#rationalize your feelings but you like him and he likes you

[starmocha]

want me, need me, love me [Sylus/Reader ★ 1510 words ★ Masterlist ★ Series Index ★ AO3] When you had made that plan to sell Sylus, you didn’t realize it would come back to (literally) bite you. A/N: This…was originally just a scenario, but I guess it turned into a ficlet in spite of my self-ban that I wasn’t going to write Sylus fics right now until I finish Bride of the Dragon King. In my defense, it’s only appropriate to post this during the cat banner and I always lie to myself <333 Snuck in some light breeding kink because @yourlocalcatscammer got into my brain and I fear I have already exposed myself enough with my last few fics so why bother hiding this anymore 🥹

It was pretend. Just a little ploy.

You knew it.

Sylus did too.

So how did it end up with you trapped underneath him on a couch, his face buried in the crook of your neck, his voice so hoarse and needy? He wouldn’t stop rubbing his cheek against you, his nostrils flaring as he inhaled deeply.

“Sy-Sylus, what’s gotten into you?” You tried to push him off, but he was too heavy, too unwilling, too…gone. Was it because of the special gene product? It couldn’t have possibly rewired his whole demeanor, could it? You vaguely recalled him attempting to snatch a parrot earlier when, for a brief moment, the feline instinct in him was triggered. You continued to struggle. “Snap out of it!”

“Miss…you really are heartless,” he rasped, nibbling on your earlobe, “Letting another woman have me so casually?”

You flustered, confused. “What are you talking about?” You looked up at him wide-eyed, startled by the darkened gaze that peered down at you. You swallowed slowly, your words careful and measured, as if you were soothing an agitated wild animal, “Sylus…it wasn’t personal…”

He narrowed his eyes. “I know,” he said, his tone terse. His kissed along your shoulder, leaving little love bites along the way. You squirmed, feeling your body heating up under his feverish ministrations. He sighed and grunted softly, his touches growing bolder.

“Say I’m yours,” he mumbled into your neck, desperation laced his deep voice. He nuzzled his cheek against you over and over again, behaving just like a frustrated cat. The warmth of his breath ghosted over your skin, making you shivered as he husked, “Let me be yours.”

Want me.

“Sy-Sylus, snap out of it! What are you—ah…” Your words died at your lips, a gasp escaped. He had pushed your shirt up, your bra unhooked and tossed to the side without a care. Without hesitation, the Onychinus leader took your sweet little nipple into his warm mouth, his tongue swirling leisurely around the sensitive nub, making you arched up, gasping and crying from the sudden electrifying stimulation.

He grinded languidly against you, and as he suckled greedily, he murmured, “…touch me…my…my ears…”

Your mind was hazy, teetering between rationality and the growing lust that was clouding your judgement. You looked down at the head of silvery-white hair against you and the pair of cat ears twitching restlessly atop Sylus’ head. Nimbly, your fingers stroked the sensitive feline ear, feeling the soft tufts of fur between your fingers. He hummed happily, and he sucked harder.

“Ah—!”

His hands reached down to grab your hips, keeping you grounded against the couch. He brushed against you, and you trembled, feeling his bulge over your skirt.

“Sy-Sylus…”

He looked up, the normally haughty expression that graced the feared and notorious Onychinus leader’s face was gone. Right now, he wore a different expression, one that only you were allowed to see. He looked at you lust-filled and wanting, his lips slightly parted, soft sighs escaping. His eyes softened a little, enough for you to notice.

Need me.

You felt a burning ache inside you, one that he had started, and one that you knew only he could quell. Those soft crimson eyes of his beckoned you closer, silently urging you to let go, to submit to the growing heat between the two of you.

Hesitantly, you leaned up, taking his lips for yourself, long and slow. Sylus stilled, surprised, seemingly taking his time to register the moment. When he realized you were answering his silent pleas, he smiled against your lips. His ears flattened back as he kissed you deeper, his hands fumbled with both your clothes.

Your panties slipped off, his pants unzipped, and his hardened member freed from its confines. He nudged his hip forward, the head of his cock pressed against your slick folds. You gasped and gripped his jacket.

“…Take me…” he mumbled lazily, his mouth finding your nipple again. Your other breast was massaged, caressed and shamelessly groped, your sweet, irresistible moans lured out, answered by his own deep, sultry groans as he suckled hungrily.

You whimpered helplessly, giving up on your attempt to resist him. You were aching so much right now, wanting and needing him in a way you had never felt before. Your fingers found their way into his hair, getting lost in the silky strands. “…Y-yes…”

He moved forward and you arched up, crying out. More and more of him eased in, his deep groans were intoxicating, your own desires igniting as he filled you, your walls stretching wonderfully around the massive intrusion. You buried your face into his neck when he bottomed out, gasping into his shoulder as his arm wrapped around you securely. He guided you away from his shoulder and you lay beneath him nearly sobbing in frustration. He looked down at you, flushed cheeks and vulnerable. Again, his warm breath fanned against your mouth as he asked softly, “…Can I…”

“Yes!” You interrupted, your moans tumbling out as he started to move, slowly at first before he built a faster rhythm. Again, you vaguely wondered if he was still lost, still submissive to his feline instincts, because the way he was moving was much more animalistic than you would have expected. It was hurried, graceless, feral, but it was filling you just the way you wanted, the way you needed right now.

Every delicious stroke of his length had you mumbling deliriously, lost in this moment of heavenly pleasure. “Mm…ah…ah…Sy…Sylus…”

His lips found yours again, taking your moans selfishly. He groaned as you clenched around him. “…fuck…Miss…”

You cried out as he spread you more, pushing your legs back, taking you even deeper. “Oh god, oh god…!”

“Mm…breed you…need to breed you…make you mine…m…yours…yours…” He was moving more erratic, his words so frenzied and incoherent, you weren’t sure if he was even registering what he was saying. He was driven purely by a natural need, an instinct so feral, he seemed more animal than man in this moment.

You felt infected by him, by his words, your own traitorous body craving what he was saying. “Ah…yes…yes…ah…breed me…breed me, Sylus…” You weren’t thinking clearly anymore. There wasn’t a single rational thought left in your little head. The only thing you could focus on was his powerful thrusts, reaching you deep where you needed.

“O-oh, Sylus…”

So close. So close, you could feel yourself peaking. Just a little more, almost, almost—

“Mm…Miss…inside…?”

“Yes!” You cried out, your pitch higher than normal, so desperate and needy. He thrusted forward, pushing in even deeper with a heavy groan. His eyes met yours for a moment before you closed yours, screaming out your climax as he coated your walls with his seeds, filling you fuller than you thought was possible.

Distantly, you could hear Sylus mumbling in between his moans.

Love me.

“…mine…yours…yours…”

You panted softly, hearing his own breathing matching your own. You moaned, whimpering as he pulled out, feeling his seed dripping out of your cunt. Slowly, you opened your eyes, seeing Sylus’ flushed face close to yours. He still appeared to be under his feline influence, looking dazed and lost.

Your eyes traveled all over, taking in his satiated expression, seeing the sweats on his glistened skin.

“Ah…oh, I have my lipstick on you.” You touched his lips, seeing red lipstick smeared across. You rubbed your thumb against his mouth, trying to wipe it clean. He stopped you.

He smiled, almost delirious with joy. “Good,” Sylus husked, “You should cover me all over. Mark me as yours.”

Before you could respond, his face was buried in your chest again, his arms tightening around your waist. He nuzzled against you, behaving much more docile now. You rubbed the back of his head for a bit, the soothing act calming him even more. It didn’t take long before you realized he had fallen asleep on top of you. His breathing had slowed, the rhythm steady. He seemed much more relaxed than he was earlier.

You scratched the feline ear atop his head, smiling softly when it twitched in response to your light touch. Sylus instinctively hummed softly in his sleep, pleased.

When he would wake up later, you wondered would he even have remembered what had happened? Would he remember how he had behaved, the words he had spoken? Would he deny it? Make excuses?

You smiled.

You didn’t particularly care. You saw the real him. He would always lower his guard around you, always be transparent about how he felt about you, and now tonight, you realized it wasn’t just that he desired you, but he wanted you to reciprocate as well. Wanted you to be possessive of him, to want and need him in the same way that he felt for you.

To be equally possessive of one another, a mutual obsession with one another.

You almost laughed aloud. Why, what an exquisite idea, you thought to yourself.

You kissed your fingers before pressing them along Sylus’ cheek. He purred softly.

How cute.

[the-gay-trashmouth]

I think something that's bothers me about how folks talk about mouthwashing is how they talk about Swansea. It's either "Swansea would have killed Jimmy immediately if Anya had told him" or "he knew and he did nothing just like curly." because, to me at least it leaves out a lot of nuance to his character and situation. Curly and Swansea are really good foils to each other, one who's got a reputation for being the kind and helpful captain but in the end does nothing to truly protect the crew from Jimmy, and one who's gruff, harsh, and cruel but genuinely tries to help in the background, the reliable mechanic.

(read more for a long Mouthwashing character ramble tw for unwanted pregnancy and SA)

Because Curly is the one with the power. He doesn't take what Jimmy did seriously enough. And you can say that he might not have known fully what Jimmy did, but I think the "I told you" pregnancy conversation and his reaction to Jimmy right before the crash ("come on we'll get through this together. We'll figure it out, you've had hard times before-") are indicators that he knew, but he still chose to stick by his friend and treat it like a "mistake" rather than what it really was.

Now that's my own personal speculation of course, there's no outright scene of her telling him "your best friend assaulted me", but I think there's enough evidence in game through Anya and Curlys interactions to say that he knew, and he knew before Anaya knew she was pregnant. He had a fully functioning ship and four fully functional cryo-pods. He could have at least given Anya more security, kept her far away from him, and at most forced him into the cryopod until they got back to earth. Jimmy STILL had full, uncontrolled access to the cockpit AFTER his freakout with curly. AFTER Anya tells curly she doesn't feel safe with him. AFTER Curly finds out he raped Anya. He's so focused on seeing the good in his friend that he does NOTHING to protect Anya, doesn't strip away not one of Jimmy powers as copilot and consequently endangers her and the rest of the crew.

Curly was the captain, he had the power to relegate Jimmy to the fucking storage closet if he really wanted, at least put him in the cryopod until they got back to earth. In fact, he was the only person above Jimmy in terms of rank on the ship, but he chose to do nothing. He chose to let Jimmy continue as acting co-pilot, chose to comfort him rather than actually confront him. Slides off his weird sexual comments as jokes "So what's this about horses?"

Now let's compare that to Swansea, the mechanic.

We don't have any evidence that Swansea knew about what Jimmy did until after the crash ("it's been her telling me things") where they were trapped with no captain, barely any rations, and a single cryopod that he kept hidden away in the one room he had the key too (and the only room that could lead into medbay). He didn't use it for himself, he makes it clear he didn't intend on getting off this hunk of metal in his last few conversations with Jimmy.

Swansea as the ship's mechanic, was used to fixing things in the background. He didn't need to get along with anyone to keep the ship running, he didn't need people to like him to keep them safe. We see that with Daisuke. He's harsh on him, for sure, but he leaves constant notes to help him learn. Genuinely tries to keep him out of harm's way when it comes to more dangerous jobs. We know Anya was scared of Jimmy getting a weapon, she hid the gun case in the medical bay even knowing she would never get it open. We can see Swansea and Anya off on their own towards the first days after the crash, and Swansea still has a tight grip of the axe weeks and months later.

I personally think that was him trying to keep Jimmy from having access to a weapon. The only time Jimmy gets the axe while Swansea is alive is when Anya Specifically asks him to use it to get medical supplies. I don't think that's a coincidence.

Swansea, like any good mechanic, was quietly trying to keep things running out of Jimmy's sight. It's not until everyone is dead or dying that he snaps, that he finally takes direct action. But it was too little too late.

Both Curly and Swansea thought they were doing the right thing, helping in their own way. Curly genuinely wanted to see the good in Jimmy, wanted it to just be some challenge they could overcome, but in doing so he failed to see the monster right in front of him. He had all the power (in context of the crew, the company is a whole other can of worms I have so many other thoughts on), but he was too afraid to use it. Hell, he was DISCOURAGED to use it if the memo about HR complaints are anything to go by. Swansea, on the other hand, never trusted Jimmy, never even really liked him, but he didn't want to make anything worse either. He didn't know what would actually set Jimmy off, or what he was capable of, and aside from just straight up killing him what else could he do that wouldn't just push Jimmy further off the edge? Like with the foam. "One wrong move and you'll rip this ship a new asshole", he worked carefully, hiding the last pod from Jimmy, keeping the only other weapon on himself, guarding the only other entrance into Medbay, but Jimmy was escalating quickly. He underestimated how far Jimmy was willing to go, just like Curly had, and in the end suffered the consequences.

The only character who actually understood how dangerous and unstable Jimmy was is Anya. She knew the moment she found out she was pregnant he would hurt her ("you won't let me protect myself"). He wouldn't be able to take it, he would do something drastic. She knew he was escalating the longer they were stranded. Anya is the only crew member who truly understood how dangerous Jimmy was and took direct action.

And interesting thing to me is that she doesn't just kill herself. She locks herself in the medbay. She could have waited for Jimmy to sleep, or locked herself in the cockpit, but she locked herself in the medbay with Curly. She knows that with her gone there would be no one left to take care of him, she knew Jimmy would continue to escalate his abuse, and with her gone all of his anger and fear and guilt would turn on Curly.

And wouldn't you know it? She was right. Without Anya to stop him, he takes curly out of the bed, forces him upright into the cryopod, and forces a man with no skin, no arms, no legs, and infected tissues to be frozen for 20 years while the rest of his crew Rot. And that's only what we know to be reality- if any of his delusions had some basis in reality he could have done so so much more. Anya is the Only one to take reasonable, direct action to keep herself, and then Curly, safe.

But she didn't have enough power over Jimmy to truly protect herself. She didn't have the code to the gun case, she didn't have a weapon or a rank to fall back on. She was outnumbered by men who she knew from experience either wouldn't or couldn't keep her safe, and she was heavily pregnant with a baby she didn't want and most likely couldn't even get enough nutrients to sustain either her or the fetus. She was physically weakened and trapped in a stranded ship with her abuser with no way home and a medical miracle (curse) in Curly.

This game is a really good reflection of reality, in my opinion as an abuse survivor. Some people will see them as "one of the boys" and constantly excuse or downplay their actions (Curly), some people will do small things in the background, recognize the abuse and disprove, but don't want to get in the way or make things worse (Swansea), and some people are just straight up oblivious/naive (Daisuke). But in the end, it's the system that allows abuse and incentives coverups to keep peace or save face that really allows abuse to fester and escalate.

Which is why I personally have a problem with the idea that Anya should have just Told A Different Man because it ignores the very real chain of power and her own agency in her story, AS WELL AS the idea that Swansea and Diasuke knew but didn't care because that's just not reflective of real life. Not every man is some rapist apologist who doesn't care what abusers do until it happens to them, some people just don't know what to do, or don't have any good options that wouldn't result in further abuse. Hell some people just don't even fucking notice! Not everyone has had exposure to the signs or knows what to look for.

It's easy when looking at fictional depictions of abuse to say "well if I was there I would have just punched him/killed him/called the police" but real life, in that moment, its never going to be clear cut. You can call out abuse, but that might just lead to that abuser taking it out on their abuse victim later. They could even start to target you for daring to speak out, or try to hurt you and cut you off from the person being abused. You can know all the right steps and the right programs, but in the moment, when faced with a real situation where someone could get hurt or even killed? You stumble. You think things over, you don't try and make any direct moves that would set their abusers off. Sometimes that's a good instinct, and sometimes that just lets abuse escalate. It's never a good situation, and it's never actually anyone's fault but the abusers. And this way of thinking also conveniently leaves out the survivor of this abuse, and portrays them as someone who needs to be saved, rather than someone who needs support and resources to save themselves. It also very conveniently lets the company that Put Anya in this situation in the first place get off Scott free.

The solution isn't "oh one of the men on board should have personally killed Jimbo and saved Anya all by himself" its "Anya deserved the support of her crewmates instead of being forced into close proximity with her rapist and also maybe Jimmy shouldn't have access to the fucking controls or medbay or any weapons- AND ALSO the crew shouldn't have financial incentives not to report things to HR"

[noiriarti]

The Winner Takes it All: Anakin Skywalker x Reader (Enemies-to-Lovers Modern AU) | Chapter 7

NSFW! Minors DNI!!! Summary: The moment the thesis competition was announced, you knew your biggest threat. Anakin Skywalker, golden boy of the engineering department. He's the only other person smart enough to beat you, and the only other person insane enough to stay in the lab until midnight every night. He's also an asshole, but you're starting to think maybe he's not as bad as you thought he was... Pairing: Anakin Skywalker x Fem!Reader CW: descriptions of anxiety + guilt, piv sex WC: 7.8k AN: hello my darlings!! i am back!!! (from the dead aka first semester of my PhD) i've missed you all so much. this chapter took sooooo long to write because i wanted to get everything just right, but we have now entered phase 2 of the fic, where new shenanigans begin. stay tuned!

Ch. 1, Ch. 2, Ch. 3, Ch. 4, Ch. 5, Ch. 6, [Ch. 7], Ch. 8

Chapter 7: Burning

"Need to talk to you," Anakin blurted out loudly over the music, obviously catching you by surprise based on your empty, blinking face. The guy who was upsettingly close to you shot him a look equal parts murder and possessiveness, and Anakin's lip curled in disgust. His face looked eminently punchable, and Anakin could just imagine the satisfaction of his fist in the guy's cheekbone, or the way he would buckle after one good hit to the stomach.

Somewhere, a rational part of him reminded him that this was not caveman times, and that you had agency and were allowed to make your own choices, but Anakin silenced it. Feeling angry was easier than admitting that it felt like his organs were being torn out when he saw you flirting with anyone else. Thinking about kicking the shit out of some random guy was easier than admitting that knowing you had put this outfit on for someone else, someone other than him, was killing him.

"I--" You began, half-yelling over the noise, then your face twisted into something Anakin couldn't read. Annoyance? Hatred? Pity? "Fine. Let's talk," you finished. The man, who looked like if all the finance bros in the university were merged together into one terrible Pokémon Evolution, scoffed his annoyance, but you ignored him.

Anakin didn't even try to suppress his smugness.

You pushed past the guy, then past Anakin, all the way to the staircase tucked in the corner of the room. He was enchanted, brainless when he followed you. The air got warmer, stickier, and the number of couples making out along the walls increased dramatically. Anakin remembered when that would have been the two of you. That night at TKD. How he wished he could turn back time to that night and just live it in a loop.

Just like then, you were divine in front of him. Your legs climbing the stairs, the gentle sway of your hips that he had fantasized about. He couldn't help it. He'd be noticing these things forever.

You slipped into a bedroom, and it smelled a bit disgusting, but he couldn't care less because he was with you. Anakin closed the door with a decisive thump, then turned to look at you.

You had that look on your face, that one he hadn't puzzled out yet. Your perfect eyebrows were scrunched together, and he could see you swallow hard. He couldn't care less if you hated him. If you pitied him, wanted him gone. At least some small part of you would have still cared. He had prepared a whole speech--telling you how sorry he was. How much he wanted you. That he hadn't felt this way about anyone before, and that he wanted to make you fall for him the same way he'd fallen for you. That he wanted more than whatever the two of you had been. That he wanted to be your boyfriend. Long-term, preferably.

Anakin was ready to get on his knees if he had to.

He opened his mouth to start, but you interrupted him.

"No, I have something to say." The words came out shaky, and dread clawed in his stomach. Were you going to say you wanted him to leave your life? That you had moved on with the finance bro downstairs, who had a trust fund and probably said slurs? That you were excited to never see him again in four months, when you graduated?

Then, you sighed and said something he never would have expected.

"I'm sorry, Anakin."

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It set in later than it should have. Much later.

All throughout finals, you were desperately trying to stop thinking about him. That horrible feeling in your stomach when his face popped into your mind. Which it did, all the time. It was a sticky, terrible pit that opened up whenever something reminded you of him. The lingering smell of him on your pillow. His hatred of orange Skittles. You'd been angry before, but this was different, worse, somehow.

But you pushed it down. Exams mattered more right now. So much more.

Sometimes, the wave of nausea hit you a little too hard, like when you thought about how badly you needed a hug, and how you didn't really want a hug from anyone but him. When it got too hard, you'd leap out of your desk and march to the corner store, just to buy a Red Bull and maybe some chips. Something crunchy, something to puncture the silence of your suddenly suffocatingly empty room.

On the walk through the biting air, you would let yourself think of him. You'd let that pain in your heart blossom, and you'd just pretend you'd said something, anything else. That either of you had made different decisions. That you'd be walking back to your room and he'd be sitting on the bed, giving you that crooked smile, ready to quiz you on fluid dynamics. It was the cold that made your eyes water, you swore.

And then you'd arrive home, and you had to get back to work. Anakin Skywalker was not an allowable topic of thought at any other times. You pulled yourself through finals like a zombie, not letting yourself think beyond the next meal or next exam.

That was not the brightest idea, it turned out, shockingly. When you left your last final, you were blank, empty. You went home and collapsed on your bed, and you finally let yourself imagine his arm wrapped around you as you drifted off.

When your alarm went off at nine PM to remind you to get to the airport, the pit was back. As you stuffed things in your suitcase, then rushed out the door, you felt like there was bile clawing up your throat.

It was a disgusting feeling. You'd been mad in your life, but this was different. It made you want to jump out of your skin just to be free of it.

Around a third of the way through the red-eye plane ride back home, everything was dark and quiet, with only the whir of the engines disturbing the cabin. You slipped out from your aisle seat, just to stretch your legs and use the bathroom, and then you passed him. Or, at least, you thought it was him. But it wasn't. The stranger sitting in 16C had Anakin's nose and curls, but his eyes were all wrong, and his hair was just a smidge too light. He didn't have those little dimples on the side of his mouth.

But just the same nose and the same curls were enough to light that painful burn in your heart. How many times had you looked at those features, traced them, even before all of this started? Why, why did your heart leap for a second, hoping that he'd followed you, like in some 90s romcom, to declare his undying, hopeless love?

That pit in your stomach you thought was bad before was swallowing you whole now. Your skin felt hot, clammy. You willed yourself to move one leg, then the other, heavy like bags of sand, just to get somewhere private before you imploded.

By the time you slid the lock closed on the bathroom door, you were bawling. Big, heaving sobs ripped from your chest, and you couldn't place the emotion. Anger, sadness, guilt--it was all mixing into a knot that kicked the breath out of you.

What had you done? What had you fucking done?

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Things got a little better at the airport, when you got to hug your family. On the drive home, they occupied you with anecdotes about the neighbors--the house across the street had apparently put up a garish snowman--and questions about your semester. And it was nice to recount some high points. A couple of times, you were tempted to tell a story that involved Anakin, but you held your tongue.

When you got home, and it was around time for bed, you tossed and turned, but all you could think about was him. That feeling in your gut was unbearable, and you were debating whether you should just go retch over a toilet to get it out of your system. You only managed to fall asleep by putting on Criminal Minds, and even then it took you two episodes.

The next night, the same thing happened.

And the next. And the next.

The next time you were in bed, you made yourself confront it. Just for a second. That feeling that came up whenever you thought of him.

For years, he was just some guy who got everything he wanted. You knew the department was stacked against you from the start--being in classes where only four people weren't men was symptomatic of the department culture. But when Anakin interacted with the professors like that, got all the internships, you wondered if you could do the same thing. If it had been you networking with the professors, would you have gotten the same reaction? And you didn't know.

Anakin was frustrating. So, so frustrating for years. Because everything just came so easily to him. It was like he waltzed in every day to your freshman lab course and made breadboard circuits that were even neater than the professor's. And when he did so well on every exam, he didn't make a secret of it. He gloated about how his projects were used as examples. Initially, that rivalry was one-sided. You'd do anything to beat him. Later on, when you'd worked on more than a couple projects together, you could see it in his eyes. He knew you were a threat, good competition.

And when he was clearly closer with the professors and got accepted to an internship you didn't get, it was whatever. It annoyed you to no end and you complained about it to your friends, but it wasn't terrible. Those were minor things. Your theses were major. This was what you'd present to employers, to the world. This was what you were going to do for the rest of your lives. And he'd gotten it from somewhere.

If even this was stacked against you, why did any of it matter?

You were still furious. You felt like you wanted to punch something or scream into your pillow at how unfair the world was, how you just wanted something to be easy for once.

But the worst part of it all was that you knew that, in his place, you would do the same exact thing. Or, at least think about it a lot. You'd feel like shit about it, granted, but you might do it. That feeling of trying and failing for months to get the perfect idea that was equally attractive to employers and the thesis committee, to get something that even worked, was probably the most frustrating cycle you'd ever experienced. If someone gave you a ticket out, what would you have done?

You probably would have taken it, if things were bad enough.

And that meant Anakin wasn't a bad person. Just a desperate one.

You knew he wasn't a bad person, though. You'd seen him smile at you with such openness, such sweetness. You'd seen him coach freshmen, including your own roommate, to become good athletes. You'd seen him get you food when you were too out of it to do it on your own. You'd felt him put his jacket around you when you fell asleep in the library.

But there was always that fear that, just maybe, your first impression had been right. That he was an asshole. That, one day, the mask would fall off, and you'd realize he was just pretending. That your relationship didn't matter to him as much as it did to you. That if you told him that you wanted more than sex, he'd laugh.

And, when you heard from Barriss of all people, that maybe he was exactly what you had thought he was, a liar, it felt like he was stabbing you in the back and twisting the knife.

Looking back at it, it still felt terrible, but you couldn't move the image of Anakin helping you, keeping you company in the library. He wasn't scheming against you when he took the idea, he was just scared and desperate.

It was the department that had pitted you against each other from the start--curves, calling out the best homework solution, TAships, and thesis competitions. None of it was made by him. He was just like you, trying his best.

You also hadn't heard all the details. The idea for the hand had been his, just the idea to scale it down had been someone else's. Just like you'd asked professors to help you choose between ideas early on in the process.

The more you thought about it, the more it felt like your heart was being carved out with a blunt spoon.

You impulsively opened your phone. The texts he had sent you.

please come back we can talk this out please give me another chance

How could you not trust him? How could you have watched him cry and just left? What kind of a person were you?

Fuck, what had you done?

You were gasping for air, the tears rolling down your face and onto your pillow. You had ruined something perfectly good. Just because you were blaming him for everything that had gone wrong.

It was too much. It was all too much. The stress climbed up your throat and choked you, and you writhed in the sheets to try to escape the feeling. To just go back to a time when things mattered less, when you were purely happy and never worrying about GPAs or rankings.

Fingers shaking, you opened Ahsoka's contact and smashed the tauntingly green 'Call' button.

She wouldn't answer you anyway, you reasoned. It was the middle of the night, after all.

The ringing was painfully loud in the empty room. The tone sounded one, two, three, four times, and you were about to give up when Ahsoka's tired voice mumbled your name.

"'Soka--I--Can I talk to you?" You managed to spit out the question despite the thick cottony feeling in your throat.

"Hey, woah, what's the matter? Are you okay?" The grogginess left her voice as she fretted on the other end of the line, and her protectiveness made you feel the tiniest bit better.

As you spilled your guts to her, she made comforting noises at the appropriate places, and grossed out noises when you described that you'd had sex with Anakin. Soon, your breathing stabilized, and she said exactly what you'd been thinking, too: you needed to apologize, stat. Preferably, in person.

You fell asleep on the line with her.

In the morning, everything felt better. Manageable. You just needed to collect yourself before you returned home, and then sit him down and talk to him--actually talk.

For the remainder of the break, you immersed yourself in the everyday. Your holiday traditions were familiar, calming. The constant clamor of your family to get this and that from the store kept you busy. You'd wake up late, eat some lunch, get some coding done, scroll Instagram, eat dinner, then pass out in front of the TV. And just like that, another day slipped by. And another. And another. And another. And then it was Christmas, and all you could think was that Anakin was opening presents right now, somewhere far away. You opened your texts again, trying to draft a message that seemed right--Hey or Merry Christmas both seemed slightly weird. But maybe hearing from you would mess up his day, or maybe he'd realized what you had, that you were in the wrong, and now wasn't interested in talking to you. As you were debating, the roiling guilt in your stomach grew, and, when your father laughed particularly loudly, you were relieved to turn off your phone and pay more attention to the breakfast table.

In the back of your mind, there was a subtle thrum of guilt that never really went away. It only got worse as the break came closer to ending, and you realized you hadn't really gotten anything done on your thesis in weeks. You set a countdown on your phone homescreen, just to keep you on your toes. All it did was make you feel worse.

On New Year's Eve, when you were watching the ball drop with your parents, your phone chimed.

It was Anakin. The world stopped, and your mouth went dry. happy new year. What could you even say to that?

Happy New Year. I miss you.

Happy New Year. I'm sorry for everything.

Happy New Year. Wish you were here

Happy New Year! How are you?

All of them felt wrong. But then one of your parents said your name, trying to get your attention, and you locked your phone.

That night, while having your nightly stew on your feelings, you resolved to talk to him in person after lecture. Otherwise, you were worried you'd never bring it up.

On the first day of classes, you were resolved to catch him before or after lecture. Any time would work, really. You'd have two chances that Monday, and then two more on Wednesday if you chickened out. The fact that you acknowledged you might chicken out was a bad sign, but you ignored it.

You got there ten minutes early, an act that was generally considered psychopathic in college, and you were ready to zone out while the professor said some things about the goals of the course for just long enough for class time to end before speaking to Anakin.

Would he say something to you? Would he try to sit next to you? Would he even notice you?

You kept your eyes firmly trained on the board, and tried not to look too desperate as you snuck glances. Then, finally, he arrived, and you tried to look as nonchalant as possible. You made a point not to think too hard about how he was more handsome than you remembered and not to wonder if he wore that shirt just for you. That wasn't your place. You needed to apologize, not ogle him. You expected him to sit down somewhere in the middle of the seats, somewhere distinctly Anakin, but he crossed the room entirely. He even sat one row in front of you. Did he not even want you in his periphery? Your heart sunk. Maybe he had a change of heart after you didn't respond to his New Year's Eve text. Maybe he was just done with you. Maybe maybe maybe, your mind chanted.

The second that the professor was done, you rushed out.

The same thing happened again in your afternoon class, and you walked home regretting every life choice that brought you to this moment.

The next day, when you got home from your class, you entered your living room to find Anakin on the couch. Immediately, that nausea that had been plaguing you punched you in the throat.

There he was. Looking so unbothered, so casual, like him being in your room didn't make him think back to the last time you had been here, entwined on the bed. Like it didn't make him think of how you'd ruined it. All you could hear was static.

The worst part was that you couldn't stop ogling him, even though you felt terrible about it. He must have been working out over the break, because his arms looked incredible in that shirt, and his jawline was etched even more strongly than usual. The haircut he'd gotten over break left his hair falling just over his forehead in those perfect waves. It caught in the light as usual, and when he turned to look at you all you could see was blue blue blue.

And then you realized he was looking at you--at you--and his eyebrows furrowed. You could see him swallow, hard, as he looked at you. Was it a glare? Was he angry? Was he about to storm out? Who knew?

But this was your opportunity. Class didn't work out--this was it. You had to talk to him now.

You opened your mouth to say something, maybe "Hey guys, can I talk to Anakin for a second?" or "Hey, can we talk?" or "I think I like you a lot," or literally anything, but nothing came out. The static in your ears got louder until it was deafening. Your stomach roiled and, for a second, you were worried you'd throw up instead of saying anything.

"Hey," you croaked out. The awkward silence sat between you three, and you didn't see his expression change. Fuck. He didn't even say "hey" back.

You had to get out of there. Had to. Right now. You bolted into your room and closed the door behind you, then dove into your bed and screamed into your pillow.

Motherfucker.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

Your next attempt to apologize came at practice the next day. You hoped to catch him at the end of it, maybe pull him away and talk in some empty stairwell. You crept up to the room, but, the closer you got, the more that tidal wave of terrible feelings threatened to wash you away. Through the door to Aerobics Room 1, your eyes found him in the crowd immediately. They were practicing some kind of form (pumsae? the exact name escaped you), and Fives made some sort of comment to Anakin which sent him cackling.

He looked light, and with the afternoon sun casting its rays into the room, he almost became angelic. When he laughed, and his eyes crinkled in that way that made you soft, you lost all your nerve. He was never like this when you were in class together, or that time he was in your apartment. Whenever he saw you, he got that look on his face.

But now, he was all smiles and laughs as he playfully smacked Fives, who repeated whatever he'd said and sent a bunch more athletes into fits of laughter.

Dappled in the sunlight, his face split with an enormous smile, Anakin was so perfect in that moment. How could you ruin it by making him have a hard conversation?

At the same time, you felt the anger at yourself build up. You said all those awful things to him, and you had the nerve to delay your apology?

But you knew that, if he heard your apology and didn't forgive you, that would ruin the day for him. He was just like that. And you didn't have the heart to do that to him.

Tomorrow, you promised yourself, as you took one last look tracing the contours of his jaw and lips.

As you turned to go, you didn't notice that he'd turned to see something moving in the windowed doors to the Aerobics Room.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

Ahsoka was fucking tired. There were approximately two people she cared for most on the campus, and they were both huge dummies. They'd proven that over and over. She knew something was amiss from the day the two of you fought/broke up/ended things/whatever, when you started sulking in your room alone and consuming an upsetting amount of caffeine. She started gently probing right when the worst of finals was over. She didn't want to rush anything, but a well-placed "hey going to go get some food, want anything?" might soften either of the two of you enough to let her know what happened.

She found out when you told her on a phone call. And, yes, it wasn't great. It was, perhaps, morally dubious and a little misguided, from what she could tell, but it wasn't clear to her why this was such an issue. Wasn't taking advice from others and collaborating the whole point of academic research and theses?

But she also knew you had gotten feedback from multiple professors after you'd submitted your initial proposal, trying to pick between several approaches, before one of the faculty nudged you in the direction of 3-D printing instead of plastic molding. And, sure, Anakin was a little more than nudged, but he came up with the idea for the mechanical hand in the first place. This was just a different application, right? And yes, it wasn't super duper ethical that the idea was just given to him, but what would you do in his shoes?

Ahsoka told you exactly that, and you sounded like you were choking on the other end of the phone. You told her about how horrible you felt, and that you felt like you didn't know if he even wanted to ever see you again, and she groaned. Of course he did. He was the biggest simp she knew.

So Ahsoka did what she did best: she meddled.

It started small, with mentioning the taekwondo team in front of you once the semester had started. Sometimes an anecdote would include Anakin, and she made sure to casually drop his name, just to gauge your reaction. You didn't even flinch when she said it, which seemed like a good sign. But the pulse in the hollow of your neck jumped. When you confessed that you'd failed to talk to him in class, because it just felt too awkward in public, Ahsoka nodded sagely, like she wasn't already scheming to give you a private time to chat.

Within five minutes, she had texted Anakin to invite him over to plan the competitions they would be attending that semester. Like she hadn't already discussed it with him in December, but whatever. A meeting between the captain and the vice captain wasn't out of the ordinary. And it just so happened that her room was free. Crazy, right?

She really couldn't have made it turn out this well if she tried. When you entered, and Anakin looked like he might fall off the couch, Ahsoka had to suppress a smile. You looked like you wanted to say something, like maybe you'd built up the courage, and she was about to say that, actually, she had forgotten an incredibly important errand she had to run at a cafe for 30 to 45 minutes, but then you just said "hey" and walked into your room. Ahsoka grumbled internally. What was so hard about just apologizing?

Two days into classes, Ahsoka had not-so-subtly hinted to Cody that he should host a party, just in case her other meddling didn't work. It was her backup plan, and, apparently, she needed it. So, after giving you a pep talk that this would be the perfect time to talk to Anakin because you weren't in class or a meeting, and after digging out some dress in the back of your closet for you to throw on, the two of you were off.

Once you arrived at the party, she watched you do a sweep of the room instantly. She knew what you were looking for, and rolled her eyes. He probably hadn't arrived yet, but she texted him anyway, just to check.

In the two seconds she was looking down at her phone, she watched you talk to some sophomore from the business school. He looked douchey, but he was cute enough and said something that made you laugh. Come on, Anakin, she thought, praying he'd arrive soon before she had to watch this guy flirt with you any longer.

Again, she realized she was great at meddling when Anakin showed up and beelined to Cody. She pushed her way through some people, and came to greet him, drag him to get a drink, but he'd already taken a beer from Cody, then insisted that they go dance.

At every opportunity, Ahsoka tried to hint that maybe they should go over there? Toward the other side of the room? Get some more drinks, maybe?

It took ten minutes, but Anakin finally agreed. He didn't see it, but Ahsoka was smiling like a maniac when she saw him take you in. When he started marching over, she was practically cheering. It was show time.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

As you walked to some quiet(er) room, your heart was pounding. This was more nerve-wracking than the first time you slept together, than anything you had done together before. When he just appeared in front of you, looking so intense, it took you a minute to get yourself together enough to form words. Was he mad at you? And now the moment of truth had come.

You pushed into a room which belonged to someone who had more weed than deodorant, and was covered wall-to-wall in dingy band posters. You didn't want to even look down to see how stained the carpet was.

But none of that mattered. Because right now, he was here. And you finally had the opportunity to say what you needed to say.

Before you started, you drank him in one last time, just in case. His deep eyes, the peek of collarbone through his shirt, his broad chest. A quick mental catalogue.

And then you started speaking.

"I'm sorry, Anakin." You weren't sure what gave you the courage. Maybe it was because he approached you first, so you couldn't hide behind the excuse that he didn't want to see you anymore. Maybe it was the slightly awkward conversation with that dude downstairs who seemed to have way too many takes on types of beer. Either way, you'd finally done it. You'd said it. Just apologizing to him made you feel lighter, but that was drowned out by the anxiety of hearing his response.

You were trying to read his expression, the draw of his eyebrows, the purse of his lips. This was the weirdest angry face you'd ever seen.

"Wait--huh?" Both of you were probably wearing the same expression--sheer confusion. Wasn't he supposed to be mad at you? What? You watched his eyes trying to read what you meant, and his plush lips were the tiniest bit open.

You continued anyway. It had to be said, even if he was just going to tell you to stay away from him.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have yelled at you like that, you didn't deserve it. Not everything was your fault, and I've been feeling so guilty over the whole break that I just--I couldn't bring myself to tell you. I chickened out every time. I wish I hadn't… ended things. Between us. I'm--I'm so sorry." Your voice came out more confident than you felt, comfortable in the words you had been rehearsing for weeks in your mind.

Once again, the room went quiet. Anakin stood, as still as a statue, clearly trying to process. Behind the pounding of your ears, you could hear the bass line downstairs and the chatter of people, and you tried to remind yourself that if this goes badly, you'll just go back home, time would pass, and you'd be able to heal your broken heart in peace.

Then, suddenly, Anakin pulled you into a crushing hug. You couldn't breathe from the weight of his head on your shoulder, and the tight squeeze of his arms around your waist. The sandalwood of his shampoo was comforting, familiar. He smelled like home as he buried his face into your neck.

"Fuck, I'm so sorry too--I wish I could take it back, that I just never entered this goddamn competition, then you never would've been mad at me and--" His voice came out broken and shaky.

"Anakin, hey," you interrupted. Had he spent the whole break feeling like this? He should be mad at you, not just upset with himself. You could talk to him about that later, but right now you could feel his desperation to just be near you again, mainly because you felt the same way. You wrapped your arms around him until your hand found his hair. Burying your fingers in it felt so good, so natural. How could you ever have ended this?

"It's okay," you said as you rubbed his back. You could feel his breaths were ragged, and he squeezed you even tighter. "I shouldn't have been that mad at you in the first place--I just got so upset that you had some sort of upper hand, and I went crazy," you continued.

"Fuck," Anakin muttered against your skin. The shift of his lips over your collarbone reminded you of the last time he'd kissed up and down your neck. You took a deep breath. Now was not the time to get horny.

Anakin pulled away, but kept his arms wrapped around your waist. Your heart clenched when you saw the mix of anguish and relief dancing across his features. His eyes were swimming, and a tear rolled down his cheek, then another, then another, until he was crying.

"Fuck," he mumbled again as he pulled one hand away from you to wipe his eyes with the back of his hand, almost as if he was embarrassed. Despite it all, you found him immeasurably cute.

"Uh, I was gonna come up here and beg you for another chance--I just couldn't watch you move on or talk to that guy downstairs, it hurts too much," he confessed. His eyes met yours and you felt that familiar jolt of joy that he brought, this time over the idea that he was jealous, possessive even, over you.

"I'm not moving on." It was a risk to say it, but you did it anyway. It was definitely true, but it came out more careful, more tentative than you wanted. Because there was a chance he didn't mean it that way, and you'd just shown your hand.

Fortunately, he had a terrible poker face. Even streaked with tears, a little bit sweaty, and standing in a room that stank like weed, Anakin's smile burst onto his face and shone like the sun.

You'd forgotten how many butterflies that smile gave you. Tentatively, you moved your hand from his shoulder to his jaw. His eyes slid closed and he leaned into your touch, like you might disappear if he didn't keep you there.

Then, someone hollered in the hallway, something about a round of shots, and Anakin's eyes snapped open.

"Do you want to go somewhere quieter to talk more?" You asked. "We can walk back home or--" Anakin cut you off.

"Um, if you don't hate me right now, and I don't--I could never--hate you, can I just--" His hungry eyes flicked down to your lips, and you knew immediately that the answer was yes. Yes. A hundred times yes.

You didn't think too many brain cells were firing, so you just nodded. His smile widened, if that was even possible, and he pulled you into him just like he had so many times before.

As he got closer, your heart started pounding, and your palms got sweaty, like this was a first date. And, in a way, it kind of was. It was your first time kissing as more than just enemies who fucked every once in a while, but as something else, something more.

When his lips met yours, he was so heartbreakingly tender, you melted under his touch. Anakin was so warm when he held you this close, and you were half expecting him to start deepening the kiss when he pulled away so that your foreheads were touching.

"I fucking missed you so much," he whispered reverently, then immediately kissed you again, deeper this time.

His kiss was all-consuming, like a whirlpool sucking you in, until you'd forgotten everything except how he felt against you. Your kisses grew deeper, until you felt his tongue gently brush your lips, and you immediately opened them.

Everything felt new, gentle, and you relished it. One of his hands slid down to your ass, squeezing gently, and you felt yourself get wet. You'd been pent up for weeks, and the simultaneous relief of being with him again and the way he had all but told you that he had feelings for you were making you dizzy with want for him.

Your hands grasped anything they could, his shoulders, his hair, his arms, as much of him as you could reach. Did he even know what he did to you?

He broke the kiss, just for a second, and you were about to protest when he pulled the two of you back until he was sitting on the twin bed shoved into the corner of the room. You stood between his legs, his hands trailing down the backs of your thighs.

You swung one knee over his hips, lowering yourself until you were straddling him. Anakin watched you, his eyes dark and mischievous, and let out a small "fuck" when you were finally in his lap. He was a sucker for this position, you knew. This was exactly how you'd gotten together, at that stupid night of truth and dare. The memory filled your heart with warmth.

As you settled onto his legs, you felt a familiar hardness under you, and the butterflies returned. You loved doing this to him, making him care about nothing other than the moment you were sharing. You not-so-subtly shifted your hips as you kissed him again, and you were rewarded with a low moan.

His hands kept teasing you, running up and down the sides of your thighs as he captured your lower lip between his teeth gently. You groaned loudly into his mouth, and he used that moment to slide a hand up your inner thigh, until he had passed the hem of your dress.

Using all the willpower you had left, you pulled away. You were both panting, and he was a vision when you looked at him again, his pupils blown wide and his lips red and wet from your kiss.

"Anakin, are you sure this is okay?" You desperately wanted him to say yes, because it felt like you might implode if you didn't have him inside you tonight, but if he was this emotional, you had to say something. Give him an out.

Instead, Anakin looked at you like a man starved. His pupils were wide, and, even through the tears, he looked ravenously hungry for you. Like you made his world spin.

"Yes--God, I've thought of you every day, all the time. I don't want to wait any more than I have to, unless you don't want to, or if you think you'd regret it--" He was rambling. It was adorable.

"I've never regretted you," you said, cutting him off. "But are you sure you're sure?" You stared into his eyes, looking for any trace of worry, or hesitation. All you found was desire, and something softer. Affection, love, maybe.

He rolled his hips, pressing his hard cock against you.

"Can't you feel how much I want you?" Usually, a line like that would make you roll your eyes, but with the mischief in his eyes and the feeling of him hard underneath you, it only served to make you wetter.

You immediately grabbed his shirt to pull his lips to yours again, rocking your hips over and over until he matched your rhythm. The hand on your inner thigh crept upward, until it reached your clothed pussy.

You'd forgotten how well he knew your body, like he'd been made to touch you. His fingers found the perfect angle to stroke your clit, and you became a mess, your kisses sloppy.

After he'd teased you for a long enough time to make you a wreck on top of him, Anakin pulled your underwear aside. He dipped just one finger inside, and he groaned at how soaked you were.

"Can I fuck you, baby?" He asked, as if the answer would be anything but please. You nodded as hard as you could, and he started unzipping his jeans as fast as he could while keeping his eyes on you. You weren't sure he'd ever look away.

Meanwhile, you stood up off of him just enough to pull your soaked panties down your legs and kick them off. As he pulled his cock out, you vowed to give him head the next time you were together, because goddamn, you'd forgotten how nice of a sight he was like this.

He pulled a condom out of his pocket and rolled it on, still looking at you and only fumbling a couple of times in his trance.

"C'mere," he grabbed your waist and pulled until you were straddling him again, right above his cock. He grabbed your hips with one hand, and lined himself up with the other, then slowly started guiding you down onto him.

As he split you open, you forgot how to think, or talk, or do anything other than feel him inside of you. Every ridge, every inch. You let your head fall back as a keening moan erupted from your throat. He kissed everywhere he could, up and down your throat as he grunted against your skin.

You realized you couldn't even draw a steady breath, you were so overwhelmed by the feeling of being with him again.

His breath fanned your collarbone as he finally rested his forehead there and groaned your name. It was music on his lips.

The hand on your hip started guiding you to move, and you gently rocked your hips. God, had it ever felt this good before?

The feeling washed over you like honey, drenching your limbs and making your fingers tingle. Almost on their own, your hips picked up the pace, spreading the feeling everywhere in your body.

As you rode him faster, he pressed his face into your neck, letting the wetness from his crying earlier rub onto your skin. He was groaning at almost every thrust, incoherent mixtures of yes's and your name falling off his lips with every breath.

You were holding on for dear life, fingers fisted in his hair, when he grabbed under your thighs and stood up, slipping his cock out of you while you were still in his arms.

Anakin turned around and laid you down on your back as he busied himself throwing off his shirt and pants until he was bare in front of you. Within two more seconds, he was inside you again, this time thrusting into you from above.

He was holding himself up on his elbows, so his face was right above yours, eyes locked onto yours. You could see every reaction, every groan fall from his lips.

Usually, he was rough and made his hips smack yours, but, today, his thrusts were slow and languid, like he was trying to make it last as long as possible. You could live in this moment for the rest of your life. A particularly strong twitch of his cock made you whimper.

"Fuck, baby. You're so gorgeous like this," he breathed, pressing a kiss to your forehead tenderly. You locked your legs around him, holding him close, so that this wouldn't end. So that you could always stay here.

His breath hitched, and you knew he was getting close. You loved that you knew things like that about him, that only you knew that about him right now.

"Shit, fuck. Your pussy is so fucking good, like you were made for me," he groaned into your ear, speeding up until he was going faster than you thought he could. The intensity made you grasp at his back desperately, your nails catching on his skin. He hissed loudly. Anakin's cock twitched inside you, and you knew he was seconds away from his release. And you were even closer, that delicious tension building with every thrust.

His hand came between you to rub small circles on your clit, and then you were gone. Your mind went blank, and everything became just sensation. Warmth, all around you. Him, everywhere.

Somewhere far away, while you were still twitching around him, he groaned, low and loud and raw, as he came while sheathed deep in your pussy. Anakin laid his head in the crook of your neck while he recovered. His breath hitched as he took a shaky exhale, then pulled his cock out of you.

You didn't need to say any words, you both knew what you wanted. He pulled you into his arms like you were the most precious thing on the planet, then let his eyes slip closed. All the tension that had been building in your body was released, gone into the wind. All that was left was him, and the rise and fall of his chest as you lay against it.

"I missed you, too," you ventured after a few seconds of comfortable silence. He hummed, letting the hand trailing through your hair cup your jaw and pull you up for another kiss.

This one was tender, not about fucking, not about anything but his feelings for you. It was addicting, and, when it stopped, you almost pulled him in for another round. But it was midnight, and every muscle in your body was screaming.

Anakin said something about cleaning up and getting out of here, and you nodded, but you found you were having trouble with coherent thoughts at the moment. Anakin gently kissed your forehead and then rolled out of bed.

"'Kay, I'm gonna go look around for a bathroom, be back in a sec!" He called out, putting his clothes back on quickly, but not quickly enough that you didn't have time to check him out.

Even when he left the room, you were still smiling. You grabbed your phone, discarded somewhere near the bed, and sat back down. You wanted to text Ahsoka to thank her for bringing you to this party, for introducing you to Anakin, hell, for being born, when your homescreen reminded you of something.

54 Days, 18 hours, 27 seconds until Thesis Due Date

That pit opened in your stomach. You thought you had gotten rid of it, but there it was again. Everything went tight in your body, and suddenly all you could think was how could you have let yourself get this far behind? You had to get to work.

Something bumped your leg. It was Anakin's hand. You hadn't even heard him come in.

"Everything okay?" Anakin asked, with that gentle smile that hadn't really left him since you'd made up.

You looked at him, the man who you kind-of-sort-of-definitely had feelings for, and you shot him a half-assed smile as you locked your phone.

"Yeah," you said, your voice tight as you put it away. But, for the rest of the night, even when he walked you home and kissed you in front of the building--in public--it echoed in the back of your mind.

54 days.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

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[muzansfangs]

I’m alive and editing Bloodstain. Look at this, I wanna tease you all. Warnings: angst undertone, after sex moments;

He did not feel ashamed, yet he had stiffened quite visibly. You gave him some seconds to gain his thoughts, before you did something that caught your own rationality off guard "Stay here tonight".

Stay here tonight. Weren't you the one who did not wish for you two to bond? Sleeping with him again would have complicated things further. But your heart was throbbing in your chest. What were you doing?

Offering him a shoulder to cry on? No. Were you concerned about him? No. Were you attempting to be his psychologist? No. You just wanted to be near him and let him know vulnerabilities are part of every being existing. He knew a lot about yours and now you were ready to know more about his ones.

But naturally Sosuke Aizen made things hard for you just like he had done in the past.

"There's no need for this. I'm heading back to my room".

"But—".

"Goodnight".

The bitter taste on your tongue you felt when he left was familiar to you. He had not chosen you. But nobody ever did, right? However, being used to this had not prepared you enough for that stupid feeling of abandonment you were now being swallowed by. He always seemed to be eager to pest you, to have you under his watch. But his pride and ego had prevailed again. After all, was he not respecting your decisions?

[tavolgisvist]

Paul about the breakup of The Beatles in The Lyrics, 2021

The four of us just knew how to fall in with each other and play, and that was our real strength. That made it all the more sorrowful to think that our breaking up was almost inevitable. So there’s a wistful aspect to ‘Get Back’. The idea that you should get back to your roots, that The Beatles should get back to how we were in Liverpool. And the roots are embodied in the style of the song, which is straight-up rock and roll. Because that was definitely what I thought we should do when we broke up �� that we should ‘get back to where we once belonged’ and become a little band again. We should just play and do the occasional little gig. The others laughed at that – quite understandably – because by then it was not really a practical solution. John had just met Yoko, and he clearly needed to escape to a new place, whereas I was saying we should escape to an old place. Reviving the old Beatles just wasn’t on the cards. It was too late to be recommending that we not forget who we were and where we once were from. If my dream at the time really was to get back to where we once belonged, John’s dream was to go beyond where we once belonged, to go somewhere we didn’t yet belong. I’ve already mentioned how in September 1969 we were in a meeting and talking about future plans, and John said, ‘Well, I’m not doing it. I’m leaving. Bye.’ In the ensuing moments, he was giggling and saying how this felt really thrilling, like telling someone you’re going to divorce them and then laughing. At the time, obviously, that was wildly hurtful. Talk about a knockout blow. You’re lying on the canvas, and he’s giggling and telling you how good it feels to have just knocked you out. It took a while, but I suppose I eventually got with the programme. This was my best mate from my youth, the collaborator with whom I’d done some of the best work of the twentieth century (he said, modestly). If he fell in love with this woman, what did that have to do with me? Not only did I have to let him do it, but I had to admire him for doing it. That was the position I eventually reached. There was nothing else I could do but be cool with it.

(Paul McCartney about Get Back (1969), The Lyrics, 2021)

That was coupled with the business problems at Apple Records, which really were horrible. The business meetings were just soul-destroying. We’d sit around in an office, and it was a place you just didn’t want to be, with people you didn’t want to be with. There’s a great picture that Linda took of Allen Klein, in which he’s got a hammer like Maxwell’s silver hammer. It’s very symbolic. And that’s why we have the little nod and a wink in the middle section to ‘You Never Give Me Your Money’, in the lines ‘I never give you my pillow / I only send you my invitations’. That whole period weighed on me to such an extent that I even began to think it was all tied in with the idea of original sin. Even though my mum had christened me as a Catholic, we weren’t brought up Catholic, so I didn’t buy into the concept of original sin on a day-to-day basis. It’s really very depressing to think that you were born a loser.

(Paul McCartney about Carry That Weight (1969), The Lyrics, 2021)

The Beatles stuff all got too heavy, and 'heavy' at that time had a very particular meaning for me. It meant more than oppressive. It meant having to go into meetings and sit in the boardroom with all the other Beatles and with the accountants and with this guy Allen Klein. He was a New York spiv who had come over to London and talked to The Rolling Stones and persuaded them he was the man for them. Prior to that, he had persuaded Sam Cooke he was the man for him. I smelled a rat but the other chaps didn’t, so we had a fight over it and I got voted down. I was trying to be Mr Rational and Mr Sensible, and it all went haywire. It was early 1969, and The Beatles were already beginning to break up. John had said he was leaving, and Allen Klein told us not to tell anyone, as he was in the middle of doing deals with Capitol Records. So, for a few months we had to keep mum. We were living a lie, knowing that John had left the group. Allen Klein and Dick James, who sold our publishing in Northern Songs without giving us a chance to buy the company, were both hanging around in the background of this song. All the people who had screwed us or were still trying to screw us. It’s fascinating how directly we acknowledged this in the song. We’d cottoned on to them, and they must have cottoned on to the fact that we’d cottoned on. We couldn’t have been more direct about it. ...

Contracts were written on funny paper. Lying behind the song is the idea of the contract as a relationship between two people. The negotiations are at once business negotiations and romantic negotiations; I’m thinking of the lines ‘And in the middle of negotiations / You break down’. The breakdown in negotiations is also a kind of nervous breakdown. The problem was that, by this stage, everything was up for negotiation, and miscommunication was the order of the day. We weren’t really writing together anymore. Each person was bringing in little bits of this and little bits of that. And we all knew that phase of our lives, of being The Beatles, was coming to an end. We were working towards an album, knowing it was probably going to be our final fling. Though Let It Be was released later, Abbey Road was indeed the last album we recorded in the studio. There was an upside, however. I’d got married to Linda, and our relationship offered some respite from the dreary infighting and the financial stuff. The lines ‘One sweet dream / Pick up the bags and get in the limousine’ were a reference to how Linda and I were still able to disappear for a weekend in the country. That saved me.

(Paul McCartney about You Never Give Me Your Money (1969), The Lyrics, 2021)

This was just after The Beatles broke up, and I was trying to establish myself as a solo artist with a new repertoire. If it was going to work like the Beatles repertoire had worked, I had to have a hit. One in two songs had to be a hit. So, this was a conscious effort to write a hit, and Phil was very helpful. We knew that if we had a hit, it would cement our relationship and we would keep working together, which we did with the RAM album. It would prove that we were both good – he as a producer and I as a singer songwriter. Releasing my first solo song after the breakup felt like a big moment. Thrilling, though tinged with sadness. It also felt like I had something to prove, and that kind of challenge is always exciting. The song went to number two in the UK singles chart and number five in the US Billboard Hot 100, so it did pretty well. Of course, this was still a time when there was a bit of tension between John and me, and this sometimes filtered into our songwriting. John made fun of this song in one of his own, ‘How Do You Sleep?’The only thing you done was yesterday And since you’ve gone you’re just another day One of his little piss takes.

(Paul McCartney about Another Day (1969/1971), The Lyrics, 2021)

This song was written a year or so after The Beatles breakup, at a time when John was firing missiles at me with his songs, and one or two of them were quite cruel. I don’t know what he hoped to gain, other than punching me in the face. The whole thing really annoyed me. I decided to turn my missiles on him too, but I’m not really that kind of a writer, so it was quite veiled. It was the 1970s equivalent of what we might today call a ‘diss track’. Songs like this, where you’re calling someone out on their behaviour, are quite commonplace now, but back then it was a fairly new ‘genre’. The idea of too many people ‘preaching practices’ was definitely aimed at John telling everyone what they ought to do – telling me, for instance, that I ought to go into business with Allen Klein. I just got fed up with being told what to do, so I wrote this song. ‘You took your lucky break and broke it in two’ was me saying basically, ‘You’ve made this break, so good luck with it.’ But it was pretty mild. I didn’t really come out with any savagery, and it’s actually a fairly upbeat song; it doesn’t really sound that vitriolic. If you didn’t know the story, I don’t know that you’d be able to guess at the anger behind its writing. It was all a bit weird and a bit nasty, and I was basically saying, ‘Let’s be sensible. We had a lot going for us in The Beatles, and what actually split us up is the business stuff, and that’s pretty pathetic really, so let’s try and be peaceful. Let’s maybe give peace a chance.’ The first verse and the chorus have pretty much all the anger I could muster, and when I did the vocal on the second line, ‘Too many reaching for a piece of cake’, I remember singing it as ‘Piss off cake’, which you can hear if you really listen to it. Again, I was getting back at John, but my heart wasn’t really in it. This is me saying, ‘Too many people are sharing the party line. Too many people are grabbing for a slice of the cake, a piece of the pie.’ The ‘sleep in late’ thing – whether that was accurate, whether John and Yoko actually slept in late or not, I’m not sure (although John often was a late riser when I would drive out to Weybridge so that we could write together). They were all references to people thinking that their own truth was the only truth, which was certainly what was coming from John. The thing is, so much of what they held to be truth was crap. War is over? Well no, it isn’t. But I get what you’re saying: war is over if you want it to be. So, if enough people want war to be over, it’ll be over. I’m not sure that’s entirely true, but it’s a great sentiment; it’s a nice thing to think and to say.

I’d been able to accept Yoko in the studio, sitting on a blanket in front of my amp. I’d worked hard to come to terms with that. But then when we broke up and everyone was now flailing around, John turned nasty. I don’t really understand why. Maybe because we grew up in Liverpool, where it was always good to get in the first punch of a fight. The whole story in a nutshell is that we were having a meeting in 1969, and John showed up and said he’d met this guy Allen Klein, who had promised Yoko an exhibition in Syracuse, and then matter-of-factly John told us he was leaving the band. That’s basically how it happened. It was three to one because the other two went with John, so it was looking like Allen Klein was going to own our entire Beatles empire. I was not too keen on that idea. John actually had Allen Klein and Yoko in the room, suggesting lyrics during writing sessions. In his song ‘How Do You Sleep?’ the line ‘The only thing you done was yesterday’ was apparently Allen Klein’s suggestion, and John said, ‘Hey, great. Put that in.’ I can see the laughs they had doing it, and I had to work very hard not to take it too seriously, but at the back of my mind I was thinking, ‘Wait a minute, All I ever did was “Yesterday”? I suppose that’s a funny pun, but all I ever did was “Yesterday”, “Let It Be”, “The Long and Winding Road”, “Eleanor Rigby”, “Lady Madonna”, . . . – fuck you, John.’ I had to fight them for my bit of The Beatles and, in fact, for their bit of The Beatles, which many years later they realised and almost thanked me for. Nowadays people get it, but at the time I think the others felt they were the ones who were victims, who were being hurt by my actions. Allen Klein already had a history with The Rolling Stones. I just thought, ‘Oy oy oy, no, this guy’s got such a bad reputation.’ And good old John says, ‘Oh, if he’s that badly talked about, he can’t be all bad.’ John had this kind of distorted thinking, which was amusing sometimes. But not when someone was going to take everything that John and George and Ringo and I owned and had worked really hard to get.

So, I stood up as the sensible one and said, ‘This is not good.’ Klein wanted twenty per cent, and I said, ‘Tell him he can have ten, if you have to go with him.’ ‘Oh no, no, no,’ they came back. ‘No, he wants twenty.’ It seemed to me they were just fucking out of it and making no attempt to do anything sensible. A lot of hurt went down during that period in the early 1970s – them feeling hurt, me feeling hurt – but John being John, he was the one who would write a hurtful song. That was his bag.

(Paul McCartney about Too Many People (1971), The Lyrics, 2021)

Towards the end of 1969, John had quite gleefully told us it was over. There were a few of us in the Apple boardroom at the time. I think George was away visiting family, but Ringo and I were at the meeting, and John was saying no to every suggestion. I thought we should go back to playing smaller gigs again, but the answer came back: ‘No’. Eventually John said, ‘Oh, I’ve been wanting to tell you this, but I’m leaving The Beatles.’ We were all shocked. Relations had been strained, but we sat there saying, ‘What? Why? Why? Why?’ It was like a divorce, and he had just had a divorce from Cynthia the year before. I can remember him saying, ‘Oh, this is quite exciting.’ That was very John, and I had admired this kind of contrarian behaviour about him since we were kids, when I first met him.

He really was a bit loony, in the nicest possible way. But whilst all of us could see what he meant, it was not quite so exciting for those left on the other side.

(Paul McCartney about Dear Friend (1971), The Lyrics, 2021)

This is one of my favourite songs. It's a ballad with a brass section, but it’s always felt Victorian in style to me. It’s very heartfelt. ‘A love so warm and beautiful / Stands when time itself is falling’. I like that idea, instead of just saying, ‘It will go on forever.’ I got a good feeling writing this song, and listening to it now, I still do. ‘Love, faith and hope are beautiful’. The brass solo is lovely for me because it harks back to the brass bands that were so common when I was a kid; there would often be brass bands in the park or in the streets. My dad played trumpet, as I never fail to mention, and he had his own little band – Jim Mac’s Jazz Band. The first instrument he bought me was a trumpet, and he taught me the scale of C which, when you go on the piano, becomes B-flat. It’s all very complicated. That’s why we didn’t even bother learning music. I realised that I wanted to swap the trumpet for a guitar, so I asked his permission, and he said, ‘Yes, okay.’ ‘Warm and Beautiful’ was written well after the demise of The Beatles, and at this time we knew sadness. I knew about delving into your mind to look for help and looking for some sort of solace in a song. I liked the idea of writing a song in a universal way that dispels the sadness. You write about the wonderful things you know in the world, and you try to write so that it will sing well and be well received by people dealing with grief something that inevitably surrounds all of us at one time or another. On a more personal level, the main inspiration for the song was Linda…

(Paul McCartney about Warm and Beautiful (1976), The Lyrics, 2021)

After The Beatles thing became so depressing, Linda and I decided we’d get out of London and start living full-time on our small holding in Scotland. It was quite a difficult period because of the band’s breakup but it allowed me to see another side of myself. First and foremost, we did everything for ourselves, and at this point it was Linda, Heather, Mary – who was still a baby – and me. If we needed something to eat, we’d go into town in the little Land Rover, come back up, and cook it. We didn’t have anyone helping us, except for one guy, the shepherd, because it was a little sheep farm. It was an experience that allowed me to be a man. <…> I’d grown up in Liverpool and gone on the road with The Beatles around the world and then around again, and now here I was on a farm in the middle of nowhere, and it was sensational. <…> This was the kind of thing I’d never done, ever, in my life, and it was amazingly liberating. I got to do all the things I think a lot of young people still dream about today – the famous ‘gap year’. I sense a lot of people want that freedom, escaping the rat race…

(Paul McCartney about When Winter Comes (1992), The Lyrics, 2021)

After the breakup of The Beatles, I wouldoften just sit around a lot. Sometimes I sat in the kitchen while the kids were playing. Maybe they were drawing. Maybe they were doing bits and pieces of homework. In this case, I came across the chords and I just felt optimistic, and I liked the idea of a song saying that help is coming and there’s a bright light on the horizon. I’ve got absolutely no evidence for this, but I like to believe it. It helps to lift my spirits, to move me forward, and hopefully it might help other people move forward too.

(Paul McCartney about Great Day (1972/1997), The Lyrics, 2021)

Wings, which we began in 1971, was in many ways an experiment to see whether there was life after The Beatles, to see whether that success could be followed. It was the result of asking myself, ‘Am I going to stop now?’ The Beatles were so wonderful and all-encompassing, so successful. Now, should I stop and look for something else to do? But I thought, ‘No. I like music too much, so whatever the something else is, it will be music.’ <…> But it wouldn’t be The Wings, like The Beatles. Just Wings. My problem after The Beatles was, who’s going to be as good as them? I thought, ‘We can’t be as good as The Beatles, but we can be something else.’ I knew that if I were to go ahead with this project I’d have to tough it out, but I had reserves of courage from being part of The Beatles when pennies were thrown at us at the village hall in Stroud, when we were still starting out. <…> Starting off a new band is always a lot of fun, but it’s a lot of hard work too; you have to establish yourself. Following The Beatles was one of the most difficult things for me, just trying to live up to those expectations. It was even more difficult for her [Linda]. I started to write songs for Wings from 1971 onwards, when we got started, and I tried to keep them away from The Beatles’ style. There were avenues I could go down that I wouldn’t have gone down with The Beatles, like bringing in the influence of reggae, which Linda and I got into in Jamaica. I fancied doing something crazy, and Wings allowed me a little bit more freedom. So, this is a love song in which Cupid’s arrow is referenced, but it’s a malevolent arrow. It’s possible I’d seen an illustration of Cupid and thought, ‘Cupid fires a bow, but I’ll switch it. It won’t be love; it will be the opposite.’ The character in the song has been wounded. He’s been cheated on. And it could’ve been a great relationship, could’ve been fantastic. As things stand, you couldn’t ‘have found a more down hero’, because there was nobody more down than me at that moment. So, get it together and bring your love. I have always had a soft spot for this song. There’s a nice horn riff in it, and it’s funky. Sometimes you write to get a sort of feeling rather than a perfectly ‘correct’ lyric. Sometimes the lyric can be secondary to the feeling. This one has as much, or more, to do with the feel of the song, the groove.

(Paul McCartney about Arrow Through Me (1979), The Lyrics, 2021)

John described ‘Coming Up’ somewhere as ‘a good piece of work’. He’d been lying around not doing much, and it sort of shocked him out of inertia. So it was nice to hear that it had struck a chord with him. At first, after the breakup of The Beatles, we had no contact, but there were various things we needed to talk about. Our relationship was a bit fraught sometimes because we were discussing business, and we would sometimes insult each other on the phone. But gradually we got past that, and if I was in New York I would ring up and say, ‘Do you fancy a cup of tea?’

(Paul McCartney about Coming Up (1979), The Lyrics, 2021)

It’s very possible that I’d been feeling down in London. I was back in the solace of family and Liverpool, and what with the Beatles troubles down south, I was likely thinking, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to get home and have that comfortable feeling again?’ So, there may have been some of that in the background. I wouldn’t rule it out. When I wrote the song, I hadn’t been back home to Liverpool for a long time. But now I was at my dad’s house, which wasn’t quite home because it was a house I’d bought him when I got some money – a five-bedroomed mock Tudor place in Heswall near the River Dee. But it was still Liverpool, and it was ‘homeward’. So I added, ‘Once there was a way to get back homeward / Once there was a way to get back home’. The song turned out to be quite soulful, and I think that’s what attracted me to those lyrics in the first place – that notion of consoling a baby or reading kids a bedtime story. ‘Sleep, pretty darling, do not cry / And I will sing a lullaby’. Those are lines – or something with a similar sentiment – that most parents probably say to their children to soothe them when they’re growing up.

(Paul McCartney about Golden Slumbers (1969), The Lyrics, 2021)

It became a refuge of sorts, and it was nice to get away from London and everything – both the good and bad – that comes with the city. I would drive a Massey Ferguson 315 tractor and mow the hay, and I loved that because I’d been a nature fiend as a kid, and this freedom just gave me time to think – ‘Down to Junior's Farm where I want to lay low’. It was such a relief to get out of those business meetings with people in suits, who were so serious all the time, and to go off to Scotland and be able just to sit around in a T-shirt and corduroys. I was very much in that mindset when I wrote this song. The basic message is, let’s get out of here. You might say it’s my post-Beatles getting-out-of-town song.

(Paul McCartney about Junior's Farm (1974), The Lyrics, 2021)

The context in which the song was written was one of stress. It was a difficult time because we were heading towards the breakup of The Beatles. It was a period of change partly because John and Yoko had got together, and that had an effect on the dynamics of the group. Yoko was literally in the middle of the recording session, and that was challenging. But it was also something we had to deal with. Unless there was a really serious problem – unless one of us said, ‘I can’t sing with her there’ – we just had to let it be. We weren’t very confrontational, so we just bottled it up and got on with it. We were northern lads, and that was part of our culture. Grin and bear it. One interesting thing about ‘Let It Be’ that I was reminded of only recently is that, while I was studying English literature at the Liverpool Institute High School for Boys with my favourite teacher, Alan Durband, I read Hamlet. In those days you had to learn speeches by heart because you had to be able to carry them into the exam and quote them. There are a couple of lines from late in the play: O, I could tell you But let it be. – Horatio, I am dead I suspect those lines had subconsciously planted themselves in my memory. When I was writing ‘Let It Be’, I’d been doing too much of everything, was run ragged, and this was all taking its toll. The band, me we were all going through times of trouble, as the song goes, and there didn’t seem to be any way out of the mess. <…> Around the time we recorded ‘Let It Be’, I’d been pushing the band to go back out and play some club dates – to get back to basics and just bond again as a band, end the decade like we’d begun it, just playing for the love of it. We didn’t get to do that as The Beatles, but that idea did inform the direction of the Let It Be album. We didn’t want any studio trickery. It was supposed to be an honest, no-overdubbing album. It didn’t exactly end up that way, but that had been the plan.

(Paul McCartney about Let It Be (1969), The Lyrics, 2021)

This song is also an analogy for when something goes wrong out of the blue, as I was beginning to find happening around this time in our business dealings. Recording sessions were always good because no matter what our personal troubles were, no matter what was happening on the business front, the minute we sat down to make a song we were in good shape. Right until the end there was always a great joy in working together in the studio. So there we were, recording a song like ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ and knowing we would never have the opportunity to perform it. That possibility was over. It had been knocked on the head like one of Maxwell’s victims. Bang bang.

(Paul McCartney about Maxwell's Silver Hammer (1969), The Lyrics, 2021)

In much the way that Linda wanted to flee from New York society– the constrictions of Park Avenue and Scarsdale – I wanted to flee from what The Beatles had become. I was hoping to escape, she was hoping to escape. So we had this feeling that we had each pulled the other ‘out of time’. Though the song was written immediately after The Beatles’ breakup, it was somehow included under the Lennon-McCartney rubric, where it doesn’t belong. It was one of my first solo songs, but because of the deal, it got caught in the publishing net. That was very annoying. <…> …the central idea being that there’s so often a split between the inner and outer. <…> The elements of fear and loneliness are very much to the fore. ‘Maybe I’m afraid of the way I love you’ is itself a troubling idea. While it’s true that Linda is the person I’m addressing, it’s also true that I’m dealing in fiction. Starting with myself, the characters who appear in my songs are imagined. <…> In any event, this song isn’t the conventional way of presenting a relationship, or of some of the contradictions that can arise from being in love. <…> It shows the fragility of love.

(Paul McCartney about Maybe I’m Amazed (1970), The Lyrics, 2021)

John went to the exhibition, and I think that was when he and Yoko met, towards the end of 1966. He climbed up a ladder to see what she’d written on the ceiling, and got close enough to it to read it, and it said, ‘Yes.’ So he thought, ‘That’s a sign; this is it,’ and they fell madly in love. Once they were an item, there was the whole Beatles recording thing, where she would be there too. I think this started at the beginning of the ‘White Album’ sessions – so, around the end of spring in 1968. And at first we all – all of us except John – found it pretty intrusive, but we went along with it and worked around her. And eventually I came to the realisation that, look, if John loves her, we’ve just got to let it be, and we’ve got to support this relationship. That was basically my feeling. Then, a year or two later, The Beatles broke up, and it was a bad period, a real low point, where everyone was taking potshots at everyone. And I felt that John and Yoko were particularly good in the potshot department, saying things in interviews, or comments that would make their way to you. They would say not always very pleasant things, and looking back on it, I sort of think, ‘Why? You’re annoyed, so say something unpleasant?’ Over time, the situation eased off and my relationship with John got better, and I used to see him in New York or speak to him on the phone.

(Paul McCartney about Golden Earth Girl (1993), The Lyrics, 2021)

I’m not sure I thought of it at the time, even though this was well after The Beatles disbanded, but I can’t help connecting the oppressiveness associated with that phrase to the oppressiveness that coincided with the end of The Beatles. Not that The Beatles are over exactly. It’s not like we were some little band that never had another record; even though half of us have died, the phenomenon continues stronger than ever. Everything I do seems to be painted with ‘Beatle’…

(Paul McCartney about Put It There (1988), The Lyrics, 2021)

Add to this

[jweekgoji]

[BW] Yandere!Dinobot/Reader [hcs/thoughts]

tw/tags: heat cycle, yandere themes, mentions of stalking, jealousy, possessiveness, a tinyy bit suggestive. word count: ~700 a/n: born to obsess over underrated characters forced to yap about the popular one (but I'm joking, I love them all, I'm just sad that Beast Wars is not talked about as much as other shows).

some quick thoughts in between requests because if I don't express it now, i will forget about it.

okay hear me out on...yandere Dinobot. I know Beast Wars is not really popular in the fandom, but oh my god, this ugly handsome man

we all saw that maximals/predacons share those animalistic traits that are connected to their beast modes. Rattrap likes to chew on scrap, Cheetor acts like a cat and even meows, Tigatron considers white tigers as some kind of family; Tarantulas and Blackarachnia have that rivalry for obvious reasons (bad for him).

it would be funny if they also had some type of cybertronian heat cycles.

even though Dinobot is heavily influenced by Jurassic Park velociraptors, I still feel like he'd act like a big bird rather than a lizard. or something in between, of course.

Yandere!Dinobot is overprotective and snappy as hell, to the point he considers even other maximals as a potential danger to you. Unlike more rational bots, Dinobot has no shame at all. It would cost him an arm and a leg to admit it to you, but he's actually jealous. Of what? There's no need to find any reason to explain his behavior once the season starts.

Yandere!Dinobot is vocal; he will growl, hiss and snap his teeth at anyone who tries to approach his mate. All maximals know that it's not the time to come near the two of you, but the unrespectful predacons...I'm a sucker for duos, their possibilities, and to imagine the dynamic between Megatron/Dinobot, both trying to court the poor reader.

But once the two of you are alone, I can see him having those rare moments where Dinobot lets himself relax. Most of the time he's in a constant state of alert, the dangerous mix of his primal instincts and  that warrior code of his just tells him to take you somewhere far-far away, so no maximal or predacon will get you. So maybe he can rest just for a little with you next to him. Dinobot definitely makes soft purrs, even to his own surprise.

Yandere!Dinobot is a stalker. Maybe, when it's just the start of the relationship between the two of you, he will try to somehow justify it, at least. Like, “I am just testing your skills, a true warrior must be always alert. You don't know when the predacons attack you next” , but the more you grow closer to him, the more he lets himself be a tiny bit warmer to you “You should not wander off alone. Stick closer to me”.

Read it, and don't forget a little personal nickname he has for you, which he adds at the end of the sentence.

It will also be funny to imagine Dinobot being a little too invested in building a nest. It also gets more awkward if your beast mode is some far different species. Why would he need to collect your stuff from your room? And why is he so adamant about you always staying in his room? He is holding you so tightly that you practically have no chance but to stay. So clueless!

“Is that [...] from my quarters?”

“Just be quiet and start recharging, you irresistible fool!”

Dinobot himself is a little embarrassed too if you start asking too many questions. He doesn't like being all vulnerable, even though he trusts you very much to know that you will never make fun of him. His own mind is clouded with not so innocent thoughts, and it actually becomes a big problem when he tries to focus on his training or fighting.

I don't think Dinobot would try to attract you with those silly dances reptiles/birds do to impress their mates, but when he is in his beast mode, you can definitely notice his tail wagging just a little bit when you're around. Rattrap probably picks on it faster than you and teases Dinobot about it until the two start fighting again.

[drabblesandsnippets]

Whatever You Need

Pairing: Bucky Barnes x Plus-size female reader

Summary: (3.3k) Bucky comforts you during a rough time. 

Background: Reworking of this snippet. It’s been a rough few weeks (for a lot of folks, I’m sure) and I couldn’t stop thinking about this one. To everyone who struggles with their mental health, please be kind to yourself. 

Warnings: 18+ Only. Mention of insomnia, depression, anxiety. Angst. Fluff. Attempt at a bit of humor? Soft and sweet Bucky. Established relationship. Pet names (sweetheart, doll). Non-sexual nudity & touching. Kissing. Cuddling. Brief mention of/alluding to past sexual intimacy.

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

You sit by the open window, breathing in the heavy scent of the steady rain, listening to the thunder getting closer. You should be in bed, with Bucky’s arms wrapped around you, snuggling you back to sleep. But, you can’t seem to make yourself go.

It’s been weeks of this. Insomnia. Depression. Anxiety. Every day, things feel just a bit more hopeless, like you’re barely treading water, surely to go under at any moment. Rationally, you know this will pass, as it always does, you just have to wait it out and hope you don’t drown in the meantime. 

The closer the storm gets, the more anxious you feel. As if the energy of the weather is triggering your fight or flight response. You push open the window a bit more and scoot closer to the screen, imagining yourself out in the storm, getting soaked to the bone. At least then you’d have a reason for the way your body is currently shaking.

“Sweetheart,” the tenderness of Bucky’s voice pulls you out of your thoughts and you glance over to find him watching you from the doorway. You have no idea how long he’s been standing there, wearing just his underwear and an obvious look of concern on his face.

You let out a heavy sigh and bite back the unnecessary apology, turning your attention back to the storm, a wave of guilt making your stomach flip. Bucky’s done everything he can to be patient with you, and never once has he made you feel like you’re a burden, but it’s taken an obvious toll on your relationship. The way you’ve kept him at arm’s length, scared to let him see how much you’re really struggling.

Your racing thoughts are interrupted again when Bucky comes closer, now barely a foot from the window nook where you sit. “I just wanna take care of you.” You turn your head to watch him slowly crouch down next to the seat, never once taking his eyes off you, a soft smile on his face. “It’s okay if you don’t want me to.”

You immediately shake your head, needing him to understand it’s not about that. Your mouth opens, the words on the tip of your tongue, but nothing comes out. This is how it’s been for weeks. Words desperately trying to claw their way out, only to get stuck in your throat with no escape. 

The frustration easily builds, fresh tears pricking your eyes, and you look away again, letting out a shuddering breath. Bucky should just give up on you. Leave you to wallow in self-pity and loneliness. He never will though, no matter how much you think you might deserve it.

“It’s also okay if you do want me to,” he continues, his hand slowly reaching out towards you, the tips of his fingers ghosting over the blanket wrapped around you, waiting for permission to touch you. 

Bucky sees you, understands you in ways no one ever has. Your independence is your shield, something you’ve carefully cultivated. You’ve handled everything that life’s thrown at you on your own, and relying on someone else doesn’t come easy. It has absolutely nothing to do with him, but he can still be there for you, if you’ll let him. 

“It’s okay if you need me to take care of you.”

His gentle assurance breaks your resolve, the tears currently blurring your vision spilling over your lashes, and the only thing you can do is bury your face in your hands, trying to hide from him. Bucky’s not one to give up so easily, choosing to join you, taking a spot on the edge of the seat instead of breaking the physical distance, his hand now inches from your sock-covered foot.

“You don’t have to look at me,” he promises, letting the words process before he continues, “I just want you to listen, okay? Can you do that, please?” 

All you can manage is a slight nod as you try to stifle a sniffle, your breaths uneven, willing yourself to stop the fresh tears threatening to build. 

No matter how many times you’ve been down this road - both alone and together - it never seems to get easier. Especially when Bucky’s male ego tells him he’s supposed to fix this, that it’s his job to put you back together and all you have to do is let him.

It’s a ridiculous notion, one he does his best to ignore, choosing instead to tell you, “I know it’s scary to admit you’re not okay, especially when you’re still trying to figure out what’s happening inside your own head. So, I’m not expecting you to have the energy to talk about anything tonight, I just want you to know that whatever you need from me, you have it sweetheart, even if you’re never able to tell me what’s going on.”

You try to fight through the rush of emotions, his words bringing a fresh wave of tears, your body aching for his comfort. You’re so tired of being strong, of forcing yourself to power through, pretending it’s not as bad as it seems. Bucky’s your one safe place in this chaotic world and for a fleeting moment, you have the courage to bridge the gap, the tension in your shoulders easing just a bit as you let your hand drop towards him.

He takes it for what it is, catching your hand before it can fall to his thigh and brings your palm to his lips, placing a sweet kiss right in the center. At the feel of your pulse fluttering from his simple touch, Bucky’s smile grows and he’s encouraging you closer with a soft, “co’mere,” his metal hand sliding along the outside of your arm to help guide you.

Pulling you into his lap, your soft curves molding perfectly to the harder planes of his body, Bucky wraps you up in his warm embrace, cradling your head against his shoulder. Your tears come more freely now and for a while, you just sit there, listening to the steady heartbeat of the man you’re lucky to call yours, the sound a gentle reminder that you’re not alone, regardless of what your brain tries to convince you of sometimes.

It’s not until your breath begins to even out, your sniffles slowly subsiding, that Bucky softly breaks the silence to ask you, “How do ya feel about a bath, sweetheart?”

A soft noise of protest comes out muffled against his skin, your arms tightening around his torso, content to just stay here as long as he’ll let you. Still, you can’t help asking, “is this your way of saying I smell?” It hasn’t been that long since you forced yourself to shower.

Bucky’s laughter gently shakes your body, your own smile building in return and he wastes no time in nuzzling your hair, his head dipping to dramatically sniff along your jaw and neck. “Nope,” he says matter-of-factly, meeting your gaze with a grin before repeating the action along the other side, drawing an unmistakable laugh from you. “You smell just as good as you always do,” he promises with a tender kiss right below your ear. “But, a bath might make you feel a little better.”

There are a multitude of reasons to say no - the energy it takes just to get in, the stark contrast of the cool air after getting out, having to dry off every inch of your skin before you can even think about getting into bed, just to name a few. All it takes is one look at Bucky and you’re realizing none of them matter because he already knows. 

His assurance that you won’t have to lift a finger comes quick, reminding you that he’s here to take care of you, in whatever way you need. He’ll even carry you, if you’ll let him.

To both of your surprise, it doesn’t take much for you to agree and the moment you do, Bucky seeks permission to kiss you, showing his appreciation, murmuring words of adoration against your lips. He takes a moment to savor the intimate connection, silently thanking the universe for bringing you to him, for allowing him the privilege of loving you.

He drops you off in the bedroom, resecuring the blanket still wrapped around your body, convincing you to rest in bed while he draws a bath. Once he’s gone, you actually start to doze off, snuggled with Bucky’s pillow, the distant thrum of the bathtub filling a nice break from the near constant rush of thoughts trying to occupy your mind.

When he returns, the vision of you resting peacefully is almost enough for him to break his promise to wake you. He’d happily sit watch, keep an eye on you for the rest of the night to ensure your sleep went undisturbed.

It’s the last thing you’d want though. You’d wake disoriented, feeling constricted in your clothing, worse off than you were when you fell asleep. 

With a heavy sigh, Bucky shakes his head, a regretful smile crossing his face as he reaches out to stroke your cheek with the back of his fingers. “You ready?”

His voice is barely audible, your mind not comprehending his touch until his beard is tickling your nose, his lips brushing against your forehead. Your response comes in the form of a confused grunt, your face scrunched, hands reaching up to touch him.

“The bath’s ready,” he explains, his smile evident in his tone, giving you one last lingering kiss before pulling back. “Are you ready, or do ya wanna rest a bit longer?”

It’d be easy to just stay here, let Bucky undress you and put you under the covers, your body craving rest. It won’t last though. You’ll start to get restless, toss and turn in hopes of finding a better position, all the while your mind will refuse to quiet, growing more on edge until you’re forced out of bed yet again.

A bath isn’t a cure-all, and maybe it won’t really help, but you owe it to yourself to at least try. To let yourself be vulnerable, no matter how scary it feels. 

Bucky effortlessly carries you from bed into the dimly lit bathroom, the heater already keeping the room relatively warm, ready to be adjusted when it’s time to get out. After setting you on your feet next to the tub, he gives you another reassuring smile and starts to undress you, careful not to snag your shirt on your hair.

You have to close your eyes when he kneels to remove your sweatpants, your body fighting the urge to take over and do it yourself. It’s far from the first time Bucky’s undressed you - and it certainly won’t be the last - it’s just not usually under these circumstances. 

The lingering tension starts to fade when he looks up, his obvious love for you shining through even your most persistent insecurities. Once he’s freed you of the rest of your clothes, he helps you in, the oversized tub providing more than enough space for you to sink down, the water coming up to your chest.

Bucky takes his time, giving you a minute to adjust to the heat of the water while he gathers the necessary supplies, the bath pillow already secure behind your head. All you can do is watch him, your throat tight with emotion, tears starting to prick your eyes, the nagging voice in your head trying to convince you that you don’t deserve someone like him.

Biting back the urge to tell him what’s going through your mind, you blink back the tears, your eyes cast to the ceiling for a brief moment. He gives you more time than necessary, his focus on dipping the fresh washcloth in the water, then reaching for the body wash to pour a generous amount.

Seeing him preparing to bathe you makes the moment fully come into view and a soft, incredulous laugh leaves you, “are we really doing this?” You’re not sure you’ve ever felt so naked and exposed, despite all the sinful things you’ve let this man do to you.

Bucky’s grin does wonders for your anxiety, as does his soft assurance of, “not if you don’t think it’ll help.” He tilts his head, holding your gaze, ensuring you hear his next words, “But, if it’s because you think I don’t wanna do this, or I’m not gonna enjoy every single second of it? Doll, come on, this is me.” 

His words cause another exhale of a laugh and a blush spreads across your cheeks, Bucky’s smiling growing wider, his tongue peaking out to tease along his bottom lip. 

“I’m getting to take care of you, be near you, touch you. I live for this shit,” he laughs, his brows raised to drive home his point. “I’m obsessed with you, remember? I’d literally drink your bath water.”

You barely have time to react before he’s leaning forward, having every intention to prove it to you. Your wet hands reach out just in time to push against his head and shoulder before his face gets any closer to the water, a loud laugh spilling out of you, “What- Stop, Bucky, oh my god!”

His laughter joins yours and he allows you to turn his head at the last moment, taking the opportunity to close the distance to share a kiss, Bucky smiling against your lips. You can’t resist keeping your hands on him, the water dripping down his bare torso, but he doesn’t seem to mind, his own hand reaching out to cup your jaw.

“There’s nowhere else I’d rather be,” he promises, peppering kisses across your cheeks and forehead, ending with one on the tip of your nose. Once he’s sure your worries and insecurities are starting to fade, he reaches for the washcloth again, telling you, “Now, just relax and let me take care of my girl, okay?”

A playful roll of your eyes and a smile you don’t even try to hide as you tell him, “fine,” begrudgingly doing as requested. Bucky takes it in stride, his smile never faltering, happily reaching for your arm to start taking care of you in one of the few ways you’ve let him recently.

He can’t help but take advantage of the opportunity, taking his time to bathe you, massaging your muscles in the process, his movements smooth along your soap-slicked skin. By the time he’s given each limb equal attention, you’re putty in his hands and you make no objections when the washcloth dips under the water to wash your stomach and hips.

Your eyes remain closed for the most part, Bucky’s occasional glance telling him you’re enjoying this far more than you anticipated. He makes a mental note to convince you to make this a regular thing, not just when you’re going through a rough time. You deserve to be pampered every day, but he’ll settle for at least once a month.

Not missing how careful Bucky is as he moves higher, the washcloth not lingering on your breasts any longer than necessary, you finally open your eyes, blinking slowly up at him. He meets your gaze with a soft smile as he starts to wash your collarbone, the warm water calling you to sink lower, as if it might erase the clinging numbness that refuses to dissipate. 

The words tumble out of you before you can overthink them, your question catching Bucky off guard, his hand stilling on the edge of the tub. “What if I never get better?”

“Sweetheart,” Bucky murmurs with a slight shake of his head, his brow furrowing to  match the frown beginning to appear. Your mouth opens to respond, the words failing you before they can even form, wishing you could rewind time to prevent the worried look on his face.

He breaks the silence before you have to, offering you an empathetic smile as he asks, “Can I get in with you?” It’s the last thing you’re expecting as a response and it catches you off guard in such a way that your mind stops racing long enough to scoot forward, making room for him.

There’s no time to waste, Bucky quickly discarding his underwear in order to join you, the oversized tub giving him space to sit behind you, pulling you back against his chest. With his arms wrapped protectively around you, he kisses your shoulder, rubbing his beard along your skin in hopes to ground you, “This isn’t going to last forever. Eventually, something’s gonna shift and you’ll start to feel better.”

Bucky’s not wrong. What you’re experiencing right now, regardless of how long it’s lasted, won't be forever and things will go back to normal at some point. Right now isn’t what you’re referring to though. With a heavy breath, you pull your knees up, letting the air hit your skin, goosebumps threatening to spread. “But that never lasts either.”

He can hear the emotion in your voice, the tears starting to build again, and it makes his chest ache, wishing he could ease your pain. “Maybe not,” he agrees, keeping his tone gentle, “but that’s okay. It’s all part of being human, sweetheart. We have good days, and we have bad days, and no, I’m not keeping score.”

An exhale of a laugh leaves you at the same time a tear escapes your lashes, causing you to automatically wipe it away, your wet hand leaving several drops of water in its place. Bucky gives you the space to collect yourself, using the opportunity to grab the washcloth and bodywash again, determined to complete his mission of bathing you.

You welcome the distraction, leaning forward to give him better access, his fingers soon working out the tension in your back. Your delicate mental state leaves you vulnerable, Bucky’s touch sending you further down the rabbit hole of negative thoughts, the once receding emotions returning tenfold, leaving you crying.

“You deserve better than this.”

“Hey,” Bucky soothes, gathering you in his arms to pull you flush against his body, your weight welcome on his lap, your face pressed against his neck, tears mixing with the water. “There is no one out there better for me than you,” he promises. “You’re it for me. You and your gorgeous mind and insanely hot body, and yes - all your ‘issues’,” he grins, kissing your temple.

There’s nothing you can do except sigh, your breath shuddering out of you, your hand pressed against his chest, drawing comfort from the strong beat of his heart. What he’s saying is starting to break through, reminding you what it’s like when things don’t feel so heavy. How easy it is to be loved by him when you’re not so scared of being a burden.

“I just want you to be happy,” you manage to whisper, working past the emotions trying to overwhelm you again.

“Good,” Bucky’s quick to respond, his fingers on your chin tilting your face up to meet his warm gaze. “‘Cause that’s exactly how you make me feel.” He can’t help but shake his head at you, his smile growing, as if you don’t realize how ridiculous you’re being, “Every day you make me feel like the luckiest guy in the world. Nothing is ever going to change that. Got it?”

Another heavy breath, and a tear that Bucky casually wipes away, but this time it’s accompanied by a twitch of a smile, the waves of anxiety starting to recede. “Got it,” you whisper, meeting him halfway for a kiss, solidifying your devotion to each other, your promise to work as a team to get through whatever comes, without pushing the other too far out of your comfort zone.

It’ll take time, and it won’t be perfect, but at least you’ll have the rest of your lives to keep trying.

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

Comments and reblogs very much appreciated!! 🩶

Main Masterlist

[wrathofrats]

Seeing Blind (you’re too good to be all mine)

Chapter 5. Mature, 2.4k. Read under cut or on Ao3

(Part 1) (part 2) (part 3) (part 4)

As always thank you to @divine-misfortune for writing this with me <3

Rain whipped around. Confused to see Dew running up to him from the side field, brushing debris off of his overalls. They had never spoken before, at least not directly like this. Small quips and comments when he finds himself at Swiss’ side that sound like they’re meant to be digs directed at him despite the fact Dew barely acknowledged his presence.

“I’m sorry?”

“I think we should have a talk“

It’s Rain’s turn to barely sleep in Swiss’ arms. His head swimming with a tirade of thought. Was he not good enough? Did he do something wrong? Go too fast? Maybe Swiss just didn’t want him in the same way he did?

He could feel how hard he was against his back for a good portion of the night. Rationally, most of that couldn’t possibly be true. Why would Swiss assume he wasn’t ready for it? None of it made sense and it left a strange, conflicted feeling in him. Not quite dejected but certainly confused.

At least he could finally sleep comfortably beside him, in a bed, like real people who like each other do.

When the sun threatens to crest the horizon, Swiss is shifting behind him. Moving carefully. Thoughtfully trying not to jostle Rain awake, no reason for him to have to adhere to the ungodly early schedule Swiss kept. It’s a hopeless effort but it was the thought that counted. Rain stirred as the arm beneath his head began to retreat, making a soft sound he could only describe as a chirp. His eyes fight to open, drooping despite himself, as Swiss slipped from the cozy little cocoon they’d made.

“Shh tadpole…Go back to sleep”

Cute. Rain looked beyond adorable and Swiss suddenly understood the meaning of ‘cuteness aggression’. The messy hair and blush coloring his cheeks the loveliest shade of pink was entirely unfair, but the way he managed to bat those pretty eyelashes was playing dirty.

“Just’a couple more minutes Swiss, ‘lease” Rain mumbled his way right into a yawn, tugging at Swiss’ shirt like he might just drag him back into bed like this.

“I’ve gotta go, I can’t be late. But come see me on my break, ‘kay?”

Swiss smoothed the hair from his forehead, dipping down to kiss the little crease between his brows before Rain’s head dropped back to the pillow with a small whine that he gives up on committing to when the comforters pulled back over him. Hard not to snuggle back in, harder not to bury his face in the other pillow to inhale the comfortable lingering scent like he might just pretend Swiss was still beside him.

Didn’t stop him from pouting though.

Leaving Rain was a real test of his will but dutifully Swiss dragged himself away. It was safer for him to duck out as early as this, less of a chance of being caught by the wrong person. He woefully stuffed his feet back into his muddy boots abandoned by the front door and trudged outside towards his truck.

He prayed it was too early for anyone else to be lurking about, and if it had to be anyone, let it be Mountain.

But God had a sense of humor, apparently.

Dew and cirrus were waiting for him with wolfish grins near the tractor, immediately trying to prod him for answers.

"Well well well, smooth talked your way right into his bed huh?" Dew laughed

"Didn't take him for easy.” Cirrus folds her arms looking over his sorry, disheveled state.

"So how was he? Did he even know what he was doing? Was it embarrassingly bad? That why you're doing the walk of shame before the suns even up?" Dew gasped at the promise of scandal, hanging off of Cirrus’ arm with a smirk like he was pleased with himself.

Swiss couldn’t tell if he wanted them to die or if he'd like a stampede of cattle to take him out then and there. Honestly, didn't know if they even deserved a response. Probably shouldn’t. All their senseless prodding, he shouldn’t dignify it but God Dew was too fucking annoying to ignore at times.

“We didn’t do anything” Swiss pushed past them to make the hike back to his truck so he could at least change. Boss might give him weird looks for showing up in yesterday's wrinkled clothes.

“Oh, sure. Totally. So, tell me, he invites you in and you spend the night doing what exactly? A kiss on the cheek before turning off the lights at nine on the dot so you can sleep on opposite sides of the bed with both hands above the covers?” Dew questions incredulously, with an oddly specific example. “You’re the worst liar I’ve ever fucking met, Swiss!”

Swiss winced at the volume of his voice, nervously eyeing the farmhouse standing silently as he gestured aggressively for him to shut the fuck up. Rain would be mortified if he knew the others were talking about him in this fashion.

“Love that Swiss thinks he can lie his way out of shit like this, as if you of all people don’t know what he looks like after a long night.” Cirrus snickers behind her hand and Dew suddenly looks appalled.

“Oh my fucking god it was one time!”

“It was a couple times actually-“

Like a thief in the night, Swiss uses their endless bickering as an excuse to slip away from their interrogation. He climbed into the backseat of his truck and rummaged under the passenger seat - working a job like this, he learned early on to keep a change of clothes on hand. It was awkward to say the least. He was not a dainty man and the back of his truck was far from spacious but he managed to climb out only having smashed his elbow into the window twice. Seemingly just in time. The crunch of gravel and the sharp squeaks of a poor suspension announced their arrival before the truck branded with an all too familiar logo rounded the bend.

His head snapped around alarmingly fast, met with mischievous grins from the both of them. He bristled. “Not a fucking word or I’m telling him to drug test you two.” Swiss hissed, both warning and threatening. Dew made a face, opening his mouth to retort but Cirrus was faster. Sticking out her tongue in his direction before grabbing him by the arm and leading him away to where they would pretend to work for the next two hours.

As they left him standing beside his truck, Swiss watched Rain’s father get out of the truck with clearly stiffened limbs. His throat felt tight as he looked his way, fearing that just maybe he knew but the man just regarded him with a curt nod and a gruff good morning, then headed inside.

Swiss wanted to close his head in the door of his truck, multiple times.

It was going to be a long fucking day.

Rain slipped out the back door an hour or so after lunch. Wearing exhaustion and semi untamed curls, a brand of disheveled he’d never sported before. He was off the schedule they’d taken to over the last few weeks. Swiss’ lunch break was a little before two, and it was currently well past. Swiss could sigh and huff all he liked about him sleeping in and shirking his fruit picking responsibilities, as well as what he’d woefully described as ‘kiss withdrawls’, but Rain truly couldn’t be faulted for sleeping in. His sheets smelled like warm tobacco and aftershave, a little bit like hay and whatever it was truly encompassed Swiss. It was hard for rain to leave in the morning, silently hoping it would linger until he got back that night.

“Rain! I’ve been looking for you!”

Rain whipped around. Confused to see Dew running up to him from the side field, brushing debris off of his overalls. They had never spoken before, at least not directly like this. Small quips and comments when he finds himself at Swiss’ side that sound like they’re meant to be digs directed at him despite the fact Dew barely acknowledged his presence.

“I’m sorry?”

“I think we should have a talk, can you come here for a minute?” Dew kicked some rocks and pursed his lips at rain who looked more than confused. He looked around for Swiss, to see if this was one of his shenanigans or could at least save him from whatever was happening.

Dew knew their routine. Knew exactly how to intersect Rain’s path before he could go attach himself to Swiss like an overgrown leech. It was almost too easy for him to find and stop him. If Rain had any more confidence in himself he would’ve told Dew to leave him alone, return the same disdain Dew had regarded him with from the start, but he was alarmingly forward. Grabbed him by the wrist and dragged him with surprising ease towards the tractor for a bit more privacy. Less of a chance they’d be interrupted.

Dew, and the other workers by extension were far from fond of him. Swiss was the outlier. Rain knew fighting him on this would cause nothing but trouble.

“Where are you going by the way? Thought you didn’t have to do your small share of work till later.” Whatever over sweetness he’d greeted him with dropped from his tone, borderline sneering at him instead.

“Dad asked me to check on one of the cows, said she looked in bad shape this morning.” Rain readjusted the bag on his shoulder, eyes flitting towards the field with a silent prayer that Swiss might just happen to pop up. Save him from whatever he’d walked into.

“Bullshit,” Dew barely stopped himself from laughing at his lie. “He would’ve mentioned it to us, not you.” Dew crossed his arms, leaning on the tractor. Casually and subtly blocking off Rain’s easy exit back to the yard.

“Ok…Then what do you think I’m doing?” Rain scoffed and rolled his eyes. This was dumb, they both had better things to be doing.

“Considering that brown paper sack in your hands, and the little birdie that talks about you in the barn, I’d say you’re bringing Swiss a snack for his break” it’s the slight flick of his eyes that answers the silent accusation.

“I don’t see how what I do with my time is any of your business” Rain's voice was almost entirely confident, almost. The faintest waver under his incredulous stare. It was hard to hold steady when someone as intense as Dew was interrogating him like he was caught about to do something downright sinister.

“Well I just think it’s funny how much time you spend with him. All of your breaks, sneaking out to go to the bonfire, spending the night?” He practically hissed his last point. “Thought your dad didn’t like you spending too much time with people like us. Weird, huh?”

“I’m not like that, I’m not my father.” Rain felt almost guilty as dew continued to stare at him like he was disgusted. Had he really been that bad? He didn’t think he was that much of a priss before Swiss came around.

“Oh you aren’t? Rain, all you do is sit on your throne and occasionally feed the animals or pick fruit for daddy’s approval. I’ve heard what he’s said, what you’ve said.”

His face, with whatever increasingly anxious expression he’d been sporting, fell instantly. Comments from his father over the years rooted in overworked frustration when profits didn’t balance out costs, when equipment turned up broken, when the work wasn't done to his standards. Blindly throwing blame on his workers. And Rain, a teenager vying for his parent’s approval, stupidly echoed the sentiment more than once and turned his nose up at them and the work they did. Even went out of his way to avoid the lot of them at the behest of his father.

“Dew, I’m sorry…I never-“

“All I’m saying is don’t fuck around and break Swiss’ heart just because you’ve decided to enjoy the attention from the peasants” Dew spat. His tone growing increasingly more frustrated as the months or years of indignation began to finally bubble to the surface.

“That’s not-“ A finger is held up before he can begin to explain himself, effectively shutting him up before he could stammer any further.

“Save it princess, I don’t want to hear it! I’m warning you to stop fucking around with him - Swiss doesn’t deserve to be some passing fancy till you’re able to go back to that prestigious university of yours.”

Rain opened his mouth and quickly closed it when he couldn’t manage any sound. Dread filled his stomach and began clawing its way up his throat. Choking him.

Is that really what they all thought of him? Is that what Swiss thought all of this was?

“You’re a smart guy, yeah? You should be smart enough to know not to cross this clear line in the sand that you and your dad drew a long time ago. Go back to your fucking tower and stay there.”

And as quickly as his tirade began, it ended with Dew turning on his heel and storming off with his fists clenched at his sides. He’d said more than enough for Rain to get the message; none of them wanted anything to do with him, Swiss just didn’t know it yet. They all harbored a level of resentment Rain hadn’t quite comprehended apparently.

Rain didn’t walk after him. Stays rooted in place watching Dew stalk off towards the fields until the vague shape of him becomes blurry. Tears burned in his eyes. All he could do was shrink into himself and return to the house where he promptly shoved the paper bag to the bottom of the trash can. At least there, he could pretend he’d never made it to begin with.

Was he stupid? He felt like an idiot for ever thinking he could really have something as genuine as this.

Heat radiated within his chest and made itself known in the form of blotchy redness in his cheeks. He retreated to his room, bag dropped steps in front of his door in order to throw himself onto his bed like a teenage girl with a broken heart. They weren’t anything and yet it felt like his rib cage was caving in. Guilt, shame, and humiliation danced inside him. Mingled into a single sensation that made his throat painfully tight.

Rain hiccuped over a half sob, shoving both pillows off the bed and onto the floor. He didn’t need the reminder. With both pillows out of the way, he was met with the cotton candy blue shark he’d stuffed into hiding the night before. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and pulled the plush against himself. Childish comforts.

Dew was right, telling him the things he was too selfish to acknowledge. None of them wanted him around, and maybe Swiss didn’t really either. Did Swiss only humor him because he was the boss’ son? Placate ‘the princess’ to keep his job. Dew was right. He didn’t deserve Swiss.

[raspberry-vinaigrette]

i am pondering dialtown peter since i just did the roger dlc good end. warning in advance for roger dialtown dlc spoilers. cool? cool anyways

i just think like. okay the good ending cutscene with peter is kind of. abrupt. and confused people according to doggo and i can see why, it's... a bit weird in tone and isn't built up to as well as it could've been imo. no shade to the ending though the ending is fuckin AWESOME and that roger speech shook me to my core. however i think the peter intrusion can be reinterpreted to be really interesting with a bit of canon wiggle room, so to speak, because like --

imagine you are peter. you're the straight-laced, responsible co-manager of the factory, and you have been for a while. you know that you aren't easy to get along with and you don't really try to change this. it keeps things under wraps. it's all you can really do when everything around you is chaotic and wacky and you're so consistently left out of the loop. things are done without you being consulted. you feel like a joke so you have to prove you're the only thing that isn't. and really, it's your fault, in a way. you're the villain here for letting these things happen. you are to blame.

and then there's your best friend roger. you feel, sometimes, like he's the only person youre tangibly helping. you got him off of alcohol. you're always the one he leans on, always the one checking in. he is a good man. life has dealt him a bad hand, and people laugh at him sometimes, but you know he's good. he tries so hard. you wonder if maybe you aren't trying hard enough, but maybe your destiny is just to be this way. you don't think about it. he seems happy around you and that's enough, you suppose. and then management changes.

for all you know you are responsible, you also believe there is something rotten within you. something that will only weigh others down. you are able to be so very normal amidst the chaos of work, but you believe you can't be personable. you're too methodical, too straightforward, too managerial. and people want a person to talk to them, not a rigid machine. you look in the mirror and wonder how much of you is just the phone on your head. you look in the mirror and wonder who you are. but you can't fathom a good man like roger could look in the mirror and see anything but the sun. you trust him. you know he's a trainwreck, a mess, clumsy and irresponsible sometimes, but he's a good man. you know he can prove himself. maybe if you just keep at arms length, don't take over too much like you tried last time...

and things are a mess anyway. things are worse. and you begin to wonder if maybe you're the issue. if maybe your destiny is just to take over and rule with an iron fist, because that is the only way things can be done. this rot inside you, this thing that is clearly only making roger worse by your presence -- it must be killed at the source. so you have to play the game. you know what has to happen, don't you? you have to take over. and then everyone will be miserable, and roger will see how good he is, how much potential he has, and he will usurp you. he will be good. he will surprise everyone. and the rotten festering thing will be taken out, and he will never be dragged down again. because it must be you holding them back. you're the common denominator.

you're the villain.

peter doesn't understand that not being the boss is better for roger. he doesn't comprehend he is likable as a person moreso than he is a corporate entity, a responsible manager -- the only person he may believe likes him beyond that is caroline, and even then he has a fucking board discussion about if he should be allowed to act more than completely rational and reasonable, with a pros/cons list! yeah that's meant to be a jokey dialogue scene but i still think it reflects how peter tries so hard to be rational and reasonable and i think to some extent he believes that makes him less human. roger is so bright, of course he can surprise people and show them the sun! peter may be good at management but how far will that get him when surely nobody wants to directly associate with him? he is a menace.

he does not understand that roger cares so deeply for him, the same way roger doesn't understand people love him without him having to prove himself. idk. this is only half canon and its kinda text extrapolation and interpretation to fit w the ending scene but its an interesting thought

[kooksbunnnn]

HOLD MY HAND- KTH

Pairing: Taehyung× fem!reader

Warnings for the chapter: slightly suggestive, fluff, kissing, making out, 18+

Summary: You and Taehyung exploring and experiencing the newer side to yourselves while getting to know each other more intimately and deeply in your new relationship.

Authors note: EEEEEEEEE! NEW SERIES! ENJOY EVERYONE! _______________________________________

"...you good?"

Taehyung shakes his head as he tries to focus on your voice again. He clears his throat and hums. "Yea-yeah- I'm good." Rolling your eyes with a small smile on your face, you continue blabbing about your day to him.

Sighing taehyung tried to listen to you, to your ranting, he tries, trust him, he does, but the way your lips glow under the light makes his mind wander. Wander to places he can't put words to because it's too early for him to dive into all that in your relationship.

Fuck he missed kissing you the whole day.

As you sit on his lap and excitedly tell him about how your friend used to braid her boyfriend's hair, you flick the hair that falls from his forehead, and he almost shivers at the touch. He smiles as you trace his features, letting the warmth of your fingers seep in his skin.

His eyes zoned into the deliciousness that your lips were. He wanted to kiss you so bad. He could kiss you again and again, and he won't ever get tired. He could make out with you all day and never miss social interactions with others, not like it matters to him when he has you in his arms.

"Baby.." he mutters, and you pause animatedly while telling something.

"Hm?"

"..can I kiss you? You can continue after that.." he whispers huskily while he leans in before you could respond to his question. His hands reach up to cup your face as one rests on your lower back to support you in his lap.

As his lips touched yours, he groaned, feeling the gloss smudge in between your lips, he licks your lips and smiled at the cherry flavor. Your giggle makes his grip on your back tighten as his hand from your face reaches into your hair.

Kissing you hungrily, he leans forward, making you grip his shoulders as you feel your body bend backward. Feeling your grip, he pulls you closer to him as if it was even possible. "I wont drop- ah- drop you.." he pants against your lips, and you breathlessly nod.

"I know.." You mumble into his lips, with lidded eyes, and as he pulls you back into him, kissing you again, he chuckles with a smirk on his face, "fuck what're you doing to me.." He whispers to himself more than he does to you as he feels his control slip through his fingers.

The moment you giggle at his whisper, he switches his rational side of his brain for a few minutes and tugs onto your hair, knowing that his hands in your hair melts you like putty in his hands. You gasp, giving him better access to your mouth and your toes curl at the wet kisses he gives, licking and nipping and sucking just the way he knows you like and he loves.

You groan, feeling his tongue bully his way into your mouth, and he chuckles when you try to dominate his tongue with yours. He smacks your ass at your sad way of trying to take charge. Your eyes widen at his action. Heat creeps up your neck as you've never experienced this side of him before.

"Not today, baby. Try some other day.." he says, chuckling a throaty chuckle and your cheeks heat up with embaressment at how you liked the burn you feel on your ass cheek. He coos at your blush making you squirm in his hold.

You both used to talk about all this, but the experience, while sitting on his lap, was totally something else. Mindfucking would be an understatement.

"Ohh... you liked that? My dirty little girlfriend, huh?" He says, caressing the side he spanked, and you whine trying to hide your head into his neck, but he doesn't let you, pulling on your hair in the way that makes your eyes roll back.

He smacks the same spot and squeezes your ass cheek with a rough chuckle. You groan, feeling yourself get wetter with every second. "Tae.." You whine as you feel your ears get warm.

"No hiding, baby." he says so gently and nips at your jaw it mames your head spin, his voice makes a shiver run up your spine, and you shut your eyes as you feel yourself getting hotter by the second. Smiling when he sees the swollen lips open, breathing heavily, chest heaving as he nastily licks a stripe up your neck.

Pulling you back in, he kisses you so good and sloppy that has you mewling on his lap. He feels your gloss smudging all over his lips, creating a sticky mess. He loves that. The way he can make your poised self turn into a messy little piece of art makes him so hard.

"Babe- babe- air -" You try to speak in the middle of his kisses. He just laughs, that deep laugh that makes your toes curl.

"Sorry.." he says, pulling back and fixing your hair gently, rubbing his thumb on your spit covered, kiss-bitten, swollen, and glossy lips. "Continue. How was your day, doll?" He whispers, and you chuckle breathlessly at how this man could say all that with such a straight face while being so hard under you. You dont even remember your last conversation, this newer side of your relationship, and Taehyung making you giddy.

Fuck, you missed kissing him the whole day. ♡________________________________________♡

HELLO EVERYONE! So, I have started a new series based on short and tiny stories of Taehyung and fem!Reader where we would know the fluffy, angsty, and spicy parts of both of these cuties' new relationship. Give them lots of love and let me know if you want me to write some scenerios, requests are always welcome🩷 I am finally trying to write with a concentrated mind so I hope I dont disappoint you and also finish my other WIPs. Thank you for all your love, I love my readers sm, they give me so much motivation, and I cant thankyou all enough. I love you all. See you in the next update!

-Sam♡

[sideysvault]

𓍼ོ Ad Astra Per Aspera 𓍼ོ (PT. 1)

Pairing: Aemond Targaryen x fem!reader

wc: 2,200k

Tags: [sfw] Arranged marriage, mature themes, angst, coldness, enemies to lovers, eventual fluff and smut.

Full Series masterlist here.

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“Are you disappointed with the results of the arrangement?” Still not very well versed on the frail subtleties needed for a cordial marriage, the woman frowned. It if sounded sincere, she might have answered honestly. Because even her, when she was a child, had dreamt of romantic affections, great tales of familial love, mutual servitude and joy.

But the Prince’s voice told a tale of practiced self deprecation. She wasn’t yet sure if it was to appear disarmingly inadequate, easier to ignore, or if it was to appease the King’s fragile ego. Either way, acting was not one of the Prince’s best qualities. Underneath all the loathing, layed a poorly covered, insidious egotism. He felt pride in fulfilling his inglorious role, pride of being an outcast, he clearly thought of himself as above it all: superstitions of the weak minded, sentimentality, the passionate side of politics. She could already feel herself getting sick of it all.

“Forgive me, Your Grace, but you must not go beyond the walls of the Red Keep often” Although she knew he did, as the stories of the sad little boy he turned to when attending the brothel could be heard from the mouth of the King himself. “The Gods are rarely in the mood for protection, and so common men are never left whole. The queerest thing about your appearance is not your limb eye, but rather your ghostly hair” with a smirk forming without her being able to avoid it, she quickly added “A haunting omen, perhaps.”

Aemond hated the petulant smile that appeared on his wife’s lips. He hated seeing her biting teeth, and her self proclaimed waking martyrdom. And the wisdomless lectures? A sickening symptom of barbarian vanity. The Prince felt scandalized. He considered himself a sensible person, able to rationalize the marital arrangement, a paragon of respectability and patience. Her attitude had a way of putting it all on a thin veil.

She felt troubled by the marriage, yes, but at night, when she could see the maidens avoid the wing of the castle where the King rested, when the Maestres ran around with mysterious teas, she felt the urge to get on her knees and thank the lords for granting her the repressed brother. Boring, tedious, and insolently over confident. But much more honorable.

They had to consummate the marriage, of course. That was a problem that was increasingly harder to ignore. He had been kind enough to not force it upon her, and the Princess had heard stories of insemination without touch. When the bride was to be young of age, the husband —If he was respectable enough to have a soul—would set his seed on a vase of sorts, which would be introduced into the girl manually, by a maiden of choice. She heard it was rarely successful, but protective parents could demand the practice.

She was too old for those considerations, but what was one to do?

Prince Aemond was handsome, painfully so. If you ignored his impatience for the incompetence of his brother, or for his mother's hidden sentimentalism, his horror towards failure, the frowns he gave at any suggestion of true romantic felicity, and the egomaniac tendencies, he could look quite handsome.

During courtship, he completely ignored his wife to be, but that is to be expected in political betrothal. Back then, he slightly frightened the Princess, but not nearly enough as everyone assumes he should have.

The residents of Kings Landing often find him rather physically odd. Why is that? If, after all, he looks like a proper Targaryen Prince, even with one functioning eye. His childhood wound could not deny his straight silver hair, or the blue in his calculating eyes. His features were delicate, sharp, and firm, with an obnoxious royal quality. And if she knew no better, she would be excited at the prospect of consummation.

Now the Princess’s dreams did not consist of domestic life —Although, she naturally still felt the urge, on rare occasions— But of going beyond the realms of her condition. A mind that kept itself occupied with thoughts of what may have become of her with less social opposition and more personal stimulus. Dreaming of being born a man, of being a scholar, a Maestre, to finally visit The Citadel.

Another recurring hope was that even in between the most interrelated webs of inherited resentments and southeastern superstitions one may find peace and harmony. To make the Red Keep a home worth living in. But all of these desires seemed to be equally improbable, and she had begun to come to terms with the fact that the burning desire of childhood may never go away, but it must be ignored in order to survive.

Learning to her was similar to a holy grace, far more powerful than any priest or God. A beautiful distraction. That’s how she had fallen into the hands of a false religious conversion. The teachings of the Seven had no real impact or meaning to her, but it was the closest, most respectable way of learning about the world around her.

The marital chambers were spotless, in an almost obsessive manner. It went far beyond the traditional efficiency of cleaning servants. It had been done by his own hand, and everything had a designated place. And at the beginning, it had been nerve wrecking. The constant worry of leaving everything in its place, of being too messy with her presence, with her own belongings, on her own chambers.

The only thing that demanded attention in the sad sterile room was the extensive library. It filled the space with character of its own, the books rebelling against their masters' particularities and demanding a disorderly presence of their own right. His private library exploited the fragility of her wife’s curious mind and predisposition for literature.

After years of espiritual resignation, it was like a breeze of fresh air. She would be the first to admit the only sin she had committed against her husband —Besides being a republican, which was a shameful secret of hers—: To sneak and borrow books from his private delectable collection. A stupid, brash decision. Especially considering Aemond's serious disposition and angsty, hostile character. But the Princess couldn't help herself when she saw the chambers unattended. Rationalizing the invasion of privacy, because they were now married, for better or for worse, those books were inside their marital chambers.

Prince Aemond knew of his wife’s intrusion, of course. When she came back to return the innocent theft, she realized with horror that he had left a single stone where the book she had taken was. Feeling partially offended by the gesture, she had returned the volume to its place and accommodated the fatal stone on the left side of his bureau, near the candle.

It became a routine. The wife would take a book from his collection, and he would place the rock marking the missing spot. Whenever she finished her reading, she was to accommodate the stone at the left of the candle in his bureau. A childish game, perhaps. But it was the most similar thing they had to a sense of cordiality and shared duality. Everything else remained as sterile as before, when either party tried to approach the other, they were quickly reminded of how repelled they felt towards the others flaws, perceived or not.

It did exhaust her a good deal, the uncertainty of the marriage. Having to be sly and poise about how she managed herself, or to be met with heavy words of disapproval. Targaryen folk, seemingly closer to Gods than to men, were not to be played with, even if you were a wife to one of them.

Another cause of exhaustion and histeria was one much more primal. She dreaded the day he finally came to claim his bride's virtue. It was not about discomfort with marital relations, but rather a feeling of vulnerability. Having to be at his mercy, his whim, it was the fact that she hadto wait until the night his patient character faltered.

There was also the matter of Larys Strong, of course. The King was like a brute, to focused on his next rush to have any sense of planning or concerned for the politics of consummation. The Dowager Queen was the one who pushed his limits when needed, and she seemingly had Larys Strong at his mercy, or the other way around, of that, the Princess was not entirely sure yet.

Sir Strong loved not the Gods or the Crown but himself and the thrill of keeping people hostage by the bondadge of secrets. He enjoyed parading around the corners, lurking, observing. He liked the authority that the Crown granted him, the preposterous work of secrecy. He translated the King’s rule into language than sounded vaguely religious, vaguely patriotic. Only to whisper it to the ears of maidens and servants.

It may have been paranoia, but the Princess could have sworn that the maidens took special care into looking for any red spots on the marital sheets. The Dowager Queen had been paying more attention to her, with that stern frown of hers. Real or imagined, it was dangerous to wait this long.

Tired of the whole ordeal, she decided that the occurrence was unavoidable, and at a reasonable cost of her sexual condition if anything, she could end the anxiety and the whispered chastity by taking some kind of agency and doing the first step.

The Princess soaked in rose water the scented brazil wood chips her mother had prepared her with. Using them to brightly paint her cheeks, nipples, and lips with an irresistible shade of contrast, and leaving her hair messy, determined to look desirable enough for it to be done tonight.

If the Prince was surprised to see her laying in bed, naked, when he walked into the chambers, he did not show proof of it on his face. The husband quickly took off his clothes, as well. He looked tired, even under the dim, warm yellow lights of the room. She smiled upon the view, a signal of relief, upon anything else. For the first time in weeks, her husband did not seem troubled and upset, only tired. The consummation might end quickly and without any fuss.

As soon as he laid on the sheets, she got up from the side of the bed that corresponded to her, and straddled the Prince. She wasn’t sure of what he may like, but she figured this was the safest and less degrading way to go about the night. She felt her nipples harden against the cold nightly wind, and she could also feel her husband's length hardened underneath her. Without any regard for her feelings, her core began to leak in anticipation. In that moment, she thanked the Gods for a handsome husband, and she thanked them for making him a contemporary in age. This wasn’t going to be as difficult as she initially thought.

For a moment, his eye seemed to shine with something similar to the spark of lust. Just for a moment.

It was gone almost as soon as she had noticed it. And with a soft but recognizably firm move, he got her off him.

“There is no use for it. We don’t carry the duty to fulfill the royal lineage” The Prince sounded cold, and spoke in a manner similar to how one explains a simple concept to a child. It scandalized her. Had he had no consideration at all for her safety? Was he blind to the watchful eyes of the maids? Was he not a man, or is it that you were insufficient in his eyes?

And if the offense wasn’t enough to hurt the Princess, he unknowingly added another striking statement, just for good measure “They are also an emotional lability. One that mustn’t be created recklessly taken in times of war”

Her heart seemed to sink in the depths of her stomach. The humiliation, sparked by anger washed over her head and burned her cheeks with an unbearable warmt. Without saying a word and trying to contain the tears that this robbery of agency had caused, she left the marital chambers.

Another brash, emotionally driven decision. A misjudgment, letting go of the calculating measure of taking care of what the court might think. The Princess needed a break from the claustrophobic room, from its cleaning, from her Husband’s cold offenses. How can he speak of children so callously? She had thought of her husband as a devout family member. Even the monster they had for the King loved his children. The Princess wasn’t particularly fond of the idea of forming a family in an arranged marriage, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that her husband was rejecting her lineage and the single act of agency that she was truly permitted:The possibility of making happiness of her own, of raising her own. Feeling rudely rejected, and more lonely than ever before, she compulsively walked into the messy physis of the garden. Tears fell on her cheeks, and went down into her neck, she had no family, no friend, no kin to confide to. For the first time since her arrival, she felt the honesty of her situation falling from her tears.

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Notes: Omg the first part of the first long form series that i have ever conceived 😭😭 if anyone is interested in proofreading or if you see any mistakes please let me know! English is not my first language and I always make so many mistakes. Take care of one another!

— Sidey xxo

[ponderingmoonlight]

Hello!!! Would it be possible to write for hatori sohma from fruit basket childhood friend to lover with a some angst and fruff at the end of

Thank you😊

aww okay we NEED to do this 🥹

Hatori Sohma realizing you're more than a friend to him

Pairing: Hitori x reader

Word Count: 3,5k

Synopsis: You were around since he can remember. You, the only sunshine in his life, that woman he never gets tired of looking at. It takes Hitori too long to finally confess his feelings to himself. And then he's about to ruin everything...

Warnings: hurt to comfort, friends to lovers, this is sooo fluffy hehe

Hatori Sohma is not a man who easily surrenders to the urges of emotion. The weight of his family’s curse, the pain of his own heartache, and the gravity of his responsibilities have forged him into a man who exists with quiet detachment in the shadows since that one fateful day. And yet, as you sit across from him at Shigure’s dinner table, laughing softly at one of Shigure’s ridiculous remarks, Hatori finds himself lost in thoughts he was never prepared to face.

You’ve been his friend for years - a steady presence in his life, like the moon hanging quietly in the night sky whenever he needs it. While others come and go, bringing chaos and change, you’ve always been there, offering your unwavering kindness and support. A warmth he has leaned on more times than he’d care to admit.

Still, he didn’t even dare to think about you as someone other than a friend. He’s always been careful to sort his feelings when it came to you, forcefully avoiding that little skip of his heart whenever he saw you.

Especially after Kana. Loving her, only to have the curse of the Sohma family destroy what both could have been, left scars he’s not sure will ever fully heal. He buried those wounds deep, vowing not to allow himself the vulnerability of love again. Not when it always means agony. Not when he’ll never live a normal life like all those other men walking around the world.

But lately, his heart has been betraying him, and today, watching Shigure lean a little too close to you while you laugh, it stings in a way he doesn’t know how to rationalize.

Earlier in the day, it was Ayame who started to chip away at the walls Hatori keeps so carefully constructed.

“I must say, Haa-san,” Ayame had declared, lounging dramatically on one of Shigure’s couches, “it’s almost tragic how blind you are to your own emotions.”

Hatori sighed, pushing up his glasses. He had little patience for Ayame’s theatrics at the best of times, and today was no exception. Why again this talk?

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Ah, denial,” Ayame said with a flourish, “the first stage of awakening!”

Shigure, who had been scribbling something in a notebook, looked up with a mischievous glint in his eyes.

“What Ayame means, Haa-san, is that you’re rather obvious when it comes to a certain someone.”

Hatori froze in place. Shigure and Ayame exchanged a knowing glance that made his stomach twist. Were they talking about…you?  

“If you’re going to make a point, do it quickly,” he remarked, his tone colder than he intended.

Ayame smirked, unbothered by the sudden change of tone. Even though he’s so convinced no one knows, everyone saw the way Hatori looked at you earlier with that slight smile forming on his lips. Every one knows about that picture of you he keeps well hidden in his purse.

“The point, dear Haa-san, is that your little friend has managed to do something extraordinary.”

“And what’s that?” Hatori inquired, already regretting engaging in the conversation.

“She’s gotten under your skin. (y/n), I mean”, Shigure interjected smoothly.

“In a good way, of course. You’re different around her - softer, more… alive.”

Hatori frowned, hating the way his heart skips a beat how it always does when someone talks about you.

“That’s absurd.”

“Is it?”

Shigure leaned back in his chair, a sly grin tugging at his lips that usually means nothing but trouble.

“You’re a careful man. But I think even you can’t deny that she means something more to you. The question is, are you going to do anything about it?”

Before Hatori could respond, Ayame clapped his hands together.

“Oh, this is so romantic! The brooding doctor and his steadfast friend, bound by years of quiet affection, only to realize the depth of their feelings amidst life’s trials! It’s like something out of a novel!”

Hatori pinched the bridge of his nose.

“You’re both insufferable.”

Now, hours later, Hatori finds himself replaying their words. As much as he wants to dismiss their observations, there’s a nagging truth to them that he can’t ignore. He does feel different around you. You have a way of making the world seem a little less heavy, of making him feel seen in a way no one else does. Even though you know about his curse, despite the fact that you’ve seen him and other Sohma’s turn into animals countless times by now, you never changed your soft attitude towards him.

Just the thought of losing you, even to something as harmless as Shigure’s playful flirting, fills him with an ache he doesn’t fully understand.

“Earth to Hatori,” Shigure teases, waving a hand in front of his face.

“You’ve been staring at your plate for the past five minutes. Is something on your mind?”, you add with your brows furrowed in that way that glues his eyes onto yours in an instant.

Hatori shakes his head, brushing off the question. But when he glances up, he sees you watching him with a quiet concern that makes his chest tighten.

“Are you feeling okay?” you ask softly, your voice laced with genuine care.

“I’m fine,” he replies, his tone measured. But the truth is, he feels anything but fine.

The evening continues, with Shigure and Ayame carrying most of the conversation. You join in here and there, your laughter like a melody that Hatori finds himself clinging to. He stays mostly silent, his thoughts too tangled to untangle.

It’s only after dinner, when Shigure retreats to his study and Ayame bids an overly dramatic farewell, that you and Hatori are left alone in the living room. The atmosphere shifts, quieter, more intimate. You’re seated on the couch, your legs tucked beneath you, while he stands near the window, his gaze fixed on the garden outside.

“Hatori,” you say gently, breaking the silence. “What’s on your mind? You’ve been quiet tonight.”

He hesitates, the weight of your question pressing against him. How can he possibly put his feelings into words when he’s still struggling to make sense of them himself?

“It’s nothing,” he says finally, though the words feel hollow.

You frown, clearly unconvinced. “You know you don’t have to keep everything to yourself, right? I’m here if you need someone to talk to.”

Your words are a lifeline, and for a moment, he considers taking it. But vulnerability doesn’t come easily to him. Instead, he deflects. “Shigure was particularly annoying tonight.”

You laugh softly. “He’s always annoying. That’s part of his charm.”

Hatori’s lips twitch in the faintest hint of a smile, but it doesn’t last. The conversation lulls, and the silence that follows is heavy with unspoken words.

After a moment, you rise from the couch and cross the room to stand beside him. The proximity is both comforting and disarming. You don’t press him further, but your presence alone feels like an invitation—to let down his guard, to let you in.

“Do you ever think about the past?” he asks suddenly, surprising even himself with the question.

“Sometimes,” you reply, your tone thoughtful. “But I try not to dwell on it too much. It’s easy to get stuck in what-ifs.”

He nods, his gaze still fixed on the garden. “I envy that about you. Your ability to move forward.”

“You can, too, you know,” you say softly. “It’s not easy, but it’s possible.”

Your words settle over him like a balm, your voice so comforting that he forgets that numb feeling in his stomach for a second. He turns to look at you, really look at you. The way your eyes meet his, full of understanding and something else, something he’s afraid to name, something he’d never speculates about, makes his heart stumble.

“I’m not sure I know,” he finally admits, his voice barely above a whisper.

You smile, and it’s the kind of smile that feels like sunlight breaking through a storm.

What if you get hurt though?

Hatori can’t help but shake his head, breaking his gaze away from you. No, he can’t allow that to happen. He can’t come this close to you. What if he hurts you? Or what if you don’t feel the same way about him? Why would someone like you fall for him in the first place? You, known and loved by countless people, secretly admired by someone like Shigure as well. There’s no way you’d actually fall for him, right?

“You don’t have to figure it out alone.”

Gently, you place your hand on top of his. But instead of welcoming the warmth of your palm, he jerks up in his seat and leaves without saying another word.

The days following the incident were unbearable - for you and for Hatori, though he would never admit it out loud. He avoided you with a determination that bordered on cruelty. Every time you tried to reach out, he found an excuse to slip away. He didn’t answer your calls, didn’t allow you to visit him, didn’t even text you back when you begged for a single sign of life. Not even Shigure and Ayame were able to drag him out of this hole. Hatori hated himself for hurting you, for pulling away when all he wanted was to be close to you. But the fear of losing you, of ruining your life just like Kana’s, was just too much to bear.

It’s for the best, he told himself so often that he lost count on that little walk alone. Staying in his apartment meant getting reminded of all the times you visited him and sat on that one chair while sipping tea out of your own personal mug no one else is allowed to use. He needed to get out there, needed some fresh air to calm his mind.

Not even this warm summer day is able to comfort him, though. Not when every beautiful flower on his way reminds him of you, not when he imagines you in all those dresses displayed in the shopping windows.

Not when you’re standing just a few feet away from him with Shigure by your side.

Shigure and…you?

There you are, walking beside Shigure, holding an ice cream cone and laughing at something he said. The sound of your laughter, so free and light, hits him like a punch to the gut. Shigure, ever the charmer, leans in closer than necessary, his expression playful as he licks his own ice cream.

Hatori’s heart twists painfully, hands balling into tight fists on their own. He doesn’t have the right to feel jealous, no right to claim you when he’s done nothing but pushing you away.

But watching Shigure, so at ease with you, stirs something primal in him, feelings he tried to drown multiple times already. The thought of losing you - to anyone, but especially to Shigure – becomes unbearable.

Like in trance, he steps back, away from the scene that might make him lose his mind. No, he can’t feel like this about you, he can’t allow himself to be jealous when you’re not even his. All he did those past weeks was pushing you away. You’re not his, you’ll never be.

Hatori slams his door shut harder than necessary before gliding down the cool wood.

What is he supposed to do now?

-later-

You’re sitting in your small apartment, trying to distract yourself from the ache in your chest. The ice cream with Shigure had been nice, a kind effort of him to break you away from your train of thought,  but it doesn’t erase the sadness you feel over Hatori’s sudden distance. What went wrong? Was it something you said, something you did? Was it because you tried to cheer him up by holding his hand that one evening? You didn’t really think about it twice, just tried to cheer him up when it was clear that he’s upset…

You can’t understand what went wrong. And it hurts more than you want to admit.

A knock at your door breaks through your thoughts. Did Shigure forget something or is he here to look after you. Maybe Tohru wanted to pay you a visit-

“Hatori?” you breathe out, your voice laced with surprise.

“What are you doing here?”

For a moment, he doesn’t say anything while you try to process the stinging fact that he’s really here. He simply looks at you, his eyes searching yours as if trying to find the courage he needs.

Then, in a voice thick with emotion, he mutters, “Can I come in?”

Your mind goes blank, lips not able to move. He’s really here. He didn’t forget about you. He wants to…talk?

Like in trance, you step aside, letting him enter. The air between you is heavy with tension as he stands in your living room, his tall frame seeming out of place in the cozy little space you can afford. You wait, unsure of what to say, as he struggles to find the words himself.

Finally, he turns to you, his gaze intense.

“I owe you an apology.”

“For what?” you mumble softly, though you already know the answer.

“For avoiding you. For pushing you away. For being…a coward.”

His voice is steady, but you can see the vulnerability in his eyes, the way his hands clench at his sides.

“I thought I was protecting you. From me. From my life. But I see now that I was only protecting myself.”

Your heart aches at his words. Is this really how he feels about everything? Does he really think he’s a threat, a burden for you?  

“Hatori, you don’t have to-”

“I do,” he interrupts, his tone firm.

“Because I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep pretending that I don’t…”

He trails off, taking a deep breath.

“That I don’t feel something for you. Something I’ve been too afraid to admit for a long time.”

Your breath catches in your throat. Is he trying to say that…

“Hatori…”

“I’m in love with you. I have been for longer than I care to admit. But I was so afraid. Afraid of hurting you. Afraid of losing you. Afraid that you couldn’t feel the same way”, he suddenly blurts out.

You stare at him, your heart pounding in your chest. This can’t be real, right? Did he really ignore you because he thought he’d hurt or lose you. Did he really just say that he loves you? Him, the man you’ve kept your eye on for years by now?

“You thought I didn’t feel the same?”

He hesitates, the doubt still etched into his features.

“Why would you? You could have anyone. Someone without all the…baggage I carry.”

Tears prick at the corners of your eyes as you step closer to him. Just the thought of him feeling this way, of him suppressing his feeling because of something like that…

“Hatori, you’re the one I want. You’ve always been the one”, you reply with trembling voice.

For a moment, he simply looks at you, as if he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. Then, slowly, he reaches out, his hand brushing against yours before taking it in his own.

“You…really mean it?”

“Of course I do!”, you breathe out while clinging onto his hand for what feels like dear life.

“But I didn’t want to rush you, especially after those past weeks. I felt like you don’t see me that way. And after what happened to Kana, I wasn’t sure if you’d give me a chance…”

“I’m sorry for all the pain I caused you. I don’t want to run anymore. I want to be with you, if you’ll have me.”

You smile through your tears, wrapping your arms around his arm the way you always imagined. Even though you’re not able to hug him the way he’d deserve it, you pour your heart and soul in this little moment. That moment you’ve been imagining in your head over and over again. That moment that fell apart in your mind those past weeks.

“I’ve been waiting for you to say that.”

Hatori buries his face in your hair as the weight of his fears finally lifts. For the first time in a long time, he feels like he can breathe. And as you stand there together, he promises to himself that he will do whatever it takes to make you happy, to protect the love you’ve both found.

Because with you, he knows he can finally heal. Now he finally knows you're more than a friend.

Dividers by @saradikagrafics 🤍

[frvnkcastles]

Hi! I love your writing so so much!!

If possible, could you do one where the reader has been working overtime at work and is exhausted, like they've been having headaches and barely sleeping & Frank notices and basically convinces them and helps them to take a break? Thank you!! 💕❤️

KEEP ME COMPANY ’TIL THE END ➵ F. CASTLE

Summary: You’re pushing yourself past your limits for work and Frank intervenes.

Warnings: Stress, mostly fluff, gender neutral reader, language

Word count: 770

Author’s note: Hiiii my loves! I am so sorry for being MIA, this semester is kicking my ass :( Rn it seems like my posts will be a little infrequent because I have sooo many deadlines before Christmas, but I’m gonna try my best!! I have not forgotten about all your requests!! Thank you so much for your patience, thank you also for 900 followers, that’s so wack but I am so grateful <3 Anon, I hope you enjoy this short fic and that you forgive me for being so slow to get this out. Much love!

A brewing headache pinched at your temples and you were painfully aware that every minute you spent staring at your outrageously bright laptop screen only sealed your fate tighter and tighter. It was getting late but you still felt like you had so much to do; like you had barely scratched the surface of all your responsibilities. You had only taken a break to go to the bathroom and reluctantly eat something when Frank had insisted on it, and now the tension from sitting on the couch with your laptop huffing and puffing on your thighs was starting to seep into your shoulders and neck.

Frank didn’t like it, the way you worked yourself to the bone, but he had swallowed down his complaints when you had promised to wrap things up within the hour. Still, you could feel his scrutinizing stare on you from across the couch, his attention on your focused frown rather than the football game he was supposed to be watching. He was itching to say something, to force you away from the suffocating bubble of stress, but he was trying to be patient — though the scratched label of his beer bottle said plenty.

When you winced at the pulsating headache behind your eye, though, he cleared his throat and reached for your laptop.

”Hey! Frank, noooo. I’m not done”, you insisted, trying to get the device back but he was quick to save your document and then slap it closed before you could retrieve it. He angled it behind his back and tutted at you, disapproving of the way you were pushing yourself for the sixth day in a row.

”Nah, sweetheart, I’m tellin’ you, you’re gonna waste away if you don’t take a break. You’ve been at it all day, aight? I want you here with me, not worryin’ about shit”, he argued back, your pout doing nothing to sway him. He always caved in and gave you what you wanted — unless your health and sanity were at stake.

You frowned, a sudden surge of guilt swinging at your chest. ”I guess I’ve been kinda neglecting you…”, you admitted with shame. That had never been your intention, but you couldn’t deny that you had not been a very present partner lately.

Shaking his head, Frank set the beer on the coffee table and took your hand in his own. ”It ain’t about that, darlin’. It’s the fact that this is wearin’ you out. I know you ain’t sleepin’ and I gotta jump through all these hoops to just get you to eat. I’m worried, y’know?” he explained, his tone stern but still warm. He was trying his hardest to be understanding, but he took your well-being too personally to let this newfound routine go on.

You managed a nod and squeezed his hand. ”I know, Frankie, I’m sorry, it’s just… there’s so much to do and I can’t fall behind”, you tried to rationalize your persistent working, and he sighed softly, not out of frustration but to acknowledge the difficult situation.

”I get it, sweetheart. But no one can expect you to be efficient at this hour, aight? You need to rest, too. Yeah?” Frank pointed out, tilting his head to catch your gaze. He was right and you knew it, so begrudgingly, you admitted defeat.

”Okay. I’ll limit myself”, you agreed, and with the concern in his eyes slowly fading, Frank nodded approvingly. He placed the laptop on the table before opening his arms for you, gesturing for you to cuddle up to him. The invitation made you smile and seeing joy on your face for the first time all day got Frank’s lips twitching, too.

You nestled against him and he wrapped you into a cocoon of safety and warmth, hoping to distract you from the stress lingering on your mind. It was hard not to think about all the work you could have been doing, and Frank suspected as much.

”I know it ain’t easy to just turn it off. But you deserve a break, baby. And I’m fuckin’ proud of you for all your effort, but I’ll be proud if you cut back a lil, too”, he spoke up after a moment of just cuddling, and with your heart soaring at his praise, you tilted your head up so you could kiss his jaw tenderly.

”Thank you, Frank. Love you”, you muttered, feeling the exhaustion of the past week creep up on you. Frank noticed, but he was glad — you needed sleep, and he was going to try and help you do it however he could.

”Love you too, sweetheart.”

[shaded-night]

The Price of Gift Giving

There are many things Aventurine can pride himself in. He has no shortage of talents that have gotten him as far as he has. However there are still a few things that he cannot wrap his head around. When it comes to love and showing his affection, Aventurine fumbles more often than not, even with his heightened emotional intelligence.

Now, he isn't sure what exactly he had done this time around, but his beloved Doctor seems to be frustrated with him. So here he is standing in one of the most luxury malls in all of Pier Point trying to pick out the best gift as an apology. He knows Ratio isn't big on material luxuries but as Aventurine eye's a beautiful fountain pen, he can't help but throw his card down. He pays extra to have it engraved with an owl face -the same one that adorns Ratio's shoulder- and a quaint but sweet quote, "For my Beloved Veritas". Aventurine feels confidence flow through his veins as he becomes a couple hundred thousand credits lighter. The pen is packaged nicely, the engraving hidden from view so he can surprise his boyfriend even more.

When he returns home, Aventurine can here Ratio in their shared study grumbling to himself as he no doubt marks another students paper as inadequate. Aventurine braves a smile as he tucks the small gift into his coat pocket and quietly enters the study.

"I'm home~. I see you're still working hard. Do you have time for a short break?"

Ratio sighs, sparing Aventurine a quick glance before his eyes setting back on the stack of papers .

"Unfortunately I'm on a tight deadline. I did mention to you earlier that I'd most likely will be busy all day." Ratio's voice held clear annoyance, but that's fine. Aventurine's smile faulters for only a second.

"Yes I remember you saying that. Sorry, I just don't like seeing you over work yourself."

Ratio only hums in acknowledgement as red ink fills another paper.

If Aventurine just stands here any longer he's sure to be kicked out, so to not waste anymore time he fumbles to get his gift out of his pocket.

"I have something for you." He places the box neatly on the desk, and Ratio pauses to look at it. It's not hard to guess its price, the name of the store was printed clearly on the lid. Aventurine can feel the annoyance radiating off of Ratio as he narrows his eyes at the package.

"Aventurine," said mans smile drops; Ratio never calls him that at home. "While the thought is appreciated, we've talked about your frivolous amount of gifts before. No matter how deep your pockets are, always spending isn't a good lifestyle. Honestly, is drowning me in expensive products the only thing you can do?"

It shouldn't hurt because Ratio is right; they have talked about Aventurine's unhealthy spending habits. Still, he had no issue buying anything that he thought Ratio may like. And that's what made his confidence crumble. His eyes stung and his voice was stuck in his throat. Ratio was looking at him, almost expectantly, but Aventurine couldn't form any words.

Instead he turned around, silently leaving the room. It felt humiliating standing there under his boyfriend's scrutinizing gaze. Maybe he deserved it for being inconsiderate of Ratio's thoughts on luxury goods. That was the only rational conclusion he could come up with.

~*~ When Ratio had finally emerged from the study, it was well into the evening. Aventurine could hear him in the kitchen getting himself his share of dinner Aventurine somehow managed to put together just a hour prior. He had the catcakes to thank for pushing him to get food in him. The last few hours he had just been curled up under a blanket on the couch while the snacks meowed at him sympathetically.

Eventually the noise in the kitchen died down, and was replaced with the couch dipping under Ratio's weight. Aventurine didn't move from his place under the blanket.

"Vasha," a hand fell onto Aventurine's shoulder; and maybe he's just a little too weak because a second later he wrapped himself tightly around his boyfriend. "I would like to apologize, my love. I shouldn't have been so insensitive to your gift."

Aventurine closed his eyes, letting his head fall against Ratio's chest.

"I just wanted to make you happy. I know you've been overworked lately...and I know I can't help with that kind of work. I know I said I'd work on my spending. So I guess I'm sorry too."

Fingers thread through his hair and a kiss is placed on his head.

"Change doesn't happen overnight, and I shouldn't have taken my frustration out on you. You are far more valuable than any gift, Kakavasha."

Ratio shifts and pulls the giftbox from his pocket. It was still unopened, but Ratio swiftly untied the bow around it and removed the lid. He picked up the pen, admiring the pretty swirl of blue and white along its body and it's gold accents. His thumb ran over the engraving and Aventurine feels a smile against his temple.

"It is quite a lovely pen. Thank you, Vasha. I will treasure it always."

~*~ inspired by this twt post~

rtrn is so stupid i love them

[avatardoggo]

I HAVE FEELINGS FOR A BOYMAN

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Why are you running?

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