied, spinning you around to face him.

In 2 minutes and 30 seconds, Cody had you naked and riding him on top of a crate in the supply closet. Your soft body would bear marks from the unyielding plastoid, and his iron grip for days.

“Can’t believe you had the balls to challenge me,” he groaned against your neck, as you rolled your hips against him.

“You fucking deserved it,” you replied, turning your head to bite him just below his jaw.

His grip tightened, and he pulled your hips flush against his.

“Who do you think you are?” He asked, narrowing his eyes at you.

“Your saraad,” you said, stealing a kiss, and wrapping your arms around his shoulders. His cock twitched inside you, eliciting a surprised hum from you.

“Say that again,” he ordered. “Tell me who you belong to.”

“You, Commander.”

“Fuck, I like hearing that. Almost too much.”

“It’s true. I’m yours.” Again you could feel his cock jump at your words. “That really does make you hard. I can feel you pulsing inside me.”

“Careful, or I’ll fill that pretty little mouth of yours next.”

“I thought you had things to do,” you moaned, as he adjusted his hold on you to drive the head of his cock into the sensitive place inside you, that had your head spinning.

“Making you come for me was already on the list,” he said, as his nimble fingers found your clit, driving all thoughts beyond your impending orgasm right out of your head.

tagu list: @secondaryrealm @dystopicjumpsuit @sunshinesdaydream @dukeoftheblackstar @wolffegirlsunite @808tsuika @sleepingsun501 @starrylothcat @ladyzirkonia @wings-and-beskar @pb-jellybeans @clio3kantarella @stardusthuntress @idontgetanysleep @lune-de-miel-au-paradis @anxiouspineapple99 @littlemissmanga @mandos-mind-trick @amorfista @kimiheartblade @freesia-writes @sinfulsalutations @523rdrebel @clonemedickix @multi-fan-dom-madness @mooncommlink @1vlouds @moonlightwarriorqueen @starqueensthings @dangraccoon @idoubleswearimawriter @wizardofrozz @trixie2023 @dreamie411 @nunanuggets @foodmoneyandcats @cdbkake1565

[sundrop-writes]

Stop? (Baby, Don't Stop)

Sub!Gar Logan x Dom!Fem!Reader

Summary:

Gar can’t say no to you. But he can’t bring himself to see that as a problem. (aka - Gar is very stressed out about everyone else's problems, so you force him to de-stress in the best way.)

Sub!Gar Logan x Dom!Fem!Reader. Friends with Benefits. Smut. Set during Season 3.

Word Count: 1,800

DC Titans Masterlist | AO3 Link

THIS IS A RE-POST. This is a fic from my old blog (a blog that was shadowbanned, forcing me to move). This fic is not stolen, it is completely mine, and I am just re-posting it to help people find my new blog, and to make my masterlist complete when I post new fics for this fandom.

Detailed warnings and author's notes below the cut.

Warnings: spoilers for Titans S1, S2, and S3 if you haven’t seen the show before and want to watch it unspoiled, this is set during S3 when the Titans are staying at Wayne Manor, passing mentions of Gar’s trauma (him being killed during Trigon, him being kidnapped by Cadmus, his parents’ death), dom/sub dynamics - Gar is more submissive and the reader is more dominant, the reader calls Gar ‘baby boy’, the reader and Gar have an implied pre-established relationship, Gar (kind of) goes into subspace but it’s not explicitly mentioned or described as such, the reader has a vagina, penis in vagina sex, the reader rides Gar, overstimulation - the reader rides Gar through his orgasm and overstimulates him, possibly dubcon - the reader oversimulates Gar when he is not expecting it and he’s in a murky headspace but he does enjoy it and it’s stated in the narrative that he does not want it to stop (hence, the title), finger sucking (Gar sucks on the reader’s finger), unprotected sex, sloppy sex, hopefully that is everything. Just know that this is in line with my usual brand of filth.

A/N: This is one of my favourite Gar smuts that I have written, so I had to re-post it first. One of my favourite smut tropes (kinks?) is riding a guy through his orgasm and overstimulating him - vastly underutilized. And I randomly got thinking about this + Gar this morning, so have this. I missed my green haired boyfriend, so there will definitely be more smut with him coming soon (I am thinking some stuff with virgin!Gar maybe? let me know what you think of that idea lmao).

....

Gar was someone who had experienced a lot of hardship in his life. 

His parents dying when he was still so young, him suddenly having a set of metahuman powers that he wasn’t prepared for - powers that he was kind of terrified of and definitely didn’t know how to use responsibly. Him literally being murdered by his dearest friends while they were under mind control, and then being brought back again and having to heal from the mental and physical injuries. The severe medical torture and resulting mental shitshow that Cadmus had put him through. 

It was a lot to have to push down during everyday life, having to pretend he was okay - having to put up a front for everyone else when they simply assumed that he was. 

But there were a lot of times when he could forget about all that. Times when he wasn’t actively suppressing his trauma because you made things okay - because you distracted him in the absolute best ways. Times when he thought that literally everything in life was just perfect. And most of those times were when you were on top of him like this. 

He would consider this nothing short of literal heaven. 

The feeling of your sweet, wet cunt clenching down on him as he laid flat on his back, splayed out on one of the many luxurious beds of Wayne Manor. 

(“You need to relax.” You had told him, taking him by the hand and dragging him into the random bedroom. “You’re worrying way too much about everyone else right now. Someone needs to take care of you.”) 

And while he had not at all put up any physical resistance against you, pliant under your touch as usual, that conversation had originally started out as him protesting against your thesis. He had told you that: no, he was worrying just the right amount about everyone else, that they needed him. But his protests had quickly died down when you shoved him back onto the bed and drowned out his voice with your tongue. 

Gar always had a very hard time saying no to you. 

He wasn’t sure if it was selfishly motivated. From the outside looking in, others probably say that it was. Considering that he was a guy, and you were just as horny as him - he never felt the need to say no to you. Especially considering the fact that he had never felt a greater sensation than that of your wet pussy surrounding his cock. 

And usually with the promise of that dangling over his head, you had gotten him to do a great number of compromising things, both minuscule and potentially life changing. Or perhaps it was because you were the sweetest little vixen that had captured his heart. And any time you batted your eyes and asked him to do something in that sweet voice, you might as well have been casting a spell on him. 

And he knew that it wasn’t just a weak spot he had for you. 

You had worked that magic on Conner and Jason before. Gar was actively working under the firm belief that if you simply approached Jason and asked him to stop killing people nicely please, then he would take off the Red Hood mask and surrender himself politely, no questions asked. 

But all of that was the farthest thing from his mind as you bounced on his cock. 

With your hands sitting on his shoulders, your nails digging into his bare skin. His shirt had been lost at some point while his pants were shucked off around his ankles and caught up against his shoes. But he could barely even focus on his lack of nakedness or your own because he was obsessively caught in the feeling of your cunt warmly hugging around his hard cock. 

Though he was slightly wishing that your shirt was off, but far too pussy drunk to simply reach out and lift it off so he could enjoy the sway of your tits in his face without obstruction. 

You were a perfect wet vice around him, leaking wetness down over his heavy balls and smearing it up over his stomach as you bounced. And all Gar could really do was take a gentle hold on your hips and appreciate the ride. His face was absolutely knit with pleasure in a way that made you giggle with delight, watching his almost caveman-like expression of tight brows and a heavy set jaw as he stared at the place where you were joined with utterly intense concentration. 

You had never seen a prettier man in all your days - those big brown eyes entirely rapt with pleasure, soft lips and a glisten of sweat across his skin that made you even more intent on ruining him. 

“You gonna cum for me, baby boy?” Your voice laced around the words, breathy yet so commanding, so strong, holding the power over him as you always did. 

It was enough to send a rumble through Gar’s chest, a sharp echo of pleasure from your words. 

That was the sacred question. 

Of course, Gar never wanted it to end. Ultimately, he just wanted to stay like this forever - buried deep in your sweet cunt, feeling that intense warmth hugging him, having your perfect scent surrounding him and having every worry in the world pushed out of his brain. 

But he did feel all the telltale signs - that almost painful tingle in his balls and that deep twisting in his gut that told him it was going to he over too soon. He was going to cum for you, just like he always did. 

All he could gather in response was a choked off grunt. But you knew his language well enough by now - you knew him when he was swimming this deep in pleasure, and you certainly didn’t need words. You knew it just by the expression on his face, the growing look of tight-knit desperation, the gentle whimpers that began to escape his lips. 

Something so enticing that it caused you to run a thumb along his bottom lip, finding the curve of his mouth to be all too pretty when he let out those sweet little sounds. Naturally, he drew the digit inside and began sucking on it, enjoying the tang of your natural skin oils, something that only pushed him closer to the edge. 

Feeling that that sharp whine punched out of his chest, vibrating around your finger only caused you to double down. You bucked your hips harder, riding him with an almost vengeful kick, as though you were trying to push his entire body down through the bed. It was something that caused a loud, pornographic wet smacking to echo through the room - a blatant signal to anyone walking by that the two of you were going at it like rabbits. 

If Gar had any sense left between his ears, he would have been thankful for it being such a large house. He would have been thankful for some sense of privacy. 

Instead, he was totally brainless as the feeling of orgasm overtook his body. His mouth went wide around your thumb as he released a litany of almost pathetic moans and whimpers and he arched back into the bed, a pure exorcism of pleasure overtaking him. He mindlessly endowed his animal strength onto you - digging his fingers into your hips and forcing you down onto his cock for a few moments, forcing you to still on top of him as he shot his load of hot cum inside of you. 

This caused a few hot moans from your lips, nothing but pure enjoyment as you watched the radical pleasure rock him. 

It was such an intense orgasm that it made his muscles seize and jump, it easily made his balls ache. By the time his cock had spurted those last bits of cum into you, he thought that his dick would willfully go limp and fall out of you, being just as tired as he was as he collapsed back onto the bed. But he was still semi-hard and throbbing inside your pussy, tingling with overstimulation as you unconsciously clenched around him. 

You leaned down to his panting lips, sealing him in a hot kiss. 

Gar let out a strangled shriek when you began bouncing your hips again. 

A shockwave of hot pin needles flew up his body from the point where you were joined, erratic hot overstimulation overtaking him. His cock forcefully filled with blood again as you clenched down on him harder. Clearly, you were gaining some thrill out of feeling the extra slickness of his cum sliding between the two of you, out of hearing just how wet your thrusts were now. 

Gar let out another sharp whine and moved his very limp hands back to your hips. In his mind, it was an attempt to shove you off him, to take a fucking breath. But his fingers only dug into your flesh harder and pulled you down onto his cock with force when he felt a particular hot streak of pleasure flare up through his gut. It was almost against his will - but your pussy was just too fucking good. 

“Too much.” He moaned out weakly, a hot puff against your lips, the first thing he had said in an hour of more. “‘s too much.” 

You found the way he slurred the words to be entirely adorable - as though he was quite literally drunk on your pussy. The wide gape of his mouth, trying to draw in breath as you continued to punch it out of him, and the tears pricking the edges of his eyes only made it more beautiful. 

“Do you want me to stop?” You asked, slightly breathless yourself. 

You continued to slam your hips down on his cock, over and over again planting yourself in that filthy puddle of your mixed cum. 

It was a traitorous question. 

It was too much of a strain on his body, but it was everything he wanted. He was breathless and brainless and nothing else in the world existed except for your wet cunt squeezing his aching cock, your natural smell filling the world around him, the hot press of your tits against his chest. 

The word ‘stop’ didn’t seem to be in his vocabulary. 

He let out a strained choking sound, and found himself unconsciously bucking up into you - he found himself enjoying the painful sting that ran through him. Tears leaked from his eyes, and when you reached up to wipe them away, you gave him one last thoughtful sentiment. 

“Tell me to stop and I will.” You whispered quietly against his cheek. 

But it seemed that you already knew what his answer would be. 

Gar put a hand on your back, cradling you close, shoving his face in your neck and breathing in that perfect aroma of your sweat. 

Stop? 

You ground your hips down into him, creating nothing but a filthy wet ache. He choked on a moan and found himself holding you still once again so he could fuck up into you harder. 

“Please.” He moaned weakly against your skin. “Please, don’t stop.”

[sorrowsofsilence]

Burning Out • VII

Pairing: Noah Sebastian x Fem!Reader

I was lost, but now I'm found Under the lights and in the sounds So let us sing and sing it loud That we're not perfect, but we're proud of who we are.

Noah Sebastian is lost. His crime-filled lifestyle is anything but perfect; but everything changes once he meets you.

Words: 4.4k

General Fanfic Warnings: 18+, explicit language, smut, alcohol, drugs, violence, mentions murder/suicide, panic attacks/anxiety, nightmares

Authors note: Chapter Seven - I wish I wasn't lost (EDITED 09-03-24)

new? start from chapter one here

THIS IS A FANFICTION USING REAL PEOPLE IN A FICTIONAL SITUATION! I AM NOT IMPLYING THESE PEOPLE WOULD DO THE THINGS IN THE STORY OR ACT THE WAY THEY DO IN THE STORY, IN REAL LIFE! IT IS SIMPLY FICTION, AND JUST FOR FUN! THINK OF THEM AS ACTORS LOL.

+

I moaned as she slid down one more time and I gripped her hair, holding her still. I filled her tongue as threads of my release coated the back of her throat. The sight below me left my legs shaking as I pulled away, tucking her hair behind her ears, and rubbing my fingers underneath her chin in endearment.

What have I done?

“Good girls swallow,” I whispered and she moaned.

“Open,” I said, watching in complete reverence as she stuck out her tongue, showing me that she obeyed, drinking in all of me.

I leaned down towards her, pulling her chin up to kiss me as I melted into her lips, sighing with commitment.

What have I done?

+++++

NOAH

I wonder how How can it be that two souls live beneath my chest? I wander on Through the snowfall And the firestorm

One week passed.

I had resorted to stealing from a few homes, but the objects I took were worth nothing compared to the cost of Y/N's drugs. After selling everything, I only made 4.5k, barely enough to maintain my daily goal of 645; and I was desperately trying to come up with another scheme to earn more cash. With my stolen money in hand, I went to one of D's associates, feeling a surge of anger at the smug grin on his face as he greedily snatched the envelope from my grasp.

‘Having fun Sebastian? Surprised you even made this much yourself.’It took everything in me to walk away without bashing his fucking face in.

As each day passed I was being eaten alive by guilt, and I could barely look at Y/N. She noticed the shift in my behaviour, persistently asking me what was wrong and if she had done something.

‘Nothing,’ I would say.

‘Just stressed,’ I would say.

Our final night together was the night I stole her medication. As she held me in her arms, drifting off into a peaceful slumber, I couldn't bring myself to close my eyes. Instead, I quietly cried while she slept, unaware of the lies that lay next to her.

The next morning, I lied and said I would sleep in the spare bedroom across the hall. The expression on her face was heart-wrenching.

‘Oh, I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I know that the nightmares are hard to deal with.’ She had said, her eyes falling briefly before she attempted to hide her expression with a smile.

My heart yearned at her words, wanting to hold her against my chest, ready to block out all the evil in the world if it meant protecting her. It wasn’t the nightmares that pushed me away, it was myself.

‘I don’t want to invade your space more than I already am.’ I responded.

I watched her take her pills when she did, my chest clenching in shame with every sip of water that followed the lies.

I wish I wasn't afraid of The haunted valley

The boys watched the remorse control me as I began to shut off the world, secluding myself from Y/N, and them.

I wish I wasn't a failure That nobody needs

“Noah?”

In the depths of my mind, I'm lost and confined A question gnaws at my core; I can't deny

“Noah.” Am I a mere illusion, a ghost in the crowd? Or do I carry a soul screaming out loud?

“Noah!”

I pulled out my earbuds at the call of my name, and my eyes squinted open. Ruffilo stood over me as I lay on the mattress in the basement, drowning in lyrics. The music blared from the removed bud as Nicholas glared, folding his arms.

I wish the voices in my head stopped their shrill tongues Just for a second so I could breathe some fresh air For a moment so I could stop sinking into despair I am a traitor in the face of myself

“Did you want to work on the song?” He asked, “Or are you wallowing in self-pity?”

A slave to a maggot that eats away my soul I ask the mountains to consume me as a whole How long will I be captured in this maze in the hail?

The song.

Y/N had hooked us up with a gig at Sammy’s tomorrow night, and Jolly had the brilliant idea of finishing our first-ever set with an original song; despite us never even playing for an audience. I wasn’t sure if I was more nervous about playing some shitty music in front of an audience of strangers, or that one of the audience members would be Y/N.

I shrugged and closed my eyes, sinking into the softness of the pillow with the bud still in my ear. Nicholas shook his head at me. He leaned over, tugging on one earbud to make me listen to him.

"Come on, you can't mope forever," he said with a sigh.

"I can try," I retorted, pulling the bud back from him as I sat up.

"You've been ignoring her for days. Can't you see how much it's hurting her? You messed up, not her." Nicholas' words hit me like a slap in the face.

I turned away from his piercing gaze, but I couldn't help but notice Jolly and Folio pretending to work while eavesdropping on our conversation.

"She's been bringing your regular coffee every day after work because you haven't even been showing up," Nicholas continued, his tone sharp.

I felt guilty as I chewed on the inside of my cheek, unable to meet anyone's eyes. She has?

I rolled my head back “I know. None of it is fair to her.”

Nicholas perched on a chair by the wall, observing me with caution in his eyes. "You need to stop taking your guilt out on her," he said.

I let out a deep breath and got up from the bed, tossing my earbuds onto the sheets. "I can't even look at her without feeling like she sees through me," I admitted.

"Is that such a bad thing?" Nicholas asked.

I scoffed and threw my hands up in frustration. "Yes it is, because I took her pills and had to watch her swallow fake ones," I ranted as I paced around the room. "Pills that are supposed to help her, but are nothing but deceit!"

Nicholas kept his gaze on me, his brow furrowed. Folio's face also showed disappointment as he watched from the side.

"She takes those pills expecting relief, but I took that away from her!" I stopped walking for a moment, pressing my palms against my eyes and exhaling loudly in turmoil.

"You made a choice," Nicholas stood up and approached me, standing in front of me.

He looked into my eyes with a mix of anger and sadness. "I hate seeing you like this, Noah, but you messed up."

"I know I messed up, Nick," I replied, my chest rising and falling rapidly. Nicholas wrapped his arms around me, offering comfort.

"You need to tell her," he advised, placing a reassuring hand on my shoulder.

I collapsed into his hug, holding onto my brother tightly. "I can't...not yet," I whispered.

“So you plan on ignoring her for weeks until everything with D is over?” Nicholas shook his head, “We’re living with her now. You can’t just avoid her and you shouldn’t after everything she’s done for us.”

I stepped back from him and nodded in agreement, “I know; that’s why I’ve been considering...”

“Considering what?” Nicholas raised an eyebrow.

“A pharmacy robbery.”

“By yourself?” He chuckled, watching me carefully. “Are you serious?”

I heard Jolly laughing in the corner and gave him a sharp look.

“Of course I'm serious,” I shrugged. “But I could make a ton of money from this Vincent guy by getting pure drugs.”

“The last time you pulled off a big solo heist was when we got into this mess in the first place. You don't take on big jobs alone.”

The lights flickered around the room as I sat on the motel bed, my chest heaving with excitement. A seventeen-year-old Ruffilo sat beside me with the tattoo machine ready to brand my knuckles as twelve-year-old Folio watched eagerly.

“Today’s the day,” Jolly cheered, a wide smile stretching across his face as he threw a beer in my direction, “Our young padawan becomes a man.”

The can fumbled between my fingers as I looked down at it proudly, jittering with thrill. Jolly’s never let me drink before.

I opened the can in acceptance, hesitant to take the first sip with shaky hands, before bringing it up to my mouth. The beer was pungent and bitter, my lips puckering with furrowed brows; yeah, it was disgusting.

I tried to hide my distaste with a weak smile, “Yum.”

Jolly laughed, throwing his head back in amusement.

“You might want to chug it,” He said, taking a sip of his own beverage, “the knuckles hurt like a bitch.”

My eyes danced between him and the can as Nicholas and Nick began chanting, “Noah, Noah, Noah!”

Jolly joined with a raised fist, smiling with admiration as I chugged the drink, throwing the can to the floor in excitement as I stomped on it, the scream of elation ripping through my lungs as we all laughed. Nicholas hollered as he grabbed my shoulders, shaking me and I grinned, living within this moment of adventure.

“You ready?” Nicholas said, raising a quizzical brow as I began to feel the buzz. I nodded eagerly, throwing my hands in front of the table placed next to the bed.

Nicholas slid plastic gloves over his own tatted fingers before he wiped my knuckles with an alcohol wipe.

“There’s no going back,” He smiled as I sucked in a breath, anticipating the familiar scratching of the needle as it embedded the letters into my skin.

“Happy fourteenth birthday, baby bro,” Jolly walked over to me, patting my back. He handed me a crumbled paper bag, and with my free hand, I reached inside excitedly, pulling out the fabric.

I bit my lip as I tried to hide my smile but couldn’t. I was finally one of them.

“Your first mask.” Jolly nodded in approval. I tried pulling it over my head but couldn’t with one hand, so Jolly reached over, pulling it down over my face.

He bent down in front of me, his hand on top of my head as he shook me with fondness and it took everything in me not to cry with happiness at his praise.

That evening Nicholas wrapped my knuckles with black tape, protecting the freshly wounded skin. He went over the plan with Jolly, pointing towards the map indicating where I was to go, and where I would meet them after.

“This garage is filled with fancy as fuck cars,” Jolly nodded, leaning over the table, “so you have options. Don’t settle for any car, but don’t linger too long.”

“Remember, Kia’s and Hyundai’s are easier to hotwire, so you’ll have better luck getting in and out,” Nicholas said and I nodded as I jumped up and down, amping myself up.

“The alarms will go off almost immediately once you break in. People in this hotel get that shit valet, so someone is bound to notice right away.”

“Don’t forget, one, Underneath the steering wheel column find the wiring harness connector, Two, Pull aside the battery, ignition, and starter wire bundle, Three, Strip about 1 inch of the battery wires and twist them together. Fourth, Connect the ignition on/off wire to the battery wire.” Jolly listed and I nodded with each of his commands, reciting them back, “And don’t forget to break the steering lock or you won’t be able to drive.”

“Wire bundle, trip and twist, ignition to the battery,” I repeated, “Steering lock.”

+

“Well, I have no choice,” I threw my arms up, laughing, “What, you want me to ask Y/N then?”

Ask Y/N…

“No but-” Jolly started, but I interrupted him. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. She could be a diversion. A distraction in the plan.

“Y/N could be an extra body, and perhaps…” I trailed off, my mind wandering in thought. Yes, this was crazy; and the idea that followed even more so…but perhaps it could work.

“Okay,” Nicholas said as anger started bubbling from his tone as he watched me with disbelief, “And?”

“And,” I grabbed his shoulder as a smile wound up on my lips, “I can steal Y/N’s prescription while I’m there, and then replace her meds. So, she’ll never know.”

Nicholas rolled his head back in annoyance, almost laughing at my words, “Dude, you’re just going to dig yourself a hole here. You can’t be serious. Just tell her the truth about the fucking pills rather than getting her more involved.”

“I will eventually,” I sighed, “Just not now.”

“You do know how hard it is to steal from businesses alone versus a few houses here and there?” Jolly said as he scribbled in his notebook, “What is Y/N going to be able to do? Other than putting her and you in danger?”

“I have a plan,” I said, as I started pacing around the room.

“You’re considering her help? Are you fucking insane?” Jolly’s mouth hung open, “Du är en riktig klydderöv.” (You are an ass who likes to make things harder than they are)

“Listen,” I held my hands up in defence, but Nicholas threw his arms up.

“You can’t be serious; she could get hurt! You’re just using her?” he seethed.

“And you guys aren’t?” I laughed, pointing to the guitars and motioned around the room, “We are fucking freeloaders.”

“Aren't you worried about her getting injured?Caught? Better yet, Arrested?” Nick asked through clenched teeth. Why did he care so much?

“Of course I fucking am!” I growled, trying to not let any more guilt eat away at my insides, “I just want to have her as an extra body for that bit of fear factor. I don’t want her doing anything upfront or dangerous.”

“That’s still dangerous!” Nicholas exclaimed, “The fact she will be in that situation in the first place is not a good idea.”

I nodded in agreement, “I know. But what other choice do I have right now?” My eyes danced past each of the boys.

I knew this wasn’t the best idea, but my options were slim. I wanted to continue whatever was going on with Y/N- I didn’t want to feel this guilt, and if I was being honest with myself…

I was scared.

I was scared she wouldn’t see past my deceit, and I was scared she would hate me. That she wouldn’t forgive me.

I knew I had to make up for everything that had happened, but the first step was getting her proper medication back.

And to do that, I needed her help.

I wonder how How can it be that two souls live beneath my chest? I wander on Through the snowfall And the firestorm

“Let’s work on the song,” Folio changed the subject as the room heated, and I sighed heavily.

“Yeah, whatever,” I sat back on the mattress, pulling up the lyrics I wrote on my phone.

“Whatcha got Noah?” Jolly asked as he picked up the guitar.

“You've run out of luck, and I'm calling your bluff You stabbed me in the back, but not deep enough But not deep enough I see through you.” I hummed.

Jolly nodded as he tried to match the chords.

“Then the chorus, yada yada,” I said, eyes scanning my device as my thumb scrolled the screen.

“You said I'd never make it, you said I'd fall on my face But now I'm right where I belong, and I put you in your place You said I'd never make it, you said I'd make a mistake But now I'm right where I belong, and you've got nothing to say.”

Jolly eyed me briefly with a slight glare as I spoke, and I avoided his eyes.

“I like it,” Nicholas said, plucking the bass.

+++++

Y/N

With my fingers wrapped around the paper coffee cup, I sighed, fiddling with my keys to open the front door to my house.

Noah’s sudden distance made my chest clench in worry.

“look at me, show me those pretty eyes while I fuck your mouth,” he demanded and my lashes flicked up toward him, his body shuddering as I stared into him with complete greed.

The last time we spoke was that night.I chalked it up to him being busy paying back D, but I couldn’t help but feel slightly broken, and that it was my fault for his distance.

Doubt ate at my insides, beginning to regret inviting them into my home.

I wish I wasn't afraid of The haunted valley I wish I wasn't a failure

Maybe Noah saw how unwell I was, after the nightmare. Maybe this whole situation made him uncomfortable. I made him uncomfortable.

That nobody needs That nobody needs That nobody needs

I'm sure he heard me wake up screaming at night, and it hurt me to know that he wasn't the one who came running in to check on me. But that's okay, not that he had to. However, Nicholas was always there in a heartbeat. Living with the boys was easy, and I enjoyed spending game nights with Nick, Jolly, and Nicholas. Surprisingly, we got along well and I developed a close bond with Nicholas over the past few days. He must have noticed my internal struggle because he would often reassure me when I came home between shifts, rushing down to the basement with a cup of coffee to see Noah, only to be disappointed when he wasn't there.

“Hey,” Nicholas had waved, his gaze falling when he saw the coffee in my hands.

“Not home?” I asked, giving him a sad smile.

“No… I don’t know where he is either.”

I shared a curt nod before turning around to run back up the stairs.

“Y/N?” Nicholas called out before I took the first step up.

I stopped, sucking in a breath before sighing, “Did- did I do something wrong?” I asked, turning to look at him briefly.

Nicholas shook his head quickly, “No! No, of course not. You’ve done nothing but be kind to us.”

“Then why do I feel like I’m the problem? Did I scare him away?”

Nicholas’ shoulders dropped as he patted the seat on the couch next to him, pulling me into his side. I rested my head on his shoulder as he rubbed my arm warmly.

“Noah is a difficult creature,” He said, “But I haven’t seen him look at anyone the way he looks at you.”

I sniffed, “Then why is he ignoring me?”

Nicholas stiffened at the question, and I tried to shrug it off, but I knew that he knew.

“I- he’s going through it. This is a lot of money for him to get himself, without any help.”

I pulled away from his hug, “I just wish he would let me help.”

I closed the door behind me, smiling down at Juice as he greeted me. I heard someone puttering in the kitchen and assumed it was Nicholas.

“Hey, Ruffilo-” I shouted, slipping off my shoes and prancing into the kitchen. I immediately gasped in surprise when it was not Ruffilo, but Noah, who sat at the table munching on a grilled cheese. Our eyes locked as we silently exchanged words, and my breath hitched in my throat. Why did I feel so nervous?

My face flushed with embarrassment as I stood frozen in place, staring at him for a moment too long before bowing my head in anxiety. My heart raced, and I couldn't help but want to stare at his perfect smile or the way his long hair framed his face.

"Hey," he said gently, his eyes burning into me as I placed my bag on the counter and took a deep breath. I tried to distract myself by placing his coffee on the counter and grabbing a cup from the cupboard to fill with water.

"How are you?" he asked, still gazing at me intensely. I hesitated before turning around, my back pressed against the counter as I let my eyes meet his. I couldn't help wondering why he suddenly wanted to talk to me after days of distance. Part of me wanted to walk away.

"Um," I took a slow sip of water, the cool liquid offering little relief from the tension between us, "I'm good. And you?"

He watched as I took another sip, his eyes scanning over the glass and my fingers wrapped around it. He hesitated before speaking again, as if afraid of what he was about to say.

"I'm okay," he began, trailing off before looking away, fixating on the ground as he spoke softly, "I've missed you."

My heart raced as he revealed his feelings, and I couldn't help but let out a sigh of relief. Part of me wanted to brush off his words, while the other part wanted to wrap my arms around him and give in to his touch. Did he truly miss me, or was he just trying to ease his guilt for being absent for the past few days? Regardless, the way my breath caught in nervous anticipation showed how thrilled I was to see him.

"I got your coffee..." I murmured, not sure what else to say as I turned and handed him the cup. Our fingers grazed each other lightly as we exchanged the drink, sending tingles up my arm and butterflies fluttering in my stomach - reminiscent of the day we first met.

He gave me a small smile and thanked me shyly, but I could sense that something else was on his mind as he took a sip.

For a brief moment, silence hung between us as unspoken thoughts danced in the air.

“I’ve missed you too,” I confessed quietly as my cheeks warmed, and I began playing with my fingers nervously.

Noah’s ears flushed with colour as he genuinely smiled, “Let me take you out tonight.”

“I- I have work,” I stammered, excitement replaced with disappointment.

“Call in. Let me take you on a date.” He shook his head as he took another sip, refusing to let down.

“I can’t afford to call in,” I gave him a sad smile, “But I would love to go out with you this weekend when I’m free?”

“I’ll give you the money then,” He stood up now, grabbing the glass from my hands before pulling my palms into his grasp, “Just let me treat you.”

His October eyes begged as they bore into me, trying to read my mind. I looked away, trying not to succumb to his silent plea but instead, I smiled, looking at our connected hands. Why was he suddenly being this way?

“Stop looking at me like that,” I laughed.

“Like what?” He teased, before sticking out his bottom lip, packing on the puppy dog eyes.  

“Like that!” I giggled, and Noah tugged on my arms, pulling them so they were wrapped around his body as he buried me in his chest.

I sunk into his arms in alleviation as we swayed in the kitchen to the beat of our hearts.

Part of me wanted to pull away, tempted to see if he would bring me back. The other part of me wanted to berate him for his attitude. Part of me wanted him to take me against the kitchen table. There were so many questions I wanted to ask him, but I didn’t want to ruin this moment together.

“I’m sorry I’ve been distant,” Noah whispered now, his voice vibrating from his chest as my cheek was pressed against his soft cotton t-shirt. I nodded against him in response, squeezing his torso as I closed my eyes, my mind beginning to overthink everything that’s happened between us.

I finally sucked in a breath, hesitant to ask, “Did I do something wrong?”

Noah immediately pulled me from his chest to look me in the eyes with a sullen expression, his hands cupping either side of my face, “You haven’t done anything wrong. You’re perfect.”

My eyes began to glaze over as my mind eased a little, and I chuckled softly, “Definitely not perfect.”

“Definitely are,” He whispered, hesitating once more before his broken eyes began analyzing my own. He made me feel like I had no reason to think he was lying. He made me feel perfect.

Noah watched me carefully before his eyes closed briefly. He sucked in a breath, hesitating, “I- I think there’s something wrong with me. I’m so lost right now.”

“I hope you know you can talk to me,” I matched his tone, my head tilting in empathy as we stood in the kitchen, holding each other. My fingers gripped onto the fabric of his shirt as I pulled him into another hug, embracing all his insecurities.

“I know,” He sighed, before masking his sorrows with a smile.

“Please come out with me,” He pulled away and pleaded again, the pad of his thumb beginning to graze across my cheekbone before tracing the outline of my lips, “I want to spend time with you. I want to hear your story.”

I smiled at his words, my breath catching in my throat as we watched each other, completely mesmerized as my eyes travelled across the outline of his ochre eyes. The slight stubble outlined his perfect lips that wrapped around the whites of his teeth as he smiled charmingly, and it left my palms sweating.

“You know plenty about me now,” He said gently, concentrated eyes devouring me, “So who are you?”

Subconsciously I began leaning in closer to his touch, our lips inches apart, “Why are you so convincing?” I whispered, the warmth of Noah’s breath cascading along my face.

“Ahem.”

I turned immediately at the cough, and Noah pulled away from me, staring back at the ground. I looked between him and Ruffilo, who stood leaning against the wall, watching Noah with analytical eyes.

“Hi, ruffles!” I then smiled warmly, confused at his interruption but happy to see him. He acknowledged me briefly, nodding in my direction before glaring daggers towards the brunette.

“A date?” Nicholas's eyebrows furrowed as he crossed his arms and spoke with a tone of accusation.

Noah gave him a sharp look and I glanced between the two of them, trying to make sense of their tense exchange.

Noah turned away from us, shaking his head. “It's none of your business.”

“It is my business now.” Nicholas stood up, positioning himself next to me in a protective manner.

I furrowed my brow and took a step back from Ruffilo. “Can someone please explain what's going on?”

A cynical smirk appeared on Ruffilo's face as he let out a quick laugh, scoffing at the brunette in front of him. “You didn't ask her where you really wanted to take her out, did you?”

Noah ran a hand over his face. “I was getting there.”

I looked between them again before turning my head towards Noah. “Where were you planning to take me?”

Noah licked his lips thoughtfully before turning to me. “I need your help.”

Chapter 8

Tags:@crimson-calligraphyx @lma1986 @spicywhenspeaking @sammyjoeee @shilohrosechicken

@princessmarshmallowx @laurpartyprogram @cookiesupplier @nojoyontheburn @lacktoesandtoddlerant

@veronicaphoenix @er3nslovergirl @cncohshit @scrumptiousfestivalpost @melcchs

@flowery-mess @mentallynot-here @judging-from-afar @darkmxgician @badomensls

@hoe-for-daddywise @philomenie @xxkittenkissesxx @venturethroughtheveil @thefallennightmare

@blend-in-with-the-madness @reyadawn @deathblacksmoke @anameunmusical @sitkowski

@anything-more-than-human @into-the-grey @amelia-acero @rumoured-whispers @artificialbreezy

[squishmyster]

Crazy, he calls me

Cooper Howard could be described as a husband, father, and a prolific actor but what happens when it all starts crumbling under his feet and one of the only things to give him fresh air is you. His co-worker and one of his closest friends. Will everything including your relationship fail or will it be the one thing that survives even a nuclear fallout.

Authors Notes: HELLO ALL THIS IS MY FIRST FIC SERIES...very much a slow burn...ANY CONSTRUCTIVE CRTICSIM IS WELCOME AND I HOPE YOU AAL ENJOY!!!! OH AND ITS IN THE FIRST PERSON.... Warnings: Mentions of dying parent! Prologue~~~ Reunion MASTERLIST

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

Chapter 1~~~ Give Me the Simple Life

The First time that I met Cooper was during the war while I was a medic. We never really said much except a few polite waves and hello's that then turned into polite conversations and heartfelt talks. After the war, we came across each other on the set of A Man and His Dog. 

Arriving earlier than planned to the studio I get out of my car and walk to set I can't help but feel a little sad seeing how this is the smallest role yet but no matter how much I've done as an actress a gig like this is just what I need right now low stress and good pay. Even if I have money saved up I have to pay for my sick parents' medical fees and if I don't work I'll be bankrupt by the time I'm thirty. So I put on a smile, straighten my back, remind myself that I haven't been doing this too long, and make my way inside politely waving and saying hello to anyone I come across. 

After a quick debrief we were told to wait for the rest of the cast and crew to get there. As I was sitting off to the side nursing a very bleak coffee I started people watching taking note of who was talking to who. Looking between small groups of people and watching their mannerisms. That was until my eyes landed on him the man of the hour himself Cooper Howard. Smile shining, eyes bright and full of life. I couldn't stop myself from starring taking in all his dashing features and then we locked eyes it felt like my breath was stolen from me and all I could do was give him a small smile and wave before taking a sip of coffee in my hand which I quickly regretted forgetting that it tasted like burnt rubber and sugar.

Before I could even look up I felt a small tap on my shoulders and heard the voice of the man I was once very close to. "Hey, long time no see".  Looking up at him I smile and give him a slight nod. "Long time no see Cooper, how's life treating you?". seeing him up close is almost refreshing, to say the least after having not talked or seen him after his honorable discharge from the military... it feels like I found something I lost a long time ago. "Hm well... life's been pretty good to me so far, especially since I get to spend a lot more time with my daughter Janey, and what about you?". 

Hearing the light that comes to his voice at the mention of his daughter I smile and can't help it when my mind tries to envision him being a dotting father. Slightly embarrassed I down the rest of my coffee and take a glance looking for a nearby trashcan to discard the cup leaving Coopers lingering glances along my figure and the slight smirk on his face go unnoticed. " That's great I'm glad to hear things have been going well for you... as for me well things are great". Deciding it wouldn't be appropriate to spring family problems on him seeing as it's been years since we have seen each other I keep my answer short and sweet with a billion-dollar smile to match. 

Standing as poise as possible I place the empty paper cup on a table close by and straighten out my dress making sure any visible wrinkles like radium in face cream. "Well-". Before Cooper could say another word we were being called to go to get ready to shoot for something that should be a nerve-racking day being my first time around most of these people but I didn't feel nervous if anything I felt excited and maybe it was because I finally have Coop back in my life but I'm gonna disregard that and just say the excitement is no different this time than any other time I've been excited about a movie I'm acting in.

Saying our goodbyes Cooper gives me a charming smile before turning to leave while I grab the almost forgotten cup and throw it away in the nearby trashcan. After an hour in the hair and makeup chair, my mind drifts to my mother and how she's doing even if it feels like a worthless thought seeing as she's lying in a hospital bed dying and not having been able to see her the past couple of weeks has been harder than I thought. Wishing I could be with her and at least hold her hand through this horrid time. I keep thinking about how I'm failing her by not being by her side and it honestly feels like I'm screaming into a void of emptiness and it's starting to swallow me whole. Holding back tears I try and remind myself that I'm doing this for her no matter how hard it is. Once I'm done with hair and Makeup I head towards the set, push down all former emotions, and plaster on that award-winning Hollywood smile and poised look I'm known for having.

After a long day of shooting, I can say I'm very happy to be out of those hot Western clothes especially since it's a surprisingly humid Tuesday in California. On my way out of the studio, I say my goodbyes my smile is not very forced anymore since I could just go home, check on my mother, and then relax before starting all over again. As I reach my car I hear someone call out my name causing me to turn around but seeing who it was made a smile hit my lips and I lean on the car while he gets closer. " Hey, Cooper... did you need anything?".  

He had a slight jog in his step and once he reached me his smile turned wider and he gave me a quick up and down. Sliding one hand in his pocket he pulls out a cigarette case and lighter putting the bud of the cig to his lips with a flick of his thumb light he puts both the case and lighter in the chest pocket of his black suit." Yes I do actually... your number i hate that we lost contact and well isn't this a perfect time to catch up". Hearing him I feel a little shocked and I can't help but think it's not a perfect time for anything in my life and it takes me a few seconds longer than normal to answer.

Noticing the hesitance on my face Cooper makes a face of his own one that almost resembled disappointment or at least that's what it looked like to me so before he could say anything I did. " I wouldn't mind that". Just like that we were exchanging numbers and saying our goodbyes and once I got home I thought about the day I had. Thought about Cooper way more than I'm willing to admit and after doing it for longer than seemed sane. I called my mom we talked for a few hours before I turned in for the night my dreams filled with nothing but stars.

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

HOPE YOU ALL ENJOYED SAVE A HORSE RIDE A COWBOY AND ALL THAT JAZZ!!!!!

DON'T STEAL MY WORK IF YOU REPOST TAG ME!!! thanks.

Thanks for reading from Squish<3

[circeyoru]

In unwanted souls, I wanna know if the reader can be or is a well known author whether in hell or earth? Like alastor discover something new about them ang they wrote something like harry potter or Tolkien's that are widely famous because of its creativity? And they quit suddenly because of the attention.

-rawr 💜

Go to MASTERLIST for the works. This ask is for {Unwanted Souls}.

**Read the newest part (part 5) before reading the answer to this ask!! You're spoiling yourself if you don't

That's what the Reader/you would have been if it wasn't for that friend of yours. See, your ideas were stolen and that story became a best seller, later it was adapted into movies and the like. So it got popular and famous.

Now you can't exactly sue them for stealing your ideas since it was hard to prove they did or maybe you were trying to do it. In the end, you had to let it go. But the kicker was that your friend came back to ask for 'ideas' to add to a next story. Being too absorbed, you told that friend your plans and ideas. At the point, you rather people know about your story. You soon learn that you weren't one for attention, so it was unspokenly established that you gave ideas to that friend and the work be published, but not in your name.

As for your career, it's something you don't like or see yourself doing. While you're not suffering financially or lacking in materialistic resources, your psychological and mental well-being was below average. So think of jobs like the medical field or engineering field, something that gets you to take apart things to understand the functionings. It's linked with how your power developed when you got to Hell.

A bit of lore on your powers and abilities then, since we're on the subject.

Conjuring through writing: Because you wanted to be a writer that brings your thoughts to life

Book as your medium: Because you love books and reading them

Understanding before being able to summon things: Because of the nature of your job and the proficiency you held

Regaining energy through a slumber mode: An ironic echo to your death, whereas sleep was the end of your human life, now it keeps you alive (to a degree)

[aparticularbandit]

The Game

Summary: When international star Junko Enoshima and her bodyguard Mukuro Ikusaba walk into her clinic, Mikan doesn't know what to expect.

Certainly not the opportunity of a lifetime.

(Or is it?)

for @the-100-days-of-junkan's Junkan Week event!

Rating: T.

AO3

“There you….”  Mikan hesitates, swallows, and corrects herself.  “There you go.”

Her patient – one of the old men who lives nearby – holds his hand aloft and twists it this way and that.  The bandage is tight, but not too tight, and it will hold the sprain in place for now.  It isn’t so bad as to be a break or need anything more than that; he can still use it, provided he takes care of it.  He smiles, and his eyes gleam as they move from his hand to Mikan.  “Thank you, Tsumiki-san.”

Mikan averts her eyes.  “Of…of course.”  Her gaze flicks back up, briefly, and she meets his eyes again with a small smile before letting them drop again.  Eye contact is hard.  She doesn’t like it.  It feels too vulnerable, and she feels vulnerable enough even without that.  It’s only as the man leaves her little shack that she lets her gaze flick back up.  When the door closes behind him without another entrant, she lets out a sigh.

A break.

Finally.

~

For the past decade (and perhaps a little longer), Mikan has had this little shack.  She was a child when she started it under the pressure of her mother and one of her mother’s boyfriends (out of an endless stream of them); the boyfriend was a drunken brawler, as many of them were (and still are), and thought that if Mikan opened this shack to patch up the others the same way she patched him up, she might make a bit of money – money that would, of course, be funneled back into his (and eventually her mother’s) drinking habit.

That was the plan, but it never quite worked out that way.

Most people didn’t want to pay Mikan when they could take care of themselves (albeit poorly).  Even when they switched tactics to a tip jar, she didn’t get much – just a few cents here and there.  The problem with those brawlers is that they thought the same way Mikan’s mother and her endless stream of boyfriends did; any money they had should go to survival, and what doesn’t go to survival goes to their addiction.  Eventually, the boyfriend left, and Mikan’s mother stopped caring.

But Mikan still had that little shack to herself, a place away from everything that went on where she lived.  More than that, she liked helping people and learning how to help people better as she did.  Some of the brawlers were dependent on her now.  She liked that, too, maybe most of all – having power over these people who, outside of this scenario, would so often use their power against her.

In here, she was safe, and she was the one with authority.

So Mikan kept the shack.  At first, it ran on donations of medical supplies (usually stolen from the nearby hospitals, although no one ever said anything).  She kept the tip jar, and as time went on, she began to be able to pay for supplies with those tips – her clientele expanded from brawlers to street urchins and orphans and eventually, because she was good and it was free, people who had…money.

Good money.

But often, that means that Mikan works tirelessly throughout the day, with a line that sometimes feels like it stretches a mile long, if it doesn’t circle the shack a million times over.  Fortunately, she lives here, in a room above the office, so she doesn’t have to worry about pushing through that line after she sleeps.  (As much as she needs to be here for anyone who needs help at any time, she still needs to sleep.  People know when they have an emergency.  She does her best.)

A break, for Mikan, is a luxury.

Which means it’s slightly more tiring when someone else interrupts it.

~

The knock comes at the door barely five minutes later, and Mikan lets out a sigh of weariness before pushing herself up, situating herself so that she’s sitting straight instead of nearly dozing, collapsed in her chair.  “C-c-come in!”

In walks a woman Mikan has never seen before.

No, no, Mikan has definitely seen her before.  It’s impossible to not have seen her; Enoshima Junko is the most famous gyaru in all of Japan.  Of course, they call her other things in other countries, focusing instead on her fashion sense than on this particular subsect of a culture they don’t completely understand, but she’s all of those other things, too!  To be quite fair, Mikan has a stack of Junko’s interviews shoved beneath her bed upstairs, a collection that she’s made over the years.  Some of them are well-worn, and others are ripped and torn – stolen from vendors by a friend who didn’t understand why Mikan liked them but couldn’t think of a better way to pay.

Mikan immediately flushes a bright, bright pink.  “E-E-Enoshima-s-s-sama,” she stutters out, and she bows forward so that her long, uneven hair sweeps her ankles, despite being pulled back into a ponytail.  “Wh-wh-wh—  To what do I…do I owe the…the honor of y-y-your—”

“She needs a medic,” another woman with dark hair and a frown says as she steps inside.  “It’s an emergency, and you were the closest to us.  And the highest recommended.”  One brow raises as she looks around Mikan’s shack, which says just as much as her lack of further commentary does.

Mikan recognizes this woman, too – Ikusaba Mukuro, Enoshima’s personal bodyguard.  A lot of rumors circle the relationship between Enoshima and Ikusaba, not dissuaded by Enoshima’s constant reply to any interview questions that they’re sisters.  Most people don’t take the comment at face value, instead choosing to believe that the term is simply used for how close the two of them are to each other, but Mikan’s always secretly hoped that Enoshima’s words were literal.  If Ikusaba had pink hair like Enoshima, and if Enoshima had freckles like Ikusaba, then they really do look quite a lot alike, so—

Not the point.

“Wh-wh-what seems to…seems to be the problem?”  Mikan asks as she straightens her posture.  She gives Enoshima a quick scan; whatever it is doesn’t seem to be too outwardly apparent.  That’s not necessarily a good thing, but it does rule out a lot that would have an effect on her work.

Enoshima coughs twice.  She sits in the chair opposite Mikan, and a bright grin spreads across her lips.  “I need a—”  Then she seems to finally take in Mikan’s appearance, and her eyes widen.  “What happened to you?”

“O-oh.”

Mikan’s appearance is well-known by the locals who visit her shack because it’s an appearance that many of them have as well.  Crisscrossing scars line her bare arms, circular white burn marks littering her skin below her elbows.  More are hidden along her back, and a few others are barely visible along her neck, mostly hidden by her hair.  A singular scar stretches from her temple through her left eye, and long lines like claw marks stretch along that side of her neck.  When she was younger, she hid most of her scars, but as she’d grown older (and they’d grown harder to hide), she’d stopped.  The commonality between herself and her patients helped them to trust her more, and when the last happened – the one along her eye, matching with the ones along her neck – they’d protected her, eventually building the second level to her shack, so that she could stay here instead of with people who only took advantage of her.

That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t look outlandish to someone who doesn’t know.

“It’s the…the c-c-cost of l-l-living here,” Mikan murmurs, her gaze dropping.  She reaches a hand up to run her fingers along the scars on her neck.  “E-e-everyone has…has them.  Or…or worse.  I-I-I’m actually really…really lucky.”  Her lips curve into a half smile, and she taps just next to her eye.  “I-I-I still have…still have this after all!”

Enoshima hums.

Ikusaba, on the other hand, stares Mikan down.  “If maintaining your operation here is so detrimental to your health, then why—”

“That isn’t what she means,” Enoshima says as she leans back in her chair, crossing her arms in the same move as she crosses one long leg over the other.  Her head tilts to one side.  “Make-up will fix that, don’t you think?”  A grin splits her lips.  “Except for the burns on her neck.  Those look kind of like a vampire bite, don’t they?  It’s kind of cute.”

“M-m-make-up?” Mikan stutters out.  Her gaze flicks from Enoshima to Ikusaba and then back again.  “Wh-wh-wh—”

“You see,” Enoshima says, reaching out and placing a hand on Mikan’s knee, “we’re running something of a…a charity event.  Play a game with us and win, and you’ll get everything you need to deck this place out.  Maybe get someone else to help you.  You’re the only one running this shindig, right?”

Mikan blinks twice.  “Y-y-yes, b-b-but—”

Enoshima waves a hand dismissively.  “It’s a short game.  Sponsors.  You’ll still get something out of it, so it’s real win/win for you.  And you’re surprisingly cute.  I could be convinced to swing the whole thing in your favor.”  She winks.

“B-b-but!”  Mikan’s gaze widens, and her face grows pale.  “Th-th-that would be…would be cheating—”

She doesn’t even know what the game is.  She doesn’t need to know.

“I-I-I think….”  Mikan looks away.  “I think I sh-sh-shouldn’t—”

Enoshima turns away from her and stares up at Ikusaba.  “Hey, Mukie, can you give me, like, five minutes?”  When Ikusaba gives her a look, she pouts.  “What, you think the nurse is gonna hurt little old me?”

Ikusaba rolls her eyes and scowls.  “Five.  Minutes.”  Then she walks out of the shack, shutting the door behind her.  Probably standing in front of it with her arms crossed and growling at anyone who walks past.

(That’s not very nice, Mikan.)

Mikan shoves that thought down.  “E-E-Enoshima-s-s-sama, this is a…a wonderful oppor…opportunity, b-b-but I—”

All of a sudden, Enoshima takes Mikan’s hands in her own.  “Look,” she says, “you’re cute.  We don’t need you.  We’ll find someone else.  But.”  And here she squeezes Mikan’s hands.  “I would like to spend a little more time with you.”  Her smile softens, and she leans forward, kissing Mikan’s cheek.  “Don’t you want to come away with me?”

Immediately, Mikan flushes a bright, bright pink.  “Y-y-yes,” she stutters out, “b-b-but—”

“Then it’s decided!”  Enoshima gives her a bright grin.  “You’ll come with us.  Tomorrow!”  She drops Mikan’s hands and stands, brushing her skirt so that it falls straight, not rumpled from where she was sitting just now.

“I-I-I—”

Enoshima makes it to the door and then pauses before looking back.  “What was your name, again?  I never asked!  Super rude of me, I know.”

“Tsu-tsu-tsumiki.”  Mikan drops her gaze.  “Tsumiki M-M-Mikan.”

“Huh.  Pretty name, too.”

Mikan flushes again.

“Well, Miki-chan,” Enoshima says, opening the door, “I’ll see you tomorrow!”  She gives her a big wink and then skips off.  As she does, Ikusaba rolls her eyes again and gently shuts the door behind them.

For a few moments after they leave, all Mikan can do is stare at the closed door.  What just happened?  Famous gyaru Enoshima Junko just came into her shack!  And invited her to play a game with her?  AND KISSED HER.  On her cheek.  But it was still a kiss!

Mikan raises a hand to her cheek and finds that her skin is still tingling.  She sucks her lips between her teeth and nibbles on them.  This is a bad idea, she thinks.  A very, very bad idea.  Maybe, if she leaves now, she can catch up to them, and—

The door opens, and another patient – a regular – comes in.

She can’t just leave him.

Mikan takes a deep breath in.  This is…this is going to be a lot harder than she thought.

[les-gnossiennes-fantomatiques]

Fanfiction Author Interview Game

Thanks for the tag, @wheel-of-fish ! I’ll do my best not to sound silly here, but I am trying to get back in the saddle of writing again and this felt nice to do as encouragement.

How many works do you have on AO3?

A mere seven stories! I am absolutely pretending the FFN account I had twenty years ago does not exist anymore. (It does.)

What's your total AO3 word count?

161, 882

Your top 5 stories by kudos/likes:

The Fly Agaric

Between the Lines

All Imaginable Pangs

Le Phénomène

All That is Solid Melts Into Air (this fic will haunt me until I die.)

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try as much as I can to; I’ve honestly fallen behind this year, since I’ve been on hiatus for medical/mental health issues, but if you see me replying to your comment from a while back in the near future… I am so so sorry, but please know that I am SO deeply appreciative of every single comment that gets left on my stories.

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

Between the Lines! This one is a Leroux-canon insert that happens during the two weeks Christine is trapped in Erik’s house, and within the context of the fic, it ends badly, and within the greater context of the book… well! You know how it ends. It’s funny, because that was the first fan fic I wrote as an adult trying to get back into fandom after 15+ years of pretending I had moved on from it (spoiler: i did not.) and now I cannot bring myself to write dark endings.

What's the fic you've written with the happiest ending?

Most likely Le Phénomène. This was written for fluff week and was a massive excuse to have Leroux E/C have sex during a rainstorm without having to worry too much about the plot lol. What can more i say.

Do you write crossovers?

I have! It’s The Follies! And I’m quite proud of it, but it gets zero hits haha, because it’s a Venn diagram of an already small fandom (Phantom) and an incredibly niche one (my favorite musical, Sunday in the Park with George, which is also set in early 1880s Paris and about a troubled artist/muse affair—which, if you’ve never seen it, GO NOW! The proshot is widely available and it’s life changing.). If you’ve ever wanted to see Erik get drunk with Bernadette Peters, then have I got a story for you.

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

For the most part, no. I have had a couple of random people who don’t like what I’ll call “hate sex” blast me for writing Erik and Christine having it because, idk their love is pure or something, but that’s mostly it.

Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes! I don’t know if I write smut for the sake of smut (save for the one fluff piece), but I love writing emotional, atmospheric sex into my stories—sex that deepens how characters relate to each other and who they are as a person; people are allowed to have their own interpretations, but for me, sex is such a massive underpinning of most versions of the story and also a big part of my own life’s journey, and I just find it fascinating to write. I don’t know if people find my writing hot though, because things tend to inevitably get a little weird.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Not that I know of?

Have you ever had a fic translated?

See above.

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Not since high school, and most of it was written to troll lol. I think now I’m just too picky and slow and set in my ways for anyone to want to collaborate with me, hahah.

What's your all-time favorite ship?

Erik and Christine forever. It just is what it is, folks. Their dynamic is so specific and strange and fascinating and I will never get tired of exploring it/reading it/drawing it/writing it etc. Every other ship I love is basically just another iteration of them.

What's a WIP that you want to finish but don't think you ever will?

There’s this Kay!verse horror story (with a happy ending because I’m me) that I started writing; it’s inspired by the myth of La Llorona and takes place during the weekend adult Erik returns to Boscherville to burn his mother’s house down. I really WANT to write it, but I have a story I need to finish first. I also seldom write horror and had to put it on pause because the particular subject matter of this one did not help my mental state lol.

What are your writing strengths?

I feel so silly writing this out about myself, hahah. If I have to say, I am particularly proud of my characterizations, my prose, and the thematic arcs I try to put into every story I write.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Plot. Oh, god. Plot. Like anything that isn’t angsting, fucking, or fighting is SO hard for me to write. (Hint: call everything a “character piece” and you never have to explain why nothing happens in your writing lmao). Looooong ass sentences. I’m incredibly slow at writing, terrible at outlining, and I second guess myself with every sentence. Someone once told me to my face that my fic writing was purple prose and I guess that still haunts me a bit.

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

For the most part, I think it’s a bad idea. Unless you have a genuine handle on the other language, I think you’re better off implying that said language is being spoken through other means. It otherwise usually just reads as really cringey to me, like “Woohoo I ran this through google translate”—especially in smut. A couple of words here and there are fine, especially if there is a word that doesn’t have a 1:1 in the primary language, but something about a bunch of Google translate sentences being pasted into the middle of a story takes me out entirely. Just my preference though, especially when it comes to my own writing; I’m not Tolstoy. I’m not Nabokov. I’m not gonna try. Anyway, end tangent.

What's a fandom/ship you haven't written for yet but want to?

I’d say Pharoga, but my current WIP leans into that ship on and off. I really, really want to writeErik and Meg. One day. Or Raoul/Madame Giry

What's your favorite fic you've written?

It’s really hard to say tbh—the process of writing every one of my stories (including Tubeman Rik) has taught me so much about myself as a writer and person. But it’s a split between The Fly Agaric and All Imaginable Pangs. The former was basically the fic I’d been wanting to read and struggling to write for twenty years, and I put so much of myself and my own life experiences into it that it feels incredible to have finally laid it all out and gotten it on paper, even if I worry that I now have nothing else to say about Christine and Erik, haha. But there is something about All Imaginable Pangs that made it so fun to write—I love the challenge of crafting an OC who makes sense in Erik’s past, I LOOOOOVE thinking about the period of Erik’s life where he was trying to live as normal person, before he was jaded enough to become a mole person, and I love that period of time in art and history. It’s been so fun to sit in that world. I expected no one to read it, because I realize that OCs are a very hard sell in this fandom, but I just wanted to create a POV character who was closer in age to me, who’d been dealt a lot of luxury and a lot of shit thrown her way, who also has gray hair and soft thighs lol. That it has gotten any comments, let alone some of the seriously incredible feedback I’ve received across platforms, surprises and delights me. I can’t say whether or not Augustine is a success in terms of a believable original love interest, let alone person, but I like her enough that I’m (slowly) re-writing the whole story from Erik’s point of view.

Well. That was a lot of chatter. I apologize if any of this comes off as pretentious, but I’ve taken such a long hiatus from writing fic and this was a nice little jab in the arm to finish. I’ve had to take a lot of time away from fandom for health reasons, but I’m doing so much better and (i think) finally getting back in the swing of things. If you’ve ever so much as read one of my fics, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Tagging @box5intern @ladystormcrow @flora-gray @muirin007 @antiquarianne . My apologies if you’ve already been tagged.

[homo-adaptionem]

Urbex Tips

Urban Exploration tips:

Learn basic first aid & bring a first aid kit.

Don't go in alone. Bring at least two other people.

Build up your strength before hand.

You need a tetanus shot every 10 years. If you haven't had one in the last 10 years, get one before you start.

If you're asthmatic, bring your inhaler.

Do research on the building / area beforehand. Figure out why it's abandoned. Learn the history. If it's condemned, find out why. Could be health reasons.

Enter at your own risk.

Tell a trusted person(s) where you're going. Give them the location of any places you're exploring. This is in case something happens, they know where you are/were going. Make sure they know who you're going with.

Hard hats. Being serious. Shit falls, even in "newer" buildings.

Wear gloves (thick leather work gloves, not that plastic faux leather shit, actual leather. not disposables, they won't do shit against glass and metal), goggles (to protect your eyes), a face mask (ideally construction-grade but the fabric types will work well enough), thick, long pants (like jeans), work or hiking boots, long sleeves, and something to cover your hair, like a beanie. If you've got long hair, put it in a ponytail and stuff it under the hat. Trust me. Also deodorant is a good idea.

Invest in a headlamp (easier than using a flashlight)

Avoid the "white 16 year old boy with friends" mentality. Don't do stupid shit because it's funny. If that floor seems unstable, avoid it. Don't smash shit. Don't jump down dark holes.

Don't steal shit. It's tempting, but I don't recommend it.

Avoid tagging / making graffiti, esp identifying graff. Again, tempting, but you can still get in trouble for it.

If someone catches you, BAIL. Don't get into a fight. Don't stick around for pigs to show up. Don't engage, just get out of there. Most of the time, urbex is trespassing.

If you find (which you probably won't) large sums of money, it might be best to report it. It could be stolen or counterfeit and get you in trouble if you use it. But ultimately it's your own choice.

If you find (which you probably won't) bloody clothing, blood-covered knives (or other weapons), or a gun, report it. Fuck pigs yada yada, but it could be connected to someone's death. Don't touch anything, don't take anything, just call the authorities and tell them where it is. I mention this because it could be connected to the assault or murder of sex workers, partners, and/or minorities.

If you find drugs (which you probably won't), report it. Don't use it. Could be laced. Not safe to use, bro, not worth it.

If you find a body(s), (which you probably won't), report it. Check for a pulse, but if the body is cold and/or stiff, call the authorities. If they're still warm, you can try CPR on them while you call for an ambulance. If they have a pulse, call an ambulance. If it looks like they're ODing, use some narcan if you've got it.

If you find Satantic imagery or whatever, 9 times out of 10 it's just teens fucking around. Like I promise you, they were probably left by some guys wanting to cause a stir or trying to make their own ARG or something.

The building isn't haunted, sorry to say. There are rational explanations for every "supernatural" thing you'll encounter. Sometimes they're the aforementioned guys. If you're superstitious, scared of the dark, easily frightened, or suffer from psychosis, you're probably gonna have a bad time.

You may encounter looters, homeless folks, addicts, and/or mentally ill/disabled folks. Try to avoid confrontation. Let them be. If they're alive and unharmed, leave them alone. If they're injured or ODing, attempt first aid (narcan, tourniquets, compresses, etc.) and call an ambulance. No pigs, just medical help.

Watch out for animals. Don't pet them. Don't hurt them. Leave them alone. Also watch out for snakes, esp in buildings with a lot of concrete or gravel.

Don't wear iconic or identifying clothing. Don't worry about looking nice. Don't wear shit you like because it WILL get torn, stained, and trashed.

Just… never assume you're alone.

Feel free to reblog with other tips.

[unseenacademic]

20 questions for fic writers

I was tagged by my dear, talented friend @mihrsuri Thanks, friend! 💜💜💜💜 1. How many works do you have on Ao3? 13 at the moment 😅

2. What's your total Ao3 word count? 28,823

3. What fandoms do you write for? The West Wing.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos? The First Lady - my ongoing fic where I answer the most important question in the world: what was Abbey Bartlet doing during the episodes she didn't appear in?

Josh and the Jackass - what happened right before Governor Bartlet decided to follow Josh to the airport in In the Shadow of Two Gunmen.

Breathe - a post-ep for Dead Irish Writers. Her birthday party is over, and Abbey Bartlet must face the New Hampshire Medical Board.

A Bit Desperate - part three of a series of three-sentence fics about Abbey and Jed in the aftermath of Zoey's kidnapping.

Anything Else I Need to Know - Five times the staff of Bartlet for America interrupted a barbecuing session and one time CJ interrupted a different kind of session. Takes place during the First Bartlet Campaign.

5. Do you respond to comments? Yes, I do. I do my best to respond to every comment I get, as fast as I can. It's a two-way street, we, as fic authors, often complain (and rightly so) about the lack of feedback, the lack of comments and kudos, but we don't respond to comments. As a reader, I am more likely to comment on a fic from an author who's replied to my comments earlier. But I guess I get so few comments that I can easily respond to all of them 🤷‍♀️ and since there are like 7 people who care about what I write, the least I can do is respond to their very kind comments 💜💜

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? I guess it's Anything Else I Need to Know. The ending isn't too angsty by itself, but if you put it into context and you know the overarching plot of first few seasons of TWW, it's definitely angsty. Honorable mentions: With Pomp and Parade & And the Silence Haunts our Bedchamber - they both deal with the aftermath of Zoey's kidnapping.

7. What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? White Christmas. And Something for Us to Remember too also qualifies. You have to read them to know why 😊😉

8. Do you get hate on fics? Luckily, I'm not popular or interesting enough for that 😅

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Yes! Oh, all kinds! The worst thing I've ever written came before I started my fanfic writing career (I used to be involved in forum RP, I'm less active there now) and... nope, I'm not going to write about it here. Too cursed. 🙈🙈 If you want to see some sane smut I've written, check out Game On, Boyfriend! I hope I'll write another barbecuing fic soon, so stay tuned.

10. Do you write crossovers? What's the craziest one you've written? I don't. But I'd love to see a TWW/NCIS crossover.

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen? I hope not.

12. Have you ever had a fic translated? No, but if anyone's interested, go ahead.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before? No, I haven't. The closest thing to co-writing fics was RP-ing which is sort of similar, but not really lol. It might be fun, so if anyone's interested in writing with me, let me know.

14. What's your all time favorite ship? Abbey/Jed! There are many ships I love, but I have to go with my horny nerds.

15. What's a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? There was a WIP I started last year, the first fic I posted, but I ended up deleting it, so it's not very likely that I'll ever finish it.

16. What are your writing strengths? I'm really, really good at research lol! If I'm writing a fic set in the 1960s, I'll make sure that they're eating food, wearing clothes, listening to music etc. that was popular in that period. You won't catch any of my characters wearing historically inaccurate shoes. I'm also really good at digging up random canon details and writing thousands of words around them.

17. What are your writing weaknesses? Plot lmao. I write fics about nothing, it's just banter and nerdiness, with the characters and/or the author showing off 🤣🤣

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? Hmmm... I don't know, don't think I've ever needed to do it, but I guess it depends on what I want to achieve, I might write it in English and add a dialogue tag like "she said in French" or something.

19. First fandom you wrote for? The first fandom I published a fic for was The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, but the first fandom I wrote for was Harry Potter.

20. Favorite fic you've written? Can't choose only one, so have a few of them:

Breathe: Once again, Abbey is reminded how cruel the world can be towards women. 

No one asked Jed what he was wearing when he took the censure. 

Anything Else I Need to Know: Josh finally opens the door to his room and slumps on his unmade bed.

Next time, he���s going to pay attention. He’s going to pay attention to Mrs. Landingham’s notes on the Governor's schedule. And he’s going to pay attention to Mrs. Landingham’s instructions, so he’ll know what her notes on the Governor’s schedule actually mean. Next time, he’s going to pay attention.

Had Josh been paying attention, he would’ve noticed when the Governor dashed across the hall and up the stairs right after lunch. Had he been paying attention, he would’ve noticed Leo’s smirk that followed the Governor’s departure. Had he been paying attention, perhaps he would’ve noticed the soft, rhythmic squeaking of the bed and muffled gasps and groans coming from the Bartlets’ suite right before he opened the door.

Well, too bad that Josh wasn’t paying attention.

And Something for Us to Remember too: “I take it your conversation with Doug didn’t go well?”

“I spoke slowly and I didn’t use big words, but I couldn’t talk him out of marrying Liz. Maybe I should’ve taken him on a hike. A six-hour hike through Vermont wilderness in the dead of winter would’ve changed his mind.”

“It wasn’t a six-hour anything! I was there, Jed, you were only gone for two hours.”

“You weren’t there, Abigail, you were baking with your mother, while I was fighting for dear life, braving the cold and wolves and bears.” He sighs and adds, “Guess it’s too late to take Doug hiking now and leave him for the bears.”

White Christmas: “’She – New Hampshire – is one of the two best states in the Union. Vermont’s the other’, said Robert Frost, your favorite poet, who also happened to be the poet laureate of Vermont.” Abbey made a dramatic pause and gave Jed a pointed look.

“She’s one of the two best states in the Union. Vermont’s the other.” She continued her performance. “And the two… the two lie like wedges, thick end to thin end and thin end to thick end.”

Jed chuckled.

“Sweet Knees, we’ll lie like wedges, thick end to thin end and thin end to thick end any time you want,” he leered at her, “on our bed, in front of the fireplace, on the kitchen table…” his smirk grew when Abbey’s lips curved into a little smile and her cheeks flushed, “but Robert Frost named his poetry collection New Hampshire, not Vermont.”

“Well, I’m going to write the words ‘Freedom and Unity’ on the pie and you’re going to eat them!”

The First Lady: “Mrs. Landingham withholds food from me,” he complained.

“Because I asked her to.”

“Yeah, cause you don’t want me eating real food like steaks or hamburgers. She won’t let me have a banana.”

“I’m sure you did something to piss her off.” Abbey shrugged.

“Do you two enjoy torturing me?”

“Yes,” she said innocently.

Tagging (no pressure!): @claudiajcregg @onekisstotakewithme @hondagirll @miabicicletta @librarianmouse @holy-ships-x-red-lips

💜💜💜💜💜💜

[vibrantbirdy]

Fingertips: A Cassian Andor x Jyn Erso Fic

Title: Fingertips Fandom: Star Wars: Rogue One Genres: Sci-Fi; Romance; Soft smut with feelings; slight angst Setting: Post events of Rogue One - canon divergence, you know the drill #everybodylives Pairings: Cassian Andor x Jyn Erso Warnings: 18 + ONLY - Explicit sexual content This is mostly smut, but it's romantic smut I hope - oral f!receiving, riding p in v sex (unprotected - please be sensible irl); brief, mild mentions of injury and recovery (unlikely to be medically accurate, sorry); strong language. Word Count: c. 2.5k

Summary: Told from Cassian's POV. After surviving events on the planet Scarif, the crew of Rogue One have spent the past two months on Yavin 4 recuperating. With Sergeant Jyn Erso cleared for duty and her inaugural mission fast approaching, Captain Cassian Andor is still recovering from his injuries, and he can't let her go without attempting to tell her how he feels.

Author's note: This is my first rebelcaptain fic and I'm kinda nervous about it, hah! It's inspired by Newton Faulkner's song, Fingertips. I've not done a song/lyric fic like this before, but if people like it I might try something similar with a different song from Jyn's POV. (My fic masterlist is here.)

Fic and link to song under the cut.

Final A/N: You can also find the song on Spotify, I don't know what works best for folks...

Fingertips

On his worst days, Rebel spy, Captain Cassian Andor, felt as if he were reliving that moment of indescribable agony as his ribs broke on impact with the support beams of Scarif's Citadel tower. Sometimes, he even imagined that he could hear the sickening clang of his body each time it slammed heavily against solid metal before he blacked out.

Cassian knew he was lucky not to have broken his back. He knew he was lucky to be alive. More medical treatments and physical therapy appointments than he could count had worked wonders, but although he tried to hide it and although he was healing, Cassian still spent many of his days in pain.

Meanwhile, cleared for duty with a clean bill of health, and with hasty field promotion during the battle of Scarif officially sanctioned by Alliance Command, Sergeant Jyn Erso was on the eve of her inaugural mission as a Rebel Intelligence Officer. Cassian couldn't have been prouder of her.

He had hoped that during their recovery time on Yavin 4, he and Jyn would have been able to build on what he was sure they had started before and during the mission to steal the plans of the Empire's planet-killing superweapon.

But when they'd returned to Alliance Headquarters with the rest of the crew of Rogue One, miraculously alive, but battered and bruised and exhausted beyond all measure, the memory of Scarif seemed to plant itself like an unscalable obstacle, opaque and solid, between them.

It was as if all that had passed between them was simply too insurmountable to verbalise. As if putting words to the experience might break the hallowed spell cast by their willingness to sacrifice themselves for the Cause, frightened and agonised though they were, to a fate made bearable only because they were facing it together. And so in the months following, Cassian and Jyn had broken up that intangible, unnameable feeling between them into little pieces, replicating it only in stolen glances across meeting rooms and brief, lingering touches, barely there, as they brushed past each other in corridors and stood too close together in dark corners of the base.

But over the past few days, the reality that Jyn might leave without her knowing all the things Cassian had left unsaid had started to sink in. It had driven him to distraction, so much so that when he arrived at the door of Jyn's quarters the night before she left for the unknown, heart racing, adrenaline coursing through his body as if he were about to head into battle, Cassian hadn't a clue what he planned to say.

He needn't have worried. The doors had barely hissed open wide enough for a person to pass through when Jyn's eyes widened in an expression of recognition that could almost have been relief. Wordlessly, she grabbed Cassian roughly by the front of his shirt, and dragged him through the doorway where they collided into a clumsy, frenzied kiss.

Make no mistake, I'm only sane when you say my name, Oh, you're on my fingertips like holy water

Any semblance of restraint that they had worked to maintain over the time they had known each other fell away as instinct took over. The two tore at each other's clothes, fumbling at buttons and belts and zippers until, naked seemingly in mere moments, Jyn's back was up against the nearest durasteel wall with Cassian pressing himself hungrily against her body.

Unable to resist any longer, he broke away from her lips, and allowed his mouth to graze across her skin, kissing a feverish descent down her neck and collarbone, over her breasts and across her abdomen, savouring every little noise she made until he found himself on his knees in front on her.

Cassian hooked one of Jyn's lithe legs over his shoulder and looked up, taking a moment to drink in the sight of her. She was the most enchanting thing he'd ever seen. He knew that already, of course, but here and now, the planes and curves of her warrior's body seemed to belong to some timeless, unknowable being, a goddess sculpted in marble and come to life above him. It seemed only natural that he should be kneeling in capitulation before her alter.

Trying to ignore the aching hardness between his legs, cruelly restricted by the increasingly tight material of his pants - the only item of clothing either of them had retained - Cassian traced his fingers up the inside of Jyn's thigh until he reached the well of her arousal. He marvelled at the elixir of desire that had already formed there, hot and wet, before he brushed the pads of his fingertips, feather light, across her sensitive bud.

As he did so, Jyn arched towards his touch and said his name as she never had before, keening and full of longing, the way he'd only imagined she might utter it on long, dark nights in secret when he was alone. To Cassian's ears, it was a sacred sound and he clung to the memory of it even as it dissipated into the air. It was as if his name falling from her lips had finally granted him release from the temporary madness of not having her which had been all-consuming since their return from Scarif. And now, that strange, unnatural distance that had crept between them, insidious and unintentional, was suddenly obliterated in one glorious instant. As Cassian pressed the flat of his tongue against the pearl at her core, and curled it slowly upwards, Jyn's hands flew to his head and she twisted her strong, slender fingers so tightly in his hair that it was almost painful. They stayed there, woven in his dark locks, until he brought her to a convulsing oblivion against his mouth and he heard her cry out his name again and again.

Stay on my fingertips just for a little while, I just want you to know I need it.

As Jyn recovered, breathless and panting from her high, Cassian, still on his knees, rested his cheek on her warm thigh, enjoying the paradoxical sensation of his rough stubble against her soft skin.

Despite his euphoric state, he hated to admit, even to himself, that for the first time in a long time, he was nervous about what happened next.

His body was still healing, and he knew that the lingering pain of his injured back and damaged ribs would undoubtedly restrict his range of movement. His strength, though returning, was still fragile and raw. The thought that his lovemaking might disappoint her was unbearable.

But Cassian should never have doubted that Jyn would consider this - consider him. She was always the first to notice when he was struggling, the first to tell him to rest when his pain flared up, even if he didn't want to hear it.

Removing her hands from his hair, she gripped him lightly under his chin tilting his head up to look at her and guiding him to his feet. She allowed him to press a single, absurdly chaste kiss on her lips before she placed her other hand against his chest and walked him backwards over to her bed, chin still grasped between her forefinger and thumb.

Cassian swallowed, quickly sweeping aside the embarrassing notion that if she carried on like this, he might well finish there and then.

Jyn pushed him down on to the mattress and tugged him free of his pants before climbing astride him with a swift efficiency that made his head spin. Before he knew it, she had positioned herself over his solid shaft, grasping him at his base before sinking her core down around him. As her slight, strong frame came to rest flush upon his, Cassian was sure that the circuits in brain shorted out.

He let his eyes roam over Jyn's body, transfixed and slack-jawed, as she began rocking her hips languidly against him with agonising slowness. Cassian understood that she might be afraid of hurting him, but she moved as if she thought he could break beneath her. Maybe she was right, he thought to himself, but he was sure as hell willing to find out.

He furrowed his brow against the sensation of her heat around and against him, a feeling that was simultaneously, wondrously everything and yet not quite enough. When it finally became too much to bear, Cassian tore his eyes away from Jyn's captivating form and looked up into her face.

She had a look in her eye, wild and wicked, and he realised then she was teasing him, delighting in the way he had started to writhe, almost desperately, underneath her.

How typical of her, Cassian thought, and damned if it didn't make him want her all the more.

He grinned up at her, enjoying the thrill of being at her mercy. He gripped her hips tightly, unable to resist testing to see if he could get away with manoeuvring her body on top of him in the hopes that it might persuade her to move.

With a gentle laugh, mischievous but not cruel - Jyn was obstinate, tempestuous, infuriating, but never cruel - she leant down across his chest to kiss him, pressing her lips hard against his. As she did so, Cassian felt the slow, deliberate pressure of the muscles at her very centre squeezing around him.

Seeing stars, he tore away from her lips and pressed his open mouth against the spot on her neck just below her ear to stifle a groan. The sound he made was long and low and full of pure, unfettered desire. His body responded automatically, hips rising off the mattress, pushing himself up and into her as far as he could.

"Please," Cassian heard himself say, unashamed by the way the word caught in his throat, broken and needful.

He did need her. Fuck, he needed her.

At his plea, Jyn drew herself up and straightened, throwing her head back and shaking away the mess of brown locks that had fallen about her face. There was provocation in her expression, one dark brow cocked and that smirk sitting slightly crookedly on her lips, the way it always did - the way Cassian had grown to adore.

The vision of her glorying in his utter surrender was breath-taking, and it ignited something primal within him as he pictured all the ways he might make her sing that word for him.

Please! Cassian, please!

But tonight, Jyn was the victor and, seemingly satisfied that her triumph was to be uncontested, she took pity on him.

Still, she made a performance of it, raising her eyebrows at him provocatively as if to say, Ready?, and taking the time to blow a stray lock of hair out of her eyes. One after the other, she planted her palms firmly and deliberately against Cassian's chest and only then, finally, did she begin to move.

As her body started to rise and fall around his hard length, Jyn became lost in her passion, and Cassian revelled in every curl of her fingers against his torso as her hands flexed open and shut, her nails dragging across his skin. It was an instinctive, unconscious movement, but to him, it felt as if she were trying to reach into his chest and extract his hammering heart to claim as her prize.

There's no need, Cassian managed to think through his lust-fuelled haze, it already belongs to her.

As Jyn's pace quickened, he thrust up into her, matching the rhythm of her movements with his own. Her hand, the one that didn't have a grip over Cassian's heart, slid slowly down his sweat slick chest until it came to rest at his throat, her thumb exerting a light, tantalising pressure at the hollow just below his adam's apple.

Cassian couldn't tear his eyes away from Jyn's bewitching face. Any guile that had been present in her expression before had been replaced by carnal, elemental lust. Her head rolled languidly back and forth on her shoulders, her mouth hanging slightly open, allowing the most erotic noises of pleasure Cassian had ever heard to escape from deep within her. She kept her eyes squeezed shut for the most part, but every so often, she rewarded her lover with a wanton, piercing look from green, glinting, amorous orbs.

As he moved within her, Cassian wanted to touch every part of her. He ran his hands along her thighs, up and down her back, across her buttocks, her stomach, her breasts, the feeling of her silky skin beneath his fingertips almost transcendental.

Finally, he snaked a hand between their bodies, caressing that sacred spot between Jyn's legs where she needed him the most, determined to give her everything.

At his touch, she cried out, her head flying back to reveal that long, slender neck. The vision sent Cassian into overdrive as he imagined running his tongue up it and tasting the salt of her exertion on her skin.

The sight and sound of Jyn in ecstasy as she reached her peak and the sensation of her body contorting and releasing around him was enough to throw Cassian hurtling uncontrollably towards his own mind-numbing rapture. He bucked up into her in disjointed and desperate movements until her name tumbled from his lips like a prayer over and over.

Love me another day, before it evaporates, Stay on my fingertips like holy water, Stay on my fingertips just for a little while.

When they were both completely spent, Jyn collapsed against Cassian's chest, their heaving bodies hot with sweat. Cassian kissed the top of her head, inhaling the intoxicating wildflower scent of her hair.

After a moment, Jyn let out a soft, breathless laugh that was almost a giggle. Then, she pushed herself up to rest on her elbows just high enough so that she could hover above Cassian and touch the sharp point of her nose against his own.

He smiled up at her and swept back stray tendrils of hair where perspiration had plastered them to her forehead, before trailing his fingers slowly down her flushed face, his hand coming to rest on her rosy cheek where he traced the ridge of her cheekbone with his thumb.

Night on Yavin 4 was dissipating fast, and in the early morning light that crept softly through Jyn's window, Cassian studied her face as she floated like an ethereal vision above him.

Before she left, he wanted to memorise every facet of those perfect features that were all at once both delicate and fierce. The angular contours of her nose and cheeks, the full lips which so often parted slightly to reveal charmingly prominent front teeth, the dark hair which always ended up tousled mess no matter what she did with it.

But most of all, Cassian longed to indulge himself by counting every single fleck of gold in Jyn's otherworldly green eyes. Her irises were the colour of lichen, he decided, the kind that only grows in the forests of the galaxy with freshest, purest air. Cassian suddenly realised that Jyn was engaged in the same undertaking, her brows knitted together in concentration as she appraised his face, her expression quizzical and vulnerable and open.

It was as if they were seeing each other properly for the first time in months. It reminded Cassian of the look they had shared in the Citadel turbo lift on Scarif - two souls clinging to the safe harbour of the other, suspended in a moment as the world burned around them.

But this time, Cassian felt no fear and no pain, only comfort and something else awakening within him. A stirring deep within his heart. As he gazed up at the woman who had faced death with him and survived, he saw this new hope of his glowing incandescent and warm, reflected back at him through Jyn's eyes.

[sundrop-writes]

Dreaming Of You

Gar Logan x Fem!Mute!Powered!Reader

Part Two: Our Past, Our Present, Our Future

Summary:

After having an argument with Gar that nearly ends your friendship, you decide to finally get over your fear of using your own powers and finally embrace them. If you do things just right, you could finally get everything that you (and Gar) have ever wanted.

Gar Logan x Fem!Mute!Powered!Reader. Best Friends to Lovers. Smut, (Slight) Angst and Fluff. Set during Season 2.

Word Count: 18,000

DC Titans Masterlist | AO3 Link | Series Masterlist

THIS IS A RE-POST. This is a fic from my old blog (a blog that was shadowbanned, forcing me to move). This fic is not stolen, it is completely mine, and I am just re-posting it to help people find my new blog, and to make my masterlist complete when I post new fics for this fandom.

Detailed warnings and author's notes below the cut.

Warnings: general emotional angst (due to the reader and Gar having emotional distance from having an argument at the end of the other chapter), (very light) canon level violence, mentions of medical experimentation/medical torture, the reader character has medical trauma from years of illness, mentions of medical debt, manipulation and emotional abuse (from Doctor Caulder toward Gar and the reader), mentions of burns/burn scarring, mention of the reader being abandoned by her parents, mentions of vomit (no graphic descriptions), the reader character has a seizure, (likely) improper first aid performed for a seizure, the reader has chronic illness/chronic pain, use of prescription medication, the reader is more feminine (wears lacy underwear), the reader has a vagina and uses she/her pronouns. 

This chapter contains smut - both dream fantasies and played out sexual acts. The reader character is mute but all consent is enthusiastic and clear, biting/marking kink, some dirty talk, semi-public sex (having sex in the communal area of a house - also, coincidentally, the sex fic I have read where characters have sex in a space that just happens to have a camera in it), scent kink, oral - reader receiving, multiple orgasms (reader receiving), (slight) overstimulation (reader receiving), hair pulling kink (Gar receiving), it’s implied that the reader and Gar are virgins but it’s not lingered on and it’s not a plot point of the fic, unprotected sex, creampie, penis in vagina sex, rough sex, (idk how to phrase it?) marriage kink/commitment kink, passionate sex/love making, Gar calls the reader ‘wife’ (in a fantasy sequence), some mentions of blood (the reader scratches Gar’s back and draws blood by accident), I believe that’s it. 

A/N: I still think this is one of the most iconic things that I have ever written lmao. I love it so much and I'm so proud of it. Anyway, enjoy the repost.

...

After the argument, you didn’t see Gar for the rest of the day. 

When Dick came in to check on your progress with training, he immediately questioned why Gar was missing. You made up a lame excuse about how he had been feeling sick (which had to be translated to Dick by Jason) and Dick complained that all of you had to learn to ‘work through’ things like illness, but at least he didn’t question why Gar had locked himself in his room for the rest of the night and didn’t come to dinner. 

After you had washed the dishes and sulked through the rest of your nightly routine, you considered knocking on Gar’s bedroom door before finally going to bed yourself - but you just couldn’t bring yourself to face him. 

You had truly hurt him, and you weren’t sure how you were going to recover from it. 

As you laid in bed that night, so strung up with guilt that you couldn’t sleep, you stared at the ceiling. Of course, all you could think about was Gar. 

You thought back to when you had first met him - going over those first days of your friendship in your mind. The undeniable way that the two of you were drawn so close together. In friendship or in that unutterable, constantly denied romance - the two of you were soulmates. 

And you had fucked it all up. 

You missed your best friend so badly. You wondered where it had all gone so wrong. 

… 

You felt lucky that Doctor Caulder had taken you in. 

Before him, before the serum, your last chance at moving out of the palliative care ward would have been offering your body as a live cadaver up for experiential treatment. It was something that might have put a dent in your medical debts, but it also would have meant a lot of pain and torture as your body was used as a trial for vastly experimental medicine and treatments - none of which were guaranteed to prolong your life as the deadly brain tumors grew to consume your brain, seemingly trapping you in a loop of pain and torture for those last few years that you had. 

At the time, Doctor Caulder was a savior to you. 

He used the money he had from his dense inherited wealth to pay off all of the medical debt you had acquired from your lifetime of illness, giving you only one very small catch in the face of this intense generosity. He wanted your consent to try out his serum on you, claiming that it would either do nothing to change your condition, or it would be the magical cure-all that you had been looking for. 

(He conveniently let out the fact that in your state of unwellness, with your weakened body, there was a large possibility that the serum could overwhelm your senses, stopping your heart - but that was a risk he was more than willing to take.) 

Honestly - while you didn’t believe him - you couldn’t bring yourself to turn him down. 

You had no other options, after all. 

After he injected you with the serum and you woke up with your sight fully restored, you were shocked. It had somehow shrunk down the tumor in your brain enough that it was no longer pressing on your optic nerve, and you could once again experience the world in full, glorious vision. 

It was something you were entirely excited by as you arrived at what would be your new home. Doctor Caulder had described it as a ‘vacuum of scientific advancement against the bureaucracy of the world’. Naturally, you had expected some kind of cold looking industrial building, another medical center that you would be trapped inside for years to come. 

You certainly hadn’t thought that it would be a sprawling, gorgeous Victorian mansion in the secluded, peaceful countryside. 

He brought you inside and set down your bag. You were too busy marveling at the details of the architecture, the stunning antique decorations, taking it all in after years of being deprived of sight to truly notice anyone else in the building at first. 

You didn’t notice anyone else there until Doctor Caulder spoke to him. 

“Ah, Garfield, I’m glad I caught you.” 

You turned at the sound of someone’s name being called. Caulder had warned you that you would be living with several other people - people who he had helped and was continuing to help with their ‘unique conditions’. 

When you looked over at him, the person that Doctor Caulder had called Garfield, the only truly unique thing you spotted about him was his bright green hair. That, and the fact that he was startlingly attractive. 

Garfield paused his footing halfway down the hallway as Doctor Caulder spoke to him. When he turned back around to give the man his attention, you noticed that he had a candy bar poking out of his mouth as he held it there between his teeth, and a pair of large headphones over his ears with some kind of handheld gaming system in his hands. He reached up and moved one half of the headphones off to the side when he realized his full attention was needed. Then he bit off the candy bar, moving to shove the rest of it, mostly still wrapped, into the pocket of his large green hoodie. 

“What’s up, Chief?” He asked, his mouth obviously stuck together by the candy and some chocolate slightly smeared on the side of his mouth. 

“Garfield, please don’t talk with your mouth full.” Caulder - apparently the Chief, quickly scolded him. 

You guessed that he found it rude because he was more uptight and proper, more old fashioned. But it was something that you easily found adorable and charming. 

Garfield hung his head in shame and made a clear effort to swallow, running his tongue over his teeth to somewhat clean his mouth before he spoke again. 

“Sorry.” He mumbled quietly. “Did you need something?” 

It was then that he really eyed you up and down, as though he had just noticed you standing there. 

You felt entirely out of place, but tried your best not to look nervous, and simply smiled as his eyes landed on your face. You noticed a small tinge of pink come over his cheeks when he finally made eye contact with you. His eyes made a quick jolt back to the carpet, obviously nervous and not wanting to linger on you. 

“I’m sure you’ve heard Cliff mention my newest patient.” Doctor Caulder told him, gently motioning toward you. “Y/N will be staying with us for the foreseeable future while I explore her condition and any affects the serum has had on her.” 

Garfield nodded at this. The wild tendrils of his green hair bobbed in a very adorable way with the motion, and you suppressed a giggle because of it. 

“I’ll need you to show her around and help her get settled in for now, because I need to go up to my office and work on some notes while everything is still fresh in my mind. I’d like not to be disturbed for the next few hours, is that clear?” Doctor Caulder ordered, his voice calm, but oddly stern. 

Garfield’s face twisted slightly into a frown, as though he was afraid of the possible consequences if he did disturb the man. But nonetheless, he nodded once again. 

“Understood.” He said simply. 

Doctor Caulder gave him a curt nod and then walked up the stairs, leaving you in the hands of your seemingly meek, very handsome tour guide. 

He stepped toward you, and then realized the game console was still beeping in his hands. So he pushed a few buttons, shutting it off, and then he shoved it into his pocket as well before he slid his large headphones to sit around his neck. 

“Hi, I’m Garfield. You probably heard that. But you can just call me Gar. I prefer it.” He rushed these words out in a puff of air, seemingly still very nervous to be in your presence. 

You nodded at this. Before you could communicate in any way that you wouldn’t really be ‘calling’ him anything because of your mutism, he let out a huff - something akin to a nervous laugh and steamed rolled right into more conversation. He didn’t really seem to mind your silence. 

“Y/N, right?” He posed, easily remembering your name from when Doctor Caulder had introduced you. 

You nodded once again, giving him a small smile. 

“That’s a really pretty name. It matches you. I mean- I-” He stumbled over his words, clearly nervous that he had unintentionally said something flirtatious. “I’m supposed to introduce you to everyone, right? Come on.” 

He then took you on a tour of the sprawling house, his chatter filling the air in a most perfect way. The more he talked, the more he seemed to gain confidence around you. He became filled with energy, fueled by the things he was saying. Especially when he spoke about the house and the daily life that he lived there, pointing out the different rooms and where you could make yourself comfortable. His words filled the space so well that he didn’t seem to notice the fact that you couldn’t talk. 

As he took you on the tour, you came across the different eclectic members of the household and Gar introduced you to them. And you very quickly came to realize what Doctor Caulder had meant by ‘unique conditions’. 

If you didn’t have your vision freshly restored in order to see it, you likely wouldn’t have believed it. But they were very real. 

Gar introduced you to Cliff - someone who looked more like a machine than a man, squeaky joints and all. But it quickly became apparent to you that he had a shining personality underneath all that metal, and his humanity wasn’t easily defined by something like rust and bolts. He was working on a half-disassembled car in the large garage, and Gar explained to you how the mostly mechanical man was an ex-racer who had gotten into a bad accident and been put back together by The Chief. 

He then introduced you to Larry - who was in the kitchen, baking some kind of very tall, very impressive multi-layered cake (apparently in celebration of your arrival). He made a comment about you ‘being rather quiet’ and you just shrugged. They would probably be amused later when they found out why. 

Larry didn’t want to comment much or explain the reason that his entire body was covered in bandages, and you understood why. In your mind, you assumed that he had been badly burned and the bandages covered some kind of scarring. The visual reminded you of people who had passed through the palliative care ward with severe burns over their bodies and didn’t survive long because of it. But he seemed to move without pain and he was obviously thriving, so whatever Doctor Caulder had done for him - it had worked. 

Gar tried to introduce you to the last member of the household - Rita - but when he knocked on her bedroom door, he was met with silence. He simply told you that she likely wasn’t feeling well. And that you understood deeply as well. 

The house tour extended down into the basement, because Gar was very excited to show you his room. You couldn’t bring yourself to disrupt his rolling speech or dampen down his swell of excitable energy. 

He was showing you some of his movie posters - something for a movie called Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. It was a movie you had never heard of before, and you only found yourself truly paying attention in order to learn about it now because Gar spoke about it with so much enthusiasm. 

“-it’s considered one of the first examples of parody ever in cinema, an effort to take horror, something that truly terrified audiences at the time, and turn it comedic. Like shining a light on that monster under the bed so he’s no longer scary. It’s brilliant.” 

Gar rambled on, his breath almost entirely escaping him as his enthusiasm overpowered his lungs. 

You couldn’t help but to feel a swell of fondness as you looked at him. 

His passion was so intensely palpable, it gave you goosebumps. It was a very old film that you likely wouldn’t have taken an interest in. But the way he talked about it - like it was revolutionary, like it was the most interesting thing in the world. It made you want to watch it ten times just to get to know him better, just to have a small taste of the passion that he felt so epically for it. 

You didn’t know it then, but feeling his overwhelming enthusiasm spreading in the air was the beginnings of your very intense crush on him. It was the moment that you started falling for him. 

“You know originally, Lou Costello scoffed at the idea of even making-” Gar suddenly cut himself off, a look of dawning crossing his features. “Woah, I’ve been talking for such a long time, haven’t I?” 

Technically, yes. 

But you would have been perfectly content to stand there and listen to him talk for hours more about this film or any of the others related to posters that he had on the wall. His enthusiasm and the way it was backed up by factual knowledge made him endlessly interesting to listen to. 

In response, you simply shrugged. 

Yes, he had been talking for a long time. But - you enjoyed listening. His tone and the abrupt way he had cut himself off made it sound like he had burdened you with his ramblings, and you weren’t sure why. 

“Sorry.” He giggled, scratching the back of his neck nervously. “I’m probably being so annoying. I haven’t even let you talk about yourself at all. What - what kind of movies do you like?” 

He seemed nervous suddenly, as though he had become self conscious in the conversation. 

You filled with nerves as well, coming to the realization that you would now have to communicate to him that you couldn’t talk. 

You motioned toward your throat, hoping he would be able to see the scar from the surgery that had stolen your ability to speak so long ago. Rather than understanding, Gar’s face knit with confusion. 

“What, did the sea witch steal your voice?” He asked. The action reminded him a lot of that cartoon mermaid, desperately tapping on her throat, trying to explain to others why she couldn’t speak. “Do you need a kiss from a handsome prince to get it back?” 

The words escaped him before he could stop it - and then he realized that it sounded entirely more flirtatious than he intended. 

He bit his lip nervously and you let out a giggle. You became entirely overwhelmed by your own nerves, and your undeniable attraction toward him. If you were feeling at all bold, you might have leaned over and kissed him in that moment. But something in the back of your mind told you that it was rude - that he hadn’t truly meant it, that it was strange to come onto him so soon after meeting him. 

When the awkwardness swelled inside of him, he rushed to speak again. 

“Sorry,” He blurted out. “That was probably insensitive. If you’re really mute, that’s like a disability, and you shouldn’t make jokes about people’s disabilities-” 

You vigorously shook your head, meaning to tell him that ‘no, I liked the joke’. 

But his eyes instantly grew wide, believing that you were shaking your head negatively, believing that he was truly being insensitive and rude. 

You raised your hands and began explaining it in sign language, and he sighed in defeat. 

“I’m sorry.” He said. “I don’t - I don’t understand.” 

Then, a look of dawning came over his face so strong it was almost as if a cartoon lightbulb appeared over his head. He then rushed into the other room - there was some ripping of paper (what you didn’t know was him ripping pages he had used out of a notebook so that you wouldn’t see them). After a moment, he rushed back toward you, thrusting a notebook and a pen in your direction. 

You took it happily, and began writing. 

‘Yes, I am completely mute. Yes, it is technically a disability. And yes, I did think your joke about the sea witch was funny. But… I don’t think a kiss from a prince will fix me.’ 

You passed it to him and after he read it, he gave a small chuckle. 

“Yeah, that wasn’t so smooth on my part.” He said. “What happened? To your voice?” 

You explained it to him. You spent a long time passing the notebook back and forth, explaining things to him about yourself and your life. 

You told him how you had been ill for as long as you could remember, and it had only gotten worse as you progressed into your teen years. And eventually, the mounting medical debt became too stressful for your parents so they abandoned you and disappeared with no way for creditors to track them down. They had left you orphaned in the most cruel way. 

Gar’s eyes danced with tears when he read this. You didn’t know it then, but he vowed to himself that he would always be by your side. He would be the one person who never left you, no matter what happened in life that might try to draw the two of you apart. 

‘Can I ask you something?’ You scrawled out, passing the notebook to Gar with careful curiosity on your mind. 

“Yeah, anything.” He replied. 

‘Why are you here? What is Doctor Caulder helping you with?’ 

You were tempted to add on something about how he ‘looked normal’ - but you didn’t want to accidentally insult him. 

“My condition… it’s uh…” Gar stuttered through his attempt at an explanation, and confusion flooded your features. “It’s probably just easier if I show you?” 

You nodded in acknowledgement that you understood, and Gar put the notebook aside and stood from the couch where the two of you had been seated, talking for hours. 

“Would you - uh - would you mind closing your eyes for a second?” He asked, once again draped in that nervous energy. 

You hesitated for a second, but then complied. You weren’t sure how him ‘showing’ you would go if you had your eyes closed. But you trusted him to harness in that condition - whatever strange ability the serum had given and not let it hurt you. You felt safe around him even though you had only known him for a short time. And you wanted to make him comfortable rather than arguing about it. 

You were curious when you heard some gentle rustling, and you cringed slightly when you heard what sounded like the cracking of bones. You hoped that whatever he was doing, it didn’t cause him any pain. 

Your curiosity became too great and you opened your eyes when you heard a low rumbling. If you weren’t mistaken, it sounded like the purring of a very large cat. 

Shock instantly overtook you when you opened your eyes to see that standing in front of you in the middle of the carpet - rather than Gar - there was a very large tiger with bright green fur. When your sight had been restored, you never, ever thought that this would be one of the first things you would get to see. 

Your first instinct was to pull your feet up onto the couch, and the tiger - which you quickly had to reason was Gar, who had somehow shifted his body into a different form - hung his head in shame when he saw the fear overtake your body. You didn’t want to be afraid of him. You shouldn’t be, right? He had been nothing but kind to you since the two of you had met. He wouldn’t use this odd power to endanger you. 

When you looked into those large animal eyes, you saw nothing but kindness. And you couldn’t resist the urge to step off the couch and lean out, petting a hand gently under his furry chin. 

It was then that you were struck with the realization. The dream you had of being married to a large green tiger - it had likely meant something. 

But you couldn’t bring yourself to linger on it. 

Instead, you scratched under his chin and he purred, and you giggled at the fact that such a large, possibly terrifying animal was so docile under your touch. 

(When Gar transformed back, you would deny that you snuck a glance at him changing back into his clothes. And you would definitely deny that you became obsessed with what you saw.) 

… 

Later that night, you met Rita when she came down to join everyone for dinner. She was a lovely, sweet woman. She was actually the only person (aside from Doctor Caulder) at the table who understood your ASL, though she didn’t seem eager to explain where she had learned it. You knew that everyone in the house had somewhat of a painful past, so you didn’t bother to ask. 

The cake Larry had made turned out beautiful. A towering masterpiece that everyone had to purposefully crane their necks around as they spoke to each other. You couldn’t help but marvel in wonder at it and the rest of the amazing spread he had made. Gar told you that it really wasn’t that out of the ordinary, seeing as cooking was Larry’s favorite hobby. 

You felt slightly bad for Cliff - seeing as he sat with an empty plate in front of him. But he seemed to show up to the meal mostly out of habit, family obligation, and a slight curiosity to get to know you. So you tried your best to answer everyone’s questions and be welcoming to the new friendships. 

You enjoyed the meal well. Everything was delicious, and compared to the food you once ate on the ward - it was heaven. Everything seemed to be going perfectly. 

Larry cut the cake and made sure that you got the first slice - which you selected from the towering variety of many different flavors. He cited that he didn’t know what your favorite flavor was, so he made a good variety as insurance. The taste of lemon was sweet on your tongue and you were enjoying yourself - when one of the lights began flickering. 

It was just a few flashes above your head, just for a few moments, but it was enough to send a sharp pain shooting through the middle of your forehead and instantaneously cause a wave of nausea through your stomach. You dropped your fork onto your plate with a clatter, and everyone craned their necks around the towering cake to look at you. Gar immediately got up from his chair to rush to your side, wondering what was wrong. 

“Are you okay?” He asked quietly. 

Your senses were overwhelmed by dizziness, a horrid feeling that your eyes were churning inside of your skull. Sharp waves of pain radiated out from the middle of your forehead and seemingly caused the world to turn wildly underneath your feet. 

You didn’t know that the harsh unwellness was visible all over your face - from your unpleasant expression to the light layer of sweat that had so quickly formed over your skin. 

You shook your head, attempting to confirm to him that you were not okay. But this only caused the pain to worsen, and you held back a harsh gag, trying your hardest to keep the amazing dinner inside. 

“You need to lay down.” Gar said quietly. 

You felt safe under his touch and you let him guide you as he pulled out your chair. He put one hand around your back and used the other to take your hand as he helped you up and guided you away. You let your eyes fall closed against the harsh light as his hand came to rest on your waist, a calming comfort against the harsh pain throbbing through you. You let yourself lean on him for support as he did as promised - took you to lay down. 

You were partway up the stairs when a voice disrupted you. 

“Garfield.” 

Doctor Caulder called after him harshly, causing Gar to pause his movements. You leaned on the bannister and kept your eyes closed. You had to concentrate hard on willing yourself not to vomit while Gar was distracted with the conversation. 

“This is an important opportunity to study her condition, you should be taking her to-” Caulder began to argue against Gar’s actions, but he was cut off. 

“She needs to lay down.” Gar argued quietly. “She’s had a long day. She needs rest. You can do your studies tomorrow.” 

You didn’t know it, but this was the first time that Gar had ever gone against the man on anything. Doctor Caulder stood there in shock at Gar’s sudden shift in attitude while Gar put a hand on your lower back once again and helped you the rest of the way up the stairs. 

He helped you into bed and pulled the covers over you. And then he got a hot cloth to put on your forehead, and got a bucket to put beside the bed in case you did throw up. It was then that you knew you would never feel properly cared for again unless it came from him. 

When he thought that you weren’t paying attention, half sleepy and half drowned in the pain, he leaned down and laid a gentle, timid kiss on your forehead, right above the cloth. 

…

Later that night, after everyone had fallen asleep, Gar snuck out to town and picked up a book on ASL. He was especially careful that his teeth didn’t pierce any of the pages. 

He used the rest of the night to study, and he greeted you the next morning with a tray of gentle breakfast food (porridge, hopefully something that wouldn’t aggravate your upset stomach) and Advil. Despite the pain throbbing through your head, you broke into a beaming smile when he signed the words ‘good morning’ to you. 

It was then that you realized just how much you were going to have to suppress your feelings for him. 

… 

Later in the day, Doctor Caulder was carrying out his tests as promised. 

He had you in a different part of the basement - in an area that essentially looked like an operating room. Just seeing the tables and all the cold medical equipment triggered a lot of your fight or flight instincts, but you tried your hardest to remain calm. Especially because Gar was by your side, even though he likely could have been playing video games or doing something else a lot more fun. He told you that he would stay by you the entire time to make sure that you were comfortable. 

You tried to relax and trust the process. 

Doctor Caulder had adjusted the table, propping up the top of it so that it was much more like a chair. And he had wheeled in a large machine that consisted of a series of lightbulbs - something that turned out to be a strobe light, set to make specific patterns. He had taped several electrical probes to your head, ones connected to an EEG machine. Although he knew that this procedure was likely to trigger a seizure, he said that it was important for it to occur because your neurological problems were closely tied to your powers, and the areas of the brain that the serum had affected. He said that it was something important to measure - even if a seizure happened. 

“Just face forward, and keep looking into the light.” Doctor Caulder explained. “It will go through a series of flashing patterns. I need you to try your hardest to keep your eyes open, and stay focused. It’s important that we record your brain activity while this is happening without disruption.” 

You nodded in affirmation. You weren’t looking forward to the pain that it would cause considering that your head was still thumping with a migraine from the night before, but if he considered it necessary, you would do it. 

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Gar asked. “How do you know this isn’t just gonna cause more harm?” 

He was standing beside the table, holding your hand, and you were entirely grateful for his presence there. 

He had seen the way you had reacted to a relatively dim chandelier bulb flickering at dinner the night before. He thought that this would be disastrous. 

“Garfield, if you continue to question me, then I’ll have to ask you to leave.” Doctor Caulder told him curtly. “You can’t keep disrupting the process like this. We need to move forward.” 

Doctor Caulder glared at Gar, giving him a moment to make his choice. To see if he was going to speak up and argue or remain quiet. Gar looked to you, wanting to see if you were truly okay with all of this. Nerves boiled in your stomach, but you feigned a smile, and squeezed his hand tighter, assuring him that you needed him there - right by your side. 

Gar then nodded at Doctor Caulder, who stood behind the machine with the lights and turned it on. Gar flinched hard against the lights as they began to flicker. He turned his head away and closed his eyes, but he kept a tight hold on your hand. 

Though it went against every screaming, pained nerve in your body, especially the ones pulsing through your head - you fought to keep your eyes open. Your carefully tuned hearing picked up on the scribbling needles of the EEG machine, Gar’s breathing. You could even hear the electricity sizzling in the bulbs as they went through three long flashes and then turned off. Three long flashes, and then off. 

You survived the first pattern well before it switched to two quick flashes and then a period of seemingly prolonged darkness - something that wasn’t any more than three whole seconds in reality. 

The moment that it switched to the intense, rapid strobing - you felt it. The tingling in your hands, the dizzying haze that said you were only moments away from having a seizure. 

You had no time to warn either of them, especially considering that this was the first seizure you had post-serum, and it had unexpected size effects. 

As your muscles became tight and your body began to violently seize, the house itself began to quake around you. It was as though the building were at the epicenter of a violent earthquake. Later, Doctor Caulder would come to the conclusion that your seizures now caused ‘rapid bursts of psychic energy’ to be released from you, completely uncontrolled by you. He realized that you would be needed to put on a high dose seizure medication to prevent any further incidents. 

In those moments, though, it was chaos. 

Between the shaking of the house underneath you and the unpredictable seizing of your muscles, you quickly rolled off the table. Gar easily caught you in a moment’s notice. Across the room, Doctor Caulder made a similar movement - reaching urgently to catch the EEG machine before it fell off of its own table. 

When the quaking stopped, and you were left quivering in Gar’s arms, he couldn’t help but to feel a rush of disappointment as he saw the obvious play out before his eyes - Doctor Caulder was far more eager to save his data, to preserve the research that you had given him than to actually take care of you - his patient who was clearly in need. 

“What was that?” Gar breathed out, looking from your unconscious face to the surrounding room. He didn’t think that it was a large coincidence that an earthquake had struck at the exact same time as your seizure and had lasted exactly as long. 

“I believe that her powers were responsible for that.” Doctor Caulder theorized. “We’ll likely have to do more research to fully comprehend it-” 

He abruptly cut off his own words when the scribbling needles of the EEG machine stopped. 

Gar began peeling the probes off your forehead and Doctor Caulder only looked up toward you when the EEG flatlined as it was disconnected. 

“Garfield, what do you think you’re doing?” Caulder barked at him. 

“We’re done right now.” Gar said, his voice choked off by his anger. “Clearly, this isn’t helping. She needs rest.” 

Gar resisted the urge to say more. He resisted the urge to berate Doctor Caulder for harming you. He resisted the urge to swear. He resisted the urge to threaten to run away with you - taking away Doctor Caulder’s precious source of research so that the two of you would never be seen again. 

He had no clue that his anger was so intense that it flared up in his eyes, threatened to invoke his transformation against his will. 

He felt calmer when he looked down at you, and petted a hand across your forehead. Although you were forced into unconsciousness because of the seizure, you looked peaceful and calm with your face so still, your eyes closed and your muscles finally relaxed. He hoped that you would feel better soon. 

That was the day Doctor Caulder decided to start keeping a tranq gun near the operating table. 

… 

Things were quiet for a few days after that. 

Doctor Caulder said that he needed time to go over the results of the EEG, and he didn’t want to induce anymore seizures in you for fear that it might bring down the house. So he did let you rest. 

But in the interim, he didn’t check up on you or attend to any of your medical needs. He locked himself in his office to contemplate the science of it all while Gar stuck by your side. He held the bucket and rubbed your back while you puked, he held a hot cloth to your forehead when you needed it. He held a spoon up to your lips to feed you because your hands were too weak after being rocked by such a harsh seizure. 

After a few days, you were almost thankful to Doctor Caulder for it. You and Gar were growing incredibly close so quickly because he refused to leave your side, and you had never felt so lucky to have someone like him in your life. 

You hesitated when Doctor Caulder called you into his office upstairs. 

He made a poor apology for the incident with the lights. He said that he was sorry for causing you pain, but it was ‘necessary’ to explore your condition, to map your brain and find out how the serum had affected you. 

He said that the next step would be further exploring your strange powers. The powers you had accidentally discovered while transitioning out of the hospital. When one of the nurses had been attending to you, you had looked into her eyes, and you couldn’t even fully identify the feeling at the time. But suddenly, you knew this shocking, painful information. One of the other patients on the ward who you had come to know as a friend wasn’t going to live much longer. And when you had asked the nurse about it, she had accused you of snooping, reading through files - because the information was supposed to be confidential. 

But Doctor Caulder - who had witnessed the conversation - easily saw it for what it truly was. An unnatural power given to you by his serum. 

He then called Gar into his office as well - someone you obviously trusted and could work well with. 

He set it up as a game. 

He had written down several things on flashcards. You and Gar would sit across from each other, and Gar would read one of the flashcards, fully capturing the idea in his mind. And then you would use your powers to try and push into his mind - figuring out what was on the card without him ever speaking a single word or giving any hints. 

As you sat across from him, preparing to begin, you were incredibly hesitant. 

‘Are you sure about this?’ 

You wrote this as a message to Gar on one of the blank index cards. They were intended for you to write the answers that you retrieved from his mind during the ‘game’. You intentionally held back with the message, not fully describing your worries. You wanted to ask if he was okay with you breaching the privacy of his mind, but you were worried about Doctor Caulder seeing it, because you knew the man didn’t like to be questioned. 

You flipped it around to show Gar, and he simply nodded after he read it. 

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Gar assured you with a smile. “It’s just a game, right?” He grinned. “It’ll be fun.” 

You didn’t quite think so. But you tried to take on his positive attitude. 

“Let’s begin.” Caulder said. He was standing behind Gar in a very imposing manner, reading the cards as well to ensure that he didn’t flub the answers just to please the Doctor. 

Gar picked up the first card and read it, and he concentrated on it for a moment, making sure that the idea was focused in his mind. He gave a small nod, and then looked up toward you, knowing that he had to make steady eye contact with you in order for you to use your powers. 

Pushing past your discomfort, you did as you had been instructed. You stared deep into those big beautiful brown eyes, and you purposefully breached the surface into his mind. The first thing you were met with was a rich visual of several golden retriever puppies frolicking in a field of grass, happily yipping and prancing around, almost tripping over their clumsy new feet. 

You soon withdrew - even though it was a happy scene that gave you joy, you knew that you had the answer. You had an unconscious grin on your face, and that easily made Gar giggle as you flipped over the message you had made to him and wrote down your answer on the other side. 

‘Puppies’

You lifted up the card and showed it to Doctor Caulder, who took a glance down at the card in Gar’s hand (which said ‘DOG’). He nodded at you, his stern face not flexing for a moment to show any sign of positivity. He picked up a clipboard from a small table on the chair beside Gar and began furiously scribbling. 

“Continue.” He said, not looking up from his fast paced notes. 

Gar looked down at the next card, took the same moment of concentration, and then looked back at you with a small grin on his face. 

This time, rather than feeling like you were committing some kind of crime or doing him a grand disservice, you looked into his eyes and pushed into his mind with a gleeful joy - as though the two of you were sharing a delightful secret. 

The next rich visual you saw featured Gar himself. He wore a pair of tight jeans and a leather jacket with some red tee shirt underneath, and he walked up to a red car - a very fancy, vintage looking car. He opened the door, got inside, and adjusted the mirror to look at himself before he stomped on the gas pedal and the car sped away with a screech. It was a very ‘cool guy’ moment, something that made you giggle because of the stereotypical absurdity of it. 

When you drifted back into the real world, you went to the next index card, and had more of a difficult time figuring out how to phrase your answer. 

You went with:

‘Driving a car?’ 

When you held it up to show Doctor Caulder, he checked Gar’s card, which simply said ‘CAR’. He frowned, and you thought that you had gotten the answer wrong. 

“You have to concentrate more, Garfield.” Caulder scolded him. 

Gar’s face dropped into a frown, and it made your chest twinge with sourness. You thought that a face as sweet as his should never have to frown. 

“You got it right.” He told you quietly, before flipping to the next one. 

You nodded. You hated the way that Caulder treated him. If you could scream at the man, you would. 

Gar waffled for a few moments, looking at the card with blank eyes before he then looked up at you. There was a slight glassiness swimming there that told you he was ready to cry, along with the hesitation of a quivering lip. You wanted to end the entire exercise and simply retreat to the basement to play video games with him, but you knew that Caulder likely wouldn’t let you get away with that. 

So you continued. 

You used your powers once again, purposefully entering Gar’s mind. 

You were surprised by the scene you were met with. 

It was a vision of you and Gar - it was almost like a beautiful painting, like a fantastic daydream. 

You were off in some grassy field, seemingly the same place the puppies had been. Lush greenery, boundless blue skies, warm sunshine that you could almost feel tingling against your skin. The two of you were holding hands - and the most peculiar thing that stuck out to you? 

Your attire. 

Gar was wearing a formal black suit with a green tie and a green vest to match his naturally wild green hair. You were wearing a long, lacy white dress that you couldn’t mistake for anything other than a wedding dress. There was a bundle of flowers looped around your head in a large crown, with a long, flowy lace veil going down your back, and a bundle of flowers in your free hand that wasn’t holding his. 

It was a wedding, a marriage. 

At the time, however foolish it was, you didn’t consider the scene to be any specific desire on Gar’s part. You simply thought that he was trying to communicate the idea - the concept to you. You thought that it was just part of the game. 

When you pulled yourself back to reality, you felt entirely confident in your answer as you wrote it down. 

‘A wedding’

When you flipped it over to show them, you were grinning proudly. 

Gar’s face immediately dropped - embarrassment clutched at his stomach and panic overtook him. Caulder sighed with annoyance as he looked at Gar’s card, which said ‘WATER’. 

Before any further discussion of it could be had, Gar dropped the cards and they scattered over the floor. He rushed out of the room, moving so swiftly that he was practically a blur. Doctor Caulder called after him, complaints wafting through the air. 

You didn’t care to listen to the man. You got up and chased him, almost tripping over your own feet to get to him. 

You caught him as he zipped up his jacket, clearly ready to escape out the basement door and go into town (something he told you he was not permitted to do, but often did anyway). You stepped right in front of his path. He sighed hard through his nose and tried to dodge you, and you stepped in front of him and kept blocking him. Eventually, he was forced to look up at you. 

It was then - when you saw the look of a truly kicked puppy spread across his features, naked embarrassment lingering in his eyes - that the truth clutched at your stomach. You got the sense that what you had seen was truly private. 

Part of you wanted to prod at him about his desires and ask why he had been thinking about that. But a larger part of you worried far more about the fact that you had upset him with the freakish invasion by your powers, and you wanted to remedy it. You wanted to save this amazing new friendship. 

With the index cards and pen still in your hand, you quickly wrote a message to him. 

‘I’m sorry.’ 

You wrote down, and then quickly flipped it to show him. 

“It’s fine.” He huffed, clearly eager to escape the conversation. 

Once again, he tried to dodge around you. 

Once again, you blocked his path. 

And then, you wrote down something else to show him.

‘It’s not fine. I shouldn’t use my powers on you like it’s a game.’ 

“The Chief needs to explore your abilities, right?” Gar sighed quietly. 

‘Not at your expense.’ You reasoned. 

Gar was silent when he came into this information - like this was the first time he had ever truly considered that the Chief’s methods were unethical. 

‘We should make a deal. I shouldn’t use my powers on you unless it’s an emergency. Your mind should be your private space. I don’t get to go poking around in there for fun.’ 

You scribbled this down with haste, feeling very emotional about it. Then you handed it to Gar. 

He gave a small smile and nodded after he read it. 

“That - uh - that sounds fair.” He said, chuckling nervously. “And we… we don’t have to talk about what you saw.” 

You both nodded and dissolved into giggles at this. And then, he took off his jacket, and fired up his X-Box so he could teach you how to play Cuphead to help the two of you forget about the whole thing. 

…

Back in your room at Titans Tower, so long after those first amazing days of your friendship with Gar - you fell asleep deep in thought about him. You couldn’t stop going over those early days in your mind. Thinking about all the intense kindness he had given you when the two of you had first met. 

Thinking about all of it truly made you realize how badly you had fucked up. You genuinely wondered if your friendship with him would ever have any chance at recovering from the cruelty you had shown him. 

You were genuinely stuck between a rock and a hard place. You thought that if you told him about the things that had happened - about the visions you had seen - even if you stressed to him that it had been by accident, then he would feel that you had violated his privacy. He would be wounded by you seeing into his mind and not reporting it to him right away. He would be upset that your powers had put a wedge between the two of you. And now, he was upset because you had stolen his secrets and you weren’t confiding any of yours in him. 

You were a bad friend. And you didn’t know how to make it up to him. 

You woke up the next day feeling like crap.  

You quickly realized that Gar was avoiding you. He did finally come out of his room because Dick banged on his bedroom door, demanding in a harsh voice that if his illness was really that serious, he needed to get it checked out. And Gar came out shoving a hoodie over his head saying that he was fine - while wearing the saddest expression you had seen over his face in a long time. 

When you placed a coffee cup down in front of him as a peace offering - dark roast filled one third with vegan marshmallow flavored creamer, just how he liked it - he distinctly ignored it. He didn’t even look at you as he got up from the breakfast bar stool, taking nothing more than a dry piece of toast for breakfast before he stormed off toward the training room. 

He placed himself in a secluded corner of the gym with his headphones blasting music, doing harsh pushups and pummeling the punching bag. He was making it very clear that he wanted to be left alone. And even when Dick called all four of you into another room for a verbal quiz on The Art of War (where you wrote down your answers on a white board) - Gar refused to make eye contact with you. 

Even when you drew a satirical comic of Dick’s Robin cape being propelled by a fart (that you labeled ‘pent up aggression’) - Gar’s face didn’t flinch from the hard stone it had been set into. It made Jason snort water out of his nose and caused Rachel to call you both ‘immature’. And it got you a verbal lashing from Dick and three weeks of washing the dishes - by hand. So not worth it considering that Gar hadn’t even cracked a smile. 

Gar’s cold indifference toward you rolled right into dinner. Gar didn’t flinch or try to take sides when Jason and Rachel broke into an argument about what had happened during game night. Jason brought up how stupid the concept of the game had been and he and Rachel began arguing about the rules. 

(“If I’ve never seen the movie before, I should get a new question!” 

“That’s not how it works, dickweed! Trivia is supposed to be difficult because you don’t know the answers!” 

“So not true. Trivia is a test of memory. How am I even supposed to remember the answer if I don’t know the damn source material?!”) 

The argument lasted long enough for you to finish your meal. 

When Dick realized they were debating who was the true loser of the bet you had made, he pointed out that regardless of any bets, you had to do the dishes as punishment for the dumb little drawing you had made. You didn’t care all that much as long as it got Jason and Rachel to shut up - but Jason was all too smug about it as he handed you his plate. Once you had finished cleaning up, something you found oddly calming, a nice distraction from the chaos of the last few days - you found yourself wandering to Rachel’s door. 

Much like you, she didn’t talk about her powers often. 

Especially not since she had been tricked into summoning her demon father to earth and then she had been forced to kill him because of what he did to all her friends - the people she considered family. But you knew that like you, she had some kind of capability to see into other people’s minds - to delve into their memories or walk the long, winding halls of their thoughts. You knew she might be the only other person on earth who might be able to understand what you were going through. Someone who could give you some kind of solid advice about it. 

After steeling yourself with a sharp breath, you raised your hand and knocked, waiting to see if she would even answer. The music that she was playing stopped, and after a moment, she opened the door, a look of surprise knitting over her features when her eyes fell upon you. 

“Y/N.” She greeted you in a quiet voice. “What is it?” 

‘I need to talk to you.’ You signed to her. You had some hope that she would understand what you meant, but her face was immediately overtaken with confusion. 

“I’m sorry - I.” She sighed, quickly cutting herself off, looking for the right words to explain it. “Between Dick’s whole list of mandatory reading stuff, and the sparring practice… I’ve been meaning to, but I haven’t had any time to study sign language,” 

She had genuine regret in her voice, which you could appreciate. 

You exhaled through your nose, a deep sigh. 

You gently pushed past her, inviting yourself into her room to settle in for the conversation. It did frustrate you that ASL wasn’t just a common language that was taught in schools, especially because it was psychologically proven that it was easy for toddlers to pick up on it with their brains being at a developmental age for it. It frustrated you that sometimes it was difficult for you to communicate with the people around you. But you tried not to let it get to you often. 

You got your cell phone out of your pocket, gesturing with it to let her know you would be texting her the things you needed to say. It was a simple, easy system. You invited yourself to sit on her bed, flopping back among the messy, unmade dark sheets as you carefully chose and typed out the words you needed to say. Rachel settled back into her desk chair, turning on her music once more, adjusting the volume to a low hum that settled into the background. You recognized it as the Arctic Monkeys and silently admired her taste in music. 

‘Have you ever accidentally seen something you regret?’ 

You sent the message. It took only a moment to race through cyberspace and you heard Rachel’s phone ping where it sat on the desk beside her. 

She picked up the phone and looked at your message. She then looked back at you with her eyebrows knitted tightly, a mixture of confusion and deep thought pulling them tight together. 

“Well there was that one time I accidentally walked into the bathroom when Jason forgot to lock the door-” She began. 

You cut her off with a raised hand and a pair of wide eyes glaring her down. 

You looked back to your phone and began typing another message, wanting to clarify what you meant. 

‘With your powers. Have you ever seen something with your powers that you didn’t want to see?’ You typed it out quickly, hitting send. 

Rachel read it over, placing her phone against her chin pensively as she contemplated the answer. 

“I… I don’t know.” Her voice was thick with thought. “I used to have these horrible nightmares. Almost every single night. And now I realize that those nightmares are what led me here. And I wouldn’t have been able to stop Trigon if I hadn’t seen those things.” 

Your throat tightened up. 

You and Rachel had never really talked like this before. You almost felt bad asking her for advice, knowing your problems were very different from hers. Quite pedestrian compared to the woes of somebody who had literally stopped the apocalypse and saved your life, and everyone else’s. You were worried about a school girl crush and she had the weight of the world on her shoulders. 

“Why, what did you see?” Her curiosity leaked through her lips. She had quickly connected the dots to realize that you wouldn’t be asking questions like this if you hadn’t seen something of significance. 

Naturally, you weren’t going to tell her the details. Not only because the things you had seen were incredibly graphic, revealing, and private, but because you did suspect that she had some kind of small crush on Gar. And you didn’t want to crush her small hope of being with him and make her upset. Especially considering you had seen what she could do when she was upset. 

You opened the one-way text conversation and thought for a moment, carefully contemplating what you would tell her. 

‘I saw something private. Something I probably wasn’t supposed to see.’ You sent the vague words, and she read them over quickly. 

“What, like a sex dream?” She posed. 

There was a laugh on the edge of her voice, as though she was only joking. But the accuracy of the comedic prod scared you. You wanted to change the topic quickly - before she truly sniffed out the truth. 

‘Doesn’t matter.’ You sent quickly. When she saw the three small bubbles pop up, indicating that you were typing more, she simply waited. ‘Have you ever felt weird acting on information you’ve gotten from your dreams? Doesn’t it feel like cheating the system? Like you should just shut up and pretend to be normal?’ 

Rachel sighed, a sharp breath that clung to the insides of her throat. She placed her phone down in her lap and leaned back in her desk chair, swaying slightly with the swivel of the rolling chair’s base. 

“I don’t think any of us can just pretend to be normal.” She noted quietly. 

Rachel’s words were calm and wise. It was something she had probably realized about herself a long time ago. It was a truth you had yet to fall to. You caught glimpses of the future in your dreams, you could see things about people they never dared to admit to themselves. You were in love with a man who could turn himself into a tiger at will, and yet, your heart still cried for something that resembled ‘normal’. 

Rachel saw it written all over your face - that warring. And more of that oddly aged wisdom came pouring from her lips before she could stop it. 

“What’s that saying?” She pondered aloud. “‘What’s normal for the spider is chaos for the fly.’” 

It was a saying you had never heard of before, but it was oddly comforting in those moments. The idea that ‘normal’ means something drastically different for everyone. 

When you didn’t say anything, didn’t pick up your phone to start typing, Rachel continued. 

“I mean, I don’t know if I’m supposed to be the spider, or the fly, but…” 

She trailed off for a moment, getting lost in thought. She looked up at you when she had found the proper words, her eyes filled with a steely determination. 

“Look, somehow, I saved Dawn from a coma.” She firmly reminded you. “She didn’t give me an open invitation to go poking around inside her brain, but she needed me. And I needed her. I know having the ability to see inside people’s minds can be weird. But you shouldn’t just go around pretending you can’t do it because you’re afraid you’ll hurt people’s feelings, or whatever. You could save their lives.” 

You knew the information you had obtained wasn’t exactly life saving, but she had a point. An excellent one. Maybe the reason your powers were acting up like this was because Gar was reaching out to you. Maybe it was because he had felt the same way about you for a long time now and he didn’t have the guts to tell you either. So unconsciously, he was reaching out, trying to show you his feelings so he wouldn’t have to risk getting hurt.  

‘Thank you. That actually really helps.’ You sent the message and gave her a smile, hopping off the bed and leaving the room once again. 

…  

You had some time to kill before going to talk to Gar. 

You really wanted to talk to him this time - truly wanted to conquer everything you had been holding back over these past few days. So you were hoping that everyone else would be in bed asleep so they couldn’t interrupt the two of you. 

You took up some of the time with a nice, long shower. Which was partially interrupted by Jason banging on the bathroom door, complaining about how long you were taking - once again. And you took your time getting ready afterwards. 

You did your hair neatly and smoothed nice smelling lotion all over your skin. Of course, the thought did occur to you that the ‘conversation’ could lead to you and Gar having sex. That’s what had been so prominently on his mind for the past few weeks. That thought likely did influence your decision to put on a pair of skimpy, cute lace underwear and forego wearing a bra underneath your pajamas. A thin matchy cotton tank top and shorts set. 

Your stomach was ripe with bubbles, absolutely full of air and anxiety as you sat on your bed, waiting for more time to pass. There was a book in your hand that you barely knew the name or contents of as you tried to kill more time. Your eyes flicked over to the clock. It was almost one in the morning. Surely you had waited long enough. 

You didn’t bother with socks or slippers, your cold feet eager and quiet on the floor as you sneaked your way to Gar’s room. You were surprised to find empty, his wide open door revealing a messy, unmade bed without him in it. You hovered in the doorway for a moment, almost losing your courage and going back to bed. 

But then your eyes landed on his nightstand. 

There was a wide picture frame holding the picture of him and his parents. And tucked into one of the outer creases of the frame’s wood was something else - two photobooth pictures of the two of you. The pictures were from the first time he had snuck you out of the house to take you to the arcade at the roller rink. You had taken the other two pictures off the set of four, and always kept them in whatever journal you were currently working on. 

Seeing the memento kept so close to him, so dear - it filled you with a fresh wave of confidence and desire. You turned around, determined to find him. Luckily, there weren’t that many places to check. 

The kitchen and living space were empty. The bathroom was empty and the doors to the security room were shut - meaning Dick was likely in there, researching something, occupied. The only other place to check was the training room. 

Gar was in there, putting himself through another rigorous training routine. Clearly he couldn’t sleep with the fight the two of you had still weighing on his mind. And he was quite a sight to behold. 

He was shirtless, wearing nothing but a pair of black boxing gloves and black sweatpants that hung dangerously low on his hips. He was pounding away at the heavy punching bag, clearly trying to take out some of the frustrations that you had caused to run ramped inside of him. He was aglow with sweat, the tips of his green hair hanging down in his eyes, sticking to his forehead. His tight abs were slick and shiny in the light in a way that made you want to lick your lips. 

His attire easily revealed the delicious cut V of his hips and even a slight bit of pubic hair where he hadn’t properly tied up his sweatpants, and they were beginning to slip slightly due to his activity. You could see a rather impressive bulge, signifying that he was definitely not wearing any underwear. It swung around freely as he worked, punching hard at the weight bag. You had to force yourself not to become distracted by the movement of that mighty snake inside his pants - especially now that you knew what it felt like against you when it was throbbing and hard. 

He either hadn’t noticed your presence yet or didn’t care to interrupt his workout to acknowledge you.

“If you came to train, don’t let me bother you.” 

Gar huffed quietly when he finally paused his movements for a moment. He sounded so entirely wounded, and the words caused pain to radiate through your chest. He leaned down to pick up his water bottle between the two clunky foam gloves without taking them off. He took a large gulp from it while he not-so-subtly eyed you through his peripheral vision, clearly waiting for your reaction. 

“Apparently that’s all I am to you lately.” 

He added on after he swallowed the water, deadly quiet. His words were barely louder than the metal creaking as the punching bag continued to swing from the residual momentum. But you heard him absolutely clear. 

The sentiment weighed on your heart like a pound of bricks. 

You knew there were no words to explain it to him. You knew he would still be angered at you for using your powers on him without permission, even if it was by mistake. You couldn’t explain how it had been a mistake, how it had only been with him. You still didn’t know exactly why or how it had happened. 

After he gulped down a healthy dose of water, he tossed the bottle aside and rose to his full height. For the first time all day, he finally cast his attention over toward you. His face was set with one of the most sullen expressions you had ever seen. You hadn’t seen him this upset since he had attacked that man back at the asylum. Every bit a kicked puppy, as you looked at him, you tried to find the right words, but came up empty. You almost turned to walk away, almost burned dry of the courage you needed to face this. 

But with Rachel’s words still ringing in your ears, you looked into his glassy eyes, and for the first time in a long time - you pushed into the quiet realm of his mind purposefully. You needed to dig to find something that would help you. Something that could remind you of how perfect you were with Gar. 

You were surrounded once again by the thick, plush world of his own imagination. 

Even if it wasn’t that different from the world you lived in. 

The two of you were in the training room, with him wearing a blindfold as you practiced the unorthodox drill that was assigned to you. You got in a few good hits with the practice sword in your hands, and ultimately tackled him to the ground. 

The two of you ended up in a position that wasn’t too different from the reality of the day before. Though it was playful and light, rather than hypersexual and startled. 

You pinned him down with your thighs on either side of his waist, your hips sitting dangerously above his. Your body weight was balanced partially on your knees and partially on him. You held your wooden sword to his throat, poised in a threat you would never carry out against him. 

He swallowed hard, his throat muscles jerking underneath the wood. You knew it was more because of the rising heat your compromising position was causing him and not because he was actually afraid of you. Or perhaps him being just a tiny bit afraid of you turned him on that little bit more. 

You let out a laugh as you tossed the sword away, leaning in to take off his blindfold and give him a kiss on the cheek. 

“What was that for?” He asked, regarding the unique new affection you had never really shown him before. 

‘Kiss it better.’ You signed, before leaving in and leaving a deeper, more heated kiss fully on his mouth. 

You forced yourself out of the thick, hazy daydream then. 

This was the answer. No words would be able to fix this - you needed to kiss it better. 

‘Kiss it better.’ 

You repeated this to yourself in the real world, confirming it as the truth. 

Gar read the signs you performed and - out of context - it draped him in hopeful confusion. 

He continued to stare you down with that delicately confused look enveloping his features as you marched across the room toward him, your steps over the cushioned mats of the floor filled with pure determination. 

He wondered if he had read your signing wrong, or if you were really planning to kiss him. Part of him thought you were going to hit him, or finally flip out on him for whatever perceived crime he had committed. And when you did it - he could hardly believe that it was truly, finally happening. That it wasn’t some dream. 

You reached up and grabbed him by both sides of his sweat damped head. And after years of waiting - you pulled him into your lips. 

Without hesitation, going on the pure fire in your belly, you kissed him. 

You channeled every ounce of raw need that had built up since the first time he had sucked you into a daydream where he so ferociously kissed you. His shock was evident at first. His whole body went stiff under your touch, which almost caused you to pull away. But a small moan rang out from the back of his throat - something that made you instantly dizzy with need. It made your lips seek out his with even more force, making your grip on his head clamp down as if to not let him escape. 

He began to kiss you back with just as much ferocity as he had in his dreams - echoing out another moan as he truly appreciated the taste of your lips. 

You felt him move but you didn’t open your eyes to look. You heard the tearing of velcro as you gnashed your teeth across his top lip and then latched onto the bottom one. Behind your back, he was taking off the boxing gloves, throwing them somewhere on the floor with a careless, quiet thump. Then his arms were around you, snaking around your waist. His flat palms went up the back of your shirt like impossibly hot magnets and pulled your body to his. He closed the small gap you had left for fear of being rejected - he welcomed you into his world with the utmost sincerity. 

Your shirt stuck to him because of the sweat he had worked up, and you wanted it off immediately. You wanted all your clothes off. You wanted to feel the naked rawness of the bulge you could feel swelling against your hip. But for now, you were too distracted by the other sensations he drowned you in to even consider pulling away to strip down. 

You were too caught up in the wicked work his tongue was doing as it snaked past your lips. You were obsessed with the loving way his hands held you. You lavished in the heat of his body as it radiated out against you like a wildfire. One of his hands was sprawled out in the middle of your back underneath your shirt. The other cupping the back of your head like you were the most beautiful, delicate doll he had ever had the pleasure of holding in his life. 

Eventually, both of you were forced to pull away from the kiss - succumbing to that formidable human breath. 

“Is this real?” 

Gar said quietly, seemingly almost more to himself as he pulled away from your lips. 

You opened your eyes, running a hand down to gently cup his cheek. He felt your gaze on him and opened his eyes. For the first time in days, he stared into your eyes so intimately and the dream became real. 

“Are you forreal right now?” 

These words were a bit louder. 

Not loud enough to break the sacred bubble of hot mingled breaths, spit, and sweat you had created. He wouldn’t dare do anything to shatter this if it was just another sleepy fantasy. But even if it was a fantasy, he still wanted to ask for your consent. That much you realized. 

Hesitantly, you tore your hands away from his glistening, flushed skin to formulate your reply. 

‘I want you.’ You told him simply. 

Without another moment of hesitance, he used the strong hold of his arms around your torso to take you to the ground. 

You wrapped your legs around him upon instinct. Your arms came up to clasp around the back of his neck as your ankles fumbled somewhere on his back. The action unintentionally drew your hot centers closer together. 

Gar bringing you down elicited a surprised squeak from you, which staved off into light laughter as your back met the mats. The laughter was easily echoed by him, deep and hardy. The sound turned into a playful, pleasurable growl into your neck as he ran his teeth along the skin there, nipping, marking his territory. You didn’t think his growling would ever be so sexy to you - but fuck, the noise ran a shock up your spine. It made your pussy clench around nothing and sent a wave of wetness into your underwear. 

This was going to be fun. 

“You have no fucking idea how long I’ve wanted this.” 

Gar grunted into your neck, his voice already deepened by the cloud of his lust. His tongue licked a hot path down your skin into your cleavage. His hands ran down your sides to grip your hips through your shorts, his touch feeling blazen through the material. 

“Wanted you.” He groaned, sounding so lust-drunk already. “You’re so fucking perfect.” 

You had some idea. 

But just hearing him say it, feeling the words vibrate against your skin made you moan for him. It made your fingers dig into the flesh of his shoulder blades. You were desperate for some kind of anchor on the plane of reality to assure yourself that you weren’t lost in the depth of another beautiful dream. 

You were vaguely aware of the fact that there was probably a camera somewhere in the room. Maybe multiple cameras seeing what Dick’s personality was like. Hell, Batman was the one who had designed and built the place and Dick was only teaching you guys what he had been taught. He probably used the footage of you guys training to review your weaknesses so he could make you better - build better soldiers. 

But all those thoughts melted out of your mind the moment that Gar lifted up your shirt. He continued the wet trail with his tongue down the middle of your stomach, stopping once and a while to make sloppy kisses against your skin. You knew exactly what his intentions were when his hands curled into the waistband of your shorts and underwear all at once. 

Your legs fell limp as he started to pull them off. 

A fresh wave of heat surged through you, making you absolutely drunk as he tossed your clothes behind him. He poised himself between your bent knees, kissing up your thigh with a tight hold on it, holding himself up with the other hand. 

“You smell so fucking good.” He growled out, low, heavy under his breath. You moaned out, only getting drunker with his words. “Fuck, I can’t wait to taste you.” 

You didn’t have a moment to sign to him, to give him some kind of encouragement or permission before he was diving in. He got low on his knees, wrapping both his hands possessively around your thighs. He leaned some of his weight on his elbows and from what you could see - canted his hips toward the mats, fruitlessly humping against the softness, seeking some kind of relief. 

He used his hands to spread your legs - not that it was much of an effort. Your legs practically fell open at his touch. You whimpered hard in the back of your throat as you felt his breath fanning out over your wet pussy. A heavy moan swelled on your tongue when he licked a broad stripe across you from your hole to your throbbing clit. 

“Shit, you taste so fucking good.” 

He hoisted your legs over his shoulders so your feet rested comfortably on his back, laying so he was more flat on his stomach, clearly getting comfortable. He laid a few tender kisses on the inside of your thigh. Then he looked up at you with dark, ferocious eyes. 

“Just, ah… smack me on the head if you want me to stop, okay?” Gar told you. 

Clearly, he was saying this for your safety - putting in a failsafe in case you changed your mind or became overwhelmed. But it came off as a sharp, pleasant warning of what was to come. 

Your pussy throbbed and you only ached for him to hurry up, biting your lip as you looked down at him. You nodded briskly, communicating that you understood his words. You had a feeling you most certainly wouldn’t want him to stop. 

Gar’s fingers dug into the tenderness of your thighs as he ducked his head down, latching onto your swollen, needy flesh. He soon brought a whole new definition to the words ‘eating pussy’. Like with everything he did in life, he did with the utmost enthusiasm and passion. He lapped at you, put his beautiful pink lips around you and sucked. He kissed your pussy just as passionately and wholly as he had your mouth. 

He shoved his tongue between your folds and dragged it in long, languid strokes. Clearly he was eager to lap up every last bit of your essence that he could - eager to devour you. He moaned into your pussy, moaned just as loudly as if he were the one being pleasured. It made the vibrations of his tongue on your clit even more deadly. Your hands were on his hair in a minute, both of them grabbing up as much of the gorgeous green as you could and holding tight. The action pulled a rumble from deep in his chest as he was satisfied by the pleasant pain of you tugging at his roots.

“You’re so fucking good.” 

He moaned into you, and you echoed back a high pitched noise that you hardly recognized as your own. 

“Everything about you is perfect. Every inch of you is perfect.” 

His grip around your thighs became even more possessive, his fingers digging into you hard enough to leave marks. Your lust clouded brain couldn’t clock the pain. You could only enjoy the view of his gorgeous hands gripping your skin. He labored over your clit, determined to make you cum. He flicked his tongue hard and fast over your clit as his hot breath fanned over you in quick, lustful pants. The orgasm washed over you so suddenly, a rubber band snapped from his actions. The tension had been built up over weeks of him living inside your mind, torturing you through lustful dreams.  

Your back arched, every muscle in your body pulled tight. Your thighs quivered and spasmed around his head as he continued to grip them hard. Your mouth became a mess of foreign noises that sounded daft and dumb to you but were absolute music to Gar’s ears. 

He chased you hard the whole way through it, shoving his tongue deep inside your throbbing cunt so he wouldn’t miss a single drop of your juices as they flowed out of you. You thought perhaps he might come up for air when your orgasm subsided. The aftershocks were still shaking your thighs, one of your hands falling to lull by your side, the other petting fondly through Gar’s now even messier hair. But it seemed you were wrong. He was just getting started. 

He growled with a feral hunger, the noise making your hips jolt, unintentionally canting toward his face as a whimper fluttered from your lips. He lapped at you in a drunken, lazy way for a few moments before he went back to eating your pussy with a renewed kind of starvation. 

Nipping at your swollen pussy lips in a way that made your entire body jolt, forcing his tongue inside you and fucking you with it while his nose bumped at your thrumming clit. Your second orgasm built up so quickly on top of the first. Your fingers curled in his hair as an unspoken signal to it. The feeling of your nails digging into his scalp only driving him to makeout with your cunt with an even deeper desire. 

He soaked up your practically pornographic moans with reverence. The wear and tear on your extremely damaged vocal cords began to hurt your throat, but the noises were absolutely unstoppable as they poured from your lips. His talented tongue was forcefully driving the moans and whimpers from you. He loved the feeling of your fingers ripping at his hair, leaving a pleasant sting across his scalp. He didn’t let up at all as your second orgasm plowed through you. 

He wasn’t satisfied even as your voice was echoing the wrecked, harsh moans of a third. 

He had you panting, your lungs struggling for air. Your muscles twitching with the excess of adrenaline and electricity. You whimpered pathetically as he tongued over your intensely sensitive clit again. Deciding it was time to give in, you reached over and tapped him gently on the top of the head. 

He looked up at you with those beautiful, wide brown eyes. This time not a lick of innocence or confusion anywhere to be seen - his irises completely overtaken with a deep, primal lust. 

You crooked your finger at him, motioning for him to come back towards your face. He kissed the inside of your thigh a few more times. He unintentionally smeared your sticky wetness, which had gathered on his lips in a heady, thick coating, across your skin. 

“I love your pussy so fucking much.” He murmured into your skin. 

Hearing him spout such filthy words without shame sent another wave of heat rolling through your belly. You had no idea how you were still so needy after cumming so many times, but Gar had easily done that to you. 

You reached over and gently tugged on his hair again, bringing his attention back to you. You suddenly became very aware of the fact that you knew exactly what you wanted, but you didn’t know how to ask for it. Surely, there had to be a sign in ASL for intercourse - but you just didn’t know what it was. You had never felt the need to look it up before now. You decided to improv, knowing that Gar would get the meaning either way. He always understood when it came to you. 

You raised your hands, making a partially closed fist with one hand and sticking your finger into it. You knew that it was probably a rather juvenile motion. To make your point perfectly clear, you mouthed the words ‘fuck me’ in an exaggerated way, hoping it would be easy enough for him to pick up on. 

“You want me to fuck you?” 

He gently shucked your legs off his shoulders, sitting up on his knees. He wiped your essence off his mouth with the palm of his hand, a delighted, surprised expression falling over his features. 

You nodded swiftly, enthusiasm spreading across your face, biting your lip as you could barely contain a giddy smile. 

“I mean, I don’t have a condom or anything… should I go find one?” 

He moved slightly as if to get up and leave you, but you were quick to trap him, hooking your knees around his thighs and squeezing tight. This touch was a good enough signal to bring his attention back to you. 

‘Don’t worry about it.’ You signed to him, firm and final. 

He clearly wanted to question you, but there was something heavy dancing in your eyes, and he didn’t want to ruin the moment by pushing it. 

(You were infertile. Just another thing your illness had taken from you. If it meant this moment with Gar would be a bit more worry-free, then you’d take it. If it meant he would break up with you down the road because he wanted kids that you couldn’t have… then you’d just enjoy the time with him that you were given.)

“Okay.” He breathed quietly. 

Your attention shifted dramatically when his hand moved to adjust his cock in his pants, which was straining harshly through the fabric. It was a long, thick outline like a shadow beaming out from the black fabric, with a damp spot at the tip. Fuck. 

Eating you out had turned him on so much that he was leaking precum into his pants, quite a lot of it. You latched onto your bottom lip at the sight of it. You couldn’t help but to outright stare now that you were allowed to look - lavishing your eyes over the thick, magnetic outline of his beautiful cock. His hand gripped it once more, adjusting himself, trying to make his throbbing cock more comfortable where it strained against the fabric. It made the sight even hotter somehow, and your eyes jumped up to his to see the almost shy look on his face. Even after what he’d done, he was shy about you staring at his bulge. 

‘Show me.’ 

You egged him on, trying to be encouraging. You wanted to play up the obvious desire that you knew was prominent on your face by pouting your lips and batting your eyelashes for him. He raised his hand to the edge of his pants, but his muscles strained, hesitant still. 

As a show of good faith, you sat up slightly, peeling off your tank top, which was now stuck to you with sweat. Your skin appreciated the cool air of the room, and your ego preened at the way Gar’s eyes devoured the newly revealed skin. 

He let out a harsh breath before he stood up on the spot and took his pants down, letting them fall to his ankles and kicking them away. 

“I thought you might laugh at me.” He said quietly, insecurity racking his voice. “Because… ya know… the carpet matches the drapes.” 

Laughing was the last thing you were thinking about doing. 

As you laid there, propped up by your elbows, staring at him, your mind could only focus on how entirely fantastic he looked. His body was so perfect, his muscles built, building up more each day with the training. His whole body covered in perfect, smooth skin, surrounding a gorgeous, filthy prize that you had only dreamed about being this amazing in real life. 

His cock sprang out from a nest of green pubic hair - which yes, ‘the carpet does match the drapes’. But you found that to be nothing to laugh at. There was absolutely nothing laughable about the gorgeous, nine inch monster that stood proudly in front of you - smooth skin covering hardened, gorgeous flesh just like the rest of him. With a drooling, bright pink tip just ready for your lips to be wrapped around it. 

‘Why would I ever laugh at such a beautiful prize?’ You told him, assuring him that you held nothing but admiration and lust for his body. 

A light dusting of pink came over his cheeks, absolute flattery from your words. He dropped down to his knees once again. His cock bobbed so deliciously as he moved, and you knew that would be so whipped by the ability to have it. When Gar realized the power he could hold over you with sex - you would be done for. 

“Jason thought it was pretty funny.” He shrugged, his voice gruff with the memory of it. 

‘Jason is a clown.’ You assured him. 

The conversation was cast aside when he gripped your ankles, playfully tugging you across the mats toward him - something that caused more giggles to erupt from your throat. 

Then, he was hovering over you on his hands and knees once again. With one hand beside your head, the other came over to grasp your chin with two fingers. It was so light and careful compared to his previous touches. He peered down into your eyes, making your stomach seize up with the sheer amount of love and affection he stared you down with. 

If you didn’t feel the same way for him, you might have backed down from the towering might of his feelings. You might have been tempted to run from something so divinely grand and beautiful. But no - you wanted to be his. You wanted to make him yours. 

‘Take me.’ You mouthed. 

Your hands were numb and useless at your sides. Your body was stilled by the cosmic depths of his affection, hoping your silent lips alone would be enough. 

Gar leaned down and swept your mouth into a kiss. His thumb on your chin rubbed sweet circles on your skin as his lips smoothed into yours. Your tongue reached out to eagerly dive into the cavern of his mouth. Soon his touch was gone from your face as your hands woke up to find him, to reach out for the perfection of his body. 

You eagerly sought out to touch his arms, his back, his ass, anything you could reach. He used his hand to hoist your knee gently over his thigh, opening you up to him. Then he poised his cock perfectly at your hot, leaking entrance. 

“You sure about this?” He breathed across your cheek, pulling away from the kiss to ensure your consent one last time. 

You nodded with the most frantic posture you could muster, impatient breaths spilling from your nostrils and pouring across his clammy skin. 

Satisfied with this, he rolled his hips forward. Finally, after weeks - no, years - of waiting in quiet agitation for him, you became complete. 

Even with his massive size, his cock slid easily inside you. 

Your pussy was readied by the many orgasms he gave you, your muscles relaxed and naturally slicked up for him. He fit perfectly like he belonged there, your hot inner walls pulling him in. Your hot cunt clung to his cock in a way that made him groan deeply into your neck. The feeling made his buttocks tense as he pulled together his last ounces of self control to not lose it - to not pound into you like a careless sex doll. You were perfect, and you deserved to be treated perfectly. 

“Fuck, you feel so good around my cock.” 

He groaned, leaning down on his elbows. He trapped you completely in his warmth, pressing his body firmly into yours from chest to chest to where he was smothered deep inside you. 

“You’re so fucking perfect. Fuck, Y/N.” 

You dug your nails into the muscles of his back - hearing your name on his lips with such a gravelly desire making your pussy squeeze around him. After a few restrained moments, he finally pulled his hips back and began to move. It started off as a slow, deliberate grind, a slow drag of his hips into yours, but it quickly became unhinged. Not that you minded one bit. You wanted to tempt that animal inside him - you wanted to see his rougher side.  

The sloppy sound of skin slapping against skin echoed through the room as he hammered his hips into yours. The sounds almost completely drowning out the quiet wave of your pathetic whimpers and his possessive growls. He tried to trap the sounds in the skin of your neck, while gnawing mindlessly at your skin, sure to leave some kind of mark on you. 

He was impossibly heavy and hot inside you, hitting all the best spots. His cock drove more electricity into your nerve endings and absolutely milked you for everything you could give. His knees pinned open your thighs where they jolted and jumped, your body so overstimulated from your previous orgasms that they wanted to clamp shut on his hips to keep him from moving. Your unconscious wanted to pin him down and hold him there - wanted to hold him inside you so that you could feel so impossibly full forever. 

And then, just as you felt another orgasm coming to form like a screeching fire in your belly, he dared to raise his head from your neck, dared to look into your eyes. 

Before you knew it, you were tumbling once again through the thick curtain of reality and into his mind. You were pulled against your will into another one of his fantasies. 

In the fantasy, you were on your back, still, completely naked. You were slicked with a sheen of sweat with his thick, pulsing cock deep inside you. But this was slightly different. The material under your back was most certainly a mattress - plush, more giving than the stiffness of the padded floor of the training room. It had an almost too soft layer of silk sheets covering it that your skin stuck to unpleasantly with the sweat. 

Your hands were poised on Gar’s chest, your nails digging into the skin there, leaving light marks. One of the things that stood out most to you about this picture was not the fact that Gar was having a fantasy about fucking you, but the ring on your finger. Seeing as this was his mind, he was the one who had put it there. Quite clearly a wedding ring or an engagement ring. It was beautifully ornate, poised on the correct finger for marriage. It held a bright green stone in the middle - green like a certain someone special to you. 

“Fuck, I love you so much.” 

Dream Gar moaned as he pounded into you, his hips taking on a sloppy rhythm as his orgasm drew near. 

“My beautiful wife. Mine. Finally fucking mine. You’ve always been mine, haven’t you?” 

‘I’m yours.’ 

You found yourself mouthing the words without even realizing it, whipped out of the fantasy world so harshly once again. A very small part of your mind wondered if it had been a small slice of the future that you had seen or if it was simply a conjuring from Gar’s imagination. 

You didn’t have the time to think or care, because your body went into overdrive. The Real Gar’s forehead was now resting on your tits. His hands created a tight grip on your hips as he pounded into you harder, harsher, deep grunts spewing from his lips each time his cock settled back inside you. 

“Please cum for me, Y/N.” His words came out as a whining beg, something so wonderfully small from the man splitting you open on his cock. 

He kissed between your breasts, his thumb coming to rub harsh circles on your clit, sending jolts right through you. 

“Cum on my cock. Please.” 

With the vision still hot on your mind and his words searing through you, the orgasm tore you up like a rabid animal. It was like nothing else you had ever felt in your life - like your entire body was on fire, being entirely consumed by Gar, by his touch, by his love for you. Finally being owned by him, finally having the one thing you wanted, needed most. Finally having him, full and whole. 

You screamed so loudly it hurt your throat, something you knew you’d be feeling for days afterward. Your whole body shook around him while your eyes screwed shut, your head tilting backwards as the pleasure was exorcized from you. 

You felt a hot dampness under your fingertips that you recognized as blood. In the back of your mind, you realized that you had gripped him hard enough for your nails to cut him - but he didn’t seem to care. In fact, it only spurred him on more, if the deep, ferocious grunts pouring from his lips were any indication. He was absolutely wild as he chased his own orgasm, breath fanning out in hot grunts against your breasts as he bucked wildly into your spent, tired hips, making your muscles twitch with bitter overstimulation. 

“Fuck! Y/N!” He cried out as he came, finally spilling his thick, hot cum inside you. 

You let out a small moan at the feeling. It became even hotter when you felt his cum pooling around the base of his cock, where you were connected, and leaking down between your cheeks. He lingered inside you for a few moments, petting his hands up and down your sides while your hands laid numbly on his back. He pecked small, delicate kisses across your clavicle that were almost an irony to the whole interaction. It made you smile. 

You were quickly falling tired from the massive aerobic exercise and post-orgasm haze, disappointed by the fact that you had to get up and make your way back to bed. You hoped Gar would let you sleep in his. It came as a bitter shock when he pulled out of you, leaving you empty and cold as he moved away from you so suddenly. When you blinked, he was standing, bending over with his back to you as he picked up his pants and righted the legs so he could put them back on. 

What he did next came as even worse of a shock to you. 

“I - uh… I understand if you don’t want this to affect our friendship.” He said, just loud enough for you to hear him. His tone was flat, completely void of emotion. 

“I totally get being horny and just… needing someone. We’ve been locked up here for weeks, and like. Like you said, Jason’s a clown.” He let out a laugh, but it was hollow and tired. He clearly didn’t even think his own words were funny. 

The words were so strange in those moments they took far too long to process through your sex-hazy brain. 

Was he really insinuating that you might go to Jason for sex? Was he trying to… let you down easy? Was he saying that he only wanted to be friends? Friends with benefits? 

Was he seriously saying that he didn’t love you? 

Your head was spinning with questions as you propped yourself up on your elbows, your whole body stiff as those beautiful, orgasmic chemicals faded away. It left you tired, shocked, and… feeling used. Your eyes scanned over Gar’s back as he tied up the drawstring of his pants. You focused on the dark red, deep, partially bleeding marks you had left. You had marked him, whether he liked it or not. You had some claim to him. You should. 

“I’m gonna stay for a while and finish my workout.” He told you quietly. “Do you need help getting back to bed?” 

When he came over and offered you a hand, you brushed it away. For the first time ever, you felt cold and unaccepting of his touch. You felt angry with him. How dare he invite you into his mind, show you how much he cared about you - how dare he fuck you with so much love and passion and then try to brush it all off as if it were nothing? 

‘I’m fine.’ You told him, hoping your coldness could come across in tired, limp handed signing. 

You forced yourself up on quivering knees and then onto your feet. You gathered your clothes where they had been carelessly tossed and shoved them back onto your used, dirty body. You would have preferred a shower first, but you preferred the precaution of drapery in case you did run into anyone on your way to the bathroom. 

“Oh. Okay. Cool.” 

These were Gar’s last words to you before you stormed out of the training room, going to the bathroom to ruminate on the whole experience by boiling yourself in hot, steaming water. 

…  

You thought about it for a long time while you were in the shower. 

Just stood there, under the hot spray and let your mind concentrate on the things Gar had said. He had fucked the living daylights out of you, ate your pussy like it was his fucking job. He was apparently having daydreams about doing so while calling you his fucking wife, and then once it was all said and done - he backed down from it. He told you that he ‘understood’ if you only wanted to be friends. 

He was afraid. 

It was like everything else in his life. He could transform into a fucking tiger, but he was afraid to bite people. He didn’t want to use the fantastic power that had been given to him. For years, he hid away with Doctor Caulder, a man who emotionally abused him and manipulated him. He had been too afraid to stand up for himself, too afraid to leave the house and chase the things he really wanted. 

And with you. He was clearly terrified you were going to reject him. He wanted a life with you, he wanted to worship you. He wanted you and your heart, he wanted your everything. But he was too afraid to voice it. He was too afraid he’d look like an idiot if you didn’t feel the same way. 

That’s probably why he had unconsciously reached out to you, unconsciously broadcasted his fantasies to you whenever you were near. And you’d thought it was your stupid powers acting up. 

Just like with kissing him to initiate that amazing sex - you were going to have to shake off your fear of rejection so that the two of you could be together already. 

… 

You woke up the next morning with a pounding migraine. 

Even with the preventative medications Doctor Caulder had prescribed to you to help with your seizures and migraines, the tumor that still lived inside your brain did get to torture you occasionally. When you lifted your head from your pillow and saw the gray, gloomy sky looming over San Francisco, the raindrops racing down your window, it didn’t take you long to figure out the cause of your pain. You groaned, falling face first back into your pillow, not wanting to get up. 

The ever present pain from coming from your head was topped off by soreness that had spread through your whole body - undeniable evidence that what happened between you and Gar last night wasn’t just another dream. Dreams don’t have consequences. Especially considering that your pussy was aching hard, still sore from having his impressive length splitting you open. On top of it all, your throat was stinging with an almost flu-like ache from having screamed so much through your surgery damaged vocal chords. 

You really hoped Dick would let you have one day off from training. You probably could have gotten through it with just your body being sore. But the migraine was already ravaging you, already turning your stomach sour with systematic nausea. 

You heard a knock on your door and sighed quietly. 

You had just barely hoisted yourself into a sitting position by the time the person entered. Squinting through your tired eyes, you were able to makeout a flash of green and immediately knew that it was Gar. 

“Hey, you don’t look so good. You feelin’ alright?” He knew the look that always settled upon your face when you were overtaken with such intense pain. He hardly needed to ask. “Where’s the bottle?” 

You motioned toward the drawer that held the item he spoke of - your hot water bottle, which you used to help ease the bitter pain of a migraine. He opened and closed a few drawers before he found it. Your eyes gently closed against the harsh light pouring in from the hallway, too sensitive to the light to actually look at him. 

“It’s okay, lay down.” He told you, his voice a comforting lull past the aching thrum in your forehead. He patted your thigh gently through your blanket, and you eased back onto the bed, throwing a forearm over your eyes to block the light. “I got it.” 

He went to the kitchen and filled the rubber bladder with boiling water, returning quickly with it and a glass of water. You took the now very hot water bottle. You gave him a small moan of gratitude as you placed it down on your pillow and pressed your forehead into it. 

In a practiced routine that only spoke to how much he loved you, he closed the bedroom door, blocking out the harsh light of the hallway. And then he walked around the bed to close the curtains, blocking out any potential light from the outside. He placed the glass of water down on your nightstand with a harsh clink that only radiated through your skull so painfully because of the migraine. Then you heard him open the nightstand drawer, digging around for your medication. 

You trusted that he knew which ones you needed right now. You trusted that he didn’t need your advice on how to take care of you. It was something he knew well after so long. 

You felt his fingers brushing your open palm, then felt the round tablets of your medication left there as he pulled away. 

“Sit up and take these.” He said quietly, voice barely above a whisper, as if he was afraid to hurt you with a single decibel. 

He used a gentle grip on your forearm to hoist you into a sitting position, and you swallowed the medication dutifully with the water he’d brought. 

“I’ll tell Dick you need to sit out of training today.” He explained quietly. “You need anything else?” 

‘One thing.’ You signed to him, your hands weak and tired. 

Though your pain was disruptive, and you were glad Gar was not acting any different after what had happened last night, you couldn’t wait any longer before doing this. 

Before he could question what that thing was, you leaned in. Your lips easily found his in the darkness and you planted a smooth, gentle kiss on his mouth. 

‘Don’t wanna just be friends.’ You signed, opening your tired, painful eyes to see his reaction to your words. ‘I love you. I have loved you for a long time now.’ 

A broad smile came across his face, his expression of pure joy practically glowing in the darkness. 

“Yeah. Awesome. That sounds amazing. I love you too.” His voice was slightly louder now, his joy overriding his caution for your hypersensitive, pained ears.

He felt absolutely giddy - this was what he had been waiting for, dreaming of for so long. He wanted to climb in bed with you and lay by your side for the rest of the day. But he knew that he needed to attend to other things, and more importantly - you needed your rest. 

“Get some rest now, okay?” 

He tucked you into bed, made sure the covers were up over your body, full and warm with the hot water bottle under your head before he left the room once again. 

It wasn’t long before you heard voices coming from down the hall. 

“Where’s Y/N? We’re doing balance drills in ten minutes.” Dick’s gruff voice echoed down the hall, very obviously directed at Gar, who he’d sent to wake you up.

“She needs the day off. She’s got a wicked migraine and she needs rest when it gets like this,” Gar told him simply, hoping Dick would respect him at his word. 

“We don’t get days off, Gar.” Dick pressed. “All of us have to train through pain, or injury. Do you really think some psychotic asshole is gonna care if you have a little headache while they’re trying to kill you? Do you think they’re just gonna come back another day? Do you think they’re gonna stop shooting at you if you have to stop and bandage your boo boo?”

His words cut through you, causing a sallow pain to rise up in your chest. It was something you’d been hearing since your childhood - since your treatments and hospital stays had caused you to miss too many days off and your teachers quickly stopped taking pity on you. You had always been told to just work through your pain, that the world won’t stop for you. You considered getting up and just going to training. You wanted to tough it out just to show Dick that you could, that you could puke into a garbage can and keep going, that you could boot and rally. 

You heard footsteps coming down the hall, and in your pain heightened sensitivity, you heard the metal of the doorknob shift as someone put their hand around it. The sound of Dick coming to get you out of bed anyway. 

He didn’t get the chance, though. 

“Leave it, Grayson.” Gar’s voice growled - a harsh, sharp sound that you had rarely ever heard from him before. “You don’t understand what she’s going through, and I won’t have you pushing her until she pukes on the floor just to satisfy your ego. She already trains harder than you ask and you know she could probably kick your ass,” 

You heard a harsh sigh, a deep breath through nostrils - Dick’s surrender. His footsteps disappeared down the hall, and Gar’s followed shortly after. 

Your heart bloomed with affection, awed by the blanket of protection he had put around you. 

You really were his. You always have been. 

...

When Gar was getting dressed after his shower later that day - he came across a small box in his underwear drawer. It was the ring that Rita had given him before he left Caulder House, a very expensive looking vintage piece from her days on set. Gar tried to insist that he couldn’t take something so nice, so sentimental from her. But she had closed it tight into his palm with the promise that it would be yours someday - that he would use the polished emerald ring to propose to you. 

Of course, she saw that big, beautiful, dangerous thing brewing between the two of you from a mile away. Gar considered marching down the hall and giving it to you right then there. But he tucked the box back into his drawer. In honor of Rita’s vision - he would make it old Hollywood, romantic. 

He had plenty of time.

THE END.

[acrossthewavesoftime]

Do you have any particular thoughts about Anne’s feud with William and Mary?

Eſteem'd Anon,

that indeed I do! I do wonder what to call the situation at hand, though, because "Anne's feud with William and Mary" does sound rather like a one-sided grudge.

In any case, regardless what we might call the situation, I think what's at the core is a much more complex dynamic than one against the other (two). it was profoundly sad, and profoundly tragic for all involved.

From Anne's perspective, William had 'stolen' her sister so to speak and taken her away to the Netherlands when she had still been a child; the separation had hurt both sisters greatly, who had only ever, their governess aside, really had had each other growing up, seeing as their mother died young, and Charles II had seen to it that the potential heirs to the throne had been raised away from their parents to prevent them raising their daughters as Catholics.

Anne and William apparently disliked one another enough that they were not above the occasional pettiness, as Sarah, the Duchess of Marlborough recorded:

I would cast doubt on whether William, who according to Sarah was unaware of Anne's pregnancy craving, purposefully ate the entire plate to spite her, but one can easily see that the two of them did not see eye to eye, nor made any effort to.

Petty disputes over peas and unflattering nickname's such as Anne's "Dutch Abortion" for William aside, one thing that really complicated the relationship between Anne and Mary and William, was Anne's only surviving son William Henry, Duke of Gloucester.

From the first day of his life on, Anne knew that her son would, in his capacity as heir presumptive, never quite be her own, as even the circumstances of his birth illustrate: both the King and Queen were present for the birth, with Mary remaining at her sister's side throughout and William being ushered in just moments before the baby was born, so as to avoid any speculations of the sort that had sparked the eventual downfall of Mary's and Anne's father James II at the birth of their half-brother, James Francis Edward Stuart.

To have one's disliked brother-in-law watch as you give birth, in a state of undress and in a vulnerable and potentially medically dangerous position cannot possibly have a positive influence on an already strained personal relationship.

And matters did not improve as the baby grew up: Anne's closest confidante Sarah, the Duchess of Marlborough, reports in her memoirs that Anne felt treated badly, overlooked and overridden in her position as a mother by Mary, who considered the Duke, heir apparent to the throne, as much her own as Anne's responsibility and would send in people to look at the baby and report back to her whenever he was sick, using her authority to make Anne grant these people access to the nursery:

One can tell that Mary did not mean any harm to her sister but acted out of concern for the nephew in whom she may have seen a sort of ersatz for the children she had never been able to conceive (and which weighed heavily on her mental health), but it is just as easily to see why that kind of behaviour strained her relationship with Anne, who must have felt as if her only worth to her sister and brother-in-law was providing them with a child to raise as their eventual successor, totally ignoring her both as a mother, and as the then-first-in-line to the throne.

Naturally, the situation did not get any less complicated when the little Duke of Gloucester was growing up and William, then widowed, insisted on handing his education over to male tutors, a situation which has often been represented as a power struggle akin to a custody battle between William and Anne (which it, according to the ways boys were raised at the time was not, but may have felt so for Anne regardless).

The rather tragic battle over the Duke of Gloucester aside, I think it cannot be stressed enough that William and Anne in particular were simply just two people who did just not harmonise well.

They had different political outlooks, different friend circles, bar a few exceptions, and both likely regarded the other jealously as a potential threat to their respective relationship with Mary, whom they both loved.

Mary on the other hand had quite simply ceased to be who she was at fifteen, when she was married off, and both she and Anne had been shaped by their respective experiences that rather caused them to drift apart as adults than reconnect.

As co-monarch with William, she naturally tended to side more often with him than with Anne when it came to political measures impacting her, which further strained their already tense relationship.

Another factor that played, particularly on William's part, an important role in wanting to keep Anne as far removed from funds and political influence as possible, was his own shaky enough claim to the title of King with Anne technically being ahead of him in the line of succession. Not being granted funds, her husband kept barred from any active military service and the use of certain royal residences denied, one can see why Anne may have been frustrated with William and Mary.

Matters reached their climax when in 1692, William and Mary suspected Anne to be part of a Jacobite plot, and Anne's privileges were pruned.

To cut my rambling thoughts short here, I think it boils down to several tales that are as old as time; namely, in-laws not getting along, and that no dynamic among people, particularly within a family, has ever been improved by adding a power dynamic to it.

In the end, it was a sad situation for all involved, marked by repeated tragic losses, with no real winners, and no more or less innocent, or guilty parties. They were adults who had allowed an unhealthy dynamic built on shaky, sometimes sour relationships, reach the point of no return.

[burnwater13]

Grogu wondered how Morgan Elsbeth managed to get something like a beskar spear. Those things didn’t grow on trees or anything else either. Hopefully it had been made from ore stolen from Mandalore, as opposed to being made of stolen Mandalorian armor. But he wouldn’t put that past her. 

Grogu just didn’t understand how some people looked at what another person had and said, ‘Wow. That’s pretty. I want that. Give it to me. No? Well, then I’ll just take it from you. There. That wasn’t so bad, now was it? Ha, ha, ha.” Inevitably the person who had the thing originally was now on the ground and in pain or feeling pretty humiliated. 

Grogu wasn’t sure which one was worse. Sure, he’d stubbed his toes more than once and the pain from that was pretty bad. But that time he went to Jedi lessons and didn’t have his coverall on because someone had taken it from him… well… being laughed at by all the other younglings was pretty painful too. 

Now the person who took his coverall didn’t mean to humiliate him. Not at all. That was the only good thing about the whole mess. They were really doing him a favor. He’d been in the arboretum, hiding, and then when he did the chores the masters assigned to him for being good at hiding, he was covered in… well… fertilizer. And not the kind that smelled good, if that even existed. The bad kind. The really stinky kind. 

So the Jedi knight who tended the plants in the arboretum offered to clean it for him, when she saw him trudging around with the fertilizer, which was her job most days. Grogu had been very grateful and stripped it right off. He wasn’t embarrassed then because he was still wearing his first layer and Tam wasn’t an eleven year old youngling who was going to giggle and point. Nope. Far from it. 

Then she had given his access to one of Master Yoda’s spare floaty chairs so he could get back to his dorm and change into a fresh set of coveralls. (He did have another set which was nice.) So he set right off. He wanted to get there before anyone spotted him and he had to explain what happened. Jedi were really good at getting you to tell them the complete story and not just the ‘I got fertilizer on my coveralls’ part of the story. 

That was going great until Master Drallig popped out of no where and called to him. Grogu had groaned, because Master Drallig was not going to be amused once he saw Grogu in Master Yoda’s floaty chair. He’d been mistaken for the great Jedi Master more than once by people and it never ended well. This time was no different from that one. 

Grogu stopped the chair and Master Drallig strode over complaining about his padawan. 

“Master Yoda, I just can’t have Sebastian being studied this way. The medical staff refuse to release him. Would you please authorize it? I wouldn’t ask, but the boy is causing them even more trouble than he causes me and I think its’ for the greater good.”

Grogu giggled at that. He couldn’t help himself. He’d heard the stories about Seb Ta’low that Ian told him. Ian often said he wished to be just like Seb. Considering how much trouble they both were, Grogu didn’t doubt that, he just doubted the ability of the Jedi Order to survive it. 

Well, that giggle gave away that Master Drallig wasn’t talking to Master Yoda. The next thing he knew Grogu was on the floor, walking as quickly as he could toward his dorm, knowing that his five minute trip had become fifteen minutes long, at least. Longer if he had to dodge other masters. Master Drallig had the floaty chair and was muttering about padawans and younglings and what the Temple was coming to, in a very dark, annoyed voice.

Grogu managed to get back to the dorm without anyone seeing him, but when he went to retrieve his other set of coveralls, they were gone. Someone had taken them! He could tolerate that once, but not twice in the same day. He did something he never did. He had a bit of temper tantrum. 

Now when people who don’t use the Force have a temper tantrum nothing much happens. They yell, they cry, they maybe throw themselves around a little. But they don’t throw everything in the whole dorm room around… which was exactly what he did. And before he could even think of fixing it, the rest of the younglings came back from their games period and stood in stunned amazement at the wreck that was their dormitory. 

“Youngling Grogu, I take it this is your handiwork?” Master Windu asked very softly. 

Why did he have to be the Master who was helping with the younglings that day?!

Grogu nodded his head. 

“I see. You will return everything as it was and tomorrow you will come to the assembly and apologize to the students and masters for your behavior. Just as you are. If you can do this in your first layer, you can do that in it as well. There are better ways to deal with frustration and you will have to learn them sooner, rather than later.”

Grogu simply nodded his head and began to clean up the room. The other younglings just stood around and watched him. He knew it was his responsibility to fix what he had done. He knew that Master Windu was treating him fairly. He just wished he hadn’t been wearing his Diggle and Daggle, the Fish that fish themed first layer. 

He’d never thought of the Force being a bully, but it had certainly helped him bully himself into being humiliated and he hoped he’d never forget how that felt. 

Now, he just had to help the Mandalorian get that beskar spear back without anyone finding out that he still had the Diggle and Daggle first layer and that they, much like the beskar the spear was made from, had stood the test of time, no matter what happened all around them.