#really the only NECESSARY one is fake/pretend relationship. like do you or do you not want 46k words of widofjord fake marriage
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elftwink · 2 years ago
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title: precipice pairing: caleb/fjord tags: fake/pretend relationship, costume parties & masquerades, implied sexual content, slow burn, not exactly canon compliant but canon adjacent, containing vague allusions to canon with no specific timeframe or setting word count: 46, 533 summary:
“So is this… worth attempting? Pretending we were invited inside and trying to sneak off to find the artifact? Especially since only one person can go inside.” “Two,” corrects Caduceus. “No plus ones,” says Nott. “Except in the case of spouses,” says Caduceus, “If you’re married, the invitation admits two.” “Caduceus!” Jester gives an overdramatic scandalized gasp. “Are you suggesting we lie about our martial status?” “I’m not suggesting anything. I’m pointing out the wording of the invitation.”
[read on ao3]
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deonsx · 1 month ago
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Hellooo! I was wondering if u could make a fic or headcanon (its up to u tho!) about seishirou fake dating? I think the reason would be bcs the girls in his school would stop chasin after him or smthing like that? And ofc eventually they like each other. I hope ur doing well! take ur time and have a great day!
Heyaa!! The request box is pretty full these days, I'm moving as fast as I can, have a nice read!!
Fake Dating With Nagi Seishiro
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Seishiro is fed up with the constant attention he gets from the girls at school. No matter how politely he turns them down they just won’t stop chasing after him. It is tiring and it is starting to interfere with his focus. Finally he comes up with a plan. He needs a fake girlfriend. Someone who can convincingly pull it off and won’t actually fall for him
That is where you come in. Maybe you are a friend or maybe you are just someone who seems reliable and disinterested in him romantically. One day after class Seishiro corners you with his usual calm and collected demeanor intact “I need your help” he says crossing his arms and leaning casually against the wall “Pretend to be my girlfriend. Just for a while. It will get them off my back”
You blink at him surprised “Why me??” you ask skeptical “Because you are the only one who won’t make this weird” he replies with a faint smirk “And you are also the only one who doesn’t seem interested in all the attention I get” After some hesitation you agree “How hard could it be” you think. A little hand holding here a few staged moments there and it will all be over soon enough
But as the plan unfolds things don’t go quite as planned. Seishiro who is always calm and cool starts to act differently. At first you think it is just part of the act. Like the way he suddenly gets protective when someone teases you or how his smiles feel more genuine when it is just the two of you. But then you realize it is not just an act anymore
And maybe you are not just pretending either
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At first, Seishiro would approach the fake relationship like a task. He remains composed and distant, treating the whole situation as a formal arrangement. Holding your hand or placing an arm around your shoulder would feel mechanical, done only when necessary to convince others
However, he takes the role seriously. If someone questions the authenticity of the relationship, Seishiro defends it without hesitation. He might casually say “She’s my girlfriend. Isn’t it obvious?” His confidence leaves no room for doubt, making the act even more convincing
As time passes, Seishiro’s demeanor starts to shift. Initially, every small gesture like walking you to class or standing closer than usual feels calculated. But soon it starts to feel natural. The way he looks at you, lingers a bit too long. The way he laughs at your jokes feels a little too genuine for an act
You on the other hand, are nervous in the beginning. Agreeing to the fake dating arrangement seems simple at first, but being the center of attention feels strange. When someone asks “When did you two start dating?” you might panic stumbling over an answer
Over time though you start questioning your feelings. Is this really just fake? Or have you started to care about Seishiro more than you’re willing to admit?
Together, your interactions change. What began as staged hand-holding turns into moments that feel genuine. A hug in public doesn’t stop as soon as people stop looking. A playful argument about what to eat ends with him smiling in a way that feels far too intimate for a fake boyfriend
Then there’s the jealousy. Even though the relationship is fake, you both start to notice how uncomfortable it feels when someone flirts with the other. It’s subtle at first Seishiro’s narrowed eyes when someone gets too close to you, or the way you feel your chest tighten when another girl compliments him
Eventually, these small moments lead to something bigger. Maybe one night, after a particularly convincing moment in public, you find yourselves alone. Seishiro looks at you, a rare vulnerability in his gaze, and asks “If this is supposed to be fake, why does it feel so real?”
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Enjoy!
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whipped-for-kpop-fics · 10 months ago
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Bend & Break - C.SC
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🥺Who: Choi Seungcheol (Seventeen) x female reader 🥺What: coworkers. friends to fuckers. smut. 🥺Wordcount: 10k 🥺Warnings: Profanity. Sex toys. Dom!reader. Sub!Seungcheol. Petnames from reader to Cheol(baby, sweetheart, little one, good boy, babyboy). Kink discussion. Safeword discussion. Teasing. Fingering by reader to self. Cheol licks/sucks a dildo. He's very needy and desperate <3. Edging(Cheol receiving). Begging(Cheol). Cheol cries(from pleasure dw). Reader just wants to ruin Seungcheol and that's so relatable. Sort of ambigious ending I guess in regards to the future of their relationship.
Summary; You've recently been hired due to the sunshine personality you showed for an interview, purely with the intention of the company pairing you up with Seungcheol to counteract his grumpy attitude around the office. Nobody realises it's just a work persona of yours and when someone does, it's none other than Choi Seungcheol himself.
Minors do NOT interact. I WILL block any account that interacts without an age indicator in the bio.
-2024 Masterlist-
A/N; this story would've never happened if the wonderful @bitchlessdino hadn't taken pity on me and my empty brain and slid an idea over to me. And letting me run wild and turn it into a sub cheol smut. Thank you so much for screaming about this with me, sweetheart <3
Edited: 21/12/24
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Being the new hire anywhere isn't ever really a thrilling experience for anyone. Being the new hire mostly because of the fake persona you showed at the interview is even worse. Because now, you have to keep acting like the bubbly, happy-go-lucky person you had pretended to be two months ago.
Still, the pay is good, the hours aren't gruelling and although you're part of a dozen-strong team, you share a comfortable little office with only one other person, so you figure it's not the worst trade-off.
Though you still haven't yet decided if your work partner is reason enough to change your mind about that.
Choi Seungcheol is the very reason you were hired; to counteract his frankly miserable attitude around the office. Not that he much leaves your shared office, but when he does he's likely to be glaring at whoever is making the most noise, or simply asking him a question that isn't entirely necessary.
He has the world's most severe case of resting bitch face too, which regularly causes issues with clients. So you were hired to be the pep in client meetings and steer things in the correct direction when Seungcheol is seconds from saying something that could risk the contract, or a trip to HR.
Seungcheol isn't the type to fake interest in the personal lives of clients or colleagues; he's just here to work. And honestly, you respect that a hell of a lot. But it also means you shoulder all the small talk and have to look at pictures of people's pets, kids, and holidays that you really could not give less shits about.
And all of that means that although Seungcheol is a hard worker and you're beyond happy to have a competent partner at your side, he is one of the main reasons for your rising stress levels. Just once you'd like to not have to be the smiling balm to soothe the sting of his harsh demeanour and blunt words.
Alas, Seungcheol is not going to change his ways, especially when he doesn't know that you could really do with him pulling his weight in the charm department.
Which is made very apparent on one particular day with a new client who seems to consistently bump heads with Seungcheol.
The meeting is an hour of Seungcheol's nastiest bitch face and the client's obnoxious attitude flaunting the “customer is always right” motto the company stupidly prides itself on. You want to tell the client to go fuck himself on more than one occasion throughout the meeting, but you can't seeing as you'd like to be able to keep receiving a pay check.
As soon as the meeting is over, Seungcheol is out of there, no doubt halfway back to your shared office before you can even exit the little conference room thanks to the client deciding that “you just have to visit the resort I vacationed in. Here, let me show you the site”. So you're stuck pretending to be interested in the fancy foreign resort that the client shows you on his phone for the next handful of minutes before you can finally leave.
After all that you really need a break, so instead of going straight back to your office you walk straight past it and to the supply room for your floor.
Once inside the small room of shelving units full of various office supplies, you just stand there, eyes squeezed closed and hands tight on your hips while you focus on trying to calm yourself down with some deep breathing.
You're so focused that you don't hear the door open a few minutes later. The gentle tap of shoes on the hard flooring has your eyes snapping open and over to where Seungcheol, of all people, is standing with one hand raised to grab a new packet of printer paper, but his attention is entirely on you. He looks bewildered; one eyebrow raised and the other scrunched a little with his head tilted slightly.
You immediately slap on your usual bright smile, entirely fake but nobody has ever noticed that before, and grab a new, empty folder from the shelf near you. “I didn't know we need new paper already, I would've grabbed it myself if I knew,” you chirp, already walking towards the exit but the room isn't wide enough for there to be enough space around Seungcheol for you to just breeze on by like you want to. And he doesn't step aside either.
“Well, guess everyone's favourite isn't all sunshine and rainbows after all,” he replies with a smug smirk. “I wonder how everyone will react to knowing the truth about you.
“I don't know what you mean, Seungcheol.” You smile sweetly then skirt around him and leave before he can say anything else so you can return to your shared office to get to work on the new client file.
You expect Seungcheol to say something when he returns; to try and taunt you and goad you some more yet he doesn't say a thing, he just silently refills the paper in the printer and gets back to work.
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For a whole week, Seungcheol has you on edge; he keeps smirking at you knowingly and making vague comments around others in what you know is an attempt to get you to break. But you hold on strong and don't show a single sign that the you everyone in the office knows, isn't you at all.
It's pretty much a week to the exact minute that you break. Another meeting with that same client that goes about as well as the first has you back in the supply room counting your breaths.
You're very certain that your printer does not need more paper already when you look over at the footsteps entering the small room.
Seungcheol isn't even pretending to be there for any reason other than to watch you break. He's leaning against the unit on his right with his arms crossed over his chest and a cocky smirk on his face.
And finally, enough is enough.
“You need to fucking stop,” you warn. His face lights up in victory at you not even attempting to put on the higher, friendlier pitch you use at work; your customer service voice that you even use for your colleagues. “Seriously, Seungcheol, stop it,” you reiterate while heading towards the exit.
This time, Seungcheol purposely stands in your path and looks down at you arrogantly. “Are you going to admit that you're not the innocent little sweetheart that everyone thinks you are?”
You take a breath as you stare back at him just so you don't break too far. “You don't even know the half of it,” you retort simply.
Seungcheol stares back at you curiously for a few seconds before stepping aside to watch you go, wondering what exactly that means and how he can find out for himself.
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After that second incident in the supply room, you figure there's really not any point in keeping up the facade with Seungcheol so when it's just the two of you in your private office, you let the persona drop.
The first time you swear to yourself in complaint over your work, Seungcheol gawps at you in shock until you notice and raise an eyebrow at him. But he says nothing and doesn't react after that time except the occasional amused smile to himself as he hears you curse colourfully at much more regular intervals than he ever does.
And Seungcheol lets you see more of the real him too.
The two of you have always met outside of work for the sake of finishing tasks or discussing clients without being confined to the same four walls of your office. You'd get dinner or he'd come over to your apartment to go over documents in your office for however long necessary. But it was always about work.
Though now that he knows who you really are, it's not always about work; your conversations over dinner turn more friendly, enough that you see him smiling genuinely and laughing for the first time. And he doesn't stop either.
A genuine friendship quickly blossoms between the pair of you, allowing you to be yourselves to the extent that on more than one occasion Seungcheol has turned big, pleading puppy eyes on you with a pout to convince you to go where he wants for dinner, or even when he's complaining about his friends and being whiny, the big eyes hit you.
And the way they hit you is really not something you think you should think about the man, so you shove the thoughts of pinning him down and telling him what to do out of your mind.
The friendship between you is noticed by your colleagues too. It's kind of hard to miss the way that you're the only person who can get Seungcheol to join work dinners, after all.
You both know that there's a 'secret' betting pool going around the office in regard to whether you two are secretly dating or not; Jeonghan is not as slick as he thinks at hiding the bet sheet. And for fun, sometimes you and Seungcheol will purposely let your fingers brush over one another or let your gazes linger longer than they should, just to watch your coworkers try to not visibly flail at what they think are moments of you two failing to hide your relationship.
Though mostly, your close relationship means that when one of you is invited to drinks, dinner or some other activity with colleagues, you'll both turn up. Even if neither of you want to. But you dug a hole with your fake persona and refuse to be buried in it alone so always drag Seungcheol in to suffer with you.
Which leads us to the day that you well and truly snap.
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It's one of those days where if something can go wrong, it will, topped with shitty clients and colleagues who will just not let you have five minutes of peace.
By the end of the day, you're wound so tight that all you want to do is go home and give yourself some good old-fashioned stress relief on one of your favourite toys. But this day doesn't allow you even that.
It's another casual team dinner that you can't get out of; it's to celebrate Mingyu's birthday and well, even if you're in a shitty mood, the giant puppy of a man is such a sweetheart that you truly would feel bad about ditching him to masturbate.
So you get into Seungcheol's car like usual after work, go to the restaurant and sit at his side at the table while silently praying that this will not be a complete shit show.
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Two hours later, you're really at the end of your fucking rope. You really had been naive to even hope that this team dinner wouldn't be as rowdy and chaotic as all the rest. Your colleagues are a lot on the best of days with nothing to celebrate, so when they have an excuse to drink they really go for it. You're always surprised when the group isn't kicked out of public spaces, honestly.
The only ones not drinking are you and Seungcheol. Neither of you ever drink at these gatherings; you claim that you just don't drink in general while Seungcheol flat-out refuses without any attempt at an excuse. Really, you both don't want to risk encouraging the group to invite either of you out for more than just the company-related dinners, so not drinking sort of keeps the team in general at arm's length. Though both of you do have a few drinks when it's just the two of you and you can let yourselves relax in trusted, comfortable company.
But this is not that, this is you sitting side by side with Seungcheol blessedly keeping his mouth shut while you try not to break and tell everyone to shut the fuck up before leaving.
You do, however, take solace in the bathroom a few times, using the cold water to cool you down before going back into what tonight feels like your own personal hell.
On your latest trip out of the bathroom Seungcheol passes you, heading to empty his own bladder. He smirks at you and murmurs something in your ear as you pass one another. You can't even tell what he says; your brain is so heavy with fuzzy tension that his words don't register at all. But they don't need to, you know he's teasing you about your temper; he's done it before many times. Usually, you'd just joke back at him and point out his own, but tonight you don't have it in you.
Your gaze turns icy on him in a second causing him to come to an abrupt stop. You don't linger, don't slow and just turn and settle your expression back to your facade before rejoining the drunken group.
When Seungcheol returns, he timidly slips into his seat on your right silently in an attempt to not anger you further. Though a few seconds later, the tip of his left pinkie brushes the edge of your right elbow where it's resting on the tabletop, his hand sort of hooked on the edge of the table close to you yet out of sight of your colleagues.
You turn your head to look at Seungcheol and find him looking at you with those fucking giant doe eyes, silently asking for forgiveness. But you don't give it, just turn back around to watch your coworkers making absolute fools of themselves.
Yet your mind is stuck on Seungcheol's innocent expression and timid posture and all you can think about is how much you'd love to make him squirm and beg under your attention. It's riling you up in a way you usually keep such a tight lid on, but considering how tense you already are tonight, that lid is bowing and shaking under the building pressure and you know it'll blow soon enough.
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For the first time since meeting Seungcheol, being in his passenger seat isn't a very pleasant experience. Neither of you say a word for the entire fourteen-minute drive from the restaurant to your apartment, and that in itself isn't unusual, but usually there isn't this thick tension hanging between you two.
When Seungcheol pulls up in front of your building, you turn to look at him. He has both hands on the wheel and eyes locked on the space between his hands with clearly no intention of doing more than just dropping you off at home despite the fact he usually goes straight inside with you to hang out some more.
And honestly, it's probably best if he does go straight home and leaves you to deal with your tension alone. But it's not exactly an option.
“You need to check those documents ready for Monday,” you remind. Seungcheol lets out a reluctant breath but relocates the car to the parking lot in silent agreement.
Once in your apartment, the two of you remove your shoes and jackets to put them in their usual places.
It's kind of insane to you that Seungcheol is at your apartment enough that there is literally space on the low shoe rack for him to leave his shoes, and a gap on the pegs for his work jacket, there's even one of his casual jackets already there on the next peg. You don't really have any close friends, nobody you deem worth your time to allow into your life frequently enough to have a usual place in your home.
There isn't anything said between you as you walk through to your office where you lean over onto the desk to boot up your computer while Seungcheol hovers awkwardly a little behind you.
While waiting for the system to accept your password for the work files, you look over your shoulder at him with a raised eyebrow. He stares back at you dumbly until you give him a look and motion to the chair on your right with a silent tilt of your head.
In seconds, Seungcheol's ass meets the seat and he stares up at you with big, obedient eyes, his hands laced together and trapped between his thick thighs.
It's all rather dangerous considering how close you are to snapping and overstepping the boundaries neither of you had ever verbally set up between you but are always in place in platonic relationships. Even if you want nothing more than to destroy them right now, and Seungcheol too.
So you turn back to your computer with gritted teeth, open the relevant documents and motion to the computer vaguely before leaving the room entirely.
You go straight to the kitchen to down a glass of water as cold as you can stand it before splashing more on your face, then dragging a cold, wet hand on the back of your neck needing all the help you can currently get to cool down in every sense of the word.
It doesn't work.
By the time Seungcheol is done with the documents and shuffles into the kitchen, you're standing with both hands on the counter in front of you while staring darkly at nothing in particular, jaw tense and an attempt in your breathing to try and regulate your emotions.
“I finished it, it's all ready to send off,” he informs, coming to a stop a few metres away, not as close as he'd usually stand but still closer than sensible if he knew the depravity in your mind right now.
“Good,” you return simply without even looking at him.
He huffs a soft laugh. “No thank you?” He jokes, but you can't see the humour at all. Not when you're feeling like this.
“Thank you?” You repeat flatly before turning your dark gaze to him as you straighten and lean off of the counter. He swallows thickly and takes a step back when you take one towards him, prompting him to keep reversing. “Why should I thank you for doing your fucking job, huh?”
Seungcheol's mouth opens and closes with an attempt to try and say something, some kind of a “just joking” explanation but all he manages are vague sputters of sound that cut off abruptly when his back hits the wall and you're standing right in front of him. He's taller than you by a handful of inches but right now, he feels so fucking small and he's surprised by how much he likes it.
"Well?" You prompt, well aware that he had tried to explain himself; his pathetic stammering was very obvious and gave away that you’re intimidating him.
Though based on the big innocent eyes on you paired with the prettiest of pink tints to his cheeks, you think that perhaps intimidation isn't all it is.
And it's just pushing you to keep pushing him until he breaks because you know that he'll break so fucking beautifully.
“I'm sorry,” he finally manages to squeak out.
“You think that's good enough? You think you can just give me empty words and all is forgiven? Oh, baby, you really don't know me at all.”
He just stares at you dumbly; mouth dry and pupils dilating further and further with every act you make. 
It's far from the Seungcheol you see at work and that thought sort of douses you in icy water. This isn't normal for either of you.
Well, it's not unusual behaviour for you with partners at all, but he doesn't know that. Besides, he's your work partner and friend, not a sexual partner.
“Shit.” You sigh and back up a little. “You should go, I'm clearly not in the right frame of mind and if you stay, I'll go too far.” You try to move even further away to give him space to leave, yet you're stopped by your shirt pulling tight around your back. You look down and find both of Seungcheol's hands gripping the hem of your untucked shirt, his fingers trembling a little. You look back up with a questioning eyebrow.
“ don't want to leave,” he admits quietly as his cheeks darken slightly.
“No?” He shakes his head shyly. “You know what it means if you stay, right? You know what I want to do to you?” You check a little worriedly.
“Uhm...dom me?”
You huff a laugh. “I want to ruin you, baby.” His eyes light with interest. “You want that? Big scary Choi Seungcheol wants little ol' me to pin him down and make him cry?” You tease while running a finger over his jaw.
His mouth opens wider and his tongue appears with the tip pressed against his lip as if reaching for your touch. You don't give it to him even if you think he'll look precious with your fingers in his mouth.
You pull your hands away and cross your arms over your chest. “When I ask you a question, I expect a verbal response, Seungcheol.” Your voice is firm and your expression is the same on him.
“Y-yes!” He rushes out. “I-I want you to do that to me.”
“Do what?”
“Use me.” You hadn't said those words yourself, but you like them a hell of a lot. “Push me down and use me to make yourself feel good. Make me cry, ruin me. Please just...do something,” he's begging by now, not as strongly as he could be, still holding back a lot but you're pretty sure it's all very new for him.
You need to check though before anything goes any further. “Have you ever done anything like this before? Subbed?”
He shakes his head a little. “No, it's usually the other way.”
“Figures.” You huff a laugh then reach down to remove his hands from your shirt to take one into your own hand. “Come on.”
You lead him to your bedroom, though let him go in the middle of the floor to walk over and sit on the edge of your bed. He fidgets when you just stare at him contemplatively, your eyes dark and calculating as you lean back on your palms behind you with your legs crossed over at the ankles comfortably.
When he starts to fiddle with the hem of his shirt nervously, you speak up deeming him desperate enough with his cheeks a magnificent dark pink. “What're your limits, Cheolie?”
The nickname is new but he likes it. It feels fitting somehow.
“Uh.” He has to stop and think for a moment. He isn't sure exactly what his limits are for certain in this situation because he doesn't know what he likes in the submissive role, but there are some things he knows he'll never be okay with so he starts there. “Bodily fluids outside of spit and cum.”
“So you don't mind being spat on with your own cum?”
“Uh, I mean, I think I'm okay with it,” he offers awkwardly; uncertain but trying his hardest to be open and honest.
“How about eating it?”
“Uh...I don't know about that.”
“Okay.” You easily accept his response and move on. “What else? Pain?”
“I don't know; I've never received it before. If you want to try it I'm willing just… not too intense.”
“Hmm, we'll see. Edging? Overstimulation?” Those options have him hesitating as he genuinely considers them both. And then, he nods slowly, shyly. “I asked a question, Seungcheol.”
“Y-yes, to both.”
“Good, because that's my favourite thing to do to my little ones,” you coo. “Pick a safe word.”
“Uh, can we use the traffic light system? Red for stop, green for carry on?”
“Sure thing,” you agree easily; it was familiar enough to you after all. “What do you use for uncertain? Some people say yellow, some orange, some amber.”
“Whatever.”
“Pick one,” it's a demand he quickly obeys.
“Amber.”
“Good boy.” He visibly preens a little at the praise, which you make a mental note of. “Are you clean? Sexually, I mean?”
“Yes.”
“And that's a recent test since your last sexual partner?”
“Yes.”
“Good, I won't touch you without that confirmation and luckily, I trust you to be honest so you don't need to show me proof like I usually demand.”
“You trust me?” He asks softly, awed by the words and the weight they carry.
You hum and nod in confirmation. “More than anyone else.”
“Oh.” He smiles down at his hands happily. “I feel the same about you too.”
“I imagine so, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be willing to do this if you didn't,” you tease.
“Ah, yeah, true.” He chuckles and rubs his neck shyly.
You let him stew in his minor embarrassment for a second before talking again. “Degradation?” He looks up at you at that. “How do you feel about that?”
“I might cry,” he admits honestly, making you laugh a little at the blunt way he speaks the words. “I don't like being called names or looked down on.”
“Okay, baby, none of that,” you assure.
“Thank you.”
“Mm, of course, I have to make this good for you too. And I do love that you use your manners without being prompted. Such a good boy, huh?” His eyes round out again at you and the semi-casual air between you dissipating with your slightly teasing tone. “Are you going to be a good boy for me, Cheolie?”
“Yes, I'll be good for you.”
“Then strip.” He blinks at you a few times at the abrupt demand; the way your tone changes from light to borderline hard with no room for arguments.
Slowly, Seungcheol's slightly shaky fingers first remove his tie, and then his shirt, exposing his broad, muscle-thick torso to you. He knows he looks good, that his body is worth ogling but your dark eyes still make him feel shy.
Still, he continues, his top half entirely bare and moving onto his belt.
Something about the way he opens it and pulls it free from the loops of his slacks is really attractive to you. You can easily imagine him teasing his own sub as he removes his belt before grabbing the ends to turn it on their backside when he bends them over. Maybe you could break for him too; if he turns out to be a good enough fuck this time that is.
For now, you're more than content to watch him open his button and zipper and let his trousers drop to his ankles. He bends down to remove them from around his feet, taking his socks off too and then he straightens up and looks at you. You can tell he's hesitant to remove his boxers by the way his fingers fiddle with the waistband over his hips for a few seconds.
There's a part of you that wants to let him off easy for now and allow him to keep his boxers on for a little while. But the bigger part of you really doesn't want to do that so you continue to silently watch him.
Seungcheol lowers his head to look down at his underwear for a second, then he looks at you through his eyelashes still hoping you'll take pity on him. You don't. So he looks back down as he takes a long breath in before he hooks his thumbs under the elastic band and starts to push the material down.
You watch with rapt attention as the final piece of the beautiful, thick-built puzzle that is Choi Seungcheol is revealed to you inch by glorious inch. You have to admit, he's fucking gorgeous and it does a lot to you. Makes you throb between your thighs as they clench for a second while he's distracted focusing on removing his boxers from his legs.
And then he's entirely bare and looking at you shyly, fingers on his right hand picking at the nails of his left in nervous wait.
“C'mere,” you murmur. Seungcheol stumbles over and when you nod to the floor, he slowly lowers to his knees, letting his hands hover over his rapidly hardening dick. That is like the rest of him; thick and unfairly beautiful.
At this rate, you can't tell who is going to ruin who.
“Don't hide from me.” You unfold your legs just to gently tap at his hands with your socked foot before settling it flat on the floor beside his left knee.
A little reluctantly, Seungcheol moves his hands aside to place them on the tops of his thighs and allow you the full view of his kneeled form.
“Mm, much better, good boy.” The praise straightens his posture a little. “You're so beautiful, babyboy, don't deprive me of such a gorgeous view, hm?”
“Ah, fuck,” he softly breathes out; a little overwhelmed by the unexpected compliments, which he just knows are genuine from your tone and expression on him. You clearly like what you see and it makes his dick jump a little against his thigh. You smirk at the visible response; you've always known that Seungcheol loves compliments and praise but you didn't know just how much.
“Shall we even things out a little?” You suggest, already getting up to your feet in front of him.
He watches you with rapt attention as you open your trousers and shimmy them down. His gaze is too focused on the skin of your thighs coming into sight that he doesn't realise that you've pushed your panties down with your trousers to save yourself time. At least until you sit back down on the edge of the bed when the material is around your knees.
“Off,” you demand.
Seungcheol's hands immediately reach out to hook his fingers over the combined waistbands and pull them off of your slightly raised legs. It's when he's setting them aside that he notices the white material inside of the black of your trousers and freezes.
Mindlessly, he moves one hand to pull on the white material and quickly looks at you with wide eyes and his mouth parted. You just raise an eyebrow in return, silently prompting him to snap back to his task and move the material aside entirely so that he can carefully remove your socks too.
“Good boy.”
Just to tease, you sit there for a good almost twenty seconds with your legs closed most of the way, just the slightest gap between your thighs but it's not big enough for him to see anything but a dark shadow.
To your surprise, he actually gives in first. “Please?” He begs softly, looking up at you pleadingly. “Please let me see your pussy.”
“Oh, how can I refuse such good manners?” You coo and spread your legs causing his gaze to drop back down between them. Though he whines when he realises that your shirt is long enough to mostly cover you and shadow the rest. “You make such cute sounds, Cheolie.”
“Don't tease me,” he complains.
“I'll do what I want and you'll be grateful for it.” He presses his lips together looking fully scolded and stares at you in wait. He's impatient, that's very obvious but he's doing his best to stick to this new dynamic.
Honestly, he's taking to it a lot better than you had expected, or hoped, considering all that you know about Choi Seungcheol; so instead of prolonging it any longer, you lift the hem of your shirt out of the way with one hand.
Seungcheol's lips part when his eyes land back between your thighs and take in the sight of you fully exposed to him. Automatically, his hands lift with every intention of putting them on your thighs to push your legs open further while he leans in licking his lips.
But you stop him with your free hand, a finger pressed to his forehead. “I didn't say you can touch.” You grin amusedly at his dumb-aroused expression; his mouth open and tongue hanging out a little.
“Can I taste?” He requests, putting his hands back on his thighs but not leaning back. Your slightly condescending laugh makes him pout. When you nudge his forehead under your index finger, he leans back into a sulky slouch.
“Your job is to sit there and look pretty for me,” you point out, now using that same finger to trail up your inner thigh. Seungcheol's pout melts away as he watches its path intently. He audibly inhales sharply when it drags through your folds. He groans a little when he sees the shine now on the digit and wishes it was his tongue getting doused in your arousal.
Even though you very much would enjoy an orgasm or two sooner rather than later, you continue to tease yourself with one finger; barely brushing over your clit and circling your hole but never pushing in. It's more to tease Seungcheol and the squirming of his body perhaps turns you on more than your own actions.
Either way, when you do finally give in and plunge your finger inside, you're wet enough that it's more than easy and honestly, not very satisfying past the initial relief of having something in you finally.
Though that relief passes very quickly so soon you're adding a second finger and watching Seungcheol chew on his bottom lip hard enough that you think he's going to break skin any second. You really don't want that, so you pull your fingers out and reach towards him. The speed at which he leans it with his mouth opening genuinely makes you laugh.
“Oh, baby, you are desperate, huh?” You tease and adjust your hand so that your thumb presses against his bottom lip and your slick fingers are not close enough to his mouth to get even the hint of a taste. “You're not getting a taste, I just don't want you to hurt those pretty lips.” The expression he lands on you is utterly heartbroken. “Stop biting or I'll gag you, understand?”
“I...I understand,” he agrees, so you let him go and return your fingers back to yourself, though Seungcheol doesn't lean back. In this position, his head is pretty much between your knees, which you spread a little wider and he takes as permission to scoot a little closer. You don't mind at all, he'll just be teasing himself more with a closer view after all.
Your intention with fingering yourself isn't to reach orgasm at all, mostly you just want to tease Seungcheol by showing him what he can't have, though you also do want to prepare yourself. When you're able to easily take three fingers, you remove them and get up.
“Wh-where are you going?” He worries, hands lifting from his thighs but only hovering a few inches away from his own body. He wants to reach out and stop you from walking away but he knows he can't. You still haven't given him permission to touch yet and he really doesn't want to be scolded again, let alone face any kind of punishment you may give him if he disobeys a direct order. He's horny, not stupid.
“I'll be right back, just sit there and wait like a good boy, sweetheart,” your voice is gentle in order to soothe him that you are, in fact, not planning to actually leave and end things here as he fears.
You quickly grab something from a case in the chest of drawers before returning. You sit back down and open your thighs again, but Seungcheol's gaze is glued to the pale blue dildo in your hand.
“What do you think?” You muse, leaning down to hold it near to his erection in comparison. “Ah, not quite as thick as you.” You sigh dramatically and straighten back up. “That's a shame; it's as close as I've got though, so it'll have to do.” You pout theatrically as you trace the tip of the silicone toy over your slick folds; it's a little cold and jarring but you do your best to ignore it. Besides, the temperature difference isn't something you're entirely against.
Vaguely, you wonder if Seungcheol would be into temperature play; you've never tried it before but you've always been interested in both giving and receiving.
Seungcheol wants to make a retort, say that instead of settling for a toy that wouldn't stretch you like his thick cock would, you could just use his. He'd fuck you however you want and probably thank you for it at this point; he's throbbing with need and leaking on his thigh. He doesn't think he's ever been so fucking turned on in his life. But he can't talk, can't say a fucking thing as he watches the head of the toy breach you.
He was wrong before, now he's more turned on than he's ever been as he watches the way the girth of the toy spears you open.
Your breath catches a little so he looks up at you and once again corrects himself because your expression is what wet dreams are fucking made of. Your mouth is parted and your eyes are closed, your head tipped back slightly and your cheeks pink with pleasure.
You let out a curse under your breath so he looks back down and swears in the same fashion when he sees that you have entirely embedded the toy within you, just the slightly flared base in your fingers still.
“Fuck,” he curses again when you start to pull the toy out slowly and he sees how you've drenched it. Your eyes open to look down at him with an amused lopsided grin. He doesn't notice though, he's too entranced by the show less than a metre in front of his face.
Seungcheol doesn't notice the way he naturally moves a hand towards his crotch with the intention of soothing his aching cock, but you do. “Stop,” you demand, stopping your own motions of fucking into yourself slowly to let yourself get used to the toy's length and girth fully.
“Huh?” He looks up at you confused with his mouth wide open.
“I didn't give you permission to touch your cock, Seungcheol.”
“What?” He looks down and notices the hand inches from his dick. “Oh.” He hesitates but obediently puts his hand back on his thigh before looking up at you shyly. “I-I didn't realise. I'm sorry.”
“Feeling that needy?” You smirk and get back to fucking yourself on the toy. He lets out a sound, a mix between a whimper and a groan as he looks back down at your pussy. “Answer me.”
“Yes. Yes, I've never been this turned on before,” he admits in a rush of syllables. “Wanna fuck you so much,” he whines, fingers curling into fists which he presses down onto his thighs almost harshly in an attempt to behave for you.
He wants to be good for you. Wants to be your good boy. But it's so fucking hard when you look so fucking good. Look like your pussy would take him so well and make a fucking mess of him.
All he wants is to get up, throw that toy aside and sink his cock into you and feel your slick, heated walls around him. He's fucking convinced that your pussy would be perfect for him.
But he can't, and that's really hard for him to accept and handle when he's usually the one in charge during sex.
“Think you can make me feel better than this?” You taunt a little and pick up speed, letting your pleasure show through with little pleased sounds that really do not help Seungcheol's self-control at all. He moves a little closer yet doesn't touch either of you the way he wants to.
He's obviously trying his hardest and that, you think, is more than enough when honestly, you really want his cock in you as much as he wants to put it in you.
“Yes,” there's not an ounce of hesitation in his answer, he's entirely confident in his abilities, in his thick cock.
Usually, you'd roll your eyes and dismiss that confidence from a man because they're notoriously cocky with nothing to back up their claims. Part of the reason you got into domming is because men don't know how to use their dicks, so you always get more pleasure when you're on top and controlling how your walls are pummelled.
But there's something about Seungcheol that tells you that he's not like other men. He can and will fuck you right given the chance. Still, you want to be on top in every way.
“Big talk, little one.” You huff a laugh, most of your breath affected by the pleasure of the toy you're using to hit all of those good spots inside of you with every thrust. You're not being as rough as you could be, as you often tend to be when you feel like this, but you're talking and know that you have no space left in your chest for words when you truly fuck yourself.
“Let me prove it,” he pleads. “Please, just let me fuck you and I promise you'll cum hard.”
“I'll cum hard regardless,” you hum. His expression twists in displeasure knowing that you are truly dismissing his offer. “Maybe another time,” you counteroffer, not liking that downtrodden expression at all.
He looks up at you with hope glistening his dark gaze. “Yeah?” He asks with a surprised exhale.
“If you do good enough for me this time.” You pull the toy out and point it at him. Seungcheol eyes it and licks his lips. “What? You wanna suck it?” You taunt.
“Wanna taste you,” he murmurs.
“Enough to suck my cock?”
He glances up at you then looks back down and nods, licking his lips again. “Yeah, can I? Please?”
“Seeing as you asked so nicely,” you approve and touch the silicone toy to his bottom lip.
Seungcheol's tongue immediately darts out to pass over the silicone and get his first taste of you. His eyes roll back and he groans before he very enthusiastically starts to drag his mouth over the toy. He moves up the length along every side, not actually putting the toy into his mouth really, but this is absurdly hot enough as it is.
It turns you on much more than you had anticipated seeing this handsome man pretty much going feral for your taste that he'll messily lave his tongue over the dildo with his eyes closed in bliss and constant streams of groans of approval vibrating out of his throat.
And when he moves back to the tip and wraps his lips around it, genuinely sucking on the fake-cock, well that's as much as you can handle. You pull it away without warning creating a pop before Seungcheol looks at you half dazed, half betrayed with a smidge of confusion.
“Get on the bed,” you demand, getting up and walking around to one side of the bed while unbuttoning your shirt.
Seungcheol doesn't even have to think; there's no mental input on his behalf as he jumps up. His legs almost give out under him as the blood rushes back into his limbs after sitting on them in one position for a prolonged period, but he powers through to practically throw himself onto the mattress.
“On your back.” He crawls and shuffles until he's on his back with his head on the pillows and chest rising and falling heavily already in anticipation.
Seungcheol's heavy gaze remains on you as you reveal your body entirely. He lets out a shaky exhale when you're fully bare and climbing up onto the mattress at his left. “You're beautiful,” he says in a tone that is far too affectionate for what is going on here.
It makes you pause for a moment and look carefully at his gaze. He still looks ridiculously horny but there's something else there now; a touch of fond that genuinely sort of worries you.
Of course, you are fond of Seungcheol; he's a very precious friend to you but your feelings don't extend further than that, further than platonic and sexual. You really hope that the fondness you see is nothing more than a reflection of your own feelings and nothing more. Him having romantic feelings could certainly complicate matters more than adding sex into the mix will.
Sex you can navigate with your eyes closed, but feelings? That's an entirely different circus.
“Are you going to sit on my face?” His hopeful tone brings you back to reality. He hasn't even noticed your hesitation for what it truly is and just assumes you're teasing him further.
“Not today,” you answer, silently deciding to just give you both what you want right now and have an actual discussion later when you're both not horny messes.
“Oh.” His lips purse into a pout but then you retrieve a condom from the side table drawer and he lights up again. “Oh!” You let out a soft amused sound at his excited reaction and straddle his thighs while opening the wrapper. “Can I touch myself?” You give him an unimpressed look. “Just to help!” He assures.
“Mm, sure, I'll allow that,” you agree. Seungcheol has his dick in hand as soon as the words are slipping from your lips and holding it upright for you. You notice the way he shudders a little at his own touch on his aching cock and don't berate him for the subtle stroke he gives himself as he rolls the rubber down his length once you put it at his tip. “Good boy,” you hum, tossing the foil aside carelessly.
“For you,” he answers, wide eyes watching as you move up his body to hover over his length that he's still holding upright. “Please.” He doesn't even realise he says it, but you do and decide you've both waited more than long enough.
As soon as you start to slide down his cock, Seungcheol's eyes roll back and his hands fly out to grip your hips tightly. It feels pretty nice so you allow it, at least for now, it's kind of stabilising to have his strong grasp centring you while his cock splits you open.
Although it hadn't looked that much bigger than your toy, you can certainly feel the difference in girth right now. Plus the fact that Seungcheol is so fucking hard in you compared to the slight give of the toy, well you're already so close to an orgasm it's kind of ridiculous.
It takes you both a handful of seconds of heavy breathing to gather yourselves when you're fully impaled on his length and seated on his hips. You don't even try to keep any weight off of him; you're certain he can handle it and even if you weren't, your legs are already weak enough from the feeling of him stretching you out even still like this that you doubt you could hold yourself up if you tried.
You haven't realised that your eyes had closed until you've got some of your breath back, enough to have a mind clear enough to want to look down at him. His eyes are closed; he's struggling more than you, which doesn't surprise you considering how you hadn't allowed him any touch until now.
Carefully, you remove Seungcheol's grip from your hips and lean over to pin his hands up by his head. The new angle has his cock hitting a delicious spot within you and you can't help but grind down against him to gain friction against it. This angle also means that your clit is rubbing against his body with every roll of your hips.
Seungcheol barely manages to open his eyes and look at you before they roll back again with pleasure as you moan over him, fingers gripping onto his wrists with your full weight. He doesn't mind at all, doesn't really register it considering you're so wet and hot and tight around him that he truly cannot focus on anything else. Yet even if he could register it, he wouldn't give a single fuck. You could crush him and he'd be into it right now.
“D-don't cum,” you order when you feel your orgasm right on the brink, eyes opening to peer down at him. His own fly open in pained disbelief. “Un-fuck-understand, Seungcheol?” He whines but nods obediently. The agreement of restraint sends you over. Pleasure shocks through your body making it jerk a little, mouth open with broken higher-pitched moans coming out.
Seungcheol's whole body tenses and his face screws up tightly as you clamp down around him. He's never fought an orgasm before but you told him not to cum and he's not going to let you down now.
He's shaking by the time you slump over him, forehead dropping to his shoulder as you fight to suck air back into your lungs, just the occasional tiny twitch of your hips when a fresh lick of pleasure shoots through you with the aftershocks of an intense orgasm.
“Did you cum?” You check another few moments later.
It takes Seungcheol a few attempts to answer, just grunts coming out at first but you wait patiently. “No,” he manages while flexing his fingers to give him something else to focus on.
“Good boy,” you praise and press a kiss to his neck. His breath catches at the unexpected action but then you do it again, and again, and again as you adjust yourself while leaning up to look down at him with your hands now on the mattress and not pressing down against his wrists in a tight grip.
You take a look at them and are relieved that there's only slight redness right now, so you're pretty sure he won't bruise. Still, you'll keep an eye on it just in case.
“You did so well, Cheolie.” You hum and cup his jaw. His lip trembles a little, eyes so big on you and soaking in the praise. It helps his shaking lessen as he relaxes from doing his utmost not to cum with the fluttering of your walls around him. “Think you can hold out longer for me, baby?”
“I...ye-yeah.” He isn't sure but he's sure he'll try his best for you. He really wants to be your good boy. Your best boy.
“Yeah?” You smile softly, pleased. He nods and smiles back a little in a natural reaction to seeing you happy with him. “That's my boy.” You tap his nose, then straighten up to sit on his hips with your hands on his solid abs. “I'm going to ride you now, okay baby?”
He nods shakily and sticks his hands under the pillow to grip it. “O-okay.”
“Colour?” He blinks at you confusedly a few times. “What colour are you right now, sweetheart?”
“Oh, green,” he answers. “Green.” The repetition makes your lips quirk up. It's oddly endearing that he's assuring you right now considering he's the one missing an orgasm.
“Good, tell me if that changes, okay?” He nods. You let him get away with not verbally responding this time and start to lift yourself up.
Seungcheol's gaze falls to watch his length appear from your dripping pussy utterly mesmerised. Up until you abruptly drop yourself back down, ass smacking down on his upper thighs audibly.
A loud, low moan tears from his open mouth as his back arches upwards. He looks fucking beautiful like this. You have to keep making him do that so you don't hesitate to lift and drop in the very same way; taking up a punishing rhythm that has his cock dragging against your walls in the most incredible of ways.
Honestly, you're half convinced his cock just being in you has you halfway to a constant orgasm because that ball in your lower stomach winds up tight so fucking quickly that you barely register it until it's there, urging you over but this isn't quite enough for you. You need clitoral stimulation but you don't think it's wise to give it to yourself right now with Seungcheol buried within you and his body trembling as he still holds back with everything in him.
At this point, he's babbling a little in amongst his constant stream of porn-worthy moans. You're not quite sure what he's saying really, you're not sure that he even knows what he's saying either.
If you cum with him inside you, you're positive that he will too regardless of your words so you pull off of him. His eyes instantly fly open in alarm and he looks at you as he lifts his head up. You just settle down again along his latex-covered cock to grind along the length.
He gasps and shudders watching his cock peek out through your slick folds. “Please, please,” he begs; his babbles now making sense while he's not overwhelmed with the feeling of you squeezing around him.
This is still a lot for him but he's much more able to be a good boy for you now. He really wants to make you proud of him. He doesn't want you to think he's a bad boy for cumming without permission, because then you won't play with him again and he really doesn't want that. He wants to be your good boy. Your only good boy.
You know what he's begging for even if he doesn't voice it. You'll make him say it in a minute but right now you're seconds from a second orgasm and unless he says red you're not going to stop.
Even though the orgasm is yours entirely, Seungcheol moans when you do as he watches your face contort with utter bliss as your hips jerk over his length a few more times before falling still. It's not quite as powerful as your first orgasm, not when you're empty, but it's still intense and leaves you breathless.
Initially, you had planned to give yourself many more orgasms before letting Seungcheol cum but you genuinely think if you draw more than one more out of yourself, you'll pass out. You don't know if it's because it's been a while and you've been so pent up that it feels so mind-numbingly incredible, or if it's because of the thick cock pressed up against you.
“Colour?” You pant out when you feel ready to go again, eyes landing on Seungcheol.
He doesn't hesitate to answer this time but he finally sounds wrecked, voice hoarse and cracking a little with the simple single-syllable response. “Green.”
“Okay.” You push up and gently lift his cock up to line with you, applying as little pressure as possible to try not to give him too much too soon and overwhelm him in the wrong way. “Positive?” He nods rapidly so you begin to impale yourself again. His breaths come in one long juddering inhale as you slide down his length until he's sheathed inside of you.
“Please,” he goes right back to pleading, levelling you with such a begging, wet gaze that you know that this will not last long at all.
“Please what, baby?” You question, lifting to ride him slowly, now focused on him and him alone yet not wanting to push him over too fast. He looks too pretty like this; skin blotched with reds and pinks in a way that makes you wish you had discussed marks beforehand so that you could leave some lovebites on his pecs.
But you hadn't, and asking for permission at this point is utterly pointless, Seungcheol is too gone to be able to give full consent to anything new. You're pretty sure he'd say yes to anything right now so long as he can cum.
“Lemmecum.”
“Hm? What was that, speak clearly.”
Seungcheol whines and sniffles. “I wanna c-cum. P-please.” He blinks rapidly as the tears gathering in his eyes overflow and spill down his temples onto the pillow under him. “Please-please l-let me c-cum,” he chokes out, close to full-on sobbing.
You give in. You want to make him cry, not sob his poor heart out, after all. “You can cum,” you consent.
Seungcheol freezes for a split second in genuine shock, but then his eyes roll back and his back bows, biceps bulging as he grips the pillow so tight and pulls it up a little with the strength of his orgasm. He almost yells your name he moans so loud in pleasure and relief as the intense climax takes over his body.
You continue to move on him slowly to ride him through it, and then a little out the other side when he flops back against the sheets and raggedly sucks in harsh breaths with only short exhales. You'd continue with the intention to overstimulate him if he wasn't laid utterly boneless and not even reacting to you anymore. It's boring to overstimulate someone with no response, after all.
He doesn't even react when you carefully pull off of him and remove the condom to tie off and dispose of in the bin beside your bedside table. You stand beside the bed on weak legs for a second to watch him in wonder and decide that he truly is too out of it right now to even notice your presence; so you dart off to get a large glass of water and drink some yourself, and a damp cloth before returning.
Seungcheol is still lying there with his eyes closed though his breathing is evening out now when you place the cup on the side table and sit on the bed at his side. You carefully start to run the cloth over his sweat-damp body; a shower is really needed but that can wait a little.
Seungcheol makes a soft noise but doesn't react otherwise.
Finally, he opens his eyes when you return from taking the cloth back to the bathroom to toss into the hamper where you also clean between your thighs quickly.
“Hey,” you greet softly, laying down on your right propped up on your elbow at his side to look down at him as your left hand soothes over his chest.
“Hi.” He smiles softly at you, then tiredly rolls over to tuck up against you. You smile at the cute action and turn onto your back to allow him to curl up against your side with his head on your chest, his right arm and leg over you keeping you there. Not that you have any intention to move quite yet.
This is nice.
Your right arm goes around his back and into his hair to play with the strands while your left hand rubs over his forearm, gentle yet firm enough that he knows you're here and not going anywhere. “How're you feeling, sweetheart?”
“Tired,” he mumbles, making you laugh softly.
“Just tired?” He hums in confirmation. “So you're good otherwise? It wasn't too much?”
“No. M'good,” he slurs a little, signalling that he truly is tired enough that sleep is already starting to claim him.
“Yeah, you are. My good boy, huh?” You tease lightly and press a kiss to the top of his head. You're pretty sure you can feel his cheek bunch up against your skin as he smiles in return.
“Your good boy,” he confirms, voice so thick that you know there's no point trying to get him up to shower or eat, even drink despite knowing he really should. It'll have to wait until he wakes.
“Mm, yeah, sleep now baby, we'll talk more later,” you reply, though you're certain he's too close to slumber to really catch the warning.
Regardless, you know that once he's awake and you're certain that he's still genuinely okay, clean and fed, you'll have to talk. A lot has changed in such a short time and hopefully, he will confirm that it's nothing more than sex for him too because the alternative has dread pooling in your gut.
You can't do this again if it's not entirely equal and you kind of have the feeling that there's no going back now that you've had each other like this. Yet, if you can't go forward because of potential feelings on his side, then you're well and truly fucked and not in the way either of you want to be.
Still, that's not something you can discuss right now so you follow Seungcheol's lead and close your eyes. You just hope that when you open them, everything will be alright.
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killerplink · 4 days ago
Text
I told y'all I got more Nightwing ones lined up. This one's just fluff but I NEED HIM.
Pairing: Dick Grayson x Female Reader
Plot: What was supposed to be a simple grocery run turns into a full-blown snack heist, with Dick pulling every trick in the book.
Words: 2,3k
CW: established relationship, fluff, humor, domestic shenanigans, grocery store chaos, snack heist, playful banter, mild tickling, slice of life, Dick being a menace, reader suffering (affectionately)
You should've known bringing Dick to the grocery store was a mistake. You should've known.
But when he offered to drive, flashing you that easy, boyish grin, promising he'd be good, you figured, what's the worst that could happen? A quick, responsible trip—grab the essentials, stick to the list, avoid distractions. Simple.
Except, somewhere deep in your soul, you knew. You knew better than to trust him in a place with this many snack aisles.
Your gut warned you. Your instincts screamed. You had years of experience dealing with this exact brand of nonsense, and still—you let him waltz through those automatic doors with zero supervision, like you weren't escorting a six-foot-tall toddler into a candy wonderland.
Really, this one's on you.
And yet, here you are, standing by the cart, listening to the unmistakable crinkle of plastic, feeling your eye twitch as you turn around—
Only to find Dick caught red-handed, a giant bag of sour gummy worms frozen mid-air, halfway to the cart, like he thought he could sneak them in undetected.
There's a fraction of a second where he looks genuinely offended at getting caught, like the audacity of your observational skills is the real crime here. You can see his soul leave his body as he freezes mid-action, standing so still it's almost admirable. Like a goddamn deer in headlights.
If you weren't so busy glaring at him, you'd be impressed.
"... Dick."
He doesn't move. Doesn't blink.
Just stands there, completely still, as if that might somehow undo the fact that he was just caught trying to be sneaky. His hand is still half-stretched, and you can see his fingers twitch slightly, like he's debating whether to keep the bag or drop it and pretend it never happened.
His lips part slightly, and you can practically see the gears turning in his head, desperately trying to figure out an escape plan. His eyes flick left, then right, like he's searching for an out, but when his gaze locks with yours, his expression falls back into the innocent act, lips curling into a soft, unconvincing smile.
And then—ever so slowly—he tries to place the bag in the cart anyway.
Oh, the audacity. He does it so carefully, so deliberately, like maybe—just maybe—you won't notice if he moves slow enough. Like he's testing some bullshit theory about your depth perception, just casually lowering the bag with all the grace of a malfunctioning vending machine.
And for a second—just a split second—you almost let him. Because honestly? The sheer commitment is impressive, but you snatch it before it even touches the groceries.
He gasps.
Like you just mortally wounded him. Like you personally reached into his chest and stole his soul. He clutches at his heart with both hands, his face the very picture of betrayal. "Baby!"
You narrow your eyes. "What is this?"
He blinks at you, the picture of innocence. "A necessary expense?"
You let out a slow, measured breath, trying to keep your patience intact. "We don't need this," you say, shaking the bag pointedly.
His face immediately shifts into the most exaggerated pout, eyes big and impossibly blue, practically dripping with fake heartbreak. "We do need them."
"Dick."
"Baby."
You don't break eye contact. Neither does he. But he's relentless—turning up the puppy-dog eyes, tilting his head just so, lips parting in that soft, pleading way that always, always makes you weak.
But not this time. You won't cave.
You exhale sharply, turning back to the shelves. "We're here for groceries. Real food. Not—"
Thump. Your head snaps around, and time slows. You swear you hear the sound of a judge slamming a gavel somewhere in the distance.
Dick—this absolute menace—has just placed a second bag of gummy worms in the cart like it's a normal transaction. Like it's a given that you'll just let it slide.
And the worst part? He looks proud of himself.
Your jaw drops. "Dick."
He grins, hands outstretched like he's just completed an Olympic feat. "Well, baby, you were distracted."
You snatch the second bag just as fast as the first. "No."
His hands go to his hips, his face twisting in mock offense. "You're so mean to me."
You roll your eyes. "We're shopping for food, not junk."
"Then why are we here?"
You fix him with a flat look, holding up the shopping list like it's evidence in court. "For the things on this very specific list."
He leans in, peering at it like it's some kind of ancient text, lips pressing together in deep, exaggerated concentration. "Hmmm. I don't see eggs."
You flip the list around, pointing directly at eggs.
"Oh," he hums. "I don't see—"
"Dick."
"Okay, fine," he grins, backing up toward the cart, hands raised in surrender. "I'll push."
You narrow your eyes at him, suspicious.
That is not a selfless offer. That is strategy.
You know this game. You've played this game. This is not about "helping". This is about controlling the terrain. He's taken cart duty as a strategic advantage—gaining full possession of the moving target so he can execute his bullshit snack heist while you're distracted.
You sigh, rubbing your temples. You're dealing with a professional. But you let him, still eyeing him carefully as you push into the next aisle.
And for a little while, he behaves. He actually follows along, doesn't stray too far, occasionally even reaching for things that are actually on the list.
It almost makes you think you might've won this round. Until you hear it again.
That quiet, telltale rustle of plastic, and you whip around so fast you almost knock over a display.
Oh, no you don't. Not again. You snap your head so fast it's a miracle you don't get whiplash, fully prepared to catch him in the act—
And sure enough—
There he is. Mid-drop.
Your grown ass boyfriend—fully aware of his actions—has paused in real time, two chocolate bars hovering over the cart like he's conducting a goddamn séance.
Your eyes widen. "Richard."
For a moment, neither of you move.
Then? He gasps, deeply scandalized, like you just hurt his feelings. "You never call me that unless I'm in trouble."
"Oh, you are," you mutter. You snatch the candy from his hands before he can even think about dropping them in the cart. "No snacks."
His shoulders slump like a petulant child. "No fun."
"I heard that."
"Good."
He sticks his tongue out for good measure, crossing his arms over his chest like a grumpy kid who just got his recess privileges revoked. It's so ridiculously dramatic that you have to physically stop yourself from laughing.
You shake your head, exhaling through your nose, and for a little while, he actually seems to accept defeat. Until you make the mistake of looking away for five fucking seconds. You're focused on checking labels, making sure you grab the right thing, and when you finally turn back—
Your cart is filled with snacks. Not just one or two things, but an entire stash. Oh, this is premeditated. This is organized crime.
He didn't just grab things—he curated this stash. The items are neatly arranged in a ridiculously methodical way: sweet snacks in one corner, salty snacks in another, a fucking theme emerging like he's opening a concession stand.
Like he actually took the time to plan this.
The worst part? You don't know when the fuck it happened. How long was your back turned? Ten seconds? Fifteen? That's all he needed?
"Dick!"
"What?" he says, all casual, as if he's not standing there like a gremlin who just pulled off a successful heist.
You gesture wildly at the cart. "What the fuck is all this?"
"Uhm... necessities?"
You groan, rubbing your temples. "We are not here for snacks!"
"Why not?"
"Because—" you let out another exasperated sigh. "Because we don't need them!"
He raises an eyebrow, smug. "Don't we?"
"DICK."
"Okay, okay," he laughs, leaning in to press a sweet little kiss to your temple, like that's going to magically make you forget he's being a total pain in the ass. "C'mon, baby. Just a few things? A little treat for your handsome, hardworking boyfriend?"
Your lips press together. Damn it. Your shoulders slump, and the second you sigh, his entire face lights up because he knows he's got you right where he wants you.
"Fine," you sigh, holding up one finger. "One."
His brows shoot up. "One type of snack?"
"One thing of snacks."
"Oh, baby." His grin stretches impossibly wide. "That's a challenge. Not for me, though."
And somehow, you already know what's coming. Sure enough—he takes full advantage of the loophole, grabbing a huge box of mixed candies, one of those ridiculous variety packs with every type of chocolate, and a party-size bag of chips—
All in one. All technically counting as one item. You look at the absurdly large variety pack sitting in the cart, then back at Dick.
He is positively beaming. Like he just won something. Like he calculated the loophole the second you gave in and set you up for this outcome, smiling so sweetly as if he didn't just blatantly manipulate the terms of the agreement.
This was a heist from the beginning.
You close your eyes, inhale slow, and mutter under your breath—
"I hate you."
"No, you don't." His grin is positively criminal, fully unbothered as he drops the massive box into the cart. "Besides, I followed the rules."
"You're unbelievable," you sigh, placing some pasta in the cart.
"I love you," he says with the most boyish grin he can muster, all sweet and soft and giggly.
"You are so annoying."
"And handsome," he adds, stealing another kiss as he proudly wheels the cart toward checkout, so pleased with himself.
You huff, shaking your head, but you don't argue. Because, yeah, he's an absolute menace. But he's your menace, and honestly? You wouldn't trade him for the world.
Later, you're curled up against his chest on the couch, munching on one of his snacks—he'd left them out, after all. You're doing nothing wrong.
He notices and suddenly sits up straight, eyes narrowing. "You've got to be kidding me."
You innocently glance at him, chips still in hand. "What?" you ask, playing dumb, your lip jutting out in the softest of pouts.
He leans back, crossing his arms. "You're really gonna just steal my snacks now? After all that?"
"Steal? I'm just... sharing in your success," you reply, smiling sweetly as you pop another chip in your mouth.
Dick's eyes narrow as if he's sizing you up, the moment of triumph slipping away from him. He reaches for the bag, but you pull it closer, feigning innocence.
"What's wrong, baby? Are you gonna deny me the pleasure of your snacks?"
You raise an eyebrow, letting your fingers hover over the chip bag like you're waiting for permission.
He grumbles, leaning forward, his hand still hovering over the bag like he's ready to strike. "That's my snack, sweetheart."
You give him a look, matching his smirk as you dramatically look at the chip in your hand and back at him. "What snack? This one?"
You take another one, slowly, teasing him as if you weren't completely aware of how worked up he's getting.
You yelp and pull the bag back, holding it over your head like a goddamn champion. "Nope, too slow!"
He groans, flopping back against the couch with a defeated sigh. "You're so evil."
You grin, sitting up a little to settle back into your spot on his chest, casually enjoying his chips. "You started it," you tease, eyes sparkling with mischief. "Besides, I'm just following the rules."
His lips curl into an exaggerated frown, but there's a gleam in his eye as he lets out a quiet chuckle. "You're lucky you're cute. But just wait. I'll get them back."
"Maybe," you reply, pulling another chip from the bag, "but I've got the high ground."
You settle back into your comfy position, leaning into him. For now, it's your turn to be the snack thief—and you'll enjoy every minute of it. Or so you think.
One second, you're smugly crunching on a chip, reveling in your stolen prize, and the next—Dick moves.
Fast.
Before you can react, his hands are on you, fingers digging into your sides in a ruthless, practiced attack. A shriek bursts from your lips as you're ambushed, his laughter mixing with yours as you squirm, trying and failing to escape his grip.
"NO—DICK—" you gasp between giggles, thrashing as he mercilessly tickles your ribs.
"Thought you could just steal my snacks and get away with it, huh?"
His voice is smug, teasing, as he effortlessly pries the bag from your grasp and tosses it onto the coffee table.
You let out an exaggerated gasp, scandalized. "How dare you."
"How dare you," he counters, grinning as he shifts above you, effortlessly pinning you against the couch. His hands settle on either side of your head, his weight warm and solid as he hovers over you.
You blink up at him, breathless from laughter, your heart racing for a very different reason now. His smile softens, that playful glint in his eyes melting into something warmer, something that makes your stomach flip.
"You're a menace," you huff, but there's no real bite to it.
Before you can argue—not that you were going to—he closes the space between you. His lips press against yours, slow and deliberate, his weight keeping you deliciously trapped beneath him.
He kisses you like he has all the time in the world, deepening it just enough to make your toes curl, his hand slipping up to cup your cheek.
And just like that, any thoughts of revenge, of stolen snacks, of anything that isn't him—disappear.
When he finally pulls away, his lips are still curved in a smirk, his forehead resting against yours.
"Mine," he murmurs, thumb brushing over your lower lip. "Both the snacks and you."
"Fine," you sigh dramatically. "But I'm still stealing your fries next time."
He groans, flopping onto you with a laugh. "Baby, no—"
But you just grin, wrapping your arms around him. Because, honestly? You've already won.
144 notes · View notes
mybworlds · 1 month ago
Text
Chapter 7
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Pairing: Javier Peña x F!Reader (no use of Y/N)
Summary: Javier Peña and his partner can't stand each other, but to take down an old enemy they are forced to work together and pretend to be a complacent married couple.
Series warnings: language , violence, alcohol use, slow burn, angst, mutual pining, smut (18+ MDNI), creampie, oral sex (m and f), fingering, masturbation (m and f), trauma and SA referencing.
Masterlist
Before to start… thank you so much for your likes and reblogs, I really appreciate it ☺️ I'm not an expert on these spy agencies, so if I got something wrong, don't get angry or offended. 😬 And maybe some aspects of Peña's character may change, if it's necessary. 🔎 I don’t know how many chapters the story will have. 📖 If you didn't like this story, it's okay, be kind and move on 🙂
Taglist: @love-affair-with-fandoms; @pedr0swh0r3; @angel98624; @missladym1981; @harriedandharassed if you want to be added let me know.
Thanks @saradika for the divider.
Thanks @vase-of-lilies for the banner
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In his arms you fell asleep again, every now and then you open your eyes when you feel him kissing your shoulder or the hollow between your neck and shoulder. You find yourself smiling and then falling back asleep, still savoring the moments spent with him and basking in the idea that all of this could last forever.
When you wake up about an hour later, you sit up in the middle of the bed, he's lying on his stomach, hugging his pillow, you notice his fake wedding ring and then you look at yours. You see and hear him breathing deeply, everything still seems so sweet and perfect, you slide your fingers very delicately along his back in a caress that almost feels like a farewell. You frown as if gripped by a horrible and painful thought, you can't be with him.
You and him will never be happy together.
Just the thought of having to separate from him hurts, but if your past echoes within you, at the same time you think you can't go back to work and let everyone know that you and him are a couple..
But are you really a couple? Or are you just one of the many women for him? A notch in his infinite scale of seductions and subsequent abandonments?
You turn your head towards him, his lips are half open and he has a sweet, innocent expression that, if possible, almost makes you feel guilty for having these thoughts. However, you tell yourself that it's right to have these qualms about him given his reputation. A few days are not enough to completely erase it.
We should end it here and hope we can ignore what happened, you think.
You get up and go to the bathroom, you lock yourself in and get in the shower and you think that you don't want him to join you in the shower or everything would be even more painful and difficult. It's hard enough as it is, you think as you turn on the jet of cool water that wets your hair and flows down your body.
While you're soaping up, you think that you don't want your coworkers to gossip about you behind your back and say things like, how could Peña get together with a bitch like that? Or again, she who pretended to be indifferent to his attentions, finally gave in and let Peña fuck her, but on the other hand, how could she resist him?
No, you can't stand to hear these sentences or hear snickers behind your back. Better to ignore what happened between you, it's better.
But better for whom?
You and him can't be together.
Better cut this relationship now.
You only know how to make someone suffer.
A thousand thoughts, a thousand words, a thousand doubts, a burning bitterness crowd your head. Javier won't take it well, he won't like it, but you're doing it for his own good. Or maybe you're just doing it for you and you're giving yourself the alibi that you're doing it for Javi too. You find yourself thinking about how sweet he was to you, how he took care of you...
You curl up in a corner of the shower, the water soaks you, streaks your cheeks, and with it hot tears begin to flow and fall down towards the shower tray. It almost feels like your heart is being ripped out, but maybe that's for the best. You couldn't bear the thought that for him you were just someone to have fun with during this time and then move on to another woman.
You dry yourself as best you can before wrapping yourself in a towel and looking at yourself in the mirror. Your eyes are puffy, your features distorted, your hair a still damp and messy mess. You comb your hair, untangling any knots, you think about the words you want to say to Javier, you want to be direct and yet you don't want to hurt his feelings.
You are awakened from these thoughts by Javier knocking on the door, “Is everything okay?”
You take a deep breath, feeling even worse if possible. However, you convince yourself that you are right, even though this choice hurts.
“Yes, I’m comin’,” you answer.
You look at your reflection one last time before going to the door and opening it, Javi is there leaning against the door jamb still half naked. He was obviously about to tell you something, but seeing your eyes swollen from crying he stops and looks at you perplexed.
“What happened?” he asks you, not understanding what could have made you cry like that. “Hey,” he says cupping your cheeks, “what happ...?” he’s about to ask you, when you free yourself from his grip and you move away from him and approach the bed where you let yourself fall.
You feel his gaze on you, you wring your hands, feeling your heart in your throat. You don't know how say out loud the turmoil and the tightness that grips your stomach and heart. You feel terrible.
“Please, talk to me.” he tells you sitting next to you on the bed. You close your eyes and feel the dull beating of your heart, it hurts. It hurts so much. He's been so sweet these days, but you don't want to have to suffer one day because of him. You don't know if when all this is over he'll go back to his old self. You couldn't bear the thought of seeing him go with other women, hearing them murmur about how he made them come, no you can't.
“Whatever was here, in this place, has to end here,” you mutter, head down, unable to look him in the eye.
You are selfish, you must be alone. Those words...
Your heart pounds painfully in your chest, almost as if your own words had stabbed you and you were now bleeding. You can't look at his face, you just imagine his expression and imagine he's hurt and confused. You were together and yet now you're violently pushing him away. You would probably feel the same way: rejected as if you meant nothing to the other person.
The silence that surrounds you almost seems unreal, as if you were suspended in a dimension that doesn't even belong to you. Maybe you’d have preferred him to yell at you, to pull you, in short, a violent reaction, but not that deafening silence that, if possible, hurts you even more.
“I thought it would be best for both of us.” You continue, feeling almost like you're walking on a very thin sheet of ice and on which a slightly heavier pressure is enough to break and make you fall into its icy waters.
You finally hear him make a sound, almost a snort as if what you said bored him. You look at him, “And did you have to cry to tell me that?” he asks you in an annoyed tone, almost as if it were obvious what you told him.
His cold and detached reaction completely throws you off. So, in the end, you really mean nothing to him, you really are one of the many women on his endless list. If his words are as sharp as a sharp blade, his gaze and the expression on his face betray him.
“You expected me to tell you this, right?” he asks you in a tone of someone who already knows the answer and doesn't need confirmation because he knows it's true “Precisely,” he says when he looks up at your face again.
He chuckles getting out of bed and walking towards the nightstand where there is a pack of cigarettes, he takes one, brings it to his lips and lights it up. Another long silence falls between you as he approaches the balcony, opening the shutters and allowing the smoke to escape.
“So the days we spent together have done absolutely nothing to make you understand who I really am.” His is a statement, not a question. He probably wants to sound cold, but the bitterness in his voice gives him away.
“I didn't say that.” you try to say, making sense of the tangled mess of thoughts that are dulling your mind. You hate all this that you started.
“No need. You made your point” he replies, taking another drag on his cigarette turning his back to you.
You don't know what to say, you just know that your own words have backfired on you. Your stomach is in knots and your heart is beating painfully in your chest. You feel terrible making him feel this bad and doing this to you.
You get up and go over to him, not knowing what to say. You look up and notice his eyes are covered in tears, while he stares out the balcony and takes a drag on his cigarette. You see his Adam's apple bob and hear him breathing deeply as if he’s trying hard not to lose control of himself.
“I didn’t say I didn’t want anything to do with you,” you try to clarify, but it just makes things worse.
“You want us to be friends with benefits, after all.” he tells you spitefully, almost turning his head towards you. “But nothing else. Don't worry. Got it.” he tells you, taking another drag and then expel a large amount of smoke.
“Please don't be dramatic,” you tell him running a hand through your hair “We’ll still work together and we’ll always be coworkers.” you add, then pause, searching for the most appropriate words, but none of them seem right.
He tsks shaking his head, “Yes, whatever." He snorts, putting out his cigarette with an expression that is somewhere between anger and disappointment. "Can I just ask what made you change your mind? I mean, you didn’t seem sorry or remorseful after we did…” he sighs shaking his head “let’s forget it,” he tells you, looking up again and waiting for your response.
“I wasn't and I'm not now." You answer him looking him in the eyes and he looks back at you with an unreadable expression, “I just think it's better for both of us to ignore what happened,” you add with a shrug.
He nods, “So there is no danger of anyone thinking you have a heart. This way everyone will still think you’re a bitch,” he continues, but it’s more like he’s talking and reasoning out loud rather than talking to you.
Maybe he hits the nail on the head. Maybe you really prefer to be thought of as heartless. Maybe that way no one suffers. Except you.
You breathe loudly, not knowing exactly what to say. It's better if Javier hates you too, you won't hurt him if you push him away from you.
“I know who you are.” He tells you when you think he's decided not to talk to you anymore. “And you're wrong and you're only hurting yourself.” he sentences looking you in the eyes, you instead lower them as if struck by his words. Yes, he's right, you're going to suffer but you can't do otherwise.
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Six months have passed since that evening. You have returned home, each to your own home and life. Fortunately, nothing has happened since the day you arrested El Diablo, you have not heard from him or his henchmen anymore. You have returned to work normally, you dedicate yourself more to seeking information and connections, you are less devoted to action. What you experienced in France has left its mark on you and for the moment has led you behind a desk.
For many, working behind a desk is bad, but not for you. Even better if you can help in this way too.
In these six months, five new colleagues have arrived, two are women and three are men. The two women, Andrea and Maxime, are more or less your age and both have their eyes on Javier, but neither of them has managed to attract his attention at the moment; the three men, Mark, Christian and Paul, are real gentlemen, at least from what you have been able to see. They are almost as stubborn as you and Javier, but if you tell them to do something, they do it without ever going beyond that. They never say or do anything more than they should and this newfound calm is definitely good for you. You really need it.
Your days are marked by a slow and regular rhythm, your actions and words are almost always the same. In this routine, you and Javier don't share a single moment except for the occasional brief, silent glance.
Part of you misses him. You even miss being teased or hearing him talk to you. On the other hand, you think it's a good thing that everything between you ended this way. No drama or tears, that's better.
It hurts you to know that behind that look there’s some form of regret. There’s also a great regret on your part in not having wanted to see if there could actually be something else between you.
You look up at him again, but he's already back to fiddling with some paperwork. You see his absorbed gaze and how he frowns when something doesn't convince him, you see him massage his chin and then light a cigarette.
For your own good, you decide to immerse yourself in the papers and not sit there mulling over your decisions or you risk going crazy. Your work takes up a lot of your time in typing into the computer two reports, one of which is the one you wrote by hand shortly after returning from France.
It's almost nine o'clock at night when you stretch your hands and get up with a small satisfied noise. You turn off the light on your desk, grab your jacket and go out.
You huddle in your jacket as you wait for the bus. The wind is particularly cold and biting today, you just hope you don't have to wait too long.
When you fear that no one will come, you hear a horn that almost makes you jump and then turn in that direction. It's Javier.
“Come on, jump up.” You look at him almost surprised. “I hope you don’t want to wait for that wreck that you don’t even know how long it’ll be until!” he adds, raising an eyebrow.
You zigzag your gaze from one corner of the half-deserted street to the other before opening the car door and getting in. The warmth of the passenger compartment immediately envelops you, making you relax against the backrest and moan with pleasure at this newfound warmth.
“What the fuck were you still doing there? Did you still have that report to finish?” he asks, giving you a quick glance before returning his focus to the road.
You nod, “Yes, I wanted to finish by tonight.”
“And did you succeed?” he asks you.
“Yes,” you reply, rubbing your hands together. “And what are you still doing here?” you ask, turning to face him.
“Andrea invited me for a drink.” You nod, feeling your heart skip a beat and finding yourself looking down, you shouldn’t have this reaction, you shouldn’t feel this way.
“I’m glad to hear that.” You say the last thing you should probably say, but you want to find a way to fill this strange silence.
"Yeah?" he asks you and from his tone you understand that he must be surprised too.
No, you are not.
“Sure.” you grumble, but look outside the car and watch the road pass by.
A strange, embarrassed silence follows, in which the sweetness and the weight of what happened between you comes back to light.
Neither you nor he say anything, you don't know what to say to him. You still feel embarrassed to be so close to him.
“Um, thanks anyway for... for the ride.” you find yourself adding, looking at him sideways as if afraid that your eyes might meet and you might say something that goes beyond the desired formality of your relationship.
“En cualquier momento! (anytime!)” he responds by driving slowly and confidently, almost as if he wants the journey to last much longer. Or maybe that's just how you interpret it.
Silence stretches between you again. You don’t know what to say to him. You were afraid something like this could happen.
“So, um.. what do you think of the new colleagues?” he asks you and you are surprised that he asks you for an opinion. But then you realize that it’s just a way to fill that numbing silence.
“Well, um.. the three boys are very friendly, cooperative and very prepared.” you answer, carefully choosing your words to describe them. You then turn to Javier and notice his perplexed look, “What?”
He shakes his head gently, he doesn't seem annoyed, but it's as if he's trying hard not to express his true thoughts. You see him purse his lips and then let out a small sigh.
“I'm not dating any of them,” you say even though you're not sure he really cares to know, but a part of you almost feels like you owe him this information.
His eyes are fixed on the road and he doesn't comment on your sentence, but you notice how his shoulders relax slightly and how the car is slowing down and then stops.
You barely notice that you are in front of your apartment building.
“Here we are.” he says pulling the handbrake almost straining to stare straight ahead.
“Here we are.” you repeat almost embarrassed and then turn your gaze towards him “So, um… thanks.”
He turns to you, stares into your eyes for a long time as if he wanted to say something else, but then gives up, lowers his gaze for a moment and then stares straight ahead again, “No problem.” he says simply “G’ night,” he adds.
You open the door, you're about to get out, but then you think better of it, you turn to him and he finally returns your gaze again, "Do you want to tell me something?"
You swallow as you feel like thousands of words are competing to be shouted and heard, but then you find yourself choking them all down, “No.” You reply, “And you?”
He takes a deep breath, but it sounds more like a sigh, “No.”
You nod, “See you tomorrow.” He nods, as you get out of the car and grab your keys to enter your building. As you close the door, you hear Javi’s car drive away.
Your heart pounds in your chest and for a moment, a long moment, you wonder what it would have been like if you hadn't said those words to him in your room, you linger on that fantasy for a while, regretting it soon after, only to tell yourself that you shouldn't think about it anymore, but not doing so will be really hard. When you are together the air inevitably charges with an electricity that passes through you and connects you in a way that pushing it away almost hurts.
You've been lying in bed for almost an hour, but all you do is stare at the ceiling. Javier and his gaze, Javier and his words are right there in front of you.
When you are about to fall asleep, your stepfather's words reverberate in your head with such force that you almost jump out of bed. You haven't thought about him in a while, but when you do, a feeling of remorse, guilt, and even shame wells up inside you. You weren't guilty, but your stepfather did everything he could to make you feel that way.
You remember that day all too well. It was a summer day, you wanted to swim at all costs, but the sea was very rough. You and your brother were two kids, you certainly didn't have the same perception of danger that your parents had.
You were a lively little thing, always smiling, reckless. Your brother was your exact opposite, shy, fearful, too cautious, a bit sulky. Your brother didn't have the same father as you, but you always felt like a brother to you. You loved each other very much. You would have done anything for each other, even doing something crazy just to not leave the other alone and so on that crucial day.
He followed you despite not being a great swimmer, a series of waves, one stronger than the other, knocked you down. You survived, he didn't.
When you came to and were informed of the tragedy, you cried, you sobbed his name and it was then that your stepfather thundered “It’s useless for you to cry now, you are a disaster, a catastrophe. Everyone around you dies, you were supposed to die. You don't deserve anyone's love because you pay back like this.”
Timid tears stream down your cheeks at the memory of those terrible words, you were a child then, but those words have dug so deep inside you that since then you have shied away from relationships with anyone. Even if it hurts to be alone, maybe it's better that way. You can't really hurt anyone. Except yourself.
55 notes · View notes
livinginsunnyhell · 1 month ago
Text
White Lies (And Other Hidden Truths)
Buck will say as nonchalantly as he can, ‘I proposed to you, okay?’ And that will be the end of it. Except there are a million different ways he could propose.
Did he and Eddie have a cute little hike? Maybe they were running errands and Buck just popped the question in the cereal aisle while they were arguing over Cheerios and Lucky Charms. He could do it spontaneously at a restaurant or while they were making dinner together. It’s nearly the holidays so maybe he tried to do something really suave and debonair and ended up getting too excited and proposing too soon. Maybe Eddie—
“Buck?” Eddie greets sounding like this isn’t the first time he’s said Buck’s name. “You butt dialed me, man.”
“Did you propose or did I?”
“What?”
“Our story – what’s our story?” Buck winces and runs a hand through his hair. It’s sticky with clamminess and gel and he wipes it on his pants. He chews on his lower lip waiting for Eddie to say something. A part of him is glad he didn’t do this in person, he doesn’t need Eddie to know how much this conversation is making him sweat. It was hard enough choosing a pretend date that they started their fake relationship.
“Oh, uh, Chris can you go set the table?” Eddie says.
“Why there’s only two of us?” Chris grumbles.
Buck can see Chris’ petulant eye roll and the frustrated downturn of Eddie’s lips. His hand hovers near the keys ready to start the car and drive over. There’s movement on the other end of the phone and the sound of creaking.
“Okay, sorry I had to go to the bedroom,” Eddie says.
“So?” Buck presses. “Also why are you eating so late?”
“Chess club ran late.”
“Oh.”
Buck shifts in his seat and lets his hand drop to the gear shift where he takes up a tapping rhythm.
“Um…do you think a story is necessary? I mean, Bobby said he wouldn’t say anything.”
“Eddie! What if he asks us? Just like randomly at work or something. What if he starts pressing us for details because he doesn’t believe us? Everyone loves hearing how people got engaged! Wouldn’t he think it was weird? What if—”
“I get it. Okay, um, do you have a story in mind? I mean, is there – I don’t know – a way you want to propose?”
“I mean I don’t have like specifics or anything but…” Buck bites his lip. The swirl of ideas flutter through like a flipbook, each page growing more and more grandiose.
“What?”
“Well, I’d like to propose,” Buck muttered squeezing his eyes shut. He’s actually really glad Eddie can’t see him.
“Oh!”
“Is that okay?”
“Yeah, yeah, of course. I just thought – no, yeah, that makes sense.”
“M-Maybe I propose with like – I mean, we’re at dinner at ou – at the house and we’re eating and I just…ask,” Buck stutters.
Eddie’s quiet for a minute before muttering, “That’s, um, that’s okay.”
“What? You don’t like it?”
“No! No! It’s just – I figured you’d want to do something, you know, more…gesture-y. Like a big romantic gesture.”
Buck smiles. “You like simple. You wouldn’t like a big romantic gesture. You’d like, well, a quiet dinner with just us and Chris. Something direct, you know no frills.”
“Yeah…” Eddie breaths out and gulps. “But if I proposed to you—”
“I thought I was—”
“We’d be like doing something. A dinner or a concert or a museum. But I’d wait until it was just the two of us because I’d be too nervous to do one of those crazy elaborate proposals in front of so many people. I mean what if you said no.”
Of course, he wouldn’t say ‘no.’ Marrying Eddie would be – it would be like getting the perfect gift. Something that contains everything he’s always wanted – a family, love, friendship, trust, loyalty. Someone who understands him completely. The proposal would just be all the promises of things to come.
“Eddie, I wouldn’t say no,” Buck whispers carefully, patiently, needing Eddie to understand how he’s physically incapable of saying anything except ‘yes’ to him (except on the crazier ideas like moving to El Paso).
“I—”
“And while I like the big romantic gesture stuff… It’s romantic and – and nice. I’d – I’d want it to be the three of us. That’s what I’d want.”
And while the entire conversation makes Buck feel like he’s sitting on a boat out to sea in a storm, he wishes – he really wishes he could see Eddie’s face to know what he’s thinking. What if he’s overstepped?
It’s dinner, Eddie and Chris at the little dining room table, Buck would come in with lasagna or enchiladas or something else he knows he makes really well. He’d put the ring box on the table and look at Eddie, waiting for him to realize. And Chris would notice first, and Eddie would probably be complimenting Buck’s cooking skills. Chris would nudge him pointedly and once Eddie realized he’d go completely silent. Buck would most definitely cry and Eddie – Eddie would try to hold back, inevitably a tear or 10 would escape.
There’s a loud bang as a garage door opens. One of Maddie and Chimney’s neighbors pull their garbage to the curb, a hunched over older man. Reality strikes and a pang of sorrow prickles his chest.
“I want that too,” Eddie mutters.
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
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abbatoirablaze · 2 days ago
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Formula 1 ABC's, G-O
G-O of some of my favorite drivers on the 2025 grid...and for those taking this too seriously, this is just what I think. I don't physically know any of the men, and I don't 'love them.'
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G-Guilty Pleasures.  What are some of the guilty pleasures that they have that only you know about?
Max-He’s a complete cat lady.  He likes to pretend that his life is entirely racing, but when he’s at home and not on the sim, he’s laying on the floor, playing with his cats.
Lewis-Loves to break the rules and do all of the things that he’s not supposed to do.  Not supposed to go skiing, guess who just booked an all-inclusive week at a ski resort?  Don’t do dangerous things.  Guess who just made reservations to see a tiger up close and personal?
Charles-Cuddling.  Charles is a softy who loves days where he has free and he can cuddle up with you and Leo on the couch.
Lando-babysitting.  Lando loves his family, and especially loves being an uncle.  His nieces give him crazy baby fever after they visit and that’s one of the main times you get to see him being mature for his age.
Fernando-Gardening.  Fernando has a green thumb, and your shared residence is full of plants.  Aside from racing, it’s one of his biggest passions.
Pierre-He loves spa nights with you.  He pretends that he doesn’t, but he lives for when you shape his brows, give him a manicure, and  for him the pinnacle of a great night is finishing it with movies with face masks on. 
Yuki-Fashion.  Yuki may be vocal about how he’s a foodie, but he loves the idea of being a model.  So when the two of you go shopping, it’s actually him that spends hours looking at things and then him pushing the both of you to try things on.
Esteban-Cycling.  It’s something that he will go on and on about with Bottas, but Esteban has a real hidden passion for cycling, and has planned vacations around it.
Carlos-Cooking.  The man is a chef in the kitchen, and positively adores when he has free time and can step in and cook you a meal.
H-Hair down there!  How well do they manscape?
Max-Doesn’t really care.  
Lewis-Expertly trimmed.
Charles-Trims when necessary.
Lando-Doesn’t really care unless he’s getting laid, and then he’ll trim up.
Fernando-Not a single fuck to give.
Pierre-Full confidence in the bush.
Yuki-No fucks to give.
Esteban-When he ‘trims,’ he usually ends up bare.
Carlos-Trims it actively.
I-Ick.  What is the biggest ick that they have?
Max-He hates when people do not listen to him.  But in your eyes, his biggest ick is the fact that he can be too blunt in his words.
Lewis-He doesn’t like being interviewed, because he feels like they twist his words too much.  In your eyes, his biggest ick is the fact that his ‘inspirational’ platform sometimes feels really fake.
Charles-He values his privacy and hates when people actively come to him when he’s not at a track or he’s doing something that doesn’t involve racing.  In your opinion, it’s when he finds a way to bring racing into the conversation when it has nothing to do with racing.
Lando-When people treat him like a kid.  However, in your eyes, it’s the fact that he acts very immature or when he invites his entire entourage on your date nights so it’s more like ‘a group hangout.’
Fernando-His biggest ick is when women use him or his relationship with him as a flex.  Your biggest ick for him is how hyper-independent he can be.  He sees no issue with making decisions that affect you both without you and he can oftentimes not take into considerations your feelings because of it.
Pierre-His biggest ick is when people don’t recognize him.  He won’t out and out say it, but he’s over someone when they don’t automatically know who he is.  Your biggest ick when it comes to him is how flirty he can be with everyone.
Yuki-His biggest ick is when people act like he’s less than what he is.  He’s worked just as hard as everyone else to get where he is and it turns him off when people ignore that.  Your biggest ick for him is his rage.  When he gets mad he won’t stop flipping out on people and it takes you pulling him back and out of the situation for him to get clarity.
Esteban-Respecting his family.  He hates when people do not treat his parents with the utmost respect, because of how much they’ve sacrificed for him.  He’s proud of his family, and rightfully so.  Your biggest ick for him is how much he’s willing to bend over backwards for female friends.  While he would do it for anyone and everyone, it especially bothers you with females because they tend to take advantage of it and try to wedge themselves between your relationship with him.
Carlos-His biggest ick is when people string him along and waste his time.  Carlos is pretty regimented and hates when people don’t value his time.  Your biggest ick for him is his immaturity level and how it drops when he’s around his friends.  He can go from the most respectful man to a teenage boy in five seconds flat if he’s around his friends.
J-Jack off.  How high is their sex drive?  And do they play when you’re not around?
Max-He’s very regimented in his time to begin with, and his sex drive isn’t super high.  While he does enjoy sex, it doesn’t happen nearly as much as you might like.  He doesn’t like flying solo and would rather wait until you come around. Unless he gets drunk.  Then all bets are off.
Lewis-He’s got a pretty good sex drive.  While it took a while to get him to come around to the idea of using toys, it’s made your sex lives better together. When you’re not around he’s got no problem in sexting with you and exchanging videos and pictures.
Charles-He’s got a high sex drive.  When you’re not around, he does spend time flying solo, but he’s got a lot of pictures and videos that you’ve sent him.
Lando-His sex drive is through the roof.  If you’re there it’s great, but if you’re not, he’s got two hands to work with, and a phone and SD card full of boudoir pics which he’s taken of you for when he needs some encouragement.
Fernando-His sex drive is pretty levelled out now that he’s in his 40’s, but he knows what he likes and how to accomplish it with minimal time. 
Pierre-His sex drive has no limits.  And with the nickname of ‘tripod,’ sometimes you wonder if that’s a good thing.  He takes little issue with jacking off though, as he knows you can’t always be there.
Yuki-He has a lower sex drive, but he also doesn’t like flying solo.  He’d much rather wait for you.
Esteban-He’s got a mild sex drive, but he’s not a hundred percent comfortable with flying solo.  He would much rather wait for you to be with him, but when you gotta do it, you gotta do it.
Carlos-He’s got a pretty high sex drive and isn’t afraid to masturbate if he wants to...if he’s able to.
K-Kinks.  What is their biggest kink? Max- Breeding.  The idea of becoming a dad is the most amazing thing to him, that he loses himself when he’s inside of you.  The normally stoic driver becomes unravelled when he tells you all about how he fantasizes of you when you’re pregnant.
Lewis- Dirty talk.  There’s something about it when you whisper all the dirty things you want to do to him that gets him off.  Whether it’s sexting or you actually physically telling him, Lewis gets off when you tell him just how bad you want him.
Charles-Somnophilia.  There is something so beautiful about you when you’re sleeping.  So much so, that Charles can’t help but want to be inside of you.  You’ve agreed to it, of course, after a long discussion where you confirmed that it was just you being asleep and not the idea of something a little more dark. 
Lando-Age/Authority roleplay.  Lando loves the fact that the women he dates/goes for is older than him, and he especially likes roleplaying scenarios where you’re an authority figure and he’s being taught by you.
Fernando-Public.  For someone so private about their love life, Fernando gets off on discretely being intimate in public places and getting away with it.  Having lunch together?  He’ll run his hand up your thigh and tease you while sending you a cheeky smile.
Pierre-Praise/Worship.  He loves to worship you like a goddess.  He’ll spend hours whispering sweet nothings to you while he makes love to you in every way he can think of.
Yuki-Roleplaying/dominate.  Yuki loves the idea of going to a pre-planned event or bar, and then picking you up.  He sees the way that other men look at you and it drives him wild knowing how you choose him every time.  So much so that he’s insisted on going to bars and then picking you up, acting like the two of you are strangers.
Esteban-Free use.  Knowing that you can come up and take his hand at any time, to lead him away for sex, turns him on more than anything. 
Carlos-Bondage.  Carlos loves being tied up and letting you drive him wild.  He gets damn near feral when you take control and make it so that he can’t take charge. Be warned, when you do finally untie him, you’ll be walking bow-legged for a few days, so make it worth it.
L-Love.  How long did it take him to say he loved you?  When did it happen?
Max-It took him a while to say it.  Love was something that was used as a weapon, so when you said it first, he almost didn’t believe you.  It did hurt that he didn’t say it back immediately, but you understood, and you were patient with him.  He said it a few months after you did.
Lewis-He said it after you surprised him at one of his races.  You both lead very busy lives, and you weren’t able to make it to a race, but when you cleared up time and surprised him, he was so at a loss that all he could do was pull you in and kiss you.  Then when you broke off the kiss, he said those three little words.
Charles-It was during a break in the races and he had come back home to Monaco.  You were asleep, or so he thought. He couldn’t help but say it as he sun kissed your face. 
Lando-It was an accident.  He said it during sex, and it went from, ‘oh god, I love this.  Love how you feel,’ to ‘Oh god, I love this.  I love you!’  He hasn’t said it since, and when you wanted to speak about it, he pretended he didn’t know what you were talking about.
Fernando-  You said it to him months ago.  He muttered something in Spanish, smiled at you, and said that he ‘values his time with you too.’
Pierre-When you were talking about the plans to make for the break, he just continued to stare at you.  When you asked him why he was looking at you like that he just smiled and said it, completely in a daze about you.
Yuki-It was when he was angry at someone in the garage and started cursing.  You had managed to calm him down, and pull him away from the situation.  He stared at you for a few second and the realization hit him like a brick wall.  He pointed out that you are his solace, and that he loves you for it. 
Esteban-It was after you met his family.  When he saw how well you got along with everyone, he couldn’t help but know you were the one and he said he loved you.
Carlos-He realized you loved him when the two of you were going on a morning run.  He knows you’re not a morning person, but he started adding up all the little things that you do for him in his head, and he realized that you loved him but were afraid to say it.  He sat you down, and the two of you had a nice, long conversation, in which he told you that he’d been having those feelings too, but that he didn’t want to scare you away.  You both admitted it to each other that day.
M-Marriage?  Does he believe in it?  Does he want it?
Max-While he doesn’t necessarily like the idea of marriage, he’s not against being with someone for the long haul.  He just needs to be 1000% sure of it.
Lewis-Only wants to get married after he retires. But he does want to be a family man.
Charles-Wants to get married and be a father as soon as possible.
Lando-He thinks that when the time comes, if it feels right he’ll do it, but he’s still young and feels there’s plenty of time to worry about that down the road.
Fernando-No.  A hard no.  He doesn’t think marriage is for him.
Pierre-He wants to be sure of the relationship first, yes, but he’s a romantic, and already knows how he’s going to propose. 
Yuki-He feels like he’s too young to consider marriage just yet, but he does want it.
Esteban-He firmly believes in the sanctity of marriage, and wants to be married.
Carlos-He’ll get there when he gets there, but also, he feels like there’s a clock ticking on it that he may be missing out on.
N-No.  What is one thing that he’s not willing to do for you?
Max-Leave Monaco
Lewis-Give up his retirement dreams of moving to the states and buying a ranch in Colorado.
Charles-Split his time between you and his family.  If you want to spend time with him and have outings, be prepared to see his mom, brothers, and their significant others.
Lando-Give up partying/clubbing.
Fernando-Marriage.
Pierre-He would do literally anything you asked.
Yuki-Change the plans he already has in place.  When he’s done racing he wants you to move to Japan with him, and he wants to open up a restaurant which he wants help running.
Esteban-He won’t stop being overly nice to his female friends despite it causing rifts in your relationship.
Carlos-Move away from his family.
O-Oral.  What are his opinions on it?  Is he a giver or a receiver?
Max-While his sex drive isn’t super high, there have been a few times where he’s been stressed out and a quick way to take away the tension is with oral.  He’s definitely a receiver.
Lewis-He’s all about oral. He loves giving as much as he loves receiving.
Charles-If he had an addiction, it would be that he loves tasting you.  He’s a giver all the way. His sex drive is crazy high, and he loves knowing that it’s him getting you off at the end of the day.
Lando-He actually has no preference.  While he has a crazy high sex drive as well, he doesn’t have a preference of giving or receiving. 
Fernando-He’s surprisingly interested in giving, but only after you’ve given him what he wants first.  But when it’s his turn, he knows all the right things to do.
Pierre-He worships you.  And while he does like receiving, he loves watching you come undone because of him.
Yuki-He prefers receiving.  There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it. 
Esteban-He’s a giver.
Carlos-It depends on the day for Carlos.  Sometimes he’ll spend all day between your legs, other times he wants you to do that to him. 
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afreakingdork · 2 months ago
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Attempted Execute of Non-Executable Memory - Chapter 5
RotTMNT Michelangelo x Kendra
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Kendra dabbles in some of her past tendencies in this week's chapter art by @goodforwho
Rated: Teen and Up Audiences
Warnings/Tags: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Revenge, Falling In Love, Love, Romance, Dating, Aged-Up Mutant Ninja Turtles, Love Confessions, Human/Turtle Relationships (TMNT), Step-Parents, Neglect, First Kiss, First Generation Immigrant Kids, Acculturation, Loss/Removal of Cultural Identity, Incarceration, Prison Time, I Fill in Kendra's Backstory, I flesh Out Kendra's Character, Character Exploration, Character Study
Synopsis: After hitting the lowest of lows, Kendra has carved out a simple life for herself. She’s content enough to live this way until opportunity walks through her place of employment in the form of an orange turtle mutant. She just needs to get close enough to him to plant a virus in his infuriating brother’s servers, but will she be infected long the way?
Also available on Ao3
First 🧡 Previous
She wasn’t going to be made a fool again.
She was Kendra Byerly and she was a force.
No turtle twerp was going to dupe her. 
Three times was far too many.
She had fallen for far too many tricks.
A kiss.
She didn’t linger on it.
She placed it for what it was.
A spur of the moment action that spoke to higher purpose.
While her main focus was spent trying to keep up with the blight that was Michelangelo, some sane background part of her brain operated within the confines of the plan.
A kiss helped keep him interested.
It was necessary because she was losing him.
It was bait to dangle.
It would have been better utilized at the end of the date with practiced bedroom eyes that said ‘take me home so I can ruin your wretch of a brother,’ but there had been the adrenaline of it all.
She wasn’t going to get caught up in that again.
She wasn’t going to let him lead anymore.
She hadn’t picked the next date spot, but she exercised discretion.
No more surprises.
No more excuses.
A common ground that removed all unknowns.
She was playing chess now.
She took a single breath and looked up at the science museum she had been standing outside of for approximately 45 minutes.
She pressed her vow to its façade.
She’d get Mikey home at the end of this date.
She would be in control for the duration.
So that meant getting here an hour early.
That was nothing.
That was mental preparation.
That was scouting.
That was beating Michelangelo at his own game.
Seduce and conquer were the primary and only objectives.
“Kendra!” Mikey called her.
She didn’t turn and gave him three quarters of her profile for an alluring glance just as she’d practiced. “Beat you.”
He marched up and almost collided with one pedestrian. “Heh. Yeah. You excited?”
“Maybe…” She turned to him in a gentle sweep. “That depends on you.”
Mikey blinked wide. “Me?”
“Do you always arrive fifteen minutes early?” 
“Yeah, better to be early.” He was clearly looking over her calm demeanor.
Keep him on his toes. “Doesn’t really avoid the disaster.”
“Which is why we’re here!” Mikey threw his hands up. “I’m gonna pick a good date spot eventually! This place is made for interaction. It’s actually open and I’m pretty sure there’s no priceless relics!”
“A little thought goes a long way.” She purred as she passed by him into the building.
She felt Mikey stray behind and smirked to herself as she entered.
She looked over the many families without focusing too much on any one of them and lined up in a queue for tickets.
Mikey soon appeared by her side. “You getting into… beetroot juice by chance?”
Don’t let him confuse you. “No, should I?”
“No. I mean, I guess? It’s fine. It’s good for blood pressure.”
She made a non-committal noise and stepped forward after several people filed away.
“Keeps ya calm…” Mikey went on.
Kendra looked upward along with her thoughts.
Mikey was leading to something.
It seemed like a comment on her behavior.
She couldn’t have that.
“Supports the heart and brain…” 
She tipped her shoulders in his direction, but kept from brushing him. “Beetroot, hm? I think I know that. Isn’t it good for stamina too?” She pressed a finger up into her lip to enhance her cupid’s bow.
Mikey’s eyes bugged out, but an employee flagged them.
Dropping from her supposed curiosity, Kendra grazed with her middle finger’s nail through his palm before grabbing his hand to lead him over.
He went off balance and hopped on one leg a few times to keep up with her.
“Isn’t he funny?” She tittered to the teller.
The woman was amused enough. “Sure, two adults?”
“Yes.” One adult and one man child.
“I’ve got it!” Mikey patted himself down for his wallet.
“Silly.” She pressed the whole of herself into his side.
It took a leading drag of her hand across the plates of his torso to reach into the pocket she had clocked his wallet in.
She pinched it free and sent him a heavy look as she offered it between two scissored fingers. “Here it is.”
“Ha… Ha… What?!” He quacked with a sweat dotting his brow.
She released him to his pathetic sense of modesty and turned to wipe her fingers off on her pants.
“Have fun you two!” The woman jeered as she handed Mikey a receipt.
“We will.” Kendra struck her with a sharp look before sending a heated one to Mikey. “Let’s go.”
“Kendra-!”
She dove directly into a crowd and felt him rattle off apologies and her name in quick succession as he tried to catch up.
All she could think was, ‘that’s it.’
It was a small rush.
A taste of control.
It had been far too long.
“Ken-! OW!!!” 
A small child giggled manically as he wove easily through the many legs.
A half-crouched mother waddled after him. “Joey!”
The little boy ran up to the next unsuspecting victim and kicked them in the shins. 
Pain was shouted and the kid continued to run on glee. 
She appreciated the hustle and finally rotated to glimpse Mikey. 
He limped forward. 
She had built up enough suspense, she supposed.
She saddled up to his side and slipped her arm in his. “I can’t leave you alone for a second.”
“Okay, that has got to-!”
She yanked him.
He hobbled and she tugged him straight to the first exhibit. A presentation of life then and now, it was illustrated by a myriad of dinosaur bones alongside creepy stuffed birds. There was a through line via placards about what genetics had been altered to illustrate the switch. Kids cheered and obsessed over what they could and could not touch. Parents tried to keep up with the whims of their lineage and Kendra picked the first placard. It had some semblance of science on it even if it wasn’t a field that she particularly gave a shit about.
Mikey took a breath once he recovered and stared hard into the side of her head. “What are you doing?”
“Shh.” She nodded to the sign that she had long finished.
She could feel his gaze narrow.
She allowed her pupils to filter along the sentence so he couldn’t complain.
He clicked his tongue. “You know what? Fine!”
This was one of the scenarios she calculated for.
She took a slow, shrouded breath and prepared her list of contingencies.
She hadn’t done anything dorky like label them, but she laid out her options in a mental tree.
No matter what insanity Mikey tried to pull, she would be ready.
‘Not again,’ she gave herself one last steadying reminder.
“It’s gross, right?!” Mikey’s voice chuckled a little too loud.
Kendra eliminated the files that involved direct action and was left with the ones where he made a scene.
She was almost impressed that he’d chosen to go for humiliation so quickly.
She prepared a staunch expression, but when she turned her date was nowhere to be seen.  
Kids laughter erupted and she found Mikey crouched amongst them where he pointed at a display. “What’s it look like to you?”
“Alligator!” One kid yelled.
“No! Crook’dile!” Another protested.
“Do you know the difference?” Mikey tilted his head.
“Looks like you!” A snottier kid made a beak out of his hands and put it over his mouth to make chicken noises.
Mikey’s lids lowered with little amusement and he turned to a quieter child. “How about you? Do you know?”
She swiveled shyly and drew two distinct arcs with a finger in the air.
“That’s right!” Mikey lit up. “You know, I have a mutant friend, Leatherhead, who’s an alligator. That means she has a wider u-shaped snout instead of a croc’s narrow v-kind!”
The snotty kid seemed perturbed he wasn’t addressed. “This doesn’t look like any of those!”
“Might be cause of the artist.” Mikey pondered the image. “Scientists didn’t actually grow the beakless chicken because how would it have eaten its seed!”
The snotty kid’s cheek puffed and he stared hard at the display.
“Says here that the embryo resembled an alligator so the artist drew what the adult chicken would have looked like.” Mikey continued on.
The snotty kid pouted and the other children filtered off.
“Want to look at the next one?” Mikey moved to stand.
“You’re… a what…?” The snotty kid couldn’t meet his eyes.
“I’m part box turtle.” Mikey told him.
“I guess-!” The kid made a loud huffy noise before running away.
Mikey smiled after him before looking straight at Kendra.
She refused to let surprise take her and solidified her features.
He gave a nod to keep looking and perused the exhibit with his hands behind his back.   
She lingered on reading a few plaques before she caught up with his snail’s pace.
He didn’t address her.
She puffed out her cheeks ever so slightly when his head was turned and went for his hand.
She needed to get his attention back.
She could demand it, but that would subvert her control.
She could threaten to leave, but he might just agree.
She could ask for his angle, but that felt like a concession.
Running out of contingencies, he turned just as she reached his fingers.
She was left with an outstretched hand towards his back and tried not to frown too deeply. “You got a booger from one of those brats.”
“You’ll get it?” He offered her his backside.
She pretended to pinch and flick nothing away.
“Thanks.” He had a smarmy aura as if he knew it was all a farce.
She fought scoffing. “I’d prefer to do something hands-on.”
“I know just the thing.” He offered her his palm.
She warily dripped her fingertips into it.
He closed without pretense and was slow to lead.
She got that his intention was for her to go and she took the deference with a flurry of thoughts.
He knew something was off.
Where was he going?
What would he do next?
She moved around an infuriating amount of families until they were at an exhibit about weather.
“Start from the back.” He spoke from behind.
She trended that way and swept through the memorized layout of the museum.
That was an area for natural disasters.
It soon appeared from between bodies as several models and a huge platform that people could stand on. An employee was manned at the display and spouting an endless line of driveled facts. Kids and parents alike mounted the platform and with a push of a button it would react with a certain magnitude of earthquake. It often barely shook, but the kids would fall and laugh gratingly with each tremor.
Kendra idled with Mikey tightly fisted at her side.
“Wanna do this one? There’s also a tornado booth.” Mikey pointed with his free hand.
“This.” She stunted out.
Mikey wasn’t eyeing her.
Mikey was barely moving.
Mikey was an old man for all intents and purposes.
Was that a representation of his commitment?
Was he going through the motions?
He had said something like that once. 
Something about thinking about how to break off a date because it wasn’t bad, but wasn’t good. 
“Let’s get ready to rumble!” The employee yelled out before listing off facts about tectonic plates.
Kendra and Mikey climbed onto the platform and found a corner.
They both held the guard rail.
“Insert joke about rocking my world?” Mikey spoke to the ground.
Kendra couldn’t move her head. 
Mikey said nothing else. 
She didn’t dare look at him. 
Who knew when the crazed attendant would flip the switch?
“Magnitude 1!” The employee then went on to explain what that could move.
Kendra planted feet and clung to the rail.
“Magnitude 2!”
The employee said this shook water in glasses. 
Kendra round it rumbled in her knees. 
She locked them. 
“Magnitude three!”
Mikey let go of the railing.
She couldn’t understand how he could. 
The unspoken rule was you were supposed to hold on. 
“Magnitude 4!”
There was a rocking that felt like the slosh of the subway.
She could believe she was there. 
She was safely moved by man and not by Earth. 
“Magnitude 5!”
Toddlers began to fall and roll around in giggle fits.
They laughed. 
The display may have been comical, but it represented something real. 
“Brace yourselves for our highest demonstration! Magnitude 6!”
The machine rocked and a woman near Kendra slipped.
It caused a chain reaction where she grabbed the next person and he tipped backwards towards her.
Before she could move out of the way, Mikey simply walked forward as if the ground wasn’t bouncing below him and caught the man.
He righted him and the woman with ease and the machine rumbled back down to stillness.
Gratitude was shared and Mikey returned to her without a care. 
She watched him as her nails were buried in the rail. 
He offered his hand again so they could dismount the platform.
Kendra looked it and him over once before flexing her fingers free and jumping off the display herself. 
She felt him follow closely as she traversed through the rest of natural disasters and into the water cycle.
It made no sense.
She had seen him react to her advances.
Both in confusion and an edge of desire.
She had somehow been rebuffed or she had rebuffed him in the process.
It was hard to say.
If she lingered for a second, the thoughts that were unlike her flooded her like one of the models.
What was he doing?
Did he care?
Did he have a plan?
What was his problem?
What would he do next?
Him.
Him.
Him.
She schooled herself.
She didn’t deal in doubt.
She dealt in exacts.
She was decisive.
So what was the next step?
The next exhibits dealt with broader topics of science and innovation.
It was the room she had been waiting for.
She could return to her original plan of seduction.
She knew he had reacted positively. 
If not bewildered.
Would he get over that?
She could adjust the probability in her favor.
Shift his attention.
She stood on the precipice between exhibits and looked on to technological feats.
There was a workshop for building mini robotics models.
A wall where code could be implemented into a digital space.
Several machines that put out pre-concocted mixtures. 
She wanted to mess with them all.
She didn’t want to keep up this charade.
In a matter of what seemed like seconds, she lost the will to continue.
The USB with the virus on it sat like lead in her pocket.
The worst part was she knew exactly why.
The damned earthquake simulation.
She was scared.
They didn’t do earthquakes in New York.
The literal earth shaking?
What a hopeless event. 
There was nothing she could do if it were to happen.
She hadn’t had the technology for a flight pack in years.
She would never cobble one together in time.
Mikey hadn’t noticed.
Mikey had made a bitter joke about her flirting.
Mikey had caught some random man instead of helping her.
For as much as they were alike, there would always be the same glaring difference.
He wasn’t intuitive enough.
He needed to be told.
Kendra didn’t spout anything but orders.
Mikey was made of questions.
He was a terrible underling.
He questioned authority.
He questioned her.
Everything she did.
For some sake of understanding.
One she didn’t want to give to him.
One she refused and always would.
Because the context was what it was.
She wasn’t interested in him.
She wanted to use him.
Admitting she couldn’t felt more like opening stubborn eyes than a revelation.
Part of her had known all along.
Maybe that was why she thwarted it.
She had looked at all the stubborn red flags and shoved through them.
Now, in a clear moment, she could hear the warnings.
This would be the last date.
She turned to convey just that, but no one was beside her.
In both directions, people were parting around her person, even though she was smack dab in the center of a threshold.
She had to turn around to find the source.
Mikey was getting bumped repeatedly.
He also had his arms out and was making himself a target.
It only took a second longer for her to realize that was on purpose.
He was acting as a barrier to split the traffic.
They parted at him so they’d funnel around where she had stopped cold.
She tapped his shoulder. “We need to talk.”
“Huh? Yeah. Sure. Let me just…” He kept his arms in their t-pose and waddled to the side.
He smacked someone directly in the face and she almost laughed, but kept it in.
Within a crab walk, they soon pressed into a bare space in the wall and had enough privacy to share words. “Still shaky?”
“What?”
“You know…” Mikey did a little unstable wiggle.
“What is that?”
“From the earthquake thing.” He threw a hand out towards it.
“No.”
“Oh.”
“We… We need to stop this.”
“We need to go? Are you feeling sick??”
“Mikey…”
“It was from that earthquake thing! I knew it was something! You wouldn’t let go of the wall!”
“I– What?!”
“I mean there was totally a warning about motion sickness on it so it makes sense!’”
Her brows pinched.
“But let’s use the emergency exit! It’s basically an emergency. I’ll get you out of here, just-!”
She placed an open hand out to his chest. “Michelangelo.”
“Eugh… Full name…”
“Look, this hasn’t worked out and never will. All these dates have been disasters. We’re just not…” She shook her head. “… compatible. We need to accept it and stop. It’s a waste of time.”
“Oh.” Mikey looked down.
That was that. 
The bandage was ripped off and there was no room for confusion. 
She didn’t think he would rat her out to her parole officer, but she also didn’t want to chance it.
He didn’t need to know about the virus.
He didn’t need to know anything more than he did. “I’m gonna go.”
He didn’t say anything.
That seemed best and she retracted her hand.
“Can I ask you something?”
“What?”
“Do you think people who are dating should have like the same mind kinda thing?”
She gave it honest thought. “You mean about compatibility?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t owe you a response.”ob
“Of course not.” He agreed too easily.
“If I say we aren’t compatible then we aren’t.”
“True.”
“Okay.” She moved to leave again.
“Do you mind answering? Before you go…”
“I did.”
“Not really.”
“I did.”
“No, you told me you don’t think we’re compatible again. Which I respect.”
“That’s the answer.”
“It’s… not though.”
“You aren’t respecting me. You’re wasting my time.”
“Kendra, it’s not a thing. I’m not trying to trick you. I’m genuinely asking if you think like minds should date.”
“We’re not like minds.”
“I’m not asking that!”
“I don’t see the point!”
“Does there have to be one!?”
“Yes! Otherwise, what is the point?!”
“I don’t know! Entropy!?”
“You probably just read that.”
“Maybe I did!”
“So what then!? You want to know for the inevitable degree of randomness in the universe!? Are you the loss of heat that messes up calculations?! You think so damn highly of yourself, you know that!?”
“I do!”
“When you don’t even notice the simplest thing!?”
He blinked once.
Run.
She could run.
She doubted he would stop her.
She only needed to dodge one person in the crowd and he would be stuck with his pleasantries.
Or he’d jump.
He could leap over everyone like that fence at the last museum and cut her off.
She could scream.
One yell and the alarm from the emergency door and the onlookers would think she was getting attacked.
It would buy her time.
She didn’t flee.
She didn’t move.
She didn’t do anything.
She couldn’t.
“Kendra, what did I miss?”
“Nothing.” She spoke automatically.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Tough shit.”
He grew stern. “Kendra.”
“Stop saying my name.”
“What should I say then? A nickname? Something shorter? Ken?”
“Just stop.”
“I can’t read your mind.”
“I know that.”
“I won’t ever be able to.”
“I know.”
“I’m also not great at guessing.”
“Obviously.”
“Unless I have something to go off of.”
“The tag.”
“The pepper spray.”
“Forcing myself.”
He nodded.
“Why did you leave me when we first got here?”
He stilled.
“You said, ‘Okay. Fine.’ and walked away. Why?”
“Oh…” He deflated in a genial way. “That’s because I realized you weren’t going to tell me what you were doing and I needed a second to accept that.”
“You… Were you mad?” She looked at him.
“Kind of?” He shrugged. “I mean just cause I’m in touch with my feelings, doesn’t mean I’m perfect at it. I know you need time and you’re super clear about your boundaries, but that kind of goes directly against my whole style of blabbing everything on my mind all the time.”
Something clicked. “You believe opposites attract.”
He grimaced. “Not really…”
“Then why did you ask-?”
“Again with the why!” He tipped his head back. “There’s no why! I’m just curious! All this time, all these things I learn about you, there’s so much I don’t know or won’t ever know. I hate that, but that’s how it is. This is over and that’s how it happens. I’m not even asking what I did wrong and, again, I’m not trying to gas myself up, but it would be nice to know, in parting, for closure, however you want to spin in, what you did want. Not because I think I can change into it or that it’ll change anything, but for the huge grand prize winning answer of, I want to know!”
“That’s… how it always is with you…”
“Huh?”
“Always jumping in. You don’t think about anything. You’re rash and stupid.”
“That isn’t-”
“And what? I’m supposed to worry about that? I’m supposed to wonder if you’ll make it? I’m supposed to care that much?! No! That’s not a relationship! Being together is being of one mind! Being a united force! Being able to face everything together! That’s what makes sense! Not stress! Not all this fighting! Not the learning curve! My bapak and ibu always-!” She clamped a hand over her mouth.
Her parents what?
What was she going to tell Mikey?
That things made sense when she was a kid.
That her dad’s mild manner perfectly matched her mom’s.
That even when she was dying he had a stone face.
That his expressions were worth their weight in gold.
That not once did he break down in those following years.
That he was what she strived to be.
That Deborah Ricci came along and confused him.
How he said he liked how bold she was.
How she was nothing like her mom.
How she’d never be like her mom.
How she was the antithesis of her mom.
Mikey hugged her.
Mikey had hugged her.
Mikey was hugging her.
She didn’t know when, but she tucked into him.
It was stupid.
All of it was stupid.
Everything was too loud.
There were too many people here.
Mikey rubbed her the wrong way.
He brought out the worst in her.
He was changing her.
“I’m sorry!” He shouted watery words in her ear. “I’m sorry…”
She shook her head.
Not because she disagreed, but because she didn’t want it.
Not another apology.
Not the room of people in black.
Not another death.
“I’m so sorry, Kendra.”
“Why?”
“Why…?” His cheek was against hers.
“Why do you keep doing this? How? You’re here and everything for years that I’ve… I keep saying things that I don’t want… Just… why?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what you’ve been through. You’ve told me some and there’s obviously way more, but… that one mind thing… You don’t just get there. Something happens. I don’t know what your parents were like when they were dating. I don’t know if you know, but if they were that cohesive, they must have been an amazing team.”
Her eyes watered up.
“They raised an amazing daughter.”
“Stupid.” She pushed him. “You think I’ll cry from some dumb praise?”
He relented enough so they could see each other. “Obviously not.”
She saw his reddened and waterlogged eyes.
They were the same as hers.
She scowled. “What do you know?”
“Nothing.” He smiled.
“Exactly! You know the opposite. You know my criminal record. That’s proof that I’m a no-good daughter.”
“No, that’s proof the system failed out. Genius gone bad? Trust me, I know. Donnie was one family unit away from becoming evil the whole time.”
She glowered.
“Right…” His teeth came sharply together. “You hate when I mention Don-err, you-know-who.”
“How do you know that?!”
“I don’t know!?” He perked with too obvious innocence. “How you act I guess?!”
“Ugh! You notice that and a million other things, but not that I’m scared of earthquakes!”
“Huh!? You’re scared of earthquakes?!”
“Obviously!”
“What do you mean ‘obviously?!’ Did you know?!”
“What do you mean ‘did I know!?’ Of course, I did!”
“When!?”
“When!?” She seethed. “When I got on that stupid machine!”
“When you-!?” He squeezed her waist. “You didn’t know until you were already on it?! You didn’t realize until just then?!”
“What does that matter?!”
“Cause how could I have known?!”
“You keep saying that!”
“Do you want someone who reads your mind?”
“This again!”
“No! Not ‘this again!’ It’s a new question!”
“’Do I want someone to-?’ No! Obviously, I don’t. I want to keep my thoughts to myself.”
“Of course you do.”
“Why do you say it like that?! Like you know!?”
“I don’t! I keep telling you! I don’t know! I’ll never know! But you hate that, don’t you?”
“Yes!” It felt like relief to say it.
“One mind! That means thinking the same!”
“Don’t presume-!”
“I’m not!” He pressed forward until their foreheads butted together.
Her eyes squeezed shut from the contact.
His voice surrounded her. “It’s obvious your parents are the gold star standard. I get that. My dad turned out to be my literal hero. The reason I learned martial arts. The catchphrases that I made my own. I was living under this enormous shadow and I had no idea! All I knew was Lou Jitsu was everything I wanted to be.”
She cracked her lids and saw a peek of blurry green.
“But that was never going to be me. I was never going to be that person. I can’t be someone else. I can only be me. I can be better.”
Her eyes shot wide and her head reared so Mikey would come into focus.
“I don’t want to prove I’m like Lou Jitsu. I want to show my dad everything I can be. I’m not done. I’m nowhere near done! I’ve got so much to prove to this whole damn world!”
Her hands were on his arms and she squeezed.
“But to do that I had to change. I had to keep changing. I had to stop copying what I saw. One way only gets you so far. I had to break the cycle… and I couldn’t have done that alone…”
“So…” The sound was shaky. “What?”
“Nothing…” He deflated from his big speech like it was of no importance. “That’s me…”
“But you…?”
“Compared us? Sure. That doesn’t mean that’s how you feel. That’s just how I feel about it.”
She dug her nails into his arm.
He didn’t react in the slightest.
“What do you think? You can… what? Be that for me?”
“I don’t know. That’s really up to you.”
That was up to her.
He was full of hot air.
He spewed it like a loose balloon.
By all accounts, he believed he could be.
By all accounts, his comparison had been right.
The finessed points differed, but in the broad strokes it was alarming how similar they were.
One mind.
He acted like he would have known about her fear if she had known about it.
Like he had been reading her mind all along.
Hadn’t he?
In a way, he had.
In a way, he always had.
In a way, he drove her nuts.
In a way, he was the only one who could.
“When you’re around, you make me annoyingly aware of everything I try not to worry about.”
“I do?”
She glared at him, but sharpened a playful edge. “You bother me to no end.”
“Ah…”
“You also make all those worries disappear like it was all just as stupid as you.”
“Oh…”
“Like there was never any point to worry in the first place.”
He was silent.
“Could you…? No…” She smiled more to herself. “Would you want to be with someone like that? What is your type? You said it wasn’t opposites.”
“I like someone who pushes me by being themselves.”
Her lips parted.
“Just as they are. Imagine how far a pair like that would go.”
She sighed right into his face.
He only blinked because of the rush of air.
He was otherwise unbothered.
She could bother him.
She had pissed him off earlier.
She had the ability.
He wasn’t one thing.
He was multitudes.
“Name something else I don’t like.”
“You don’t like being trapped.”
Her head tilted slightly. “Why name that one?”
“Why not?”
“I hate when you do that.”
“Sure, you do.”
She rolled her eyes once before landing right back on him. “Trapped by what?”
“Anything. Me, for one. It’s the whole arm’s length thing. I get it.”
“What do you do about it?”
“I hang back and let you decide what things happen and when.”
She instantly knew what he was referring to. “Your perfect kiss.”
“That’s one way to put it. Even though it’s passed.” His brow ridge waggled.
All his actions with her had been chaste. “You were… mad that I wouldn’t tell you why I was flirting, but it was more than that, wasn’t it?”
He oozed guilt.
She ate it up with her expression alone.
“I had to be in the right mindset! You hadn’t ever come on that strong! You’re a physical person, but you hadn’t been physical like that before!”
“So what!? We would never have done it!?”
“I sure wasn’t going to initiate!”
“What if I never asked? Never hinted? We’d just go on a hundred dates.”
“A thousand and one, why not?”
“How is that good enough?”
“How isn’t it?”
She twitched.
“That one was too easy. You literally set me up.”
“You know you’re putting the emotional load on me that way, right?”
He jolted.
“Yeah! How unfair is that?!”
“W-wait-!”
“Just like a man.” She hissed.
“You take that back!” Mikey gasped.
“Make me! You can’t because-”
He kissed her.
One swift bob and weave of his head and he shut her right up.
She preferred it.
She would have to tell him.
Maybe in time for their next date.
Until then, she kissed him back.
They popped apart and swiveled right back into a reconnecting press.
When they broke it was because they spied one another peeking through lashes.
“You like it when I’m assertive.”
“I like when you know your place.” She spoke against his lips.
He rumbled with a noise that was sickeningly sweet.
She might have asked him what the sound was had someone else not spoken first.
“Um, are you two… alright? The staff were-”
“We’re fine!”
“We’re fine!”
Mikey and Kendra shared a look after their simultaneous comment before releasing each other to run into the other room.
It didn’t take more discussion then, but it would come, Kendra knew.
There had been a monumental shift in an exceedingly small amount of time, but she would worry about that later.
For now she had brats to contend with.
She started at the robotics stations where she immediately conscripted a ton of toddlers into her assembly line. They passed her pieces under her tutelage and she soon had a demolition derby bot worthy of her old club’s name. She sent it after Mikey’s tank which he had seemingly armored with every sturdy piece available. She hadn’t been able to locate any metal to fashion into a saw so they were left at a stalemate.
The kids were inspired and began to flood the space with battle bots.
Kendra and Mikey left them to their devices as they moved to the interactive screen. Mikey jumped onto the projected panels and ignored the games to instead do shadow puppetry. He did kabuki theater for the impressionable young souls that were captivated by his story. It gave her cover as she hacked into the code for the lights and enhanced his performance. He spoke of flames and she made fire. He mentioned spurts of blood and she splashed dark liquid across the ground. It was apparent that Mikey was retelling some R-rated action flick and the angry mothers started to catch wind. Kendra slunk away before they could strike and flicked her head for Mikey to follow.
He trailed away after throwing the end of the story to the crowd to complete and they moved onto mixing machines. There were flat tables that each had an obvious set of chemicals that could be mixed. One only needed to solve an all-too-easy-to-complete chemical equation to make the right one, but Kendra ignored that in favor of gutting the machine's interior. As soon as she opened it up, Mikey got access to the tubes inside. He identified a soap mixture and she rewired where it would flow to. While she worked, a few pre-teens squatted around to ask what she was doing. She narrated her plot all without naming its climax until she smashed a button. Mikey crawled out of the way just in time for a massive bubble to begin to form. Kendra couldn’t contain her cackles as it grew and grew until everyone was halted at the sight of the soapy monstrosity.
It popped directly into everyone’s eyes and the room erupted.
With the staff blinded and three strikes against them, Kendra grabbed Mikey to race out and  assumed they had some lifetime ban. Both their images which would be printed on a wall so as not to be served. They ran down the street, a regular Bonnie and Clyde, until the suds subsided and they could plan their next date over a public water fountain eye rinsing.
🧡 NEXT 🧡
My laptops out of commission again, but my betas keep going @tmntxthings  @thepinkpanther83 and @unrestrainedhotsoup
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avelera · 1 year ago
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Come Live with Me and Be My Love ☼: how i came up with the idea :)
Funny enough, I can share with you the EXACT post detailing my thought process back from when I first had the idea!
But to looking back... I think I really just wanted to do a "fake dating/arranged marriage" type AU where Dream is sort of forced to fall in love with Hob throughout the course of pretending to be in a relationship?
Like I truly think that if you put a gun to his head and told Dream "You have to marry ONE living human and stay with them for a year," he'd first scoff at the notion and think it's beneath him but again, gun to his head, would probably be like, "Hob has occasionally amused me in the past and might not be totally unbearable/doomed if I was forced to spend more than the usual amount of time with him so, sure, let's go with Hob." But like... not *really* expecting to get anything more out of it for himself beyond some mildly interesting sex?
But I think Hob is kind of the essence of, "I do much better in the interview than on the application." Like on *paper* as a former peasant etc, he's not really a good match for Dream. But he's *so* resilient, and *so* likable and *so* willing to put up with Dream's bullshit and (in my opinion) so starving for pour all his affection onto someone like Dream (well, *specifically* Dream) who isn't going to up and die on him that once you're trapped in the web of a relationship with him, you're like, "Oh shit, this guy is some grade A husband material, huh?"
So I was really interested in writing a version of Dream who *isn't* in love with Hob, who doesn't *expect* to ever love Hob, but thinks Hob is tolerable in a "If I had to pick a human" sort of way, only to get smacked across the face with like, wow this guy is actually *amazing* and an *amazing* match for me and wow this is all gone to shit real quick and all my plans are in tatters because this guy I knew who once had *fleas* is a really amazing husband and partner and we're very well suited and oh no, I'm actually really falling in love???
And 1789 made the most sense to put that story in, I want to say, for a variety of reasons, but mostly it seemed hmmm.... It seemed the era where Dream had the most *recent* memory of having been at least a little tempted to sleep with Hob. So if it's within a few decades of that meeting (it had to be decades later, I wasn't going to place it directly in 1789 because Hob *had* to have made some amends for the shipping business before that, he had to be LONG out of that business before I'd cast him as a romantic lead) and Dream, gun to his head, was told he had to pick a human, I figured it was realistic that he'd go, "Oh yeah, Hob and I had that flirty exchange recently. He doesn't seem *totally* unbearable, if I had to pick a human." (1589 or 1889 the vibe would be VERY different and Dream absolutely would NOT have picked Hob, and obviously Giving Sanctuary is my 1689 take on if their relationship started then).
But yeah, mostly it was out of a desire to see Dream give Hob a chance and for Hob to knock it out of the park, and then everything sort of fell into place after that that it would be a wager gone wrong, that it would be post 1789, etc etc because that was the supporting details necessary for this sort of silly wager to occur, y'know?
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anneofteenfables · 2 months ago
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Cress
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Title: Cress
Author: Marissa Meyer
Genre: Science Fiction
Length: 16 hours
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Summary: 
In this third book in the Lunar Chronicles, Cinder and Captain Thorne are fugitives on the run, now with Scarlet and Wolf in tow. Together, they're plotting to overthrow Queen Levana and her army.
Their best hope lies with Cress, a girl imprisoned on a satellite since childhood who's only ever had her netscreens as company. All that screen time has made Cress an excellent hacker. Unfortunately, she's just received orders from Levana to track down Cinder and her handsome accomplice.
When a daring rescue of Cress goes awry, the group is separated. Cress finally has her freedom, but it comes at a higher price. Meanwhile, Queen Levana will let nothing prevent her marriage to Emperor Kai. Cress, Scarlet, and Cinder may not have signed up to save the world, but they may be the only hope the world has.
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Review:
Cress has always been my favorite book in the Lunar Chronicles. It’s also the only one that I’ve reread. This is the first time in a long time that I’ve read the whole thing, though. Usually I just skim it and read only the sections about Cress and/or Thorne. I found that I’ve actually forgotten about large plot points of this book. Many scenes that I thought happened in Winter actually happen in Cress or even in Scarlet. 
I really enjoyed reading this book, as I always do, and it almost felt like I was reading it for the first time, considering how much I had forgotten. The run-time for the audiobook is 16 hours and after a certain point, you feel every minute of it. I think that Marissa Meyer is a good author but her pacing has always been a little bit too slow. It somehow felt rushed but also way too slow at points. In my memory, there was only one wedding (on Luna) and because of that the wedding on Earth seemed like a surprise and also very sudden. I know why it happens this way in the story because of Levana’s goals but it seems very quick. Cinder’s plan to crash the wedding also seems very quick, even more so than what would be necessary in universe because of the timeline of the wedding. Some plans and ideas seem to happen out of the blue with very little on-page planning or forethought. This somehow feeds into the slow pacing, not necessarily slow, it just feels like this book goes on forever. When Cress and Thorne have their emotional moment on the Rampion after kidnapping Kai, I truly believed that was where the book would end. However, there’s still more chapters. While these chapters are important and I know why Meyer couldn’t put them in Winter, I wish they would have been earlier. I think that it would have been nice to end Cress’s book with a scene of her and Thorne and I don’t think it would’ve hurt the book to rearrange the scenes with Cinder/Kai and Scarlet/Winter to be slightly earlier. If anything I kind of wish the scene with Scarlet and Winter had been an epilogue, sort of a teaser, for Winter. 
There is a reason that Cress is my favorite Lunar Chronicles book. I really enjoy the different settings and situations that the characters are put in. I’m always a fan of the fake dating trope, so I obviously loved the scenes where Cress and Thorne have to pretend to be a couple. I also really love how Meyer writes their romance. At the beginning Cress is in love with this idea of Thorne that she’s created based on nothing more than what she’s read about him. Even after Thorne tries to explain the truth behind these stories where she’s painted him as a hero, she still views him as such. However, through the course of the story Cress learns for herself who Thorne really is, he is sometimes a hero but he’s also just a person, and she gets to fall in love with the reality of him. I really like that by the end of the book they aren’t officially a couple or anything of the sort but you can still see how much they’ve grown in their relationship. I never really knew that there was a questionable age gap between the two until after I finished the whole series, but I do wholeheartedly accept the headcanon that Thorne is actually 18 and he just lied about his age to get into the military.  I’ve always loved Cress, I especially love the idea of the satellite and I really want to read more about Cress’s life in the satellite before the events of the story. Despite my complaints about the length, and eventually having the audiobook at 2x speed by the final chapters, reading it made me want to read Winter next. Which I probably will even though the audiobook is 24 hours long.
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Divider: @cafekitsune
Header paintings: Rapunzel by Florence Harrison + The Last Day of Pompeii by Karl Bryullov
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vantasei · 1 year ago
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as per req. from @koobinn
Their thoughts on David? Or which deals with what situation or what triggers a switch?
ok INDIVIDUALLY. foxhound era since thats our favorite :)
null is wary of pretty much everyone. if anyones the type to self isolate, its him. that being said, hes most attentive when it comes to matters of either work or matters of big boss. null is bibos little guard dog (affectionate) SO hes more suspicious of david than he is caring of him. especially since he Does Not vibe with miller or ocelot AT ALL. david getting special attention only makes him more of a concern.
frank... honestly doesnt know him, really! very VERY rarely does he so much as show up in headspace while theyre at foxhound. it just isnt his business and he stays away from it. what DOES get him out while hes there is getting letters from naomi :) thats his sister :) naomi :) but even then, he knows better than to do just about anything while hes around. hiding them away until he dissociates back out. otherwise, he'll only sorta be present in headspace at most via positive triggers.
fox :) dave thats his little guy. its funny not knowing whats wrong with you and only getting a name for yourself way later but yes he steals the name gray fox away from the rest for himself. he mainly exists in spaces where a certain level of camaraderie is necessary while out on business, but he doesnt usually do the work himself (hi null!) that being said, he IS the king of pretending to be human for the sake of establishing (superficial) relationships w his peers. he just has a very distinct personality of Faking Everything because if he thinks too much about his purpose as an entity he'll start itching for pain. which, ha, is a pretty big trigger aside from established environment. specifically self-requested/initiated harm. ironically grounding Specifically for him. but yes :) dave he likes that guy thats his little guy who doesnt mind when fox acts weird and does what hes told and is cute while doing it and (no this isnt love, i dont even know what that is!)
and as a special treat, mr ninja... ah ninja, you elude me still, but i can say insofar as that involuntary pain/harm is one of his bigger triggers, pulled off of null when he split, actually! he knows david as a Name, more than anything. a concept which establishes [an end]. he isnt nearly a masochist (i can literally tell you whos fronting where in mgs1 cutscenes somethings wrong with me), but rather just an entity who exists in a weird bubble of ignorance and simplicity (also pulled off null. post mg2 null is, how do i say, Different from pre mg2 null). very (tell me what to do and ill do it), holding onto the idea of (needing to die) and (snake killed us. he can do it again).
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hanako-san · 7 months ago
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Kou........
I got my hands on volume 19 and I wasn't able to read it all, only chapters 96 and 97 and sighs I have to vent my anger.
I couldn't understand why Kou was disliked/hated before, but after some time I started to understand. Now I understand it completely.
In my version he said "Don't ever do something like that again, supposedly for Yashiro's sake"
sighs
Stop pretending to be Hanako's friend. Stop pretending that you want to protect him and believe in him. You are a fake person. FAKE FRIEND. I know that he never declared friendship with him, but AidaIro later shows that they are 'friends'.
You who broke your promise. You who don't mind Mitsuba may attacking a students when he's hungry. Anything to save him and you have no regard for the safety of others. You lecture Hanako. This is level master hypocrisy, and that's not the end
kou's comment about Hanako doubting your lame plan to capture Sakura. "Because you're afraid of your brother"
Of course it will be 'simple', as if Sakura wasn't protected by someone and she personally got caught or Tsukasa.. yes he will allow catch himself as well,it's as easily as you say. When I read this plan and with how much delight and ease he said he would go ahead, I got a facepalm. Hanako only rightly doubted. This plan is so idiotic that I have no words for it.
The way he proudly and arrogantly said the line "Because you're afraid of your brother" made me want to actually punch him in the face like yashiro did to Hanako in chapter 86.
The one who admitted that he didn't understand Teru and had trouble understanding him. Hypocrisy . His hypocrisy has surpassed everything! He is worse than Teru.How dare he judge Hanako and Tsukasa's relationship with such arrogance when they are in exactly the same position. He is so haughty and proud and thinks that he knows and understands everything, when he was not there when they showed this love between them. He doesn't know everything, but he quickly assesses the situation in his own way because Hanako rightly didn't like his pathetic plan.
Teru is at least honest that he doesn't care about the well-being of people, only those he loves, he admits that he hates the supernatural and this job, but he likes killing them (Which is a contradiction of the fact that he doesn't like this job, but I'll leave it at that). Teru may be a a sociopath., but there are moments when he is seriously honest, either with actions(except for Tsukasa, because if Tsukasa he doesn't do anything), facial expression or words.
Kou is ready to get rid of Hanako when necessary, but he is not ready to get rid of Mitsuba and let him go, he wants to keep him alive desperate like Hanako with Yashiro and even against Mitsuba. Selfish, egoistic, hypocritical, he has long outdone his brother, false, arrogant, pretends to understand everything and to be the smartest.
He doesn't seem to be super smart and intelligent. He can't pretend to be 'cool' and look like Teru, he just looks pathetic and arrogant, the hypocrisy just pours out of him.
I don't care about his conflict with himself and his feelings. He want to be good, but he can't do it. He is false. It's annoying how he tries to understand Hanako and try to see the good in him when he actually sees him as evil and not a good spirit who doesn't do anything good out of good intentions, when otherwise he does with Mitsuba and does what Hanako does. and it gives me such a vibe that "I'm better than this Hanako, I'm Minamoto, from a family of egozcrists than this 'evil Hanako'
I'm really fed up with him always trying and faking it. He won't make everyone happy, never, someone will suffer, it just can't be done, and his attitude towards Hanako and his situation of not knowing everything, I have no words to describe it.
Kou, you are not superior and you aren't above Hanako. You're just a clown in my eyes , you are an arrogant fake person trying to pretend you know everything and look cool. You're failing at this I called him a clown because to me he acts like a clown after reading these chapters,arrogant and the hypocrisy in him is deep and enormous.
I'm up to date with the chapters and this made me so angry. I just feel sorry for Hanako, he didn't deserve such 'friends'. Honestly, there is no friendly person around him who would support him in any way. Everyone thinks only about themselves, and yet he is the only one who has been called 'selfish', while others do what they want and are doing great and go on with it, being worse than that 'evil Hanako'
The absurdity of this series knows no limits.
Vol only confirmed that. I can't hate or dislike him because I understand him a little, but I haven't trusted him for a long time and I won't trust him,and Kou hasn't good heart,he wants to be seen that way.
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omennatural · 2 years ago
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Lie theory & why I like it less than coffee theory
So this theory, not my own, focuses on Aziraphale and lying, his lies to protect Job's children, his lie about making Nina & Maggie fall in love. It theorizes that Aziraphale lied about the true nature of what The Metatron offered him, lied to Crowley to push him away, to protect him, because the whole question is give me coffee or give me death–heaven, or to have themselves erased from the book of life.
What I really like about this is the clear motivation behind the supposed tie-in to The Metatron asking Nina if anyone asked for death, and the book of life which we didn't know about in season 1. I really like this on paper, the idea of Aziraphale being threatened this way and pushing Crowley away to protect him and do what he has to to save Crowley. I do really like some good angst and sacrificial saving.
What I don't like, though, is that on screen, I don't think Aziraphale's actions speak to him pretending. The man is an awful liar, something we also see a lot in the first season and the second. And it bleeds into other aspects of deception, such as his exploits in the art of magic. Aziraphale gets it right, though, on occasion. The one time his sleight of hand was necessary, he saved his relationship with Crowley from Furfur's otherwise quite successful investigation. And most impressively, he quite convincingly was Crowley for a bit. He played it up a bit, but truthfully, that imitation was far out of character for him since he's really quite awful at it otherwise. Desperate times, I suppose. These are desperate times, too, but when you watch it, it reads that he's just too excited to get the words out. We all know what that's like, to be so excited you struggle to get the news out. He's excited, genuinely. I can't see it as a deception. And I would presume that if the Metatron threatened him, and especially if he threatened Crowley, that he'd of had a much different reaction than we see at the end of the conversation.
I also would like to point out that if the Metatron was going to end up threatening Aziraphale, then why sweeten him up so much with the coffee bit? To get him to go talk? I really don't think all that was necessary just to have a private conversation. No, I think the coffee was a manipulation tactic in a long list of them.
I'm not 100% for coffee theory, I have some doubts, but I don't like this one a whole lot simply because I think Aziraphale is more likely to just be blinded by the Metatron's bullshit than Aziraphale pretending to come up with the one thing that would put Crowley off the most and just faking that whole thing.
I just believe that an agent of Heaven has a 77-step plan to manipulate angels/people for its own agenda, especially when that angel/person has made it quite clear they don't want anything to do with Heaven, much easier than an outright threat. At first. They always try the manipulation first, and when they can't manipulate anymore, then it's time for threats. It's the messier way of business, and often more tedious.
The only thing I really know is that Aziraphale must wear his glasses to impair his eyesight because I'd of folded eons ago if I was him. Have you seen turtleneck Crowley?
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ravenmold · 1 year ago
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How do you go about picking which fic to read next?
I've decided I'm going to take this opportunity to rant about my favourite AO3 tags some. And also about how a great summary can absolutely sell a fic.
So I've got two modes, as I'm sure most of us fanfic readers have: reading and rereading. Rereading I do a LOT of, I've got so many comfort fics, and the mood for them strikes when I'm stressed or when I'm having a normal Thursday and suddenly the memory of that one specific moment surges up and I have to go find it again (this is a lie my brain tells me. I will read the whole thing again - granted it's under 150k words).
But for new stuff?? Hmm, here follows a few of my favourite things:
For fic authors I'm not familiar with:
General fic things: A nice name. Bonus points if I find out several chapters in that it connects thematically with the plot! No Archive warnings - I'm not the biggest fan of character death etc. If you know me, this doesn't come as a surprise, I like my fics like I like my pets. Fluffy and exciting and comforting. (I will not expand on this simile any more because I realize now it has some major flaws) A sweet spot for words would be >10k and <80k. Not necessary for it to be finished, but I do tend to check finished fics first.
Tags that would definitely reel me in: mutual pining, temporary amnesia, slow burn, fake/pretend relationship, royalty or historical au, time travel/time loops, identity porn, marriage of convenience, workplace au's for some reason, epistolary, kid fic (DONE RIGHT), cheesy romcom crossovers, future fics/time skips, used to date/exes (this is a big one), space operas/sci fi au's, magic and crossovers with other pairings I like. Yeah I guess I like putting my Guys into Situations, no surprise there. Also zombie or apocalypse fics can be fun, if they're not too heavy on the angst. Unless I write it myself.
Summaries: This is the main thing that catches my eye. Probably also not unique there 😂 I like when they're more than two sentences and actually set up the tone and the inciting incident of the fic pretty well. I love a "quirky" premise, if you're like "so character A got cursed to be forgettable and the entire plot happens because of this" I'd be like Hell Yeah I wanna see how that happens!! 😂 I do also like when summaries, combined with the tags, give me an idea of at least like 80% of the fic. I'm not the biggest fan of when an author considers it spoilers if they drop hints about more than the first two scenes. That's what makes fic different from just picking up a random book, imo, and I like to know what I'm in for. That's why I also expect the focus of the summary to be the focus of the fic's main plot. I only find this out later, of course, but we're talking ideal circumstances here.
For fic authors I know/enjoy:
Honestly, same as above but if you manage to hit any one or two elements I'd be interested. I follow a few authors, but not a ton, as I tend to forget to unsub when they move on to new fandoms and then I just live with the emails on random pairings I get 😅
Overall, how I choose new reading material is usually by seeing if my new hyperfixation has my preferred tropes and tags. And by being intrigued by an interesting summary and setup. Once I've worked through all of those, I'll go through the bookmarks of people who've read and enjoyed my favourite fics, and then I've pretty much never dried up on content so far.
Thanks for the ask! This has been really fun to talk about. And I can look back on it in a few and see if my tastes have changed through the years 😊
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voxiiferous · 2 years ago
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Vox, Hellaina, and the realization that you should really, really run.
...Or that it's too late to do so.
Under the cut is an expanded drabble from the hc in @a-hazbin-spider and I's thread!
Decades ago , Vox decided he would only ever bring Hellaina to the Porn Studios when it is absolutely necessary. Sometimes, you just acknowledge that your lover and your PA despise each others guts and move on. Sadly, that is not always an option. Like now.
The disadvantage of he and Valentino having actual business dealings alongside personal ones, is that it means both contract renewal season with him, and the other rings, and as Hellaina has become his go-to liaison the last few months with Lust, it seems sensible to bring her.
"C'mon sugartits, you're even more anal about this than Voxxy,"
And there go all his chances of this going peacefully. The bartender looks at him sympathetically. "Pardon me," he says. Apparently expecting them to play nice for less than an hour was too much to ask. He looks between the two of them, no bloodshed, no weapons, Val looks smug and Hellaina looks... deceptively not murderous. That's a good place to start.
He cuts into the conversation, with an easy grin. "Maybe we should reschedule this for another day? Nothing needs to be on paper for a few more weeks yet." And before then, he'll make sure to brush up on all the information Hellaina's gotten, so he doesn't have to worry about these two in the same room again.
"Fine with me," she says, smile tight, and Val waves his cigarette dismissively.
It's a week later when it all goes wrong.
His phone chimes, the specific notification that signals Valentino's arrival at the tower. "I'm sure we can wrap up here," he says to Hellaina, and she looks up from her tablet with a clearly fake look of innocence. "Oh no, what did you do?"
The placid expression melts away, replaced by the sharp look that he expects. She turns the tablet towards him, security feeds pulled up. Val entering the building and a bucket of... something pouring over him. Val entering the elevator and feathers being added as another bucket pours. There's no sound, but he doesn't need it to recognize the obscenities Val is saying, even more so when the elevator opens on the sixth floor, and one of his accountants looks at Valentino and the elevator, a puddle of... "what is that?"
"Sugar, honey, feathers, a few other things."
The accountant steps away, clearly deciding to take the next elevator, and the door closes.
"Tarred and feathered?"
"I'm making him into a sugary tit." She answers; shameless, smug.
Feathers... ah, the bird. He should have guessed that the comment from last week wouldn't go unrewarded. And if she were anyone else, he knows she'd have Hell to pay, but he also knows that her opinion of her position is summed up in the opinion that she gets most of the benefits of being an Overlord, and none of the disadvantages.
The door to his penthouse opens, and he watches as Vark leaps towards the... dripping moth, lapping hungrily, and happily at the sodden and feathery coat.
"Who are you expecting to clean this?"
She blinks. "You think I'd plan my revenge without that in mind? It's already being dealt with."
The final bucket is less of a bucket, so much as the shower-head dropping it on Valentino before the water starts.
Twenty minutes later, he and Hellaina watch from the window as Valentino walks right back out, and a knock on the door sounds. "Come in,"
One of the new special effects techs walks in, wringing his hands together. "Mr. Vox, sir, your uh. Mr. Valentino, sir, he wants me to tell you that quote, 'we're through Voxxy,'".
He counts to 5 in his head. "Thank you, you can go." The messenger leaves without another word, clearly glad to be dismissed rather than torn to shred.
He looks at Hellaina through the corner of his screen. "Are you even going to pretend to be upset at my collapsed relationship?"
"Do you want me to be?"
"It might be nice," He considers for a moment, shaking his head. "But no, it wouldn't be genuine anyway."
Well, at least it hadn't ended with his screen broken again.
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epicmusic42 · 2 years ago
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Obi-wan finally addresses the questions from reporters about his relationship with Senator Bail Organa when they start insinuating that the man is cheating on his wife. The couple might insist it's unnecessary, but he can read the stress it's causing them in their eyes—no Force necessary.
"As dear and close of friends as the Organas are," he assures the reporters, "there isn't anything untoward happening. And even if there was, Breha would certainly be the one instigating it." The implication that he's a visitor to the couple's bed gives the press their gossip, but helps prevent rumourmongering.
A bit of petty revenge against his own love, ensures that they won't. Unbecoming of a jedi, perhaps, but she won't mind.
"Really, the Organas have been a comfort over the years. They certainly aren't anything more than friends. I'm afraid that if you're looking for my torrid affair, you won't have any luck. Satine and I were... shockingly mature about everything when I consider how young we were."
Of course that just has the reporters more eager.
"I was her guard during the Mandalorian Civil War. Well, one of them, anyways. My Master and I were sent to guard her family. Of course, then there was her father's assassination practically before we had arrived. We hadn't even been introduced"
Sadly, he isn't dramatising their introduction.
"My Master and I were able to rescue Satine and Aajanath before anything happened to them. We spent over a year on the run, and well, we fell in love." He doesn't have to fake the wistful look, he would have stayed for her, for aliit.
"We did discuss. But I would have had to give up being a jedi and she could never ask that of me. She insisted that I go back, finish my training. I insisted we stay in contact, that we would discuss things when I was a Knight. Only I ended up with Anakin practically before I was knighted. And do you know what she did?"
He laughs, inviting the reporters in on the joke even if they likely don't understand it.
"She sent me a birikad! A carrying harness for an infant," he makes sure to clarify. "As though Anakin wasn't already half my height and ready to start preparing for his verd’goten if he was mandalorian. And she insisted on meeting him. Fussed over him and insisted on teaching him mando'a at least."
He shakes his head, pretending to hide a melancholic smile.
"If I'm honest, we were always long distance, but we did live as though we were married. As best we could anyways. I really don't know what would have happened to anakin if she hadn't helped teach what she could. It really did help him find balance."
He waits. There are two ways this could go. It depends on how much they latch onto his last comment or remember that he did NOT mention Bo-Katan.
"Master Kenobi," one reporter asks, eyes bright and attention sly in the Force, "the late Duchess raised her nephew. However, his parentage was never clarified and he does bear a strong resemblance to you..."
That would be because Korkie was adopted, also Stewjoni, and likely from the same clan. He remembered when Aajanath had adopted the boy because Satine had been furious.
Aajanath shouldn't have even left home with their health, and they'd come home half-dead with a toddler bundled in their spare shirt. And then Aajanath had declared that they'd adopted the child, who'd already lost one family in a bloodbath. Aajanath, who would be lucky to survive the year—and that was with a cloned lung.
Satine had raged for hours at her sibling's idiocy for claiming a child who had already lost their parents, only to march away and leave them with an aunt who was at constant risk of assassination.
...she had also had to yell at him that he was a jedi then.
"Korkie isn't my son. We likely do share a blood relation, but I am quite certain that he's Aajanath's. Besides, the timing doesn't work out. He's a couple years too young to be mine. The next time I saw Satine would have been about the time he was born."
He pauses, as though he's considering. "I wouldn't put it past her. To hide a child from me, that is. I went back to finish my training and if I knew we had a child I would have returned to Mandalore without hesitation. ...I wouldn't expect her to continue to hide it after I took anakin on."
"Well," he adds, like it's an afterthought, "not unless they had already left home. I could see her keeping it quiet for their safety, then."
It is not, he reflects later, actually a bit a revenge. Satine is dead and she hid their relationship more to protect him than herself. If he had decided to leave for their aliit then she would have happily told people.
They might have implied to certain factions that she stole him. Let certain clan heads think that she had sent him back because she wanted him to be trained, not because she refused to let him simply give up his dreams for her. But that was politics.
If she was alive, she would have commed him and yelled at him for not warning her. Lamented the fact that she was going to have to explain to half her parliament that, no, she could not, in fact, simply marry him. And then she would have held a press conference.
She probably would have simply announced that yes, she did hide the existence of their daughter from him for years. Would have poked fun at him for how many times she needed to remind him that he was a jedi, simply because her aliit, because their aliit was struggling and his vows to the Order meant he could not swear to be there or even go when he was able to. She probably would have no qualms about outright telling the galaxy that, while she told him when it became apparent that he couldn't simply leave the Order, when in her eyes he adopted a jedi child, she maintained the lie to the rest of the world.
It was well known, among mandalorians, at least, that the Kryze family was still strongly kalevalan. It was also well known that Satine and Aajanath's sure had come from Wild Space and no one was really sure what species they were.
The results had been obvious enough. Satine and Aajanath had gestated for nearly three years before hatching. To the immense relief of their Clan, House, and all of Kalevala.
Given the political upheaval of the time, no one had questioned the idea that her parents didn't share the news that they were expecting again. And Clan Kryze was loyal. as soon as Satine had realized she was pregnant, they had figured a plan for how the egg had been keep safe and cared for in case anyone was asked.
Bo-Katan had not, thankfully, taken nearly as long to gestate as her mother did. She had hatched a month earlier than the normal ten months that kalevalans gestated for. (Right on time for a stewjoni child to be born Satine was reassured).
However, Bo-Katan was willful. And stubborn. And wanted to be a soldier not a politician. Which was gine, but did jot negate the need for a politician's education given her position. ...or who hired most soldiers to be honest.
She had run away to live with her "uncle" Pre at 8 years old. Just old enough to start training for her verd’goten.
Pre had been willing, and it solved Satine’s issue of extremists who refused to see accept that self-defense was necessary objecting to her training her daughter. So she told him no live fire until after Bo passes, and trusted the man who'd been helping her hold Mandalore together for nearly a decade.
And so the first time Obi-wan met their daughter had been when Death Watch marched on Sundari.
Satine would absolutely have had some petty revenge in how she told the story. Obi-wan actually hadn't. Though he had decided to allow himself some going in.
Well, he supposes he ought to make sure the temple guards know to let Bo in if she does show up then. If she's anything like him and Satine, pettiness would have actually calmed her down some.
Hopefully, she won't arrive during a saber class.
Cooper woke me up two hours before I needed to be awake and I can’t get back to sleep, so here’s 4am blogging:
What if the reason that Anakin and Padme were able to hide in plain sight for so long is that it’s really common for Jedi to have friendships that seem unusually close and intimate to outsiders?
Like. We actually do have some canon evidence that it’s normal for a Jedi to be besties with a major political figure! Obi-Wan and Bail, Qui-Gon and Valorum–wasn’t Yoda pals with the Wookie leader?
Jedi having Epic Friendships/brothers-in-arms-type relationships regardless of venue is probably their default cultural portrayal, in-universe. “Jedi are just super intense about that stuff, it’s the Force or something. It doesn’t mean they want to fuck you.”
…This means that in the good end AU where Palpatine explodes and Anakin’s secrets come out there’s a massive cultural whiplash to the effect of, “does that mean they were all fucking in secret?!”
Yoda and Chief Tarfful have to publicly deny any allegations of a sexual relationship.
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