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netherfeildren · 1 month ago

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Busy, Dying. Part 1;

Pairing: Joel Miller x F!Reader

Summary: In an in-between place called his life, Joel Miller is alone. In search of a cure. In need of a miracle. In want of God.

Can I interest you in a cure for loneliness? She'd asked him in a language without words. Taking it is the easy part. Letting her go is impossible.

-OR-

an a/b/o soulmates AU

Rating: Explicit 18+

Content Warnings: No Outbreak AU, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Soulmates AU, Infidelity, Cheating, HEA!!!!!, Angst, Fluff & Smut, Mating Bites, Knotting, Heat Sex, Breeding Kink, Group Therapy, Social Experiments, Basically puppy training for unsocialized Alphas, And by God that man will be house trained by the time she’s done with him!, Complicated family dynamics, Discussions of self harm, Depression, Existential Angst, Author returns not with a whimper but with a KNOT, I wrote this in a very unserious state of mind beware

A/N: Gray November, I've been down since July - but we're so back, baby. I’ve missed this so bad. I’ve missed you all, I won’t drone on and on. I hope you enjoy, and please talk to me in the comments. Update me on what I’ve missed, let me know how you’ve been and what’s happening in your life.

A great heartfelt thank you to all of my wonderful friends who so supportively cheered me on while I struggled to write this. Sincerely the best people I know.

Love you all madly.

Word Count: 6.5K

Read on AO3

Part 1;

The old linoleum tiles are the most peculiar shade of puce, and Joel has realized that there is someone sitting at the back of the room who smells… strange.

More brown than purple—an ugly color. There’s something about it that fascinates him.

The woman that is currently speaking tells of her husband; it’s the only tale she has to tell. She’s been doing it for weeks, and they all know it well by now. Older, omega, the woman, and at the latter and less comely stage of life. Most of them here can say the same. They usually give their names, those that get up to share—although it’s never a requirement when you attend, it is highly encouraged—the sharing, he means—but he never pays much mind to them—the names, that is. That’s not what he’s here for after all—to make friends. Although, he does see how that’d be the initial assumption.

Joel Miller is here for something more specific.

Six weeks he’s been showing up to these things now, and he’s yet to take a turn. He tells himself he’s working up to it.

What that specific thing is…he hasn’t quite figured out. He’s listening for it, though, and intently, even if he does skip over the names. It’s the details of what they’re telling that matter to him. The hows and intricate whys of what it is that brought them here today.

Her youth had been spent on a drunk, the woman is saying—her husband—and he’d been cruel to her in those days when there was still currency to spend in the form of her vitality. Joel nods at the puce—yes, he thinks, that’s usually the way of it. But later, there’s more to the story she reminds her audience, he drank himself into a fit, and had never been right since. The cruelty had been taken away from the marriage after that, and she’d been put in charge.

“But I wonder,” she says, “If sometimes I don’t miss it, the way he’d been,” —if the reason she was here now, with all of the rest of them that were just like her in their own unique ways, was that she’d been left lonely after her cruel husband had been exchanged for a sick one.

Joel nods again and wonders what sort of face the woman wears as she confesses but doesn’t bother to check. No matter, he knows they’re the same. If not in designation, then in heart.

It’s easy, that thing, he does it too, to wish for the bad. To want to hold on to it, the thing that hurts. Addictive, even, in some cases. Missing it is easy.

It’s why he’s here.

And it’s what they promise you. In their flyers and pamphlets, when they stand on the corners of streets talking people up wearing that look in their eye and that slouch in their step, when they smell it on you—or in the lack there of—a mate or a purpose.

Welcome to our meeting. We’re here to find the cure for loneliness.

That’s what they promise you when you come here.

It’d been that word: loneliness, actually, that had caught him. L-O-N-E-liness. There was something attractive about it to him. Not a label but a state.

You see, it was like this: Joel had seen a therapist once, several years ago, against his will and at the behest of another, who’d said all the wrong things in all the wrong ways.

“You sound depressed, Joel,” the therapist had told him.

He’d worn horn rimmed glasses and had a shiny bald head he could see the reflection of the overhead lights in. And worse—the non-scent of a beta which told him they’d never understand each other in the ways Joel longed to be understood. He’d—not hated him, necessarily—but felt an immense apathy for the man; more so than the regular apathy he felt for most things in his life.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“Very, very sad,” was the official diagnosis.

Joel hadn’t liked the sound of the word. The label. He did not like that a word so succinct could be ascribed to him and all that had happened to him in his life. There was no word for it. It just was.

But there was something different about a state of aloneness, which if attributed to himself, he could accept. He had been left alone, in ways. It was a tangible thing he could look around a room inside of himself and recognize.

They’re meetings, is what this place is—encounter groups this coalition offers where lonely demi humans can come to congregate, discuss their aloneness, what had led them to such a state; their lack of attachments, connections, mates—alpha, omega. Held in the basement of the Emmanuel Episcopal Church on Newbury street, right between his shop and house, although they never talk about religion which he likes because he doesn’t believe in religion.

God is still under review.

He wonders if the Catholics wouldn’t have them.

Sitting forward in his seat, the metal folding chair that always leaves his back aching something fierce, he presses his elbows into his knees to distract with alternative pressure. Focusing on his fingers woven together between his spread legs, he tries to pay attention to the man who’s stood up to speak now. Older than himself, late sixties, no children, no family, no nothin’; he’d run them all off.

But Joel is distracted.

The smell is stronger now. Stranger too. Something full bodied, but metallic like rust, astringent bleach, built in a way that forces saliva to pool heavy between his suddenly aching gums. A mask that sits atop something of a much different chemical architecture—that’s the strange part.

Or—no. The back of his neck itches, and Joel lifts a palm to cup his nape, quell the sting, feel the tender mark. No. The strange part is not the illusion of the smell. What it is, actually, is that he’s fairly certain what he’s smelling is someone else's blockers. Something which he’s positive he’s never consciously noticed on another person in the thirty plus years since he’d presented as an alpha.

He has, suddenly, the quite intense urge to peek over his shoulder, certain that he’ll be caught smelling things he has no business smelling. That there will be someone just there, breathing down the nape of his neck with accusation on their tongue—boo!

Silly. But he’d known today would not be a good day.

It’d started off wrong. The milk had gone sour overnight, the check engine light had come on in his truck, all his socks were suddenly mismatched with not a single pair to be found, and his usual route to work had been waylaid by some freak accident. A tree split in half, one side into a house, the other into the road. Not a sign of lightning in the sky all night long.

Perhaps he might be compelled to believe in God after all.

Joel does not like it when things are out of order or out of the ordinary. His life was organized in a way that never caused him strife or excess. And it was not that he was stuck in his ways, only that he enjoyed his routine and disliked when things were not as they should be. And this—whatever it is he’s smelling, whoever—is not as it should be.

The older gentleman, an Alpha too, is still speaking. He had a daughter, has, who no longer speaks to him. Won’t even take his money. He’d had a long career in government that’d filled him with greed and paranoia and a radical view of life that refused to align with the way young people saw the world now. Perhaps he’d tried to change at certain times, but he was old and set in his ways. Or maybe he hadn’t wanted to change as badly as he should have when he still had the chance to. Happily stuck in the past. His wife had died, and his daughter had gone away from him. Too tired of his mediocrity as a father to give him another chance.

The man sounds like he feels sorry for himself. Like he thinks himself the victim, and this one, Joel does look up at. He looks old and worn down, heavy beer pouch and thinning hair and sagging jowls. A sad and lonely man. Joel wonders if that’s how he looks to the other people in this room, as well.

“No man knows how bad he is until he has tried very hard to be good.” Joel blinks, looks at him more closely, tries very hard to find similarities between themselves. But no—not quite right, not the thing he’s looking for. Their plight is different. This man is not alone, he’s got his weakness to keep him company.

The one thing Joel had fought like hell to keep out of his repertoire of issues. He’d run from even the possibility of it as soon as she was dead, left Texas straight for the Northeast and from thereafter, everything he’d done, he’d done with a staunchness of character. If at the end of it, that staunchness was made up of apathy or numbness or dissociative fury, well, then at least he wasn’t still that man who’d been too weak to save his daughter.

That counted very much in Joel’s book.

An overabundance of cold numbness, little anger, everything a static haze—an abstinent winter. That was his whole life. But then, look at him now, he was here, wasn’t he? He’d taken that brochure handed to him on that last warm Tuesday weeks ago as he’d headed back to the shop from lunch.

Hello, sir. Could I interest you in a cure for loneliness? The young omega had said.

It’d started like anything—an experiment or a desperate ploy. The monotony had been steady going the past few years, getting older, colder. He’d grown hard and solitary around his wound, loneliness spread like a fungus, and he’d longed for any sort of change.

“A cure…how?” The terrible shrink had come to mind.

“Oh, nothing to fret over.” The young man had a nice smile, Joel remembers. Kind and straight toothed. Honest in the way that a stranger knocking on your door to sell you a Bible seems honest. “We call it an encounter group. People come, share, tell the tales of their designation and their lives. In the end, the result is different for different people. Some move on to a second step if they need more. Others find what they’re looking for just through the connection of sharing. But no matter the result, you’ll see, you’ll be cured. Promise.” He’d winked, smile deepening, giving him an appreciative once over at the end of his spiel. Joel had blinked back, surprised, confused, but curiosity peaked enough he’d obsessed over it for three short days before he’d found himself stepping into the molted incense smell of the belly of a church so dimly lit he was sure not even God peaked in this sad space any longer.

“It’s that easy?” Joel had asked, childlike in his throat-strangled hope.

“That easy.”

It seemed the smile had been honest enough to sell him the Bible.

The scent insists upon itself as the older gentleman finishes up, and Joel’s nose tickles with whatever it is it’s whispering at him. He wants to get up and walk out, run away, but suddenly his gut is tight and hot, and he isn’t sure he can actually stand up without disgracing himself in front of all these people. A wash of agonized heat moves through him, confused at what’s suddenly happening to his body.

“We have a newcomer today sharing for the first time,” Maria, the woman who leads the group, says at the front of the room. “Everyone give her a warm welcome, it’s her first day and already she’s brave enough to jump on up here.”

There’s the shuffling of bodies in their seats, a cleared throat, the man sitting behind Joel breathes so loudly he thinks he’s gotta have some sort of medical condition, the puce turns more hideous by the second, and his own heart is beating so hard in his ears the rush of blood is dizzying. He feels each thump of the thing against his breast bone in some sick imitation of a fist begging to be let out.

The new voice begins as nothing but a murmur.

An introduction—he misses the name. His breathing goes shallow, he’d tip over in his seat if he didn’t have both boots planted firmly against the puce. The voice gains strength and with it, Joel wishes he’d been paying attention from the start. He didn’t get to hear her name.

It’s a girl.

She’d run away from home in the spring of her sixteenth year to join the opera, she tells them. Had come upon the city in roaring spring and thought the rest of her life would be exactly like that, pure novelty in bloom, nothing like what she’d left behind. And was deeply disappointed when the reality was nothing such.

And Joel hears it, that disappointment in her voice at what she’d not been able to find after searching for it so religiously. This is what makes him look up at her. This, unlike all the others, he thinks he can relate to—just by the sound of her voice. The search for a thing lost which can never again be found. The fruitlessness of it all.

At that first vulnerable, terrified glance, she’s already staring at him, eyes catching like hooks.

He blinks once, twice—color—is sure he can hear the movement of his eyelashes passing through the air, the stick of his lids meeting—color—bright. This is it.

That wash of heat turns into a blaze, every single bead of sweat blooming on his brow is a tell evaporating into the ether. This is what he’d sensed from the start of the evening. Maybe even from the moment he’d seen that split maple.

“My mother always said I needed to be stronger, bolder, not so sensitive.” She looks away from him now. “I grew up in an angry house where you had to fight tooth and nail not to be overrun. Because of this, I left it at a very young age, and it was the greatest fight I could muster, abandoning that house of anger. I found myself something to bring me what I thought would be joy, a job and a city, and for a time, it was enough. But starting your lonely life so young…it’s hard.” After a pause of breath, “It’s been hard.”

“And it’s made me never want to have to—exert myself,” she says, searching for the right words, smiling when she finds them, and Joel has the urgency to smile back. “Now, I never want to have to be strong. I never want to have to try. I want to only be the way that I am. If that’s weak or sensitive or whatever it might be at any given moment, I don’t care. I don’t want to have to fight. I never want to be in an angry house again. I want someone who’ll see this in me and understand and never make me work for it, that they would give it to me willingly, easily, without me having to ask. Do you understand?” She looks about the room, and he hopes her eyes will land on him again, and even though they don’t, he feels she’s speaking directly to him. He nods, the hook of her temptation cast beneath his chin. “This is a fantasy. And it makes for a lonely existence. This idea of how I need it to be for it to be right—love.” She looks down at her hands folded atop the podium where they go to stand at the front of the group and share, and he wills her gaze to find him amidst the crowd again. “It’s so difficult. And this might seem very bad to you, weak willed, but it’s not. It’s only very honest. Which can never be a bad way to be.” That’s why she’s here, she tells them.

Finally, she looks back at him, and it’s that loneliness of two people amidst a crowd, facing one another, knowing themselves mirrored against the other and yet still disparate. There’s something indecent about the way she looks at him in front of all these people, the way he, in turn, looks back. A little bit like finding your own face on a stranger's body in a crowded room. Color rises to his face, and she gives him that same elusive smile from before.

He’s the one to look away this time.

As the crowd disperses for coffee and pastries after the last of the speakers, he searches for her. He needs to ask her name, feels as if he’s some blighted creature without it, swears he’ll never forgo attention during a meeting again if he can fish it out of her.

He finds her at the dessert table, Maria at her side and a hand at her shoulder. Something of a thank you is being imparted between the two women. The girl is saying she’s grateful for the welcome, grateful that they’d found each other.

Joel has things to be grateful to Maria for, too. His brother, mainly. It’d been pure chance that Joel had met her here, that she knew Tommy also. She’d met his brother on a summer trek to Wyoming where they’d become friends and had kept in touch afterwards. The woman has a thing about her that ingratiates people by sheer force of will. Perhaps it’s that she’s an alpha, too. Perhaps it’s just the charisma and wide smile. The fact that she has a countenance that takes no shit from anyone, that makes demands of a person whether they’ve got any give or not. But whatever the case, they’d realize their connection through Tommy, and she kept Joel updated on his brother whom he’d not spoken with in many years.

Watching the two women stand together and share that easy thanks that Joel so urgently owes, and yet which he cannot voice, he feels, suddenly, so angry. So awkward. So humiliatingly inexperienced. So unable to grapple with the pain of human contact, the fascination of it, the humiliating necessity.

That decade old anchor weighing him in place and the guilt of even thinking of it as such.

I feel decrepitly alone and odd, he thinks. And how strange, no? He was a normal man. He has a normal job. He lives in a normal house. Unexceptional in every sense. Everything in his life had been ordinary up until that one great tragedy. And then, as if none of the before had ever existed, it was as if everything afterwards was one great landslide of wrongness. The filth of it slinging mud all over his life so that nothing had ever been right after her.

So that now he cannot even approach this girl whose name he needs to know, and Maria, to whom he owes the last surviving connection to his brother.

As Maria turns to go, she gives him an encouraging nod, sending him into an agony of shyness. She’d sensed him hovering.

The girl remains at the dessert table, perusing the pastries. He can see her fingertips dancing over the golden, sugared confections, before she settles on a plain, glazed donut. He watches the bend of her elbow, bringing it to her mouth and thirty seconds later, the empty hand reaching for a napkin. He can’t help the huff of laughter it draws from him.

Watching the unknown creature with her back turned, he peers down the length of himself. Wood stain marred t-shirt, old work jeans and scuffed boots, he’d come straight from the shop. Looking back at her, she seems perfectly packaged and pristine. The two of them, different as chalk and cheese. He tells himself he shouldn’t do it, turn around and go, leave her alone, as he steps up beside her at the table.

Immediately, there’s the heat of her skin, the smell of her shampoo, and he realizes, and it’s silly because it should’ve been obvious from the get go, she’s an omega. The epiphany, not that she is one, but that he’d been too stupid and oblivious to notice, leaves him feeling vulnerable and angry.

Any sort of hello that’d been coming alive on his tongue immediately dies. And he’s about to make a run for it once again when she speaks up from beside him, “Would you like a donut?” Her small fingers are dancing over the pastries, searching once again. “I haven’t had one yet,” she lies, “I can’t decide which looks best.”

The dancing hand pauses over a golden brown puff pastry, seemingly coming to a decision, when she turns to look up at him. The scent of her isn’t just shampoo, not just the blockers he’d shockingly picked up on before, sharp, burning his nose. It’s her skin now, too. The dry sweat from hustling under her coat to make it to her first meeting on time salted along her limbs. Hot, sweet almonds. The shocking vermillion of the morning’s split maple comes to mind. He can smell her.

“A puff pastry?” She presses, quizzical crook to her brow at his silence and glower. “I think you really need something sweet. It’ll make you feel better.”

He wants to agree, to say he also thinks he needs something sweet. All he can manage is a short grunt because she smells…indescribable. Honeyed musk, something heady, like she herself had just got done baking, straight out of the oven and full of sugar into his waiting mouth.

That earlier anger, it kicks up a notch. Why isn’t he fucking saying anything?

She shrugs, as she lifts the puff pastry to her mouth he finally manages sound.

“You stink.”

He doesn’t know when he became such a liar.

A pause, mouth open, straight, white teeth ready to bite into the fluffy sweet bread. He can see her small, pink tongue, and it makes him go a little woozy.

He might be losing his mind.

She’s got elegant eyebrows that shoot straight up her smooth forehead. The look of her skin is glorious. “Excuse me?”

Now, there seem to be too many words spilling out of his mouth. “You need better meds or somethin’. Need to sort your shit out. Can’t go gallivanting about the world smellin’ like that.” Oh god, shut up.

“Excuse me!” She takes a huge bite of the pastry. “I do not gallivant,” she shoots back, mouth full of sugar and Joel goes hot everywhere. “What is wrong with you?” she demands, the pursing of a prim little mouth as she chews, eyeing him maliciously.

He hasn’t the damndest clue.

She is not wary of him in the slightest, which in turn tells him he needs to be wary of her.

Another large bite, inexplicably she extends her free hand towards him—potentially going into shock and entirely out of his depth when he takes it, the vulnerability of tendon and muscle soft beneath his strength—offering him a firm shake. She gives him her name.

In that moment, she has a look about her that tells him she’ll bite back if he isn’t careful, even if she hurts herself in the process.

And now he knows you.

“We might as well acquaint ourselves if you’re going to insult me. Don’t you think?” Peering up at him, he’s tall, well over six feet, and broad shouldered. Older, distinguished, but in a rough way, hewn oak, gray. “Are you typically this rude? Or is this a special occasion?”

Incredibly handsome.

“I’m being serious.”

“I do not stink. No one has ever said that to me, and my blockers are quality. It must be a you problem.” The puff pastry really is very good. And this man really is very handsome. Coming here today was a good idea.

One of the girls from the theater had suggested it, handing you a pamphlet with Looking for the Cure for Loneliness? emblazoned across the top, and even though she’d done it kindly, any other person would’ve taken the implication as an insult. Hey girl! No offense, but we all in the company think you’re super weird and have you heard about this support group for losers? Kind of like Omegas Anonymous!

Those hadn’t been her exact words, and you hadn’t taken offense. After the initial agony of embarrassment, you’d warmed to the idea. You’d heard of groups like these before. Congregations of demi humans where one could come to find community or connection. Be it socializing or support for people struggling with their designations and all that they implied, they served their purpose. And anyways, you weren’t in a position to be nitpicky.

It’s true, you’re alone.

So alone, in fact, that even the people around you could tell. Strangers, coworkers, your roommate and her girlfriend. Like some noxious cloud of loneliness following you around virtue signaling the desperate need for love and companionship and understanding you’re so in need of.

You increasingly saw yourself as a dancer on her toes, trembling delicately all over, vying desperately to survive to the end of the song. A monster with too many heads. A Cerberus of the richest caliber.

Two or three would’ve been acceptable—heads—but you'd long surpassed that and moved on to something unrecognizable and unpleasant. Desperately in need of a solution.

“Maybe you’re the one that stinks. Maybe it’s your upper lip.” And voila, the monster makes her debut.

“My—” The rude alpha, obvious, that one, lets out a choked sound, a deeper wash of color immediately flooding his cheeks. You dip your head sideways, appraising him as you polish off your second pastry. He has pretty bone structure, masculine, and after he’s done choking and spluttering, he can’t help but laugh a little bit. You see it.

Beneath a mouth that looks forbidding, perhaps even a little cruel, you can sense that he is not an unkind man.

Yet you’re not so green that you can’t recognize the gnawing hunger of loneliness in others. There’s always a reason people find themselves in places like these. His face, edged with the weariness of age, makes this obvious. He has good reason for subjecting himself to this.

Reaching for the lovely eclair you’d been deciding between earlier, you take a large bite of it. Almond cream and a thick layer of icing on top, humming happily as you chew while he stares at you like the three headed dog.

You hold the dessert out towards him, offering. Palm up, he shakes his head no, slightly disgusted look on his face.

“So. You come here often?”

He blinks. “Really?” Patronizing look on his face now.

“Why not? I am actually interested to know if this is worth my time.”

He rolls his eyes. Oh, he’s fun. “Yes, I come here often. Every Friday, for the past two months just about.”

“And you like it?”

“Is this the sort of place one likes?”

“Oh, come on. You never know what you might find.” He watches your mouth as you finish the eclair, swallowing hard. “Anyways, I think the world is kind of over out there. Don’t you? Might as well make the best of it in here.”

Thumb pressed against the edge of the table, he looks down, suddenly awash with shyness once again. A shy alpha, who’d of thought.

“What did you used to do?” He asks, motioning at the crowded room full of chatting alphas and omegas. You wonder how many of them will go home together for a fuck after this.

“When?” You ask, sure he means in lieu of this group, if you’d ever had another form of demi human community.

“Before this.”

“Before this? Nothing.” Smiling at him, certain he isn’t picking up on your teasing.

“Nothing?”

“Nope. I’ve always been here.”

“But— Don’t you…I thought...” He’s cute, shaking his head like you’re just too confusing to sustain. “You sing, right?” He pivots.

“Sing? Me? Whatever made you think such a thing?” The sly look on your face goes completely over his head and slides to the rest of the sweets. If he wasn’t watching, you’d have another.

“You said. You said you’re in the opera,” he gruffs back, looking visibly aggravated now.

Such fun.

“I’m a supernumerary,” you concede as you turn, making your way to an old relic of a pew along the far wall, tragically abandoning the desserts.

He follows as you go, sitting a respectful distance beside you.

“I don’t know what that is.”

“We’re the actors that fill the stage at the opera.”

“No singing?”

You shake your head, flirting with him. “I’m a wench, I’m a courtesan,” You bat your lashes, fingertips pressed coquettishly beneath your chin, “Part of a harem. I’m every woman you’ve never known. It depends on the opera.”

“I’ve never heard of that before.”

“I started as a stagehand when I first got to Boston. Worked my way up.”

“How’s it work? Lines or somethin’?”

“No lines. No anything. I’m a background actor—an extra, basically. If anything, I’m given some simple choreography direction, laugh, sigh, show fear, horror, shock. Whatever. I’m playing pretend without actually having to do anything.”

“No working for it.”

Your smile melts to blandness. So he’d been listening, then.

“Did you want to sing?”

“No. I wanted to be a supernumerary.”

“Strange. I’ve never heard of that,” he repeats.

“You did say, yes.” Now, the smile turns auspicious. Everyone’s here for something. “What do you do?” Perhaps this is it for him.

You eye the rest of the congregation, at the far exit, there’s a large alpha helping an omega into his coat.

“Got a shop, furniture, woodworking and such.”

“You make things?” He nods. “Ah, a man of creation.”

Sitting back to take him in, he’s got the beginning insinuations of silver speckling the dark hair at his temples, a well groomed beard, and large, intimidating hands.

His small huff of laughter is bashful, tinged with something disappointed. “No, nothin’ that grand.” And he’s got an accent heavy at the ends of his words, not Bostonian. Southern.

“But you know, I wanted to say…”

“Yes?” You press when he loses his courage, leaning towards him, inhaling deeply.

“Well, that I know what you meant earlier. Sometimes I can be the angry house.”

You blink once. Sit back. “I see.”

“It’s hard work. I have to try every day at it.”

Hard work being the house, or not? Two opposite sides of the same coin.

“How do you stop yourself?” You cast a line, fishing for his character.

“Don’t know. Keep myself cold, I think.”

“That’s no way to be.”

“No. It’s not.” He sounds amused. You want to bite him.

Everyone’s here for a reason.

“Ah, well. Perhaps that’s what’s brought you here then,” you say, twisting the toe of your sneaker against a scuff on the old hardwood, leaning forward on your palms wrapped around the edge of the pew.

“Maybe,” he says, but a sort of pained, exasperated sound follows it. Your hung head turns to peer at the handsome face, and he’s already looking at you.

There’s something animal afoot. Perhaps in terms of designation, sure, of course, like the rest of the alphas and omegas here. Your designations weigh heavily in the air. But also intrinsic to your two personalities. You feel you know him. That the two of you might have the same sorts of problems, desires. And as you stare at him, you think you may be equally measuring each other’s character, finding that similarity in one another.

His eyes move quickly between yours, over your face, and you can tell that prolonged eye contact isn’t his norm.

He has the most surprising set of bright hazel eyes like river stones.

Suddenly, you feel desperate to pull out a flicker of sexuality in the man, hear it in his voice. Sure, that with him, the experience would be entirely different, exhilarating. Perhaps a challenge. He seems to be more quiet and more patient than any other man you’d ever come across, but also more stern—taking in that soft mouth held so firmly. Far more remote too, by the far away look in his gaze. You want to see how he could be moved and what the sight of it would look like.

“Maybe not,” he finally continues. “I’m looking for something, I think.”

“Something like what?”

“Someone like me.”

“An alpha?”

“No,” he looks away, cringing. The word out loud seems a shock to him. “Did you listen to the woman at the start—missing the bad thing? I struggle…with that. Holding on, not letting go even when I know I should.”

You’re at an age now which sometimes makes it hard to realize or accept that what you’re living is your life. That it’s been time to grow up. That you have to remember to move forward when it’s your turn in line.

Which is to say, that you understand him—the difficulties of knowing when to hold on and when to give up.

“Sometimes you hurt yourself because you don’t have anything else to do. Sometimes, because the alternative is much worse.”

“Holding on ‘cause there’s nothing else to do?”

“Sure. Or you’re used to it.” You’ll be gentle with him, you decide. He’s in need of gentle handling despite the stern face; not a puzzle so arbitrarily solved. And those eyes are still so bright, he doesn’t seem like he needs any more hardship.

“Don’t know why I’m tellin’ you this,” he says, accent heavy.

“Well you did come here for a reason. Didn’t you?” Discreetly, you slide closer to his side, but he doesn’t notice. Apparently lost in the realization that perhaps this was what he’d come here for, to talk to someone, to have someone listen and relate. You’re almost positive he’s never gotten up to share with the group before in all his time coming to the meetings; doesn’t look like the type.

“I came here because I’m going to take better care of myself,” you tell him. “I’m going to try harder.”

“Harder at what?” He blinks as if attempting to come out of a dream.

“Everything. I don’t want to end up like my parents; drunk, angry, alone. I’m scared of it. I’ve avoided at least two of them.”

“I’m afraid of getting older,” the dream moves in his eyes. “That I’ll forget,” he says, but you don’t ask what.

All of a sudden, he seems very real. The swells of grief and loneliness moving through him so similarly, so close to the surface.

Springing up, you turn to face him and he follows to stand too. You can hear the crack of his knees unfolding, and when he lifts his left palm to stifle a gruff cough, the band of gold around his finger is paralyzing.

All of a sudden, he’d seemed like what you’d been looking for here too. There’s laughter coming from the church rafters.

“You’re a widower?” He wants to forget, he’d said he wants to let go.

Hadn’t he?

But instead, “What? No.” You stare pointedly at the ring, and he looks down at it also. “No,” he repeats.

“So’re you looking for a fuck, or what?” You try and hold back the bite it comes with, but you can’t.

“No. No. That’s not what I’m looking for.”

You don’t understand, impaired by your youth, you forget you’d chosen to be gentle with him. “Maybe it’s what you need,” you tell him, turning towards the exit before you can watch him cringe.

He follows at your heels, grabbing his coat from the hook by the doors before he’s stepping out after you into the fall blister. It’s cold and wet and glorious out.

“Don’t you have a coat?” He demands.

“Nope.” You start walking towards Arlington Street and the park.

“Did you walk here? It’s freezing out.”

“I did,” you turn back towards him, still moving, and he starts to follow.

“From where?”

“Downtown.”

“Where?” He scowls at your uncooperation, the married man. Alpha. The truth was that he’d smelt strange to you too. Like no one ever had before. As glorious and shocking as the cold. Like if snow had a scent. Disappointment churns in your gut alongside the excitement at the sight of him stalking after you.

“I don’t think you know it.” Your backward walk is interrupted as a hurrying stranger bumps into you, sending you staggering. Watch it, the Boston snark spits. The alpha turns to scowl, heavy boot forward like he’s half a mind to follow after the person you’ve just inadvertently assaulted.

And it occurs to you, “You didn’t tell me your name.” How silly of you. You’d been so distracted you’d forgotten to ask, and what if you never see him again after this? What if you can’t muster the courage to come back again next week? What if he can’t?

“It’s Joel.”

You think it sounds right.

“I might—know it.” Where you’re headed to. You smile at the dog with a bone. The disappointment pulses. “Is it far?” He presses. You shrug, looking over your shoulder. You’re going to lose yourself in the garden for a few hours, forget about him. “Why don’t you drive?”

“I like to walk,” you tell him, turning back.

He looks at you like he doesn’t like the things you say much less the way you say them much less the way you’re grinning at him. Perhaps he can see the disappointment and is disturbed by the sight of it, but the possibility seems too altruistic.

“You should try it sometime, Joel. You might like it too.”

His huge body seems to be shivering in the cold.

“I think…” The look on his face has turned suspicious now. He takes a step towards you. “You’re very strange. And you’re very young. I don’t think we should be friends.”

Your heart gives a demanding thump. “We’re not going to be friends.” When you’d first spotted him in the crowd, the strangest feeling had come over you. A tug behind your belly button, a scalding heat at the back of your neck, at your wrists. Perhaps it’s merely imagination, the look of disappointment you think you see on his face right before you turn away from him to continue on walking. “And I’m not that young anymore.”

You’d known today was going to be a good day. Extra cinnamon in your latte, a late start to your morning, warm in bed, no rain in the sky despite the cloud cover. And your director, late for rehearsals after some freak accident had befallen the roof of his house.

“That’s what all young people say.”

Part 2;

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#busy dying fic #vic fic #joel miller fanficition #the last of us au #joel miller x you #joel miller

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hoseoksluna · 9 months ago

Text

STEAM | myg ft. jjk

pairing: boyfriend!yoongi x oc (feat. jungkook)

genre: smut

word count: 9.2k

summary: one video call awakens your neediness for two cocks.

playlist: steam / pinterest board: steam

warnings: female masturbation, mentions of shower sex, praise kink, toying with the idea of polyamory, a hint of voyeurism, oc rly goes through it and faces mental battles, fear, intoxication, punishment, dom/sub dynamics, fingering, choking, cum eating, manhandling, degradation, provocation, mutual masturbation, rough & raw sex, brief oral sex (f. receiving), pet names

note: IT'S FINALLY HEREEEEEE SKFDSFLSFJ, okay so—let me introduce to you a new yoongi series featuring JUNGKOOK oh my god. i am SO EXCITED about this and i wanna apologize for my insane ideas in advance... i'm so sorry, guys. nevertheless, i hope you like this as much as i do, i literally went mad writing this and i smoked so many cigarettes i lost count. please, let me kNOW UR FAVORITE PARTS CUZ I HAVE SO MANY AND I WANNA TALK ABOUT THEM. oh fuck, guys. ENJOY READING SDKFJSD. ⋆ ˚｡⋆୨୧˚

side note: btw, the playlist i made is literally perfect and depicts the fic wonderfully. you can listen while you read! <3

The scent of mangoes finds its way up your nostrils, heating your senses through its balmy touch as you rub the body butter over the damp skin of your arms. Fingers graze along your décolletage, tucking in the fragrance for your boyfriend to breathe in when he comes home. He’s out for the night—said something about his friend finishing his military service, so the whole group was going out to celebrate it. Yoongi was so frantic in his excitement, hastily putting on the first outfit that sparked his eye. Didn’t even touch his hair, only sprayed a mist of his sandalwood and tangerine-tinged perfume. Grabbed his phone, keys, wallet. Barely kissed you goodbye before he fled out of the door.

He didn’t even ask you if you wanted to come along.

You didn’t mind, though—you’re only in the early stages of your relationship. It hasn’t even been half a year since you’ve started dating. And you figure he deserves a night out with his closest friends because you’ve been attached to the hip since the beginning. Funnily enough, you no longer live at your own place. Somehow, you’ve settled in Yoongi’s apartment, never setting foot outside, save for your walks, grocery shopping, the few dates with your friends and work. There wasn’t any conversation about it; you just mostly spend your free time with your boyfriend.

And all you do is fuck, eat and watch movies.

The last time Yoongi took you out was during the first two months you’d been getting to know him. The realization of how long it’s been sends a trail of chills down your arms and you rub it away.

But because you’ve been spending all your time together, you’re glad to have a moment to yourself—glad to be able to take a long hot shower, to do your hair and skincare. Perhaps, you’ll even have time to do your nails and that energizes you, propels you to spread the body butter further down the rest of your body. It is your rose garden, these night times reserved for your hot showers. The place you go to—your hideaway from the pressure and nerves of life that the steam loosens and soothes, especially when you let your sultry playlist echo through the mightiness of Yoongi’s bathroom, your favorite singer’s voice reaching your veins like the growing stems of those roses; pretty, pink and so feminine. Yes, Yoongi’s therapy sessions and thick length might have been a great help, the best in fact, but there’s something about letting yourself be burned off of all that’s been weighing you down and watching it trickle down the drain that is just so satisfying.

It was all that you were once used to. That is, until you met Yoongi.

Showers with him are something else.

Something you never thought you could ever have the blessing to encounter. Showers with Yoongi are intense, so out of pocket that you find yourself thinking about them fondly whenever you’re alone with your thoughts. There, beneath the downpour of the warm water, he lets you see the other side of his ever unyielding stern façade. While holding you, he would make you laugh, then make you moan and break that sound with each hard plunge of his cock. Hair slicked back, smirk adorning that delicious wet mouth, causing him to look like a Mafioso bent on absolutely ruining you. He would tell you the most insane story he heard from his friend, then talk you through the build-up of your orgasm while continuing to the point of that story—seamlessly waving through, never losing tempo. “Then, he went up to his hyung to ask him about what he did—yes, just like that, honey, take it. I know you’re almost there, just listen.” You would come all over his cock, sprinkling him with your essence, right there at the end of his story and like a hungry man, he’d get on his knees and eat you up, muttering how good you are and how well you did along with each swipe of his tongue. Your lungs would heave due to the overstimulation, your legs would tremble, unable to stand and he’d gather you into his arms, fold you like paper into the crooks of his body and let his thick duvet drape over you. He’d fall asleep first, breathing in the scent of your shampoo, snoring softly behind you while spooning you, never letting go of his deathly grip around you. And while you would breathe in the haze of lilac sprayed on his pillows, you’d become aware of the drowsy rhythm of his heartbeat, the lift and fall of his chest against your back, the snug heat of his body and it would lull you to sleep.

That has become your new version of hot long showers.

And if it isn’t this, then it’s Yoongi letting you quickly wash yourself before he’d steal you away, dragging you into this bed, only to carry you back there an hour later.

You speculate he has a serious, adorable case of attachment issues.

That is why you enjoy your exceptional alone shower all the more—you haven’t had it in so long. Only this time, it’s quite different.

You feel him everywhere.

You feel him in the drift of your hand down your tummy because you recollect the way he likes to pepper kisses there on his way to eat you out. You feel him when you round your palms across your backside because you know he particularly likes to leave traces of saliva when he presses open-mouthed kisses there. His love for you circulates in your bloodstream, mingling with the little love you have for yourself, making it bigger, turning it into a turbulent rush of liquid. You sense it tapping beneath your skin, asking for more of your body just like Yoongi does, always begging, begging for more—for more skin to kiss and lick, for more sensitive parts of you to find and nibble on.

Your hands sense the ghost of him even when your fingers slip past your mound and realize that the film of your memories dampened your cunt. You hear the words of praise he’d utter into your ear at the discovery and you sigh at your tender touch.

That’s a good girl. Messy for me.

The rotund case of your body butter remains opened, forgotten. You suddenly have better things to do—like give your body the self-care, the self-love it deserves.

It’s a part of the solo girl's night.

A mewl comes out of your mouth at the first round of circles on your clit. Furrowing your brows at the pleasure, you prop your free hand on the edge of the bathroom counter, riding the pads of your fingers. And then, just like Yoongi taught you, you take your digits away, edging yourself, taking them elsewhere. You cry out at the contact of your wet fingertips on your stiff nipple and you pinch the nub, a spasm of delight coursing through your sensitiveness.

You imagine Yoongi standing behind you. Not touching you, merely guiding you, telling you when to stop, when to pick up the pace—when to fill your hole. Watching you in the mirror, hands in his pockets, having a perfect view of your slick-caked folds, of your clit swollen and asking for his tongue. Determined to make you lose your mind by teasing you, letting you only slap your pussy once you’re close. Your essence drips out of you at that thought, making a mess on the floor and you plug it in with your finger, fucking yourself steadily, inflamed by how slippery your heat is, how easy it is to slip the digit inside. Hot flashes close over your body, pearls of perspiration kissing the crook of your neck. You fuck yourself faster and—

A sudden ring of your phone jolts you. And the picture of your boyfriend, half dressed, with the early morning sunlight leaking over the scars and tattoo on his shoulder, crammed inside your screen, greets you.

You pant hard, your finger still inside of you. Delirious.

He must be on his way home. You don’t even know what time it is.

Leaning forward, you hide your breasts behind your forearm and you swipe your finger to accept his video call.

Blurry Yoongi. The night sky, starlit and alive, behind him. A shoal of silhouettes, some lanky and some buff, all short-haired and all as woozy-lidded as you. The picture smooths into a crystal clear view and there you see your boyfriend, the nocturnal breeze brushing his ebony hair back. Not just him, however, but another male craning his neck to regard you fully.

His eyes flicking from your neck to the smallest of your exposed décolletage, a smirk blossoming on his face like your imaginary roses.

Yoongi slaps his phone face down. You withdraw your finger from your heat, a cacophony of giggles, whiny cries and the exclamations of his name emitting out of your mouth.

He is not, in fact, on his way home.

It is a warning, his low and strict call of your name back and, heeding it, you take your phone into your hands, so he’s only able to see your deeply flushed face. Device back in his hand, he’s not looking at you at all. As a matter of fact, he’s shooting daggers fueled with deadly nightshade at his friend, grumbling something that you can’t quite make out amidst the chaos and bustle of the outing. The shoal of the rest of his friends and strangers disappear out of the perspective, as if threatened by the cold energy.

You wish you knew what he’s saying to him. Even your pussy aches to hear it. The principle of him scolding his friend for looking at you at your most private moment scorches you and you’re red, flattered and majestically horny.

Yoongi turns his head to see if you’re well-behaved and you beam at him, the pulse on your clit intensifying, forcing you to say, “come home, Yoongi.”

He chuckles, aware of the reason behind your words, pretends he isn’t. “What were you doing, baby?”

The growth of your grin doesn’t falter. You show him the sheen of your wet finger in the ivory bathroom light, the glint, the stickiness as you push your index finger to your middle and pull away, your arousal on full, filthy display.

He curses under his breath. Doesn’t give a fuck that his friend sits beside him and adjusts in his seat. Bites his lip briefly. “Stick it in your mouth for me.”

Doesn’t say the words that so very often follow after in that sentence. Taste yourself.

Why he doesn’t step aside to take this video call eludes you, but something about you being watched by two pairs of eyes excites you. Enough for you to do as he says. Perhaps it’s due to the fact you don’t know the male sitting beside him and Yoongi is letting him keep his sight glued to the screen.

Two sharp inhales of breath. Not one of yours. Yoongi readies his hook to feignedly lash out at his friend and you press your thighs together to alleviate yourself of the unbearable feeling between your legs. Confidence, a bad, bad version of confidence suffuses you whole, turning you into a person gone mad by lust. You swirl your tongue around your digit, the tanginess of your taste causing your eyes to narrow, the principle of driving not just one, but two men mad just the same intoxicates you, as if you were there among them, drinking.

A pair of round eyes peek at the corner of the screen. Soft, naive, so terribly innocent. A dash of sobriety washes over you, owed to those brownish effervescent orbs, a sprinkle shame pooling low in your core. A reality check. You sense some kind of stability of that reality beneath those eyelashes of his, the stability that whispers—is this the right thing to do?

It’s not rough, it’s not stern, it’s not Yoongi coded—it’s anything but. Gentleness is what you detect, free of any prejudice.

You sigh. Millions of thoughts about how you could toy with them pass through your mind, but you decide against them, the stability a pillar that blends into your spine, helping it unbend. You can’t do this; you can’t do this to Yoongi and you need to keep your dignity intact in some way, despite the fact that every fiber of your body compels you to do the opposite. You distract yourself by screwing the lid of your body butter back on.

“Good girl,” Yoongi coos, causing you to whisk your eyes to the screen in perhaps disbelief, shame or your still pending arousal—you’re not sure. How can you be a good girl when you let another man see something so lewd? How can your boyfriend validate something like that? “One more beer and I’ll be home. Wait for me on the bed. As you are.”

Naked.

Heat rushes to your cheeks, to the surface of every part of your skin, dragging away small ounces of shame. You curse, mentally, running a hand down your face. Yoongi downs his drink without taking his gaze off of you, watching your reaction, adds once he swallows, “and don’t touch yourself.”

And with that, he hangs up.

The harsh comprehension of what the fuck just happened envelops you in a confining embrace, the precipitately increasing weight of shame now a burden on your shoulders that you just can’t shake off, even when you slink your arms through sleeves of your silky robe and welcome in the summer breeze coming to caress your face on the balcony—even when you burst your lighter to a flame and light up your cigarette, inhaling the smoke that you hoped would rid you of its such uncomfortable hold around you.

You licked your cum clean under the gape of a guy you don’t know in front of your boyfriend.

His friend heard the order. Don’t touch yourself. Yoongi didn’t whisper it. Didn’t camouflage his words in any way. Uttered them straight and bare, allowing his friend to hear them, despite the fact he almost fought him then and there for sneaking one glance at your moderately naked form.

Question marks hover in your mind and the pulse on your clit cries, seemingly knowing the answer.

Did Yoongi like it as much as you did, the aspect of having an audience?

The wetness in your heat dribbles out, staining your thighs. You squeeze them together, the drag of your cigarette hard and long, expecting to feel your nerves burn off. You gain no such thing—no relief, no lifting of the burden, just constricting tangles in your tummy, zippy spasms of butterflies going mad, mad, mad.

Perhaps Yoongi didn’t like it at first until he perceived the auspicious debauched look on your face. Saw the way you didn’t hesitate to oblige him when he told you to stick your finger in your mouth. And perhaps the fact that you didn’t express any signal of discomfort was the key to unfastening the leash on his possessiveness over you.

What have you done? What have you so selfishly and disgustingly done?

You hang your head in your hands, the white smoke intertwining with the burden on your shoulders and pressing down harder on you.

That’s why he let his friend hear the command. Don’t touch yourself. He saw the way you indulged in it, and that awakened his liking for it.

Yoongi lied when he said he’d have one more beer.

By the time you hear the thunder of his voice, all the roses in your garden have wilted, leaving faded, withered petals in its wake—leaving a path of your internal battle all around the apartment for Yoongi to follow. You’ve paced, your bare feet stepping on them. Tried to untangle yourself from the incarceration of your mind by chain-smoking, but to no avail. The only change that took place in your body was the decline of your shame, for you couldn’t help but imagine what could have happened, had you let free rein to your desire—had those round eyes never looked at you with such purity. You figured there wasn’t anything bad about letting your imagination be colored like that, and so you sat on your boyfriend’s couch, cigarette switched to a coconut-flavored vape, and dreamed.

You dreamed about those two men being of service to you, right here on the same couch, where they would lay you down and make you squirt over and over again, betting between each other who could make you come the fastest, counting down your orgasms until the number was a mere blur to you.

The throb on your clit heightened to heavenly levels and when you emerged from your dream, you found yourself being able to breathe—your momentary disappearance tricking your shame into leaving. It was difficult for you not to touch yourself and you opted to adhere to Yoongi’s wish, not risking to feel worse than you already had.

The war ended, undeterred by the fact you never expected it to.

Loud swear words roar in Korean. You rise to your feet to open the front door for Yoongi and you discover that he’s not alone at all.

The same pair of round eyes, the cause of all the ruckus you just departed from, meet yours, hauling you back there with a force. Your mouth falls agape and before you can react any further, Yoongi stumbles into you. You almost topple over, realizing you didn’t care to steal a glance at the state of him, but the male grabs a hold of Yoongi’s jacket and pulls him back. You wish you had tumbled over and the floor had opened up and swallowed you whole. It would have been less embarrassing than to be stuck in this situation. You want to run, you want to scream—

“He’s drunk out of his own mind,” the male says, his voice deep like the warm wind before a tumultuous storm, fitting just right with the thunder of Yoongi’s intonation, his gaze wandering over the entirety of your shock-stricken face, taking it in; giving you the same attention that fucked you up hours ago. Yoongi begins to mumble something you can’t momentarily focus on, his hands grasping your waist, lips latching onto your neck. No, you cannot for the life of you focus because the man steals you all over again and you hate how easy it is for him to do that, when you’re far from being available. “Don’t ask what made him drink this much.”

Did Yoongi get drunk because he let his friend in on your most intimate moment?

Humiliated, turned on and angry altogether, a concoction that simply worsens everything, you draw back from your boyfriend. You want to beat at his chest with your fists just to have some sort of relief from blaming him—because if you blame yourself, only doom consumes you. Why did he call you? Or, essentially, why didn’t he step away to take that damned video call?

“Thanks for walking him home,” you say eventually, your voice smooth, despite the violence of your feelings, despite wanting to say something else entirely. Your first words to him and, wholeheartedly—despite it all, you hope they aren’t last, even if that possibly makes you a despicable person.

Yoongi’s friend nods. Chews his bottom lip and lowers his gaze to the ground for a split second. You wonder if he feels the need to remove himself from this uncomfortable situation as much as you do because you can’t read anything in that paleness of his countenance. Not a hint of any emotion whatsoever, just blandness of expression, slightly dimmed by the few thick strands of black hair that have fallen from his disheveled, pushed back mullet. As if they did fight after all, perhaps on the way home, or wrestled if Yoongi was being difficult.

You don’t realize you and the male are just staring at each other until Yoongi places his hand on your cheek, brushing back a wisp of your tresses. Only then do your eyes flick to Yoongi’s and you finally notice him, the gloss in his hooded irises searching and searching for you, the rosy blush on his cheeks, dry parted mouth and the dart of his tongue as he wets it, softening the flecks that have been created there.

This is it. If you are focused on him, all things are made right—all things that have been stained get purified and dreams get turned into dust. This is the man you’ve fallen for, who puts you before himself and has done so every day since the moment he made you his. You can’t let anyone else get in the way of the home that your relationship has become, you can’t let your feelings flee—

“For the record,” Yoongi’s friend starts, hand massaging circles on the nape of his neck, the leather of his jacket tight around his arm. Your heart jumps and beats against your chest ferociously. “I didn’t see anything, if that helps you sleep better tonight.”

It’s such a fat lie and you’re about to shake your head, but then he looks at you with such sincere regret that, ultimately, you choose to believe him. Just to keep your peace of mind unscarred.

Yoongi tightens his hold around your waist, which grounds you, and a small part of you begins to bloom in healing, disseminating little by little across your whole body.

A healer with big, round eyes. A good man.

With a swing, Yoongi closes the door but you don’t hear the click. No, the light spills in from the hallway. Your hands reach for the doorknob but Yoongi blocks them and wraps them around his waist while swaying on his feet. He traces the shell of your ear with his lips, his alcohol-reeking breath wafting over you, and softly, you whine his name. Shuffling beyond the door, feet never entirely moving—the male is still standing outside and he hears as Yoongi hums at your call, as the sound grows into a groan at the feeling of being alone with you at last, at the feeling of all that makes you feminine under his hands. He hears your gasp as Yoongi pushes your chest flush to his body, kisses you harshly and cups your bare pussy. Hears the smack of your mouths, the pop once he withdraws, the squelch of your wetness. Hears as Yoongi murmurs, “you been horny, baby? Wet for me, hm?”

It’s those words that make him shut the door for you.

You made Yoongi drink a lot of water.

And while he downed the glasses, you ordered him Thai food from his phone, which he now devours. You had wanted to change out of your flimsy robe into your plush pajamas, but Yoongi stopped you with a tight grip on your shoulder and with the nastiest puppy eyes he could manage, considering his plastered state, he begged you not to. Informed you that he wanted to fuck you in your little robe and you told him that if he wanted that, he needed to get sober.

He’s your boyfriend and you trust him, but you don’t feel comfortable having sex with him while he’s wasted and you’re not. It’s a dangerous territory you don’t ever want to cross.

So, now he eats as quietly as a mouse, feeding you every other bite with his chopsticks, meanwhile you’re jittering your leg with your arms crossed across your chest, mind full of the male who walked him home. Of the way he pulled you under and resurfaced with you soon after. Of the calm peace you feel all over the perimeter of your mind that peculiarly stresses you out. Of what would happen if you voiced your little dream to Yoongi, especially.

Was it out of the question or would he consider it?

Your leg jitters harder.

You want to tell him, badly. Seeing his friend in real life changed fucking everything. If you hadn’t, you would’ve forgotten about it in the days to come. Yoongi would’ve fucked it out of you in most probability. But those eyes… those eyes got under your skin.

“Stop fidgeting,” Yoongi scolds with his mouth full of food, no hint of slurring. The hot meal and hydration worked a miracle. “You’re making me nervous.”

He picks up two cut pieces of chicken with his chopsticks and stuffs your mouth, adding a few pieces of vegetables as you’re chewing. Watches you swallow it, noticing how your eyes are focused on nothing in particular on the other side of the room. Tucking his utensils under his palm, he places his hand on your thigh, halting your restless motion.

You still won’t look at him. Too lost in the overthinking maze, debating whether you should speak or remain quiet about your desire. A strong part of you fears his reaction and the other half is horrified at the possibility of being turned down—

Yoongi takes his hand away. Props it on his cheek.

“I can see your pussy from here,” he says, licking his lips. “You’ve shaved?”

You breathe a soft laugh, turning your head to face him, covering yourself with the small fabric. Dark, but tender eyes, void of any glossiness, awake and stirred—amused. Cheeks awash with color. Lips puffy, a dark tinge of red coating them. A sturdy fist on his cheek, the milky jawline underneath. That messy hair, the slicked-back look ruined by the constant rake of his fingers through them, now falling to the side from the middle. That slender body, clad in the night from head to toe—legs outstretched under the table. So fine, so delicious. A beautiful strong man—all yours. Why do you want another one?

You slide your leg across his thighs and Yoongi slouches in his seat, discarding his chopsticks.

“I shaved everything,” you respond, cocking your brow at him—a sly invitation for him to feel its smoothness.

And he does. Runs his hand up and down your skin. Goes as far as lifting your other leg onto his lap, cradling them both, thumb caressing your calf. The movement causes your robe to expose you again and, cursing the fabric, you go to cover yourself, but Yoongi stops you.

“Don’t bother,” he mutters. “I wanna look at it.”

You raise your brows altogether, looking up at him. “You wanna look at her?”

Yoongi smirks. That dangerous tug of one corner of his mouth to the side. Your death, your undoing, the root of your submission to him. “I want to have her at my disposal.”

You gulp and Yoongi catches it, chuckling. Drifts his hand down your calf, to your heel, to the middle of your foot up to your toes. He plays with your pinky. You note the fact he changed the pronoun after you did.

Your arousal returns at full speed.

“Did that make you wet?” Low, low is his voice—you feel it prodding at your core, thrumming vehemently.

You blossom like your roses, thoughts put to the side.

“I’ve been wet this entire time,” you say, zeroing in your gaze on the flick of dimness that whirls past his eyes. “For hours.”

He makes a sound of pitiful nature. “Poor baby.” Furrows his brows and juts his bottom lip out, making you weak. Lets his hand roam on your thigh. “So you listened? You didn’t touch yourself?”

You merely nod your head quickly. You were too distressed to give your body the pleasure it sought. Too busy flaring your lungs with the burn of smoke. And you respected his wish enough to keep your hands to yourself.

Yoongi coos. “Good girl.”

A flashback—your lips wrapping around your slick-coated finger, Yoongi praising you and… another pair of eyes watching. Chills spread across your arms, your stomach flipping. Thankfully, your shame is kept at bay. It relieves you.

“Can I feel how wet you are?”

A sweet, devious smile. “If you can manage to get to her.”

You press your thighs tightly together. Yoongi looks at you as if you’ve greatly offended him and alas, he turns your chair so you face him head-on. Forces your thighs apart without any strain at all—and there you feel it, the embarrassment of fucking with him, once your pussy is at complete disposal to him just like he wanted.

“If your pussy wasn’t so pretty, I’d make you regret your words,” he purrs, eyes fixed on your drenched flesh, hands pushing your thighs back until your knees are at level with your shoulders, folds parting with the movement, revealing more of you. Yoongi wets his mouth with his tongue.

He thumbs your gleaming lips back and forth, collecting your essence, mesmerized by them. Looks at you intently.

“It wouldn’t hurt to say sorry, though,” he says, narrowing his eyes at you. “Would it?”

You grin at him. “Sorry, Yoongi.”

He rubs your swollen clit in slow circles, still with his bedewed thumb, still with his eyes on you. You choke out a moan at the delight permeating through your being. “That’s not the proper way to apologize, now is it?”

You lean your pelvis into his touch, a natural body reaction unfolding. He disapproves. You scrunch your face. “What should I say?”

Yoongi tuts. “I’m barely touching you and you already forgot your manners?”

The only answer you emit is an uncouth whine.

He shakes his head, putting pressure into his circles for a mere beat of time before he slaps your pussy curtly. A vivid spasm of pleasure fills you and you moan. “Needy girl. Don’t I take care of this pussy enough? What’s this behavior?”

Another whine. A roll of your body, asking for more of his touch. “Spank her again.”

A cock of his brow. Harsh, stern, evil. His hand remains propped on his thigh, shoulders hunched. “I didn’t hear you say please. You wanna be bad? You want me to make you cry?”

You know just how much he’s capable of doing that. You shake your head ‘no’. You want gentleness, the kind you saw in his friend’s eyes—

You flutter your own shut to get rid of that thought. Take a deep breath.

“Spank my pussy again, please.”

Yoongi massages the apex of your thigh, dangerously close to your cunt, squeezing the flesh every once in a while.

“Apologize first.”

“You didn’t tell me how.”

He clicks his tongue and pinches your folds and your clit between his fingers. You cry out, and then Yoongi gets up to his feet, leaning over you, propping his hand on the back of your chair. He begins to swiftly spank your pussy over and over again. You just jump at every contact, moaning, eyes flicked to his, never breaking apart. Taking it, taking it so well that Yoongi kisses you nastily, licking into your mouth. Then, he grunts. Fingers flat against your clit, he moves them from side to side. Roses, a myriad of them, flood your form with their freshness and dewiness, with their beauty and delectation and you shudder, you scream, you arch your back off of the backrest—

“Say, ‘I’m sorry, Yoongi. I’m such a bad girl that I deserve every spank and I’ll take it until it hurts.”

Flabbergasted and horny beyond measure, your mouth falls agape. Your brain turns into mush, the pleasure paralyzing you, your sounds now loud and obscene, the roses in you flitting, growing and murmuring. Yoongi adds more pressure to your clit and your eyes sink back into your head, his darkness wafting over to you, seeping into your skin—now completely yours.

You repeat after him—word for word. With a simper on your face that causes him to scowl at you, as if you dared to toy with your punishment he bestowed upon you. But then, a tongue prods the inside of his cheek and he laughs, taking a hold of his dominant role and making sure you know. He spanks your clit twice in a row, hands lifting to fondle your nipples.

“Good,” he praises. “You like that, don’t you? Spanks on your pussy?”

You don’t like that softness. Like the personified thunder he is, it is the calm before the storm. It unnerves you, the expectation of what might come next and your disliking of it. Nonetheless, you brim with the craving to have his fingers inside of you. Your hole clenches at that and Yoongi notices, hissing under his breath. The language of the darkness rises on your tongue and you figure that if you let loose, you’ll get your wish fulfilled.

“Yeah, it feels so good—” He pinches your nipples between his knuckles and you mewl, your lashes shaking at the impact, another set of wetness coating your folds. “Please, fuck me with your fi—”

You don’t even get to finish your sentence. Yoongi plunges his middle finger into your heat, cursing at your tightness, at how slippery you are and at the delight of being filled at last, you knit your brows. With his other finger, he traces the outline of your puckered mouth, his breathing hard and ragged.

“I’ll do anything for that pout of yours, fuck, no matter if you deserve it or not,” he utters, slipping the digit inside. Instinctively, you suck on it and only then does Yoongi begin to pump you slowly. “You just need a little roughness to be good, don’t you?”

Dumbly, you nod, swirling your tongue around him, but a faint, silenced part of you begs for the gentleness that you know hides somewhere deep inside his chest, never once unfurled during such intimate times.

You pay it no matter, too fucked out to think.

When he adds a second finger into your heat, he does the same thing with his other hand. Two fingers in your cunt, two fingers in your mouth. And he fucks you with both until you gag and a light flashes in his eyes—then, he withdraws all together, leaning against the table, his bedewed fingers coming to rest at his hardened length in his pants.

Roses, opening. Roses, sighing.

You breathe heavily, needing to finish, needing to have him in your mouth—

“You liked being the center of attention today?” he husks, surveying your whole body, bent in half.

There it is—the storm. Just what you expected. Cold sweat dribbles down your spine. And it is fear, what you feel, even when you refuse to admit it. Stiff, tempered fear that pervades each and every vein on your body, regarding being possibly degraded, being made feel dirty—regarding, even, tasting the dark wine of his wrath.

Such a stark, sudden change.

You don’t want this. You don’t want any of it.

Abruptly, an internal question comes and pokes you in the middle of your forehead.

Will you succumb to it or will you, with the wildly fresh darkness within you, fight against it?

You take a deep breath, and in with the air also follows, with the little rationality you have amidst the sensuality of your lecherous appetite, the decision to take a hold of it all. To take charge. Just like he did.

You shall prioritize yourself. Your feelings, your desires—your roses.

Your choice envelops your fear in bubble wrap. It doesn’t dissipate. And as much as it pains you, you take a mental note of that.

“I did,” you spit out, angered by the fact you’re afraid of your boyfriend, and so you stand your ground. “It made me so fucking needy and I want more.”

The relief that hits you almost causes you to weep and you lower your legs to the ground. Not wanting him to see the film of tears clouding your eyes, you avoid his gaze. Yoongi crosses his arms across his chest and clicks his tongue at you, disapproving.

“Keep your legs where they belong.”

“No.”

A lift of his brow. He crouches down to your level and cradles your face in his hand, forcing you to look at him. And there he sees, under the waterfall of your hair, your emotions at his disposal. Yoongi studies you, frowns at you and you want to sob, you want to go home. Shame slithers towards your spine like a ghost, and although it keeps a distance, you feel its presence prickling your back. You cover your cleavage.

“Why are you crying?” Yoongi asks, a silky murmur, eyes flicking between yours. His fingers don’t caress your skin; they merely hold you firmly, making dents in the skin.

You don’t trust that voice, dismayed by what might lie under.

“Why did you do that to me?” you ask in return, and it’s a blue fire shooting out, engulfing the room in stifling heat. You catch a glimpse of its sparks in the dimness of his eyes, of how he’s momentarily stricken by it before it folds beneath the shadows.

“You want to get fucked by someone else?”

A question for a question.

You swallow down the lump in your throat, caused by your frustration.

Your devotion to him didn’t let you go as far as to imagine being fucked by his friend while Yoongi watched, but the brief flash of it in your mind is enough incentive for the heat to spill into you, mingling with the darkness, turning you candescent, traveling through you until it finds your core—and there, it stays. There, it finds home.

The pulse on your clit returns, filling you with abrupt energy.

There’s something about him coming up with it that makes you unhinged, but you’re so utterly sick of the instability of your feelings. You need it to stop.

“And what if I do?” you retort. “What will you do?”

Truthfulness, at last.

Yoongi takes in a sharp inhale of breath, and that is the only reaction you receive from him. Nothing else on his face flickers; no wrath, no sliver of jealousy, not one thing. You stare at an empty canvas, ready for you to paint on. And you simply decide that you want to start.

You push his hand away from your face. Stand up to your feet. But the hardened look he gives you inclines you to sit back down.

You fight against it.

Untangling the knot on your robe, you let him see your bare femininity. The perkiness of your breasts, the long dip of your stomach that he likes to pepper kisses on. Yes, you’re aiming for his weakness.

And you decide to repeat history.

You reach your hand down, lower and lower while he stares you down, and you collect your glimmering essence. Sinking your finger into your mouth, you make a show of rolling your eyes back and moaning faintly, softly. Your other hand, in the meantime, unbuttons his pants.

The breath Yoongi inhaled hitches in his throat.

“Is this not evidence enough?” you purr, dragging down his zipper. “How else am I supposed to show you?”

You pull his manhood out as you suck on your finger, all while maintaining eye contact. You don’t touch him beyond that. In fact, you withdraw your hand altogether.

And then, you collect your essence again.

This time, you smear it across his bottom lip. Yoongi lets you. Your heart thuds, threatening to jump out of your chest.

“Your actions during the video call told me everything,” you whisper, catching the sliver of wooziness scattering along his narrowed eyes. “And I think you liked it more than me—the thought of sharing me. You can’t hide it. Not when I saw it.”

Yoongi growls. Then, he surprises you.

He parts his lips for you.

And the contact of the pad of your finger with his wet tongue coaxes a string of your dewiness to drip down the side of your thigh. You moan for him. Relieved, fucked up, woozy just the same. Finally, finally, finally.

You’re in charge. And it feels divine.

His length twitches against the fabric of his T-shirt. Long, hard, drooling. Such a delight for you—and so you continue.

“I also think it made you hard. Not just because you called me when I was touching myself, but because your friend was right there beside you,” you purr, your voice a seductive sound of silk—leading him to wrap his lips around your digit. You moan for him, showing him how much you like that. “Isn’t that right, baby?” Your walls clench at the pet name, solely due to the fact that these soft terms of endearment have always been addressed to you, never the other way around. It thrills you. “I’d always be devoted to you, even if he fucked me. I’d look at you the entire time. If that’s what you want. I had a different idea, but yours is just—” you pause, and again you make a show of sighing and rolling your eyes back, “better.”

A straight hit to his core. A glee for you.

But you don’t realize how much you fucked up until Yoongi grips your waist and the hold hurts enough that you wince.

And then—then he manhandles you.

Lifting you and laying you down on the table, Yoongi spreads your legs. Watches you drip, watches as the satiny fabric follows the movement of your limbs and reveals you in all your entirety. He pulls you closer to him with a sharp tug until you collide with the tops of his thighs. Bends over you. Hovers his lips above yours. You expect him to kiss you—he even angles his head and rubs the side of his nose against yours—but he never does.

He only leaves you waiting. Leaves you submitted to your empty expectations, taking charge, taking his control back from you. You shiver in anticipation, reaching for him, however he pins your hands down on either side of you. An angel in a rose garden.

Yoongi chuckles, darkly, his teeth glinting in the yellow light. You fight against his hold, hips rolling against the underside of his length, beckoning him to do something, anything. You merely manage to prolong the thunder of his laughter.

“One cock isn’t enough for her, so baby wants two,” he spits. That smirk, the crinkles around his eyes—he’s enjoying this. The hint of degradation doesn’t reflect what’s swarming inside of him, doesn’t reflect the face of pleasure coursing down his body. You smile and he scoffs. “I have enough friends for you to choose from in case you want more. I think you’d be stellar at taking three cocks. Four, even, huh? Would you have enough then? One in your tight little virgin ass, two in your cunt, one down your throat?”

You gulp, frozen, eyes widening.

Yoongi bites his shiny lips, nudging the tip of his nose against yours. Kisses you once. Begins to rock his hips, his length sliding across your wet fleshiness. The moan that escapes your throat trembles with each delicious motion.

“You watch too much porn, honey,” he coos, giving you tiny kisses on the mouth. “I’d kill anyone who would come near this pussy. And I’d kill Jungkook, too, if he so much as glanced at her.”

So that’s his name. You mewl, knitting your brows. That’s his pretty name. The entirety of your form shivers at the discovery, at the pleasure given to your throbbing clit.

Yoongi pulls back, setting your hands free.

You prop your elbows on the table, pouting. Yoongi grasps his length, spreads his arousal and begins to jerk himself off.

“You’re not fucking Jungkook. You’re mine.” He groans, squeezing his tip; your hole clenches. “Rub your clit.”

Like him, you spread your arousal on your seashell, the arousal long caused by his presence and now the mention of his name—the reason behind your frustration and his, the reason why you’re spread on the dining table, why your boyfriend is hard. You rub your clit from side to side, amused.

“No,” Yoongi disapproves, knowing you do the motion when you want to prolong the build-up. “Circles. Make yourself come.”

You change direction, obeying him. A sly grin blossoms on your lips, dark eyes looking up into his, permeating them, permeating into his soul. You pick up the pace, moaning into your expression of elation.

“Jungkook is such a pretty name,” you provoke and you heighten your sounds in volume and intensity just to piss him off, just to have your way.

A grunt escapes him, matching your pace. He wraps his fingers around your throat and squeezes. You hum.

“A pretty name to moan in my opinion.” A layer of sweat coats your body. Yoongi grasps your jawline firmly and your satisfied laughter inches you closer to your orgasm. You feel the hot flashes, roses surrounding you—its tender petals grazing your feverish skin. You give in, watching Yoongi do the same, his mouth in a tight line, hissing and sizzling, an open fire, an open fire you want to be radiated by, burned whole by. “Just imagine him here, watching us. Oh my god, imagine him knowing he’s the reason why you and I are doing this.”

Yoongi has had enough.

He pushes you down harshly. Fills your hole to the hilt without letting you adjust, observing himself disappearing inside of you and begins to pound you into the table. The sound of skin slapping, the hard and quick strokes, the ravaged grunts he lets out, the fast change—it all takes your breath away, so much that you can’t, in fact, breathe. He grabs your face and makes you look at him. The dead of the night captured in his features, you absorb it, whining like the brat you are onto his mouth, mingling into your noises your approval, your yes’.

Swallowing it, he kisses you, keeping his eyes open. “He could never fuck you like this.”

You laugh. He swallows that, too, moaning. “What if he could?”

He taps you on the cheek, a warning, giving you an exceptionally hard stroke that causes you to scream. He pauses. Does it again. Over and over—and your screams echo across the room, your own soul slipping out of your body. Petals flutter against you and you’re done for, hanging off the edge. You’re close, so terribly close. Your eyesight blurs and Yoongi pulls out entirely and rams into you. Again and again, abusing your cervix.

You moan his name, gone—entirely gone.

“Yes, moan my name like that. Just mine,” he mutters. “Who’s fucking you this good? Who’s gonna make you come?”

He rams into you more rapidly than before. Your senses leave you until all that you know is Yoongi. His name, his scent, the wholeness of the night encompassing him.

“You, Yoongi, you. Fuck, I—”

Yoongi laughs maniacally. “Yes, that’s right. That’s my good girl.”

He rolls his hips, slowing down the coming of your orgasm, owning you. Lets your senses come back to you momentarily. You swallow, your throat dry and you blink, dazed still. Yoongi kisses you, giving you all that he took from you.

“Who’s only capable of fucking you like this, honey, hm?” he asks, his voice tender and sing-song. “My pretty honey, so fucked out. So out of it.”

You whine and you don’t control what comes out of you, your body answering for you. “You, Yoongi. You’re fucking me so—so good. I can’t—fuck. You’re the only one.”

He smiles down at you fondly, kissing your nose, then your lips, parting your mouth and swirling his tongue around yours briefly. Then he withdraws, begins to fuck you again, slowly, reaching to the side for something.

Once you see his phone in his hand, your heart stops. And when he puts the device to his ear, your throat dries up even more. You suddenly become aware of the silence all around, especially in your chest. You can’t breathe, you can’t blink—

Yoongi jackhammers into you, purposefully luring your loud noises out of you. “My girlfriend wants to fuck you.”

You gasp, squeezing your eyes shut, the suddenness, the quickness of pleasure you haven’t yet felt piercing you. Fuck hot flashes and petals, you feel a heavy urge of your orgasm closing down on you.

“She’s so desperate for you, even when I’m fucking the life out of her.”

You flutter your eyes open to see Yoongi surveying you. You scrunch your face—so close, so fucking close—and then he puts the phone to your ear. Breathing, hard, ragged breathing fills all of your senses and you come.

It’s an explosion. Roses bursting, their dew soaking you and Yoongi whole and you exit. You exit out of this situation, this world, this universe while your soul remains here with them. Vibrancy, colors so beautiful and sensations so vivid, ardent and fierce. You don’t know what it is you’re feeling or where you are. That is, until Yoongi’s voice yanks you back to planet Earth, back into this world, this situation—back to them.

“In fact, she just came for you. Squirted.”

You sob. Overstimulated, rhapsodic, but effulgent. Yes, you emit light and glow. You can see it in Yoongi’s softened eyes.

“Think about it. No pressure. Just know she won’t shut up about you. I recall her saying your name would be pretty to moan while she played with her pussy. I think it’s only right you fuck it out of her.”

With that, he hangs up.

You brim with so many emotions that it numbs you. Happy tears flow out of your tear ducts—and happily, endearingly, Yoongi chortles. You don’t even feel humiliation or shame. On the contrary, you’re ready to come again.

Yoongi kisses you and the sounds he slips into your mouth divulge how happy he is about this, how pleased he is with himself.

You pout, burning your eyesight into his. He begins to rut into you.

“What, you’re not even gonna thank me?” he says, grinning, as if he wasn’t fucking you at all, as if you two were still sitting at the dinner table, conversing.

You stammer, head empty, silencing yourself and trying again. “What—what made you change your mind?”

Yoongi places open-mouthed, wet kisses along the bone of your jaw, and there he seals his answer. “I made up my mind the moment you admitted you wanted to be fucked by him, but you wouldn’t shut up about him. I wanted to hear you babble for me. About me. I just had to mess you up to get to that point.”

You mewl, running your hands through his sweat-slicked hair. Like a cat, he perks up to your touch, lifting his head, angling it. He kisses you, deeply. Kisses your relief.

“Where are your manners, hm?” he whispers onto your mouth, giving you hard strokes that erase your vocabulary. You want to make him come and so you push against his thrusts, but to no avail. The intensity won’t allow you.

“Thank you, Yoongi,” you murmur, cradling his face, pecking him, giving him the softest eyes you could muster so you can show him how much it means to you.

He approves of your effort on bettering your manners and to reward you, he lifts you up and fucks you in the air. Your breasts bounce against the material of his T-shirt, stimulating you and he alters between jackhammering into you and sliding you up and down on his length. Your pussy squelches around his girth, tightening and Yoongi—

Yoongi loses his mind.

And it’s him who begins to babble when you snap your hips down on him in circles.

“Just like that, honey, oh fuck. So good, so good for me.”

He takes it until his sounds grow in volume and you focus so much on his pleasure that you forget about yours.

But you don’t let him take charge.

“Let me fuck you, please, Yoongi. I wanna make you come.”

Just like you, he’s out of it and because of that, because you asked so nicely, he lets you.

His chest heaves, staccatos of his choked out breaths sail through the room and you can see it on his face that he’s close. Brows furrowed, bottom lip bleeding due to the way he bites hard on it, the way his mouth pops open and his eyes flutter closed.

You hold onto his neck with your dear life.

“Look at me,” you demand and swirl your hips in slow circles around his tip. “I want you to look at me when you come.”

You’re so stunned that he allows you to be in charge, even more when he truly does open his eyes and pierces his gaze into yours.

“I need to pull out,” he breathes, but you shake your head, snapping your hips down on him harshly.

“No, I want your cum in me. And I want it to be inside of me when Jungkook fucks me.”

Yoongi grunts and this is it for him. His cock twitches in you, over and over again and then you feel it—the hot, thick ropes of his cum stuffing you full. You’re so mesmerized by the feeling, by the blissfulness evident on his face, by the smoothness between his brows at last that you can’t even milk him dry. You’re frozen, stupefied by his beauty, by his personal rapture and you want to feel it in unity with him. You kiss him.

It’s him who fucks him cum into you, burying it deep, moaning into your lip lock.

It’s him who lays you down to your original position and briefly, feebly licks the sheen on your spread lips before devouring your clit.

It’s him who gives you the fastest orgasm of your life.

And it’s him who tells you—in the shower—the story of how he almost beat up Jungkook black and blue once he heard him say how pretty you are.

And it’s you who checks up on him.

“You sure you’re okay with this?”

You’re stroking his hair in the bed, the duvet heavy and warm around your body and his, the night overflowing into morning—Yoongi, too.

He’s falling asleep, but still conscious, still here with you, purring.

“I wouldn’t be waking him up in the middle of the night if I wasn’t,” he whispers, opening his eyes to look at you, to see you enveloped in the extra blanket of the dawn’s rosy light—glowing, throwing the sun off of its throne. “Poor guy just got out of the military and you’ve already rocked his world.”

You smile, fondly, thumb caressing his temple. Yoongi hums in appreciation.

“I’m happy for him he’s getting pussy—one that’s mine. Before he enlisted, he spent all his time painting and getting drunk alone,” he pauses in a thought, blinking at the light. “You still want this?”

You nod, settling into his chest. Yoongi pulls you closer, tucking the duvet into the lines of your form, bringing in comfort and sleepiness.

“I’ll make sure you have the time of your life. I’ll be here the whole time, taking care of you,” he promises against your hair and you squeeze him.

“He hasn’t said yes, though. He could turn me down.”

“I’ve seen the way he looked at you. You have nothing to fear. He’ll come to you like a puppy.”

Yoongi sinks the promise onto the plane of your forehead and holds you as you drift to sleep. Happy, relieved, steamed off of all the negative things you went through. It evaporates into the dawn—far, far away from you.

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love-toxin · 1 year ago

Text

bonus night - mike schmidt

plot: jk it's just por-//SHOT

(cws: fem!reader, FNAF movie spoilers!!!, rough sex, riding, begging, a teeny tiny taste of dom mike, tit sucking, bruising, protected sex w/ a twist, post-fnaf canon, established relationship)

wc: 2k

There's absolutely no question that it's been a long fucking day. One of many, in fact, both behind him and yet to come.

Aside from his sleep schedule still being tremendously fucked from that five night ordeal, Mike's also had the stress of landing a new job and keeping it this time. He's lucky–god, he's lucky that an old friend of his just happened to have a connection–but that just puts more pressure on his ability to keep a level head and not lose this one. Plus, with his meds cut out as well as a whole host of new traumas to keep him up at night it's almost more stressful than fighting for his own life. With today being the end of orientation and the first real shift on the job, it's finally sinking in that a new chapter of life has started but his problems are still an uphill battle.

Bills, backpay, rent, Abby's therapy, pacifying their aunt who was quite aghast at waking up disheveled on their living room floor…it's been a process to say the least. His one saving grace has been you. You. His beautiful, gentle angel, with a voice like sugar and honey and skin as soft as velvet, warm like a shallow pool on a summer's day that he'd want to float in for hours. You're so precious he can't think of a single thing he's done in life that tops being your lover, or even comes close.

Well…maybe there's one thing.

“Mike,” The squeaking of the bed beneath you just barely drowns out the high, sweet whimper that your voice has melted into. “Please baby, slow down-”

A squeaky “ah!” flies from your mouth regardless of that insistent plea, your lover's hips like stone pistons as he bucks up and topples you over to land back against his chest. He loves you there; the feeling of your tits squished against his chest as he holds your ass in an iron grip. Thumbs dig into each cheek, palms splayed out to keep you spread but still in your place–stretched enough to take him but tight enough not to let him slip out. Not even now, an hour after he carried you through the door over his shoulder, when his spit and cum and sweat have coalesced into a damp sheen spilling over his lap. Fuck the mess. He'll clean it up later, if he doesn't just throw his whole bundle of sheets into the wash to scrub away the evidence.

Each thump, thump, thump of your body thrown down rings more in your ears than his, but both of you feel it equally. Your womb kissed with hard, stinging passion on every thrust, and Mike's stomach twisting and flexing as his cockhead beats that spot raw, instincts begging him to drain all he has left inside. He's got lots of pent-up energy to spare, and on the one night that his sister's gone to a sleepover you can bet he took the chance to let some of it out. He'd barely had time to grab a condom–as eager as he was, it pales in comparison to the heat between your thighs when you see him get all riled up. If he'd let you put it on for him, you'd probably have it off in a second. Now he's just at the mercy of your needy and downright addictive pussy.

“Fuck!” Your mewls shift into a spitting, hissing curse when he bites down on one of those beautiful breasts of yours. Unlike what a weaker man would do, Mike isn't averse to leaving bruises–what else could be expected? He tries to be a gentleman in public and you always tell him he is, but the desire to put hands all over those pretty tits and mark his claim on them is second nature now. And no matter how much you'll complain about them being sore afterwards, you'll still push them in his face with that devilish look that's daring him to do it all over again.

Besides, he can't resist those things swinging right in front of him. And you'll forget the sting so quickly, his tongue will make short work of those shallow wounds you feel as he latches his lips and starts to suck. Greedily.

“Mike!”

Your hands in his hair won't stop him. But they don't really want to–as always you love to tug but you never push him back, you don't try to get any more space between you because what's already there is still not close enough.

God your whiny voice is so cute. He couldn't feel more lucky to have picked you up when he did. How would he know that the girl he helped out once for an ice cream would end up being his girlfriend? He just thought you were cute, and he felt bad seeing your face fall as you counted out your change in line, so he hadn't thought twice about the dollar he put down on the counter in your stead. Such an adorable little ditz, and now he's got you riding his lap and kissing him awake nearly every morning. If he wanted to catch a break, this is it.

“M-Mike, m'gonna cum,” Your whimpers dig into his ear and tug at the strings of his heart, his head already turned to soothe you with a low, soft shush brushed by your cheek. There there. With a stroke of your hair, you're melting again.

“Mhm,” He hums again, his warmth a lull following the furious heat that's been sparked by the friction of his hips pumping at a violent pace. “Shh, sh sh. We’ll go slow, I promise.” His murmuring muddies your head, his fingers descending quickly towards their destination. Once they reach it at the crest of your soft, pudgy mound that's been brutalized by his cock, he's glad to see you finally let that tension go as you slump forward into his chest. You just need to cling to him for awhile, and he certainly won't be complaining.

The smell of your sweat, your heat, your sleek, soft tongue wetting the bruises your teeth leave in his throat, all that whining and groaning and high, girlish squealing as your hips hump his lap–these and more are all reasons he has to absolutely worship you. Your starry-eyed gaze as you look upon him in ecstasy etches itself into his very soul. He won't ever forget this…he won't ever forget you. Not the warmth of you both being cheek-to-cheek, your hand coaxing out his end as it trails reverently from his jaw down his heaving chest.

“Pleeeeease,” You whisper, so achingly sweet he could cry as easily as cum. “Please, baby?”

Please. Such a pretty word. Prettier from your mouth most of all, so pretty it hurts–nearly stings as he digs his nails in and leaves marks on each cheek, though it will moreso for you when you wince at sitting down at your desk tomorrow morning. You're shaking, trembling more like, and even if he made you wait for it you wouldn't be able to obey. The spasms wracking through you can't be controlled, nor can the grind of your hips down as you let those strong hands drag you all the way to the base. So far that it causes a twinge in your expression as the orgasm passes, your ecstasy blotting out the stretch that you're gonna feel all the way up to your hips in the morning.

But he's got to get in deep, has to make it ache, so he's got a grip so firm it's trembling up his arms and you're shaking even harder on top of him as he digs in and lets loose. There's no question he's hit your womb, it's more curious to whether he's broken through it or not…by the way you bite down on his shoulder and bear the pressure, though, he must be nearly there. Nearly squeezing through that tight, tight wall so he's draining his seed right where it's meant to be. And you paw at him all the while, lower lip quivering, tears threatening to spill, yet you won't let up on rubbing yourself back on his thighs–it just isn't enough until you've taken all he has to give, and even then he can spot that gleam in your eyes that begs for even more. The fact that the condom's split isn't even in his mind, it's floated so far away he won't think of it until it's too late to stop.

Yet all that heat hits the same end after the climax. The friction subsides, the breathing slows, and the two of you are left in content silence as you quietly come back to your senses. There's something even more intimate about losing oneself as a collective; being so hedonistic in pursuing an indulgence, yet facing the fear of baring your own heart to one you love in the process, and reaching an even more satisfying end as it all comes to a close. It's glorious. He wouldn't trade it for anything. He wouldn't trade sex for his own life now that he's had it with you. But, again, he's still coming down from the high–he’ll most certainly feel the embarrassment of losing himself so indulgently as the cool air from the AC starts setting in.

“Was that good, baby?” Your tone just drips with deliciously sinful innocence, god. You've got such a proud expression on your face as he finds the words through his post-coital haze, hands inching back down your ass to grab handfuls of it yet again. Once he's got a grip he tugs, and draws you closer to meet you in a kiss–and as wet as it still is from the exercise, the way you lean into it and giggle is just enough to send his heart burning into passionate flames yet again.

“Very. Always is.” Panting, sweaty, he'd have no trouble convincing the neighbors he was just having it out on a treadmill for the last hour. If he could afford one.

“The best you've ever had?”

“Best. Best and only. Can I get up now?”

“Mmm…” You make a show of thinking up your answer only to tap him on the nose as you lean forward over him. “...No. I like this.”

Mike claps you on the ass suddenly, the smack echoing loudly in his modest little bedroom and eliciting a squeal from you that's just as punctual. Your squirming only draws a heat up inside him again though, and he knows better than anyone that that's exactly what you want. You'd be happy if he never got out of bed again, and if he spent all day with his cock nestled nice and warm inside you.

“Up. I gotta piss. Don't make me count.”

“Fiiiiiiine.” Huffy and puffy as always, you soon relent and slip off with a bit of manoeuvring to flop into bed beside him. “Can I at least hold it?” Rather than say something equally as shameful, he just pushes his pillow over your face with reddened cheeks and ducks with laughter as you launch it back at him, already up and on his way to the bathroom to wash off–and to soon find the evidence of that broken contraception that's definitely gonna plant a seed of worry in him when he realizes. Or…maybe not. God knows how many jokes you've made about wasting his cumshots in your mouth, and how often you've jumped him with no inkling of whether he's got a rubber in reach or not.

Maybe this is just another chapter of life, one more stage he's been readying himself for unconsciously. Whatever it comes with, he's gonna be beside you either way–so in a sense, he's more prepared than he's ever been to face what lies ahead.

#mutuals if u look at me im legally required to gag u #mike schmidt #mike schmidt x reader #spicy writing #fnaf movie #fnaf mike #ellie writes #2k

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forsworned · 7 months ago

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It’s said canonically that simon riley has trauma around intimacy from torture 😔 If you feel comfortable writing it, can I please ask for a short fic of an Afab reader body worshipping/lovingly pleasuring Simon after they both work through his trauma and he’s getting all soft and emotional and babbling about how good reader is making him feel and how much he loves them and can’t believe someone cares about him this much? I always liked the idea of Simon being portrayed as vulnerable and soft and not this dom sex god a lot of people portray him to be. I really love your work and would love to see your take on this request :)

Soft ft. Simon 'Ghost' Riley

Author's Note: So I do recall someone making a post about this and I have to say I do not agree with everything. Men definitely process trauma, specifically sexual trauma a lot differently than women do. While women experience guilt, men experience anger. And maybe it's not all men who experience it that way, but after reading the comic and making my own assessment, I can say that Simon does have lingering anger. Of course, he is hell-bent on avenging his dead family, but all that pent-up energy could be going toward trying to even the score. He is pretty level-headed and able to compartmentalize. He has support from his comrades as well as undergoes mandatory rigorous mental health assessments because that's military protocol. He needs to be able to perform his duties on the field without putting himself or others at risk. He also most certainly gets mandatory counseling. Although he may be reluctant, his superiors are very much aware of the possible impact that it has on his mental health. So all that to say that Simon is not without help. He is not as "damaged" as people may perceive him to be. He's not a broken individual. As seen in the remastered MW's, albeit reluctant he can clearly put his trust in others. He develops relationships with the people who he works closely with meaning he is capable of change. SIGH. I just wish people would break this down a little more, but I do get what you're saying. His masculinity, trust issues, and the type of secret operations he goes on can lessen the effectiveness of the therapy. He's definitely a very complex character with layers to him, but I just don't think he's as weak as you may think he is. It's also important to note that it hasn't been confirmed that this current Simon went through the same thing. He could have a completely different background. Honestly, Activision is so fucking inconsistent but ANYWAYSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS I hope you enjoy this. Also if you read this all the way through, I applaud you. But thank you for enjoying my work, I didn't mean to critique you and your request, but I just couldn't let it slide LOL

Warnings: PnV sex, AFAB!Reader, Some Canon Simon Lore, Sexual Content, Mentions of Sexual Trauma

"Si—Simon..."

You sigh out in pleasure with every roll of your hips as you grind down on him. Your clit grazes against his lower abdomen, and his cock stretches you out pliant. Fingers dig into his shoulders, marking half crescents into his pale, scarred skin. But something feels off.

His hands loosen their grip on your hips, and upon opening your eyes you find him his half-lidded gaze distant in a familiar haze. He isn't present.

"Simon." You halt the rutting of your hips, cupping his stubbly cheeks. "Are you alright?"

His onyx hues fixate on you. He is clearly readjusting his withdrawn eyes to refocus on you. You didn't want to say it yet, but you had felt him go a little soft a few seconds prior. "We can stop."

"No, no." His fingers squeeze your middle as he sits up a bit. You shake your head, but he's not letting up. "Why stop?"

You firmly grasp his face and his blonde lashes flutter up at you with a seemingly unreadable expression, but you're no stranger to Simon's detachment. Although he loathes to admit it, it happens. The relearning of being intimate is tumultuous for him.

"Because you're not mentally here, my love."

He frowns. "But I want y'to finish."

You exhale sharply. He doesn't even deny it. "No, Simon. I'd feel disgusted with myself if I finished while you weren't here with me."

He struggles to reply. In all honesty, he doesn't know what to say. It's not exactly a common occurrence, but he's not too keen on having a conversation about it. You never pry though. His therapy sessions are his own, unless, of course, you join him if he so desires.

Couples counseling is mandatory. A rule you established when you first decided to tie the knot. If you had problems that were beyond just a sit-down talk, a professional would have to intervene. And Simon agreed. No fuss, no muss. To preserve the sacredness of your relationship, he'd do anything.

He sighs. "'m sorry, dovie." He caresses your sides, feeling the gooseberries on your skin rise. A small smile adorns his lips and you giggle at his smugness.

"Stop it." You begin to get off of him, but Simon holds you firmly. You feel his dick harden inside of you, now kissing your cervix. A little gasp escapes your chest as you readjust yourself.

"Y'like tha'?" Simon's grinning now. It's his confidence gleaming through the abysmal darkness of his mind. The life in his eyes feels revitalized, and you now feel his vigor—literally.

"Yes, but..."

"'m here, love." He reaffirms, squeezing your waist again. "'m here. Please, 'm achin' for you."

He groans a bit and bucks his hips when he feels you pulsate around him. You return your own moan, leaning forward but his fingers thread through your hair and he brings you into a sloppy, heated kiss. His hips thrust into you slowly and deeply, earning a guttural moan from him.

For a moment as you withdrew from the kiss, your gazes meet and Simon's eyes soften and become glossy with tears that brim over his oculars and spill over the corners of his eyes.

"Oh, baby." You coo, holding him close as you kiss his face. His sadness is silent, yet palpable. You're now babbling sweet, sweet words to him as you pepper him with kisses, and Simon holds you as if you're going to slip away. You gently guide him through the double inhale technique you learned from your therapist, and with the sweetness of your voice, the kindness in your eyes, and the tenderness of your touch, he feels at ease.

"I dunno how y'put up with me."

You grin, kissing the corner of his lip. "It ain't easy."

"Oh?" He flips you over on your back, pressing you firmly against the mattress and you giggle into the nape of his neck. "Wanna say that again, love?"

You thread your fingers through his sandy blonde hair and kiss the tip of his nose. "You're not hard to love, Simon."

His eyes soften once more and he kisses you deeply. Simon has never cherished anyone more in his life. You were always so patient and kind from the jump. You were truly the "greater woman" behind the "great man".

He rests his forehead against yours and closes his eyes as you gently card your fingers in his hair.

"Thank you, lovie."

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thebibliosphere · 1 year ago

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I love how transparent you are about what its like to be a self published author in this day and age, and i was just wondering if there was a difference on your side between amazon ebook/paperback and audible - and also if Scribd is any better, because i use it as an alternative to amazon whenever possible (and whenever the library doesnt own a copy of whatever im looking for) is it functionally all the same? What is best for you?

Thank you!

I actually did a huge long post a while back when I got the audiobooks produced and uploaded to various platforms. I included Scribd in the breakdown after people falsely claim that Scrib is better for authors than Amazon/Libraries.

A lot of people were not happy when I burst that particular bubble by showing that Scribd paid me 97 cents out of the 19.99 price tag. Which is less than what Audible paid me.

Now, obviously, Scribd is different because it's a subscription service, and you’re paying for access to multiple things with that subscription. But saying it is better than libraries is just false because I also showed the numbers for that, and my income from libraries was several times higher than both Scribd and Amazon combined (for audio), which is why authors are always begging people to request their work in libraries.

Libraries pay us better and are usually free. Not always. I know it depends heavily on the country, but for most of my English-speaking audience, that is the case.

Now, this is not to say people shouldn’t use services like Scribd. If Scribd is what you can afford and it gives you access to things your library can’t fantastic. Please continue to access our work through that legal option. I would much rather earn 97 cents than zero.

But uh, yeah, Amazon pays me more than Scrib for digital stuff and I really don’t like when people who aren’t on the author side spread misinformation and frame it as some more “gotcha.”

The sad truth is Most retailers pay us the same or within the same royalty range. The difference I earn between Kobo vs Kindle is literal pennies with Amazon coming out on top. I make my work available on multiple platforms to give people options, but unless you’re buying directly from my personal storefront, it's all roughly the same.

I do actually earn more from Amazon paperbacks than I do any other retailers (for self-pub, paperbacks are a flat rate regardless of how much a retailer is charging), but the difference is about ten cents, so I always tell people to buy from wherever is best for them.

I like bookshop.org because they give some of the profit on their end to indie bookstores. Same with libro.fm for audio.

Audiobooks are just a whole fucking nightmare. Audible sets your price point for you and takes 80% of your royalties. And because Audible does that, I have to then use that price tag on all other platforms or risk being fucked by the algorithm gods. Other audio retailers take about 60-70% in royalties, most of them veering toward 70%.

As we say in radical acceptance therapy, it is what it is—fucking end-stage monopoly driven capitalism.

Now, speaking personally, when it comes to digital media, I earn the most royalties from my Payhip store where I keep 90% of my income.

That's the best place for me.

It's also why it's worth looking up an author you like to see if they have their own storefront. It doesn't help our sales rankings or put us on any bestseller lists, but frankly after launch week, who cares. I’ll take being able to feed me and my dog.

I hope that helps!

#indie author shit

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queers-gambit · 9 months ago

Text

Talk Shit, Get Hit

prompt: ( requested ) your high school bully picks the wrong day to taunt you and it's up to an equally hotheaded Billy to calm you down. call it irony.

pairing: Billy Hargrove x female!reader characters are ALL aged 18 years old

fandom masterlist: Stranger Things

word count: 5.4k+

note: the reader is aggressive. the reader is violent. the reader’s hands are rated ‘E’ for Everyone.

warnings: you know the drill: author projects instead of going to therapy and uses personal experience as details. there's physical violence, aggressive reader, depiction of shitty home life / toxic family, (somewhat severe) abusive alcoholic parent, parental abandonment, cursing, bullying, Jason Carver's sister is the bully, injury and blood. cursing, threats, brief cigarette and illicit material use (marijuana / weed), i guess this is hurt and comfort, angst, we talk about Billy's abuse with Neil, too, and kinda abrupt ending.

PLEASE NOTE -

this fic will depict parental abuse, both emotional and physical. this fic will discuss an alcoholic parent. this fic will detail physical violence BY the reader.

DO NOT engage if any of these topics potentially trigger you. you will miss nothing if you decide to skip. author implores readers to value and prioritize their own comfort and mental health.

Of all the days Brittany Carver could've chosen, she picked the worst day imaginable to bully you - being akin to a ticking time bomb. To your immense surprise, she'd laid off that entire week, focused on the "big" cheerleading competition she was leading Hawkins High to victory in. It left her no energy to engage in her favorite past time of tormenting you; figuring that after 6 years of her brutal behavior, she had grown up and lost interest. You weren't someone who people bullied easily, but this thing with Brittany, it was some kind of twisted pissing contest; competition brewing in elementary school that boiled over during middle school and now lasted into high school.

However, God seemed to have a sick sense of humor because on the week your bully had temporarily forgotten your existence, things at home had escalated to a new height not previously known. It was true what they said: if it wasn't one thing, it was another.

The entire week, your mother had only been sober for - well - none of it. She was found morning, noon, and night slumped over in various locations around your home with different bottles of liquor in her grip. The house grew messier each day, a direct result of a checked-out parent refusing to do any chore and destructive little monsters that took form as your twin little brothers. You couldn't keep up, playing mother, sister, housewife, personal maid, and full-time student all at once; pushing your stress levels higher, making you bitter and short tempered. The times your mother was conscious, which was typically to find a new bottle of alcohol, she was a right nasty fuck.

Her bark matched her bite; not only yelling at you, belittling you, and gaslighting you - but also using physical aggression to "teach you a lesson" for being "disorderly" or "a waste of semen" - and yes, that is a direct quote. Her hands were dainty from malnourishment, bulging veins prominent, and despite your father abandoning the family ages go, she still wore her diamond wedding ring that left small cuts wherever she struck you. The times she wasn't sober enough to really "get" you, she put out cigarettes on your arms and thighs; leaving tiny, circular burn scars you coated in Neosporin. She’s been known to break a few wooden cooking spoons over your head, steal the money made from babysitting, even cashed-in your inheritance - pawning all of your dead grandmother’s jewelry. There were plenty of other examples, but dwelling on those instances wouldn't change the past or alter your future, so you stuffed them way deep down in your soul.

Naturally, you didn't say a Goddamn thing; under the impression that everyone had shitty family members they tolerated and that your home life was normal enough to not report to the police. You didn't know any better, you didn't know that your mother downing fifths of alcohol daily was cause for concern. You didn't know that abuse wasn't the standard - emotional or physical. It took years for you to learn that love wasn't supposed to hurt, that love wasn't supposed to scare you, that love wasn't selfish, that your mother didn't actually love you. It took years to convince yourself that you were worthy of love and acceptance, never receiving it from your mother - not knowing you could get it from anyone else.

And then, William fucking Hargrove - or Billy - breezed into your small hometown with a sweet denim-clad ass, golden, curly mullet, and a bad fucking attitude that rivaled your own.

It was a match made in heaven. Or hell.

You both suffered at the hands of your parental figures, turning abrasive and foul-mouthed as defense mechanisms. You and Billy developed hardened exteriors in an effort to protect your soft insides, and when you met officially, it was as if you two could see past that hard shell - straight through the bullshit. You recognized much of the same in one another - like looking in a mirror - and grew impossibly close in an incredibly short amount of time; grateful to have a second half who understood without ever needing explanation.

He just got you. Able to identify common threads between you. Billy understood you, having more empathy than you thought he could muster. He protected you. He loved you. He took care of you - and you did the exact same, considering you two were cut from the same cloth; wanting to assure him he was just as worthy of love as you.

Billy was known around Hawkins for being a womanizing jock with anger issues, and yet, when you finally agreed to go on a date with him, he never even looked at another girl twice. He felt as if dating his best friend, understanding that nobody else would truly understand him the way you do - so he did what he could to keep you.

He did his best to defend you, but there was only so many tangible things the star basketball player could protect you from. Gossip and petty cheerleaders, prime examples. Yet Billy still tried, even taking the liberty to confront Brittany's brother, Jason Carver, about leaving you alone. Unfortunately, it was as if Billy's concern spurred on the cheerleader's bullying, calling you pathetic for hiding behind a man and sending him to fight your battles. You told Billy to stay out of it, that you could handle the situation by yourself, that he would just make the situation much more sticky.

So he did. Billy backed off, letting you deal with the situation as best you deemed; offering his support in return, being a shoulder to cry on for the days your frustration peaked.

That entire week Brittany didn't bully you had been extraordinarily tiresome due to your mother's abuse, wanting to confide in Billy but refraining when you rationalized not bringing him into your bullshit. He had enough of his own. So, while, yes, it was a comfort to have him on your side, you never indulged Billy on the woes of your life. He was meant to be your escape, not your savior; the burden of shouldering your abuse while enduring his own feeling terribly unfair.

You kept quiet, even though you were silently begging for someone to save you. Yet you weren't a damsel, there was no Prince Charming, brave knight, chosen champion to slay the dragons terrorizing you.

However, your boyfriend was much more intuitive than you realized. You always prided yourself on your acting skills, convincing everyone around you that you were indifferent to your mother's temperament, even when showing up at school with a casted wrist, black eye, and split bottom lip. Turns out, parents in Hawkins gossiped much more than the kids, and soon, it felt like the entire town knew about your abusive alcoholic mother and runaway father. Nobody did anything to help you, they just tiptoed around the knowledge and stared at your injuries. Brittany Carver was the only person stupid enough to make the mistake of weaponizing your home situation.

It was a tepid spring afternoon, the sun peaking through the clouds and the first flowers sprouting from the thawing ground. The bell rang to dismiss for lunch, the hallways filled with mingling and milling students all grateful for the midday break. Some gathered in gaggles of friends, some headed directly for the cafeteria, and others, like you, utilized the time to exchange morning class books for afternoon materials. Your fractured wrist had long since healed, but there was a long, straight scar present as a result from the surgery you required; currently, a scabbing cut over your eyebrow, lips stinging from where the flesh split, with a collection of bruises turning different colors to represent various healing stages.

Today simply hadn't been your day.

After a week of constant alcohol-fueled battery, you felt your frustrations finally crescendo after being assigned 3 separate essays; doubling your stress, shortening your fuse, and creating heavy leaded dread as the minutes ticked by. Everyone else felt giddy for the spring-tastic weekend, wanting time to go faster so they could go home - but not you. You might've been the one teenager in the city - no, no, the county - no, wait! The state - WAIT, NO... The country, who didn't want to leave school. You didn't want the day to end and be forced out of your safety zone; anxiety twisting your stomach and prickling your skin at the thought of returning home.

Truthfully, you spent several nights a week at Billy's, being snuck in through his window; feeling unsafe in your own home and wanting to remain close without voicing your need for his proximity. You felt stronger with Billy, as if you could take on the world; as if your safety and wellbeing were (finally) a real priority. He took great pride in being that safe haven for you, thinking it a nice change of pace as he often never seized opportunities to prove himself compassionate and caring. Billy was known for being a brute, someone aggressive and commandeering; nobody associating "safety" with him - except you.

However, this wasn't one of those weekends you'd be able to sneak out, being forced into caring for your two wee brothers; them needing you, dependent on you, relying on the care and love you provide them.

As a result of your shitty week, you had been a right, foul bitch to those unfortunate enough to engage you. Being well aware of your attitude, you tried to avoid everyone, not wanting to lash out at innocent peers - labeling yourself a bitch because of your impeccable self-awareness. Though, no matter the labels you assigned, you simply couldn't rein your emotions into check given your anxiety over returning home overpowered your brain.

Knowing you'd be forced to defend yourself against your own mother set your teeth on edge, projecting your horrible mood onto anyone in your vicinity - making most keep their distance.

Keyword: most.

Much like her brother, captain of the basketball team, Jason Carver, Brittany Carver wasn't the brightest bulb of the bunch. She never picked up hints, she didn't bother reading the room or in-between any lines; she held little to no regard for those around her or their emotional state. Brittany just wanted to assert herself as Queen Bee and thought the best way to achieve that was by bullying those she deemed lesser then she. It gave her a power trip, made her feel swollen with importance, boosting her ego because in her mind, she'd rather be feared than loved.

Brittany was dressed in her pretty, pressed, and bright cheer uniform; her obnoxiously blonde hair tied in a high ponytail that swished dramatically with each step. She wore cherry flavored lip gloss, her make-up caked, skirt hiked higher than school regulation permitted because she suckled at the teat for attention - good or bad.

You heard the second bell ring and finished shoving books in your locker, trying to stuff notebooks in your bag when your locker was suddenly violently slammed shut. Flinching at the quick movement and aggressive bang, you glared at whoever dared interrupt you; a manicured hand flat on the metal to keep the locker closed.

"The fuck you want, Brittany?"

"Awh, someone's already got their panties in a twist," she mocked, two of her cronies giggling their support. "C'mon, babe, I was just stopping by to say hello - missed you this week!"

"Oh, for sure," you sneered in a sickly-sweet tone, "of course you missed me, your life is so much more boring without me in it, huh? Wow, seriously, Brittany, I'm flattered to be the main character in your life, too."

Her eyes rolled and one of the other cheerleaders at her flank, Jennifer, popped flavorless gum. "I'm surprised you still have this level of spunk and cheek to talk like that, would've thought Mommy Dearest beat it out of you by now - she hits you often enough, right? Doesn't she? Hmm, well, maybe she needs to hit you a little harder."

"Excuse me?" You snapped.

"You heard me!" She laughed. "Obviously your mom isn't teaching you any lessons since you still have this whole emo-attitude going on. But I can't say I blame her, you're such a bitch - I'd smack the shit outta you, too."

You nodded slowly, not realizing several students had paused themselves to watch the exchange; knowing this was a longtime coming and didn't want to miss the inevitable drama. Dropping your backpack, you asked, "You sure? You really wanna hit me?"

"Is it that hard to believe? I mean," she smirked, "your own mother does - of course, I do, too. Like, seriously, it's not a secret why she hits you - just look at you! No wonder she hates you, you're just a waste of space, resources, and money. Damn shame Billy doesn't see it yet, but don't worry, he will." She laughed again, "He'll get tired of reopening your lip every time you kiss. It's so pathetic and ugly, he'll start to crave what you can't offer. I mean, seriously, what guy with any self-respect wants to date a girl as broken as you?"

"Know what, Brittany?" You growled, balling your fists at your side. "I'll give you one free hit."

"Excuse me, what?"

"Yeah," your head nodded, "go ahead. One free, clean shot. Hit me if you want to so bad, but you'll only get just this one shot."

Her eyes rolled, "I don't need to, your mom's got that covered."

"Free hit, Brit," you taunted, gesturing, "c'mon, go 'head, lemme have it. Since I'm so insufferable, go right ahead - get your clean hit."

Jennifer and Jasmine shared strange looks, the latter nudging, "Just do it, Brittany, shut this stupid bitch the hell up."

"Yeah, Brittany, shut me the hell up."

She looked to her little goons with a smirk, shrugged and handing over her backpack. When Brittany turned again, she dramatically wound her arm back and used her full strength to swing her fist into your cheek; only making your head turn a fraction from impact. You hummed and nodded, the cheerleader laughing with her girls as if she had "shown you" - but her amusement died when she noticed you barely reacted.

You smirked, cracking your neck, "My turn!"

Your knuckle cracked the bridge of the cheerleader's nose - sick sound of a snap ringing in your ears and jolting the girl's head backwards; momentum forcing her to stumble. Brittany shrieked in pain, holding her nose, unable to defend herself as you launched your attack; first slamming her back into the lockers before jabbing your fist into any vulnerable spot you could.

Similar to the movies, you held Brittany by her hair to keep her in place; wailing your punches repeatedly, each hit making Britt bang into the lockers. Jennifer and Jasmine tried to pull you away but both earned their own punches or elbows to the face for the interference. You focused on Brittany, instantly curating a flock of students all eager to watch.

"FIIIIIIGHT!"

"GIRL FIGHT!"

"BEAT HER ASS, Y/N!"

Brittany sobbed as blood dribbled down her front, staining her pretty uniform, but you were just getting started. The hallway turned noisy, a circle forming around you four as all three cheerleaders were staved off; you running on pure anger, adrenaline, and overflowing frustration that encouraged your foot to kick Britt's gut. You'd never admit it, but Brittany's mocking had hurt you past words, made you feel vulnerable, disarmed, as if you were damaged, undeserving goods. With each punch or kick or stomp, you remembered a different instance of your mother's abuse, seeing her face instead of Brittany's; spurring you on with unrestrained force.

In the parking lot, Billy was leaning on his car with a few teammates from the basketball team and enjoying a hearty nicotine-filled break. Though they'd never label it as such, the boys exchanged idle gossip; listening to Conrad Jones detail his latest conquest, sneering about how "easy" Kennedy Stephens was. They were interrupted when Kyle Lambert sprinted up to them, sneakers skidding over asphalt, panting dramatically, "Billy! Billy! Y-You gotta come see this, man! You gotta help!"

"What?" He asked, taking a drag from his cigarette.

"I-It's your girl - it's Y/N!"

He pushed off his car that was supporting his weight, demanding, "What about her?"

"You gotta come quick, man, you gotta see this! It's fucking wild! Brittany, Jennifer, and Jasmine tried jumping her - "

Billy was surging across the carpark instantly, tossing his cigarette away before yanking the school doors open. He was instantly greeted by the chaotic sight and sounds of a fight, peers gathered in a large circle; screaming their support and hollering encouragement.

"Billy! Oh, thank God!!" Chrissy Cunningham cried, waving him closer. "You have to help! You have to do something, it's 3-on-1!"

He didn't acknowledge the strawberry blonde, just started instantly shoving through the crowd to reach the edge of the fight. It wasn't the sight he was anticipating - fearing the worst, now pleasantly surprised (and a little turned on).

Blood was splattered on the linoleum floors, a single streak smeared on the lockers. Jennifer was left on the ground with her back against the metal, sporting a busted lip as Jasmine was trying to coax her to her feet - sporting a ruddy face and disheveled look. Left in the center, to the entertainment of the crowd, was you on top of Brittany Carver, heaving your fist time and again into her face.

"Shit," he breathed, intending to step forward to stop the fight but needing to shove Tommy H. out of his way when he stepped forward.

"C'mon, man! It's a girl fight! Don't break it up!" Tommy begged, but Billy bullied through.

"All right, that's enough," he grunted, wrapping his arms around your middle and heaving you up and back a step - needing to engage his core and arms when you wriggled in an effort to free yourself. "Hey, hey, hey - "

"Lemme go! This bitch needs put in the ground!"

"Jesus Christ, when did you get this strong?" He grunted, your feet slipping on blood but still being restrained by your boyfriend's impressive strength.

"Talk your shit again, bitch!" You barked at Brittany, who was sobbing in pain and curling into herself. "Lemme hear you say another Goddamn word, you'll need more than another nose job! Fake ass, plastic bitch!"

Jason joined the center and knelt at his sister's side, helping her sit up, glaring at you and Billy. Your boyfriend grit his teeth when Jason snarled, "You need to muzzle your bitch, Billy!"

"I'll fuck you up for talkin' about her like that, Carver, don't provoke me. Watch yourself," Billy snapped in warning, successfully managing to get you behind him.

However, you dodged around him with only enough time to spit hatefully on Brittany, warning, "You wanna talk shit, you'll get hit! Don't let me hear you again - don't you ever dare say another word about my mama! I'll put you in the ground, bitch, fucking try me! I dare you! Try me again, say shit about my mama, and see what the fuck I do!"

"All right, all right, you made your point," Billy stiffly told you, pulling you away by force to avoid you actually killing Brittany. He got a look at her injuries, thinking there must've been more than a broken nose from the way her uniform was stained and her entire face bloodied. "C'mon, we gotta get outta here, come with me - c'mon, baby, you can't touch her anymore, you made your point, you'll end up killin' her or some shit," he panted, shoving through the crowd and effectively ending the fight.

Billy didn't let go of your form until finally outside - letting you rip yourself away as your blood boiled, adrenaline making you much stronger. He watched you pace; huffing, puffing, seething, all but gnashing your teeth hatefully. "That fucking bitch had it coming, Bee, it was self defense!" You finally explained.

"Oh, yeah, princess, totally looked like it," he scoffed, blocking the doors in case you tried to go back. He lit another cigarette.

"It was, you condescending asshole!" You snapped, eyes ablaze and anger tangible. "She approached me, she ran her mouth, and she hit me first!"

"Well," he sighed, "whatever the reason, it's not worth jail time for beating her to death."

"Might be."

"Ain't nothing worth throwing your life away," he offered you the cigarette, but you refused. "Why don't you just tell me what happened? What'd she say?"

"It doesn't matter, Billy."

"I think it matters when she looks like she's gonna need a blood transfusion to replenish what she's lost."

"Whatever - let it be a lesson that you shouldn't throw stones if you're scared of a boulder."

Billy sighed, smoke blown from his mouth, "C'mon, doll, tell me what happened?"

"Doesn't matter, it's done, it's over, it's in the past."

"Baby, I can't help you if you don't talk to me."

"You can't help, period, Billy! There's nothing you can do!"

"Well, you're not even letting me try!"

"'Cause it's redundant!"

"Obviously not when you look like a raging bull!"

Your eyes rolled, head shaking, "I handled it."

"I saw," he scoffed. "So, 3-on-1? How'd that happen?"

"I told you, they approached me."

"Well, I'm gonna need a little more to go on. C'mon, pretty girl, the fuck just happened? You know you can get suspended!" This made you freeze, muscles clamming up, looking purely petrified as if the thought hadn't occurred to you. "I know you don't want that, but if you talk to me, maybe I can help lessen whatever punishment."

"Oh, whatever, like I care about being punished," you snipped, hands twisting together - telling Billy you were beginning to get anxious.

"I think you do, it'd put you in the house with your mom alone," he trailed, pushing away from the doors to approach you like a baby deer. "C'mon, I know you don't wanna get suspended, so just tell me what happened."

"I'm sure you'll hear all about it from your little basketball buddies."

"I don't fucking care!" He snapped with the cigarette trapped and bobbing between his lips, making you look at him in mild shock. "There's gonna be a hundred different rumors, whole fuckin' school watched you beat the shit outta those girls - but I only care about what you have to say."

"There's no point - "

"Oh, Jesus Christ," he growled, snatching the cig between his knuckles, "I just saw three bitches on the ground, all injured, beaten up, bleeding - so stop being so Goddamn stubborn and just tell me! I'm tryna help you!"

"You pulled me off of her, you've helped plenty."

"I'd like to understand how this happened."

"It won't change anything."

"No, it won't, but you have a side to the story. Tell me what went wrong? What happened?"

You sighed, no longer pacing, planting both hands on your hips. Your head shook as Billy tossed the filtered cigarette butt aside, muttering when he exhaled the last of the smoke, "It seems so stupid now."

"Hey," he soothed, crowding into your space and taking one of your hands in his. "Whatever it is, I'm sure it wasn't stupid. You're forgetting, I know well enough to understand you wouldn't throw a punch unless absolutely necessary. Whatever got you riled up like that ain't stupid, sweetheart."

Like a glazed donut, your eyes turned glassy. Billy frowned and took your other hand off your hip, forcing your attention on him. "I swear, I didn't start it," you whispered.

"Only matters that you finished it," he smirked. "Tell me, what the fuck was all that?"

You sighed deeply, offering meekly, "Guess they had it comin'..."

"I know they did," Billy chuckled. "Nobody's that stupid to provoke you, except Brittany."

"I was at my locker... They approached and slammed it shut."

"Right, okay..."

"There were words exchanged, but Brittany, she - " You paused, swallowing thickly, "she started talkin' shit about my mom, about, you know, what she does..."

Billy understood instantly. "You fuckin' serious?" He growled, seeing you nod and fill him in on what was said - unable to look him in the eye as you relived your anger. By the end, you were trembling in emotion and adrenaline loss, Billy sighing deeply and yanking you into his chest for a tight embrace. "All right, yeah," he mumbled, "should've put them bitches in the ground."

"And now," you sniffled, "I'm gonna get suspended, forced to stay home with Ma all next week."

"We'll get you outta it."

"Can't, the school doesn't tolerate fighting on school grounds."

"You said she swung first?"

"Technically, yes. I might've - allegedly - prompted her into it."

"It's still selfdefense, toots, no matter what you or anyone said - if she swung first and hit you, you were only defending yourself."

You shrugged, resting on his chest, "You see the damage? Admin won't care who swung first - not when they're beat to shit."

"Yeah, there's my li'l hothead," he smirked, chuckling slightly before pecking the top of your head. "But you gotta admit, it's impressive how you took on all three."

"I guess, doesn't exactly feel like an accomplishment."

"Nah, princess, seriously," he pulled you back to look at him again, "that's fuckin' hot. I mean, they approached you and still got their asses handed to 'em. That's straight skill."

"Or just a lot of anger with nowhere to go," you frowned. "Think I should go find admin?"

"Nah, they'll probably find you - "

The doors opened and your name was called, the principal's secretary waving you to her. "Fuck," you whispered, releasing Billy.

"I'll come with you," he promised, lacing your fingers together when he took your hand. Billy had to admit, it was a little weird being in the principal's office but not being the one in trouble; waiting without patience in a fraying chair, picking at the exposed stuffing with his leg bouncing. He'd been there 45 minutes, skipping the last half of classes, just waiting as you were behind a closed door with the principal, vice principal, and the disciplinary officer.

He looked up when the school nurse lead Brittany, Jennifer, and Jasmine inside - glaring at them but admiring the scattering of cuts and bruises with dried blood on their precious uniforms. A few minutes later, you were exiting the office with a passive and neutral expression settled on your face. Your lip curled only slightly when you clocked the cheerleaders - hating how smug they all looked - approaching Billy instantly.

"You all right?" He checked, standing and adjusting his jeans.

"Mhm," you nodded, keeping your voice low as the principal called the three cheerleaders into his office. You waited until the door was closed, then informed with a smirk, "I'm not suspended."

"No?"

"Nope," you confirmed. "Apparently, they asked a couple other kids what happened and my story matches theirs. I was minding my business, they came up to me, they started mouthing off, and Brittany was the one who hit me first. So," you shrugged, "guess your idea of selfdefense held strong."

"See? That's good, huh?"

"Yeah," you sighed, nodding absently, "but he said the girls were gonna lose their spot on the cheer squad for this. Listen, I don't think I feel like goin' back to class - kinda just wanna take a nap."

Billy hiked up his jean jacket sleeve, consulting his watch for a moment. "Wanna head to mine? Neil's got the evening shift and Susan has bridge club for a few more hours - we'd be alone."

Your eyes rolled, "No offense, Bee, I don't feel like fucking right now."

"I'm not sayin' that, I'm sayin' let's go nap at mine," he chuckled, picking up your backpack that you forgot about. "We can come back to get your brothers but you know you're not gonna rest if you go home."

You gulped, sighing sadly, "Yeah, well, about that..."

"Something else happen?"

"Apparently... The school has an obligation to call the police if a student reports abuse."

"You reported your mom?"

"Not on purpose," you rushed in defense, "just that... I had to explain what Brittany said to me - so I had to admit what Ma did - or does."

Billy frowned, "Jesus."

"Yeah, so... Maybe going home isn't the smartest idea right now. I wouldn't wanna be there when they conduct their wellness check."

"You wanna stay at mine?" He offered.

"What about Neil?"

"He's a lot nicer with you around," he admitted. "Won't care too much if you stay the night. Plus Max has that club thing after school, then she's going to the arcade; so, she won't need a ride, we can just go."

"You know what? Sure, all right, I'll come to yours," you accepted, your lover boy whisking you away without a second thought. "Thank you, baby."

Your hands were stiff, and when you looked at them, noted split skin and stained blood as a reminder of your aggression... Wondering why the fuck people pushed you to these limits and acted surprised when you reacted? If they wanted a punching bag, they picked the wrong one - but you were willing to remind them.

When you got to the Hargrove residence, you were silent as the grave; stewing in your anger that rolled off you in projected waves. Billy was terribly disarmed, unsure how to properly comfort you - wondering how he would want to be comforted, realizing he'd want to be alone, not subject to anyone's bullshit advice. So, he did what he knew and after handing you a bag of frozen peas for your split knuckles, comfortably stripped and crashed in bed with the window cracked and a rolled joint between his fingers.

You rested on his bare chest, sighing deeply while watching the end of the spliff come to life in a smoldering ember. Billy took the first inhale to make sure it was lit and instantly handed it to you, his arm snug around you and the silence hanging in the air like the swirls of stale, exhaled smoke.

"I'm sorry it got to this point, pretty girl," He offered awkwardly, his other arm bending to prop under his head. Both of you stared off aimlessly, stereo filling the space dully in the background.

"Not your fault," You inhaled and held your breath, handing him the joint. He casually flicked the end in an ashtray resting on the window sill.

"No, but I could've done more."

You chuckled, smoke seeping through your lips and teeth, "Oh, yeah? How? You gonna beat up three girls?"

"Nah but I could beat the shit outta Jason."

"What good would that do?"

"If he didn't want a weekly black eye, Jason would control his sister."

"It's always about control with you, isn't it?"

"I'm just saying," he handed the joint back, lungs pinched to hold the smoke, "I could protect you."

"You already do, baby."

"Let me do more, princess."

"You can't fight every battle for me."

"You could let me try."

"You'd be fighting on two fronts," you frowned, exhaling slowly. "Can't fight for me when you're defending yourself against Neil."

"Might be easier to deal with your shit than my own," he chuckled without humor, accepting the spliff. "Look, I know you don't want me involved, but that's kinda what a boyfriend's supposed to do, right? Protect their woman?"

"I wouldn't know."

"Never had a boyfriend before?"

"Nobody was worth dating until you. Nobody could understand me the way you do so effortlessly."

"'Cause we're one and the same, baby girl. You don't have to do everything by yourself," he inhaled, handing the spliff over again, "don't always have t'be strong."

"Ain't no other choice."

"You could let me in more..."

"You're one to talk."

He sighed, smoke billowing. "You're right. Can't expect you to open up if I don't, so why don't we both try to let the other in more? Yeah, I get it, the shit we deal with ain't pretty but at least we understand each other, right? We're the best for each other to lean on."

"I don't wanna drag you into my bullshit, baby."

"I want you to drag me in, princess. I wanna help you."

You sighed, "Well, Brittany and her cronies are getting suspended and kicked off the cheer squad - they'll be looking for reason to take it out on me."

"Say the word, baby, and I'll beat Jason black-and-blue."

"You're so romantic."

"Only for you - so don't tell anyone. I got a reputation to protect."

You both snickered as the weed you indulged in took effect, lulling you two into a state of ease. Your knuckles had stopped burning, resting your injured hand under the frozen peas, reminding yourself to remain grateful in this turbulent period of life because now, you had someone on your team. Someone who wanted to help carry your baggage. Someone without alternate motives. Someone who was willing to withstand the storm in the hope of feeling the warmth of the sun again.

requesting rules and masterlist

Stranger Things masterlist

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a-driftamongopenstars · 5 days ago

Text

alright, i finally finished Dragon Age the Veilguard.

tldr; 3/10. I didn't like it.

If you enjoyed the game and would rather keep enjoying it, please don't click the read more section as what follows is rather critical.

I can finally sit down with my thoughts and put them together in a more cohesive structured review, touching on most things that I wanted to address. I'll start with positives and then focus on the negatives.

Warning, this is VERY long.

Overall, I had a neutral to negative impression of DatV, which got worse by the end of the game. It had some good moments, but they were entirely unexplored and underutilized, suffering from bad writing. While the game itself is rather pretty, it didn't outweigh the dialogues, the stories and the lore butchering that took place.

1. Environment and visuals. 8/10.

I think Veilguard is a very beautiful game. I enjoyed exploring the corners of this new world, the little bits of environment design and storytelling that it had. It felt magical, certain locations were mesmerizing! I couldn't stop staring at the valley where you go to with Harding, the carcass of a titan.

2. Combat. 9/10.

I love flashy combat, I enjoy hack and slash, so until the very end of the game I was having most fun in combat. Yes there was repetitiveness but I tried to combat (hehe) it with changing my abilities and weapons every now and then. I liked combos and I liked timed parries. Enemy tactics got a bit boring by the end, but a few enemies still surprised me and challenged me.

.... That's where positives end. Now on to the negatives.

1. Characters. 2/10.

I don't understand what happened. Almost all the characters in this game were tuned down to a two-dimensional personality, "good" and "bad" - and absolutely no nuance. This happened not only to the villains, but to the different NPCs and even our companions. Their interests got narrowed down to single points of interest (Lucanis and coffee being a prime example to me), their motivations got watered down.

This is not what I expect from a Bioware game. I want to be challenged, I want to dislike characters or approve of their choices. I like characters who are messy and complex and don't always have their shit together.

I like villains who may have other reasons for their choices, other than "ba ha ha, I am so evil and I will do evil things". Where is Alexius who sold himself to the Elder one, just so he could save his beloved son? Where is Samson, forsaken by the Chantry and turned to red lyrium with his addiction? Where is Calpernia, misguided in her choices, just to free the slaves of Tevinter?

Where are the slaves of Tevinter anyway?? That's another topic.

2. Rook. 4/10.

On one hand, I liked playing Rook. They were stoic but with a humorous side, ready to get the job done, compassionate to other people.

The problem is that it's the only Rook you can really play. The protagonist is set in their ways and their dialogues and there is very little to roleplay. Rook really does feel like a gentle manager, trying to get everyone to play along nicely, while providing therapy every now and then, and is excluded from the majority of friendly interactions with other people. That awkward glance everyone gives you after their banter is embarrassing. The way you can third wheel people, the way the game actively offers you to leave a couple of animated conversations between other people - why even include those? Why not make Rook a part of the 'team'?

I did like Rook's dynamic with Solas. They got to see a different side of him, one that's not presented heavily in Inquisition. But like everything else, it felt surface level and underexplored.

3. Story arc. 2/10.

I am left unsatisfied with the story. The pacing threw me off so much nearly every quest, it was hard to stay on track. From "we need to solve this NOW" to "actually, let's all slow down and deal with our problems", the plot's priorities were all over the place. We kept hearing about the gods and their destructive oppression, but we saw surprisingly little of it. Yes, there was the Blight, yes there were Venatori and the Antaam, but they felt more like a video game fodder and dressing rather than a part of the story.

Not to mention that all of those things made little sense to me. Why would the gods align with aforementioned factions? Why would the aforementioned factions align with the elven gods? In-game explanation was not enough for me, it did not make sense. Not with the established lore in the previous games.

I also did not enjoy the ending. While the idea of Solas binding himself to the Veil is good and does make sense, what was suggested as the good ending (inviting Mythal to deal with Solas essentially) actually left me feeling awful. I sent a man, full of regrets and self-loathing, on a lonely journey to figure himself out. That... did not sit right with me at all. Neither did the fact that Northern Thedas, supposedly the point of the gods' attack, gets to live and flourish, while Southern Thedas is dying of starvation and blight. That is UNHINGED to me.

4. Music. 1/10.

There was no music. I remember one track. It was not memorable whatsoever and I can't believe they hired Hans Zimmer to do exactly nothing. Just wow.

5. Lore. ???/10.

And here is the worst offender. What was done with Dragon Age lore is unacceptable. I was doing a head-in-hands every five minutes. This was a slap in the face of so many fans who enjoyed the three prior games and delved into deep, interesting lore of various races, countries, cultures and religions. Veilguard showed a big middle finger to all that.

Everyone has already touched upon the sanitization of different factions. From the suddenly slaveless Tevinter to found family Antivan Crows, everything has been scrubbed clean and made sweet and palatable and "good".

The Dalish clans have been removed from existence as we know them. The Antaam left the Qun? Don't even get me started on that. The Chantry has no influence in this game? Really? The Chantry? The biggest religion in Thedas? The one that we know has heavy presence in the Anderfels, the Black Divine in Tevinter? That Chantry?

I think it really hit me how disrespectful the game is during the quest of saving the Dalish elves, where apparently Elgar'nan's Venatori, uplifted to be his servants and chosen people, were trying to sacrifice them. It's a gross and oddly telling idea that the ancient Elven god turned to a faction of racist mages to sacrifice elven people. I actually can't believe I'm writing this. Just how much are you going to shaft these people? Mindboggling.

There is a lot more I have to say on this specific topic, and I probably will later, but the idea is this.

6. Romances. 2/10.

Whoever said this is a game with romance lied so hard. So hard. The romance was atrocious. From the badly written flirting to the lack of romantic scenes (I romanced Davrin), to the poorly timed and awkward 'final' romance moment... It was atrocious. I felt no connection between Rook and Davrin beyond what game was telling me. My actual companions got more screen time with their romances than me and my LI.

Damn, even Evka and Antoine, my single most beloved NPCs in this game, had more romance going on that my Rook.

---

All in all, Veilguard was a massive let down. After having enjoyed the first 3 games many times over, with multiple playthroughs, I was so excited to see how the story of the Inquisition, of the elves, would end. When I saw the first trailer for VG, I knew I would never get to see it. When I played the game, I was left with disappointment and disdain.

I'm glad there are people who enjoyed this game, genuinely. I'm sure there's something to find for anyone, but it was not for me. Nor was it for many other people. It was a let down. I feel like I'll never get the conclusion I wanted - so I'll have to write my own I guess.

I have more thoughts on this game that I might be sharing, but for now this is the review I wanted to write. Thanks for reading!

#dragon age #dragon age the veilguard #veilguard critical #bioware critical #adrift babbles

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grimdarling69 · 3 months ago

Text

Another deaged Dan and ellie or otherwise known as Crack.

Pt1 pt2 pt3. pt4

Jason was out patrolling Crime Alley when Clark called him freaking out.

Clark was currently in the doghouse with most of the bats and his sons. While most of it wasn't really his fault his family wasn't really the letting go type. He would know.

"What the hell do you want." He grimaced, that came out a lot rougher than he intended but sue him his brother had been missing for a week and they still were no were closer to finding him.

"Jason! How can you tell which rich men are predators?" What the hell.

"Get here now."

Which is how he came to be sitting across from a crisscross apple sauced Superman in his nearest safe house nursing a beer.

"I overheard something today at work." Kill him now. He was about to pull out a cyanide pill if this fucker didn't stop beating around the goddamn bush.

"What don't you overhear." He took another swing of his beer. He'd need plenty of it if Clark was gong to pester him for some fucking story while his brother was out there who knows where with God knows who, doing fucking anything. He could feel the green starting to rise and he did his best to push it back down but his vision was still tinged. It was happening a lot more often lately.

"Lex Luthor is apparently a sex trafficker." Atleast he was no longer beating around the bush but what the fuck? He knows the top suspect is Luthor and he's going to make a fucking joke about that. This was so not funny.

" I don't know what your playing at but you better explain yourself before I put a kryptonite bullet in your head." This fucker was going to singlehandedly destroy all his hardwork in therapy.

" One of my coworker's moms works at lexcorp, she called him today talking about the fact lex had two sick kids hanging around but disappeared and that a new one apparently showed up sick as well, last week." That got his attention.

"I also overheard her say he was experimenting on all of them and that the newest one spent time in Luthors own bedroom." He was going to cut Lexs dick off and shove it so far down his throat it was going to come out the other end. The green was suffocating.

"You think it's Damian."

"Who else? But the other kids I'm not sure." The other kids could have been surrogates for Damian but he was missing something. Kids because Lex has now kidnapped two other kids and experimented on them. And was probably hurting or experimenting on Damian in all kinds of ways he didn't even want to think about. The green spiking and flooding his senses, urging him to put down down anything that hurt his baby brother his...fraid? What the hell? He shook that thought off, that's never happened before. The green never allowed him to have such clear and borderline strange thoughts before.

"We need to go to the batcave." Shoving his helmet on, not even waiting for Clark's response, he'd beat him their anyway.

‐------------

Jon was sat perched on the rocks high in the cave, listening for even a hint of wherever Damian had gone. His dad who he was absolutely pissed at bad arrived and asked everyone to to 'please listen to whatever he and Jason have to say before you interupt'. Which led to a lot of shouting and arguing he was ignoring. He already knew what it was about he had been straining listening to every single person mentioning lex luthor.

He couldn't imagine Damian in that position. It wasn't that he didn't understand it could happen to anyone it was just disbelief that it could happen to... his best friend, who he's had a crush on for years. He obviously knew that no one was infallible, much less Damian, but he couldn't help think it. Damian always seemed untouchable.

Eventually, everybody quieted down again and went back to their own things. The quiet was unwelcome. He'd been having strange dreams since before he heard of Damian's disappearance.

They always started out normal enough. He was walking in a park that seemed familiar, but he knows for a fact he's never been to. After a while, he comes to a picnic table with various snacks and drinks thrown around in smaller piles like they were transfered from someone's arms to quickly care.

A boy with bright orange hair, covered in freckles everywhere, he can see wearing a basketball jersey attempting to twirl a ball on one finger, his hands are covered in colorful markers, both drawing snd wikd splotches. He instinctively recognizes him as 'Wes' even though he has no clue who he is. 'Wes' briefly tries to wave at him but loses his grip on his ball and has to chase it down the hill, cursing all the way. When he turned the back of his legs, have punctured, looking scars on them like something grabbed him and dragged him around, seering fangs into his flesh.

Another boy 'Tuck' is typing madly at what he can recognize as a PDA even though he's only seen them on old TV. He's placed in the center surrounded by tools most on his left and right side like he picked them up and threw them back down too quickly to care. His hands have several scars, but his left arm is the worst, 3rd degree burns healed, but still looked painful. His tongue is sticking out the side of his mouth, and he keeps pushing his dreads underneath a red beanie, but before his hands even touches his device, they've already slid back out.

There's two other girls side by side, one shooting airplanes and attempting to get the other to 'play with her'. One 'Val' his mind supplies somehow, has darker skin, and wears a typical y2k outfit complete with a flip-phone she secured on her body with a yellow ribbon. Her face has a huge jagged scar running from the side, almost touching her mouth as if her head slammed on something sharp, then dragged downward purposefully and other smaller scars on everywhere else. She looks straight out of one of his mom's old photo books rather than a 2000s fashion enthusiast. She smirks at him and waves her finger at him in a 'come hither' kinda way.

The other girl 'ellie', wear more baggy clothes, the knees are torn and darker from wear and tear rather than on purpose like what he himself has worn. From the little skin she shows he can see both bruising new and old with quite a few 'narley' looking scars. She sees him and waves, smiling brightly, she grabs one of the paper airplane and throws it into the sky. 'Ellie' then waves her hands around in a motion that looks like it was practiced for more effects than practical. Wind billows past her making the paper go soaring for a brief minute before it self-destructive under the stress of the wind. She pouts and stomps her foot before grabbing another one and trying again.

He continues past her and sits near 'val'. Val grabs his shoulders and snaps a phota on her phone. "Say cheese," she says through her teeth, smiling joyfully. For some reason, he obeys her command and smiles softly at the camera. He feels happy and peaceful. Val shoves the phone in his hand for him to inspect, but something is wrong.

He-she has dark black hair that seems to have a purple hue to it. Her makeup is dark and shadowed, and her clothes are shorter than he's ever worn before. They look sewn together cruedly but with an attention to detail he often lacks. She has quite a few scars ranging from scrapes to jagged cuts. Somehow, the girl holds a peace sign up, and he can see her claw like nails. The black paint was patchy in places, making him able to tell those were real nails, not just fake acrylics.

He looks down, and he sees her. Before he starts to spiral,'Danny' calls out. "Sam! There you are. I've been looking everywhere for you!" 'Danny' has even worse scarring than anyone else the way he leans over him he can see inside his shirt, a large autopsy scar is healed rough and jagged edges make it known he fought the whole time. He has litchenberg type figures from his right hands palm all the way up to his throat. Weren't they supposed to fade? He knows logically that he can't be Damian, but he also just feels like he is, like he's just like Jon's best friend, like he's known him forever and loves him. 'Danny' appearance then starts to shift from looking even more like Damian his eyes and face stay carefree, but his harsh scarring looks even more profound against his darker skin. 'Damian's' head comes to rest on his shoulder and he feels 'Sam' start to lean down and kiss him, but as soon as they lock eyes the dream is over leaving him in a panting mess, trying to catch his breath.

He's had that exact same dream for a week now with no change. All ending in the exact same spot. He wasn't sure who to talk to about it. It felt important, but what if it's just a dream?

"Jon? Hanging in there?" Kon floated up, he staying in the air probably in case he reacted negatively. He hates how they treat him like a ticking time boom, Damian never treats him like that. Come on, just say it. He's your brother.

"I just...miss him." he buried his head in his hands like the coward he was. Kon floated closer until he was landing right next him, bumping his shoulder.

"I know Jon, I get it." No you really don't. Cause i don't let you.

-----------

"So there is a boy you like?" Vlad pestered him rubbing his back.

"I never said it was a boy." He snarked before throwing up his entire stomach up in the toilet.

"Please Damian, I went to school with your father. Both of them now actually." He said matter a factually.

"Gay." He said in between hurling. Finally after not immediately throwing up as soon as he even moves slightly Vlad places a water bottle in his hands.

"Thank you." He mumbles, mind your manners young master.

Vlad was nice and all sometimes, but he missed his family. Pennyworths chiding, Richard's easy smiles and praises, Father's lessons. He missed it all.

Vlad really wasn't the best at emotions or parenting really. He... cared for him but he was more that fun uncle you realize was really just crazy. Not he'd ever tell Vlad that.

"Let's go back to work."

"Are you sure? We can take a longer break?"

"We both know we can't afford it."

Things weren't going all that well. They had realized fairly quickly that the incubation was going to follow a real pregnancy timeline if not a little shorter up to the birth where they will just faze out when their ready. Vlad theorized it was a protective measure his body was doing to make the pregnancy less ghostly. He couldn't handle even a half-ghostly anything. The flight to the island drained him of all of the ectoplasm he was able to accumulate over the years despite the corruption.

Due to the corruptedness of the pits he was basically severely ecto-deprived and any ecto he gains goes to the two extra cores or fixing the corruption. He can't even make any ectoplasm anymore because of the corruption stopping it. He needs to get to the Infinate Realms as soon as possible or else neither him or his kids will continue to exist. Vlad was also weaker using his own ectoplasm to power things because the purified ecto was so much weaker than just natural.

The ectopods give him a boost but he was getting worse. The ectopods had failed Dan and Ellie to.

Vlad was starting to get a little protective and by a little he means not wanting to let him out of sight at all. Barely for a bathroom break. Ancients forbid he takes more than five minutes and Vlad pulls a sledgehammer out.

He may or not be going a little stir crazy. It was agonizing he's not used to dealing with this much attention. His parents in his first life were mostly focused on the portal or their work in general until they suddenly realized they had kids then showered them with affection just to forget about them just as quickly. The league of assassins and his mother don't need any explanation really, between training there wasn't much time for affection his mother sometimes did but it was always behind closed doors when noone was watching at all and that didn't happen near as much as you would think. His father wasn't really affectionate on anything, the most he would get for a mission gone right was a pat on the back and a "good job chum" and it often felt more forced with him than the others. Richard was quite affectionate with both his words and his actions. Getting a passing grade or winning a fight or even losing a fight seemed to be a cause of celebration. He was physical with his affection, hugs and kisses on the forehead, but even the second he started feeling uncomfortable he would pull away. Sometimes it was nice sometime he just wished he would push just a little further.

Vlad didn't have any of that. He was all antagonistic words, he didn't even always seem to mean it, it just happened with him. His attention nice for a while but got tiring and he couldn't just ask him to leave him alone because Vlad would take it wrong. He also never knew when to leave him alone. Like he didn't need to sleep in his room just cause he was having headaches and occasional nosebleeds he had that plenty with concussions before and had been able to treat it since he was 4 years old. He thinks if Vlad says one word more on 'taking a break' or 'drinking some more water' he was going to punch him in the face.

"You dont need to push yourself! you'll only end up in more pain just take a five minute break? Please think of the kids I'm also there father to you know!" There it is.

Damian while around and punched him in the face. The force and the surprise knocking him onto the floor.

"Damian! What the hell is your problem, young man!" He attempted to get up but he didn't let him. He easily swept his feet from under him and pushed him back down.

"I'm sick and tired of you always thinking you know what's best for me! Well news flash. You don't." He punched him in the face, expertly evading Vlads dodging. Vlad was powerful with powers but without them he was much more skilled.

"Stop this right now!" He'd have to make him.

And make him he did. Shit. He overestimated just how much ecto Vlad had been giving him because he stopped holding back his strength and shoved him off.

Crack.

Shit Vlad definitely either broke or cracked one of his ribs. He must of really pissed him off because that didn't stop him. He ran at him and kicked him in the throat. He gasped for air.

"Are we done yet?" Fuck you. He grabbed his legs and pulled him down. Almost straddling him and started to beat his face in. Vlad spit out blood but started to heal quicker than he could hurt him. Switching their positions he stsrted to choke him out. He choked for air but remembering his training, he quickly administerd a move that would have taken down any regular human down.

Vlad quickly recovered even angrier and threw him roughly at the glass of the lab shattering it and landing in it. He could feel the glass prickling against his skin. Bloody streaks painting his hands, glass embedded. He tried getting up but heard a loud gasp.

Susan stood hand over her mouth. Her skin pale and her hand gripped her tablet so hard he could hear creaks. He laid his head back down. He suddenly didn't feel like fighting anymore.

"Take him to the physician." Vlad spoke, voice distant and echoey. He couldn't resist the pull of darkness and fell under.

--------

After Clark shared his findings with the cave a month ago, Tim and Barbara have been hard at work trying to track the call, but meeting dead ends all around. Lex's security to tight and better than ever before.

Until, a new call came through.

"David! Oh David it's horrible!" She cried, her sobbing evident even through the poor phone service. They quickly got to work, everyone joining in around them. It had a two months since the last time they saw their littlest bat. No way where they letting the opportunity slip through their hands again.

"That little boy! He threw him through a window! He's been in and out of emergency surgeries for a week. A week! He had a punctured lung, an almost crushed larynx, a broken collarbone, and five cracked or broken ribs. Not to mention, he's covered in bruises and srapes from the glass! It's terrible! That little boy, just laying on the operating table, his heart stopped twice. Twice! Oh, David! I don't know what to do." She was in hysterics. Oh god, that was his brother. His baby brother.

He ignored the broken sobs around him and pushed his down.

"I've got it." Barbara announced, hse didn't sound relieved in any way but he understood they still had to save him and from what they heard from her, he may never fully recover.

"Supers, fly ahead, scout out. This is Lex, he's bound to have plenty of kryptonite." The supers flew out without even acknowledgeing their orders.

He paused. Please don't say it. Please

"Evrybody else... to the batjet."

It didn't really matter what he said anyway everybody in the cave was ready to go war, with or without Bruce.

A/N if yall think for one second that a relationship built from the ashes of one of the most traumatic moments in their lives is going to be perfect, yall kidding yourselves. Vlad is never going to be perfect he and damian/Danny will always be archenemys who may or may not have some fluffy moments they'll still have met because he wat trying to kill his father so he could marry his mother. Vlad desperately wanting him to be son is so obsessive and insane he creates a clone of him to be his kid. They may care for each other, but vlad will never truly be a good choice for Danny in general.

#bruce wayne #dp x dc #jason todd #dpxdc #damian al ghul #danny phantom #damian wayne #dcxdp #dick grayson #lex luthor #vlad as lex au #vlad plasmius #danny fenton #danny as damian au

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