#self. ﹙ EX DEGENERATE ﹚

[ecstaticasusual]

Maid AU ☆

[eaglescores]

DON'T BE A PUSSY , PUNCH HIM IN THE ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏ ͏͏FACE ׅ⎖

EAGLESCORES ׅ⎖ an independent , private ﹠̲ selective portrayal of cobra kai's 𝐣𝐨𝐡𝐧𝐧𝐲 lawrence . former bully seeking redemption and to do things his own way , working to erase the legacy of cobra kai forever . a man trying to adapt to the 21st century . sensei , father , mentor ﹠̲ best friend . two time all valley champion , 100% badass . mv , ms with chem ﹠̲ oc friendly . mun is eighteen plus . minors , do not interact . exploring themes of accepting defeat , learning how to work together , teaching something better than you've been taught , making something good with your hands , being haunted by demons of your past , found family , substance abuse ( ﹠̲ the eventual uphill battle for recovery . ) basic dni criteria ; dni if you ship johnny ﹠̲ kreese and terry ﹠̲ daniel .

template credit : jessource . psd credit : waatsoned . muse goes by 𝐡𝐞/𝐡𝐢𝐦 , mun by 𝐬𝐡𝐞 / 𝐡𝐞𝐫 . main blog is @cobrascores . loved by bee .

[mesetacadre]

So, like, have any of you actually ever had a conversation with a fascist offline about what they believe? I have.

To be clear, this wasn't a sit-down-let's-talk conversation. He (the only one) tried to start shit, and we (me + 2 comrades) confronted him in the act and regrettably got into a 30-minute "conversation".

Fascists, individually, are very mentally feeble. They are cowards who always seek to start conflict while trying to make themselves out to be the victims. This is, of course, until they gain enough popularity and canon fodder to throw 20 unstable fascists at anyone they don't like. But until this exaltation occurs¹ and their organizations enter a relatively stable cycle (in contemporary liberal democracies, they last between 2 and 7 years before disintegrating), there remains a contradiction between their aggressive desire to seek confrontation and their individual and collective insecurities. Fascist ideology is mostly not rooted in reality (more on this later), and it also has an important component of self-hate. They are an inferior specimen, unable to achieve what the fascist martyrs before them achieved (in Spain, Jose Antonio Primo de Rivera usually occupies this position), and to add injury to insult, it's those who they perceive as weak and undeserving who rule over them. They ignore this perceived inferiority by joking about being chads, the superior race, or non-degenerates. But behind their rhetoric and "humor" there is usually a tinge of insecurity and hate against anyone who doesn't fit their increasingly narrow standard, including themselves.

This fascist we talked with kept referring to Jewish conspiracies, to the freemasons in every position of power, to old Falangists, to fascist "theorists", to some kind of esoteric spiritualism within the bounds of Christianity, somehow, and hyperborea. He talked about communists, how they were already in the government (referring to the social-democratic PSOE), how we were degenerates, how the day will come, etc. He attempted to scare us by saying that he was an ex-member of this more notorious fascist party and that they were looking for him to beat him up, which isn't something you admit to people you're trying to start conflicts with. After a while of his ramblings, one of my comrades couldn't help but laugh at him. It was all very ridiculous; I don't remember exactly what he said that made my comrade laugh. He got slightly more agitated, and the conversation ended in ~5 minutes.

Individually, fascists are also not the brightest people you'll encounter. For somebody to internalize fascist beliefs, they have to be unconsciously willing to never dig deeper about their beliefs, to contrast them with one another, or to contrast them with other fascists. They'll read a text (they may be stupid, but a lot of them do read more than you'd expect) about, say, the concept of race, and never really address the fact that it contradicts their own beliefs, or a fellow fascist's beliefs about the nation or about Europe.

And a really interesting thing is that fascism is far from a monolith. It's more akin to an entelechy². The specific contradictions of fascism manifest themselves much more between individual fascists than within a single individual. Like I mentioned before, there are contradictions when it comes to race (racialists like the nazis vs anti-racists like Falange Auténtica), to Europe (the idea of a Great Europe vs every idea of Nationality/Empire, which generally coexist poorly), to the nation (its intersection with race and/or Europe and how it interacts with these), to the reaction against progress (a conception of fascism as progressive, reactionary, or neither³), to science (a realist position based on scientificism such as race science and Kameradschaftrecht (nazi feminism) vs metaphysical conceptions, such as esotericism or the Thule society, reliant on aesthetics and mysticism), or to the economic policy (bourgeois positions, corporatism, vs workerist positions such as Strasser or Bombacci).

These contradictions aren't unique to the contemporary fascist situation of fragmentation and the peculiarities of social media either. Back in the 30s and 40s, there was a lot of disagreement on who counted as fascists. On one end, during the rise of the NSDAP, there was a small cadre of orthodox fascists who narrowed fascism "a la Italiana", and did not consider nazi-fascism to be fascism because of its differences on the scientificist conceptions of race. The Nazi party repressed this small wing. On the other end, it was a prevailing position in the USSR to not consider fascism to start with Italy's fascii di combatimento, but rather in Russia's Black Hundreds, having a broader conception of fascism.

This fascist we talked with considers himself a Carlist⁴, while another member of his groupuscule considers himself a national-socialist, while being Moroccan, and a third is a run-of-the-mill reactionary concerned with the 2030 agenda, globalism, immigrant invasions, the great replacement, that sort of thing. When fascist groups are relatively small and lack any form of inertia and/or formalized structure, their activity is extremely sporadic. There is no discipline to be found, no real planning or broad strategy, they are, rather, a group of similarly-enough-minded friends who sometimes like to do some vandalism or threaten/agitate leftists of any stripe. Their only method of growth is to generate controversies, fights, have a provocative tweet go semi-viral, to generate noise. When it comes to agitation for the fascist, concrete ideology is not relevant. They appeal to both rage and the satisfaction of, for example, seeing x annoying leftist org get their posters ripped off. Discussions of fascist theory rarely, if ever, influence their pragmatic activity, sometimes it's more similar to a circlejerk to see who has the most esoteric, exaggerated and offensive positions.

This is not to say fascist infighting is irrelevant, far from it. Fascists have their own petty disputes between groups, periods of extreme fractionarism, inter-fascist and intra-fascist violence. But when it comes to the philosophy of action, to how they apply all these beliefs, you'll be pressed to find meaningful, material differences. Some might be more or less aggressive, more or less esoteric, more or less contrarian, more or less effective. But they all rely on building that momentum, that controversy -> confrontation -> growth -> controversy cycle. The moment fascist groups lose that momentum, or one too many campaigns fall flat and fail to garner attention, they'll start to turn against themselves, to deteriorate their own structures in the permanent search for conflict that their beliefs demand. There is no way to hold the belief that, for example, race is a scientific category that makes the white/national/aryan/european/whatever race constantly threatened to disappear without exhorting you to seek conflict, whether it's against immigrants or other fascists who don't place as much importance on race.

If you find yourself in the context of a few small fascist groups festering and seeking conflict, it is a strategic error to confront them outright. Unless you're willing to downright kill them or injure them severely enough (with the bigger threat of legal repercussions that entails), fascists will be able to turn your explicit opposition against them into ammunition to attract more reactionaries to their own ranks. The best you, as an organized communist, can do in the period before exaltation, is to quietly collect information about them, study their patterns, and exert as much opposition as is possible without letting them turn it into a visible confrontation. If you're going to cover up their symbols and posters, do it when they can't film you or try to start a fight. If they're threatening someone to provoke them to then cry and hue about the rabid leftists, use the fact that they have low numbers, record them, and intimidate them without physical violence. Even if you can leave them writhing on the floor in a fight, they can use that as ammunition, but they can't use a video of them putting their tails between their legs and running off. You can't debate with fascists, this much is clear. You also can't just use violence to scare them away, because they'll use that violence to gain momentum, and then you can end up with an actually decently-sized and consistent fascist organization.

This is how we have been opposing these small groups of fascists attempting to grow through controversy. We opposed them non-visibly, effectively and professionally. When this group of about 15 fascists total (they never appear with more than 4 at a time because of their inconsistency) encountered this, they were at one point scared enough to stop all activity for about 2 months, and after that have yet to appear again. Meanwhile, other, more infantile orgs, overreacted by opposing them with full force and very publicly, which only encouraged the fascists to keep going and wasted energy in a futile back-and-forth, as well as putting their members in unnecessary risk by engaging in unplanned situations.

¹ Throughout this entire post, all analysis of the behavior of fascists offline assumes this exaltation has not occured

² Entelechy here means an impossible ideal, built entirely in the imagination, or with an unstable and shoddy manifestation.

³ Fascism often positions itself as a revolutionary movement, while other times it places more importance on the opposition against progress.

⁴ Carlism is a Spanish political current originating in the rejection of Isabel II as a legitimate heir to Fernando VII, it became very intertwined with Franco's dictatorship and the Falange during the Civil War

[littlejuicebox]

LittleJuicebox Masterlist

Click here for my AO3 account. (Converting is a WiP).

If you’d like to be added to a tag list, please DM me and I can send you the google doc link. I have decided to keep tag lists for each individual series so you only get tagged in the ones you want.

My personal favorites are denoted by a +.

GN reader is denoted by a * otherwise assume Fem reader/OC.

Titles colored red are smut or other mature themes, 18+ only.

AstarionxWren Series:

This is a canon-adjacent passion project which focuses on Astarion and Wren, a ranger half-elf with her own backstory. She is based off my first Tav. Do you like angsty slow burns where two broken people find one another and learn to love again? Then this one is for you.

Chapter 1 / Chasing birds to get high (PG) + Chapter 2 / Between comfort and chaos (PG) Chapter 3 / Sunshine and midnight rain (PG13) + Chapter 4 / Protect the flames (M/Gore) Chapter 5 / Blue and silver bonded (PG13) Chapter 6 / Remember how it feels to have a heartbeat (PG13) Chapter 7 / Give peace a chance (M/Smut) + Chapter 8 / Dancing in a burning room (M/Gore) Chapter 9 / Lavender haze (PG-PG13?) Chapter 10 / I want to hold your hand (PG13)

Midnight Chimes Series:

Your parents own a tavern in Baldur’s Gate, and Astarion was somewhat of a regular when you worked at the bar in your younger years. You don’t exactly trust him. Now you’re an apothecary owner based in Waterdeep, and when the two of you crash on the beach, you aren’t exactly thrilled to see him there, too. But things aren’t always what they seem.

1 / The Prologue +

2 / Three years

3 / Luck +

4/ Ringleader

Midwinter Carol Series:

Eirianwen and Astarion were in love before the Ascension ritual changed his behavior toward her. She refused to become a spawn, and they went their separate ways. The story starts when they run into one another fifteen years later; Eirianwen returned to the city to deliver some news to the pale elf. Meanwhile, the Ascendant had a night time visitor that convinced him to change his ways, and he believes his ex-lover might be the key. Will he be able to change after fifteen years of living life as a debauched degenerate?

1 / The Prologue +

2 / The Barrier

3 / The Carriage

4 / The Auction +

5/ The Repeat

6/ The Affliction

7/ The Interrogation

8/ The Scheme

9/ The Snake

AstarionxReader One Shots and Mini-Stories:

Mini-Stories are grouped together in order and denoted by a “Part X” in sequential order after the title. These are in general "timeline" order and follow my (admittedly self-indulgent) headcanon for Spawn Astarion x Tav but can definitely be read as OneShots. All stories are AstarionxReader, some allusions to reader having spellcaster ability but otherwise no real description apart from being female in about 3/4 of the fics.

Act 1-2:

The little things.

Before someone steals your queen

Act 3:

Drunken nights*+

The nail salon

You'll stay still, won't you, little love? +

Post-BG3:

Mermaid whiskey+

Baking Cookies*

Astarion talks in his sleep Part 1*+

My Sun, My Moon Part 2+

Glowing in the Underdark+

Reflections on one year of marriage

Highharvestide Part 1

Highharvestide Part 2

Handmade+

Dadstarion:

The wish spell worked.+

Daddy?

Little bump.

Labor and joy

Skin to skin.

Milk.+

Little lockpick.

Beach babies.+

A growing brood.

Puppy love.

Stuck.

Pre-BG3 / Random / Ascended Astarion OneShots

Midnight chimes / The Original One Shot

Pre-BG3. You’ve known Astarion for years… or at least, you’ve known of him. You think he’s a rake, but one night he changes your mind. The series "Midnight Chimes" started based off this "prologue."

A Midwinter Carol / The Original One Shot

“A Christmas Carol” but Ascended Astarion is Scrooge. He sees you after your break up 15 years ago, and then has an unexpected nighttime visitor showing him past, present, and future. Will he be convinced to change his ways? The series "Midwinter Carol" started based off this "prologue."

Naughty or Nice?

You’re Ascended Astarion’s little toy in the middle of a party. TLDR; he’s tease and a BDSM dom.

Dancing on my own

[plaidos]

Im a trans man who was on the outside circle of a friend group led by another trans man, there was one trans woman in the friend group, and she was dating the guy who kinda led the friend group. I didnt talk to her much, because i didnt talk to anyone there much due to bad experiences with the people in that group (tried to bring up stuff like experiencing dysphoria before I was out and got screamed at by the lead guy for “appropriating trans culture” and how i couldn’t use terms like gender envy to describe how i wanted to look exactly like a cis man youtuber i watched. He also shamed me for my interests which he deemed morally iredeemable (homestuck) before getting back into it himself, and then it was fine) but yeah i didnt talk to her much, and then suddenly i was dragged back into the friend group to do an intervention for the lead guy for a lot of insane things, and the tgirl was the one who asked me to help. When i was known as the only girl in the group, i was the group therapist and mom basically, i didnt want to be, and when i pulled away/came out as a trans man it seemed they replaced me with the tgirl as the group mom. And we started talking. And oh my god. Anything they did to me wa %1000 worse with her. She had to convince a grown as man that being homeless was not in fact a good fall back plan to not being able to find a roommate and no it wasnt easy. But nothing compares to the way she was treated by the main guy she was dating. The things she told me were so awful, she was basically his bangmaid abuse prisoner, he convinced her to move in with him, and then she had to do everything for him because he was “too depressed” he would sit at his computer all day cheating on her with other trans men while she cleaned his whole fucking house, and cooked, and got physically ill from all of the mold that he had let grow on things like dishes. He only really interacted with her when he needed comfort or sex. And he literally forbade her from doing anything sexual herself including masturbating without his permission because “it made him feel like she was like the pedo that groomed him when he was young” any kinks she had she was told were perverted and degenerate, she age regresses which he compared to pedophilia, it was so awful on literally every level, and he had convinced her she was so worthless and unloveable that when i told her she should leave him she said it was fine and they were working on it. It never got better and when they did break up he spread rumors that she had been raping him. She then dated another trans man who did the exact same thing down to the rape acussations when they broke up. And i was one of the only people who tried to convince her to break up with either of them initially, i was the only person who was the first to speak up. Apparently the other men in the group agreed with me they just didnt say anything till after i did then suddenly they were all agreeing. Shes doing better now and her self esteem is slowly recovering, she still talks to that friend group excluding her exes, i dont talk to any of them except her anymore. Anytime i see a trans man say they cant be misogynistic or transmisogynistic i kind of hate them for it. I was literally screamed at for trying to come out because then the group wouldnt have their “token cis girl” yes that was my title in the group, to dump their issues on. And as soon as i pulled away they replaced me with a woman they treated even worse just because she was trans and easy to beat down. Literally the only two women in the group and we were forced into the mom friend role. Its awful and i hate that people cannot acknowledge it happens. Trans men are not magically exempt from misogyny, and the ones who claim they are are lying to themselves and others so they can benefit from it. That first guy? The one who was so awful to both of us? Hes on tumblr and hes a pretty popular fanartist, he reblogs save trans women shit all the time, i hate him so much and i hate people who are compicit to the abuse trans women face, sorry for writing so much

don’t apologise, thanks for having the courage to share your experiences. it makes my heart sink how familiar this story is, the amount of people who have shared fundamentally identical experiences to this — the belief that trans men do not and cannot utilise male privilege above trans women (even in trans spaces) is without a doubt the reason so many are able to get away with this. i’ve heard this same story dozens of times; trans girl who is being physically & sexually abused by her (trans) boyfriend, regularly being raped, yelled at, often hit & abused in countless other ways who then turns around and says “actually she raped me” when she finally has the courage to break it off. And people believe them, because they believe that trans women are all rapists one bad day away from hurting everybody, but trans men are biological victims who can never do any wrong.

im sorry this happened to you. i hope your friend is in a much better situation now. ❤️

[gretavanmoon]

Caught in a Daze

Spinning Now: "Ex" by Aer (2014) (and a little bit of "Wonderin' Why")

Pairing: Sam x OC

Word Count: 12.2k

Warnings: Drinking, Cursing, Manipulation, Cheating, Sadness, Bad Coping Mechanisms, Hella Angst

Smut including: Kissing, Touching, Oral F!Receiving, Fingering, Unprotected Sex, Reluctant Dominance if you squint

+ So these songs aren't ones that were suggested by you guys, but Aer has always been one of my favorite groups, and these two songs have kind of always gone hand in hand for a little storyline playing out in my head. Not much thought went into this, but sad surfer boy Sam just felt too appealing to pass up lol. Give them a listen if you don't know them, they'll make you want to live in a little beach town with nothing better to do than skate & surf <33

◇ ◇ ◇

A glance to your watch lets you know it's nearing eleven, but the bloom of warmth in your chest from your scotch on the rocks is making you forget about your impending 9AM clock-in. The bartender, Marcus, raises an eyebrow at you as you slide the empty glass his way, silently asking for a refill. 

“Same thing, Sammy? Since when did you start drinking scotch, anyway?” he asks, refilling your glass with a handful of ice before pouring the Johnny Walker overtop of it. You return his question with a menacing glare; he knows exactly when you switched from whatever draft IPA was on tap to… this. You watch the ice cubes swirl around in the glass as it fills, keeping silent as your bare foot taps on the wood-slat floor beneath your barstool. “Oh. Right, nevermind,” he responds with a bite of his tongue before being approached by another patron. 

You sigh as you turn in your stool beside the ice machine, running a hand through your saltwater-damp strands, feeling the effects of forgetting to put sunscreen across your cheeks this morning. The icy liquor hits your teeth as you sip from the edge of the glass, letting the fire ignite inside your chest again. The feeling is one you’ve become fond of as of late, but you know the headache that will accompany it will have you kicking yourself in the ass tomorrow. The wind is blowing the palms Eastward, and the warmth of the humid air feels like a storm may be preparing to blow through, if you had to guess. 

Sand is still gritting between your teeth every now and then as you people-watch at the crowded beachfront bar, Donovan’s, watching as locals and tourists alike dance and sing along with the house band. The multicolored spinning lights are bouncing off the faces of the strangers mixed in with your acquaintances, and you suddenly feel a little envious that you aren’t out there enjoying being alive with them. 

A year ago, you would have been right in the middle of it all, stealing the microphone away from the front man, belting out the words to Sweet Caroline or Margaritaville, but now, things are different. Now, you stick to the sidelines in a way that you never have before. Your entire mind, body, and soul have been overtaken by a completely new human being, someone that you aren’t familiar with, drifting further and further away from your true self as the sun rises and sets over the ocean.

Are you happy with yourself?

No, not necessarily. But what the fuck is your other option? You can’t run away to a new place, and you can’t ignore the elephant in the room, so instead of taking control of your life, you let it have you. You bask in the fact that this degenerate side of your lifestyle has become more addictive than any drug you’ve ever done, and you have to admit, it’s more delicious than you could have ever imagined.

◇

A few years ago, now, you’d ridden into this tiny little beach town with your surfboard riding behind you on your baby pink Schwinn bike. You’d come here with nothing but an oversized backpack stuffed full of ratty t-shirts and a few pairs of board shorts, a straw hat, and your lucky koozie in your back pocket. You barely even had more than $300 in your wallet. You’d spent the first week sleeping on the beach and avoiding high-tides, riding around town looking for a job and a place to stay that had a decent roof. 

Finally, after four or five days of searching, you’d landed a job as a surf instructor at the Ten Down surf shop, working Wednesday through Sunday for minimum wage plus tips. You were over the moon, of course, working in the field of what you knew and loved best, the ocean. 

Growing up as the only child of a single dad was oftentimes more difficult than it was enjoyable, but your father took the hardships in stride. He’d raised you alone, working while you were at school and then teaching you how to surf in the evenings. Even if your father struggled, you never knew it. He was a wild character, always the life of the party and had more wisdom in his pinky finger than you had in your whole body. All your memories of him are fond, and he taught you more about life than you’d ever learned on your own. 

He was street smart, intelligent in ways that didn’t make sense to other people. And damn, if he didn’t love the ocean. Loved it so much that he devoted his life to it. And in the end, it was the ocean that took him away from you. Why he thought venturing out during a storm by himself is beyond you still to this day, and you’ve only just now started to forgive him for it. Maybe it had something to do with your mom not being there to help raise you. Maybe he thought he was more powerful than the waves he rode. You’ll never know.

It was only a week after you got hired at Ten Toes that your co-worker Scotty figured out that your home was somewhere up underneath the pier, and asked if you’d like to crash on his couch with him and his housemates. You couldn’t turn down his offer, of course, knowing that if you had to sleep one more night with the sandflies you might actually move back to your shitty hometown. The house was small, but big enough to hold his three roommates and you on their sofa. 

In hindsight, that might have been the absolute best year of your entire life, thus far. Everyone you lived with was on the same level as you… surfing to live, and living to surf. You shared meals, met their families, partied way too much, and spent every single night together watching the sun drift down below the waves from your seats on your boards. You were making money, you were having more fun than you ever imagined possible. You were in a constant state of bliss, that is until she came around and turned your entire world upside down. 

The day your manager introduced her as the new hire at the shop was the first day of the rest of your life. Her sweet and timid hand taking yours into a handshake, taking your breath straight from your lungs as she introduced herself as ‘Cora’. You became enraptured by her, the way her green eyes poked through her lashes, the way her freckles sat perfectly across her tanned face, the way her long hair reached far past her waist…

She was the newest hire at the shop, just like you had been the summer previous, so you understood completely how it could be a little difficult to grasp how things went, there. So you took her under your wing a little, volunteering to show her the ropes and walk her through her probie-period of learning. She was shy at first, hardly giving you more than a few sentences a day. But you committed each of those sentences to your memory, hanging on her every word like they were the last ones you’d ever hear uttered from her perfectly pink lips.

Over the period of that summer, your shy coworker became your good friend, and as the blaze of the summer started to drift into the coolness of Fall, your good friend became the one you ended up falling asleep with under the pier, this time by choice. 

You fell fast and hard for one another, freefalling blindly into what felt like a bottomless pit that the two of you would never tire of floating through. Everything was perfect, she was perfect. Every waking hour was spent with her, surfing, hiking, biking, socializing… and the sleeping hours were spent wrapped up in each other, tangling your limbs and intricately weaving your emotions into what you could only describe as pure and effortless love. 

She came out of her shell once she became comfortable with you, spending more and more time away from her own roommates to crash out on the futon in your room you were able to acquire when one of Scotty’s buddies moved out. For the longest time, it felt like life couldn’t get any better, like you’d truly hit the peak, and there was no way you’d ever be able to be any happier than this, here, with her. 

‘Love, Sammy… you love me?’

‘With everything I am, baby, I swear…’

And you did, you really and truly did love her. All the other failed relationships of your past dulled in comparison to what you had with Cora. You didn’t have to try with her, the ease of your lives came and went just as easily as the waves crashed onto the beach and drifted away again, always unfaltering and headstrong.

You weren’t even upset when she decided to get a second job at the only 24-hour restaurant in town waiting tables during the lunch and dinner shifts. In fact, you were happy, seeing as how the two of you had begun to save up a little money to rent a place of your own. 

You weren’t upset when she began to pick up more shifts there at the restaurant than she did at Ten Down. And you weren’t even pissed when she started bringing home more money than you, even after you’d been employed at the shop for almost two years. You shrugged it all off, because you were a team, in this together, sharing everything under the sun as you survived the world with her. 

You weren’t pissed. Not even in the least. 

Until one night in early summer when you woke up on a Saturday morning ready to rush to the shop for your surf lesson, pulling yourself from the sheets only to realize she wasn’t asleep next to you. You checked the bathroom, the other guys’ bedrooms, outside on the porch… she was nowhere. And her bike wasn’t parked outside. 

Her phone went straight to voicemail over and over and over, and her texts pulled up green as you began to realize her phone was off. Panic set in as your mind began to rush with possibilities of if she was hurt or harmed… thoughts back to last night reminded you that you’d crashed out early after a smoke session with Scotty, sending her a sweet goodnight text that assured her not to work too hard. 

After telling Scotty to call you if he heard back from her, you took off on your bike down the sandy street toward the restaurant, hoping to talk to someone who may have closed with her last night. 

“Nope, they cut a couple of us at 11:30 and sent us home, I haven’t seen her since…” one of her coworkers told you, only sending your panic into a deeper spiral. You called her roommates, her friends, hell, you ever texted her mom to see if anyone had spoken to her since yesterday. But all came up empty handed. It was like she had vanished. 

You decided to ride to the shop to see if by some miraculous chance she’d be there, ready to work her shift. Your feet pedaled hard as you zipped through alleyway shortcuts and across parking lots to get there faster, your heart pounding in your ears as you continually checked your phone for any updates. Your tires slid sideways across the pebble gravel as you let your bike fall against the tin building, and you rushed inside in a huffed mess of nerves and sweaty exhaustion. 

You yelled through the building at your coworkers, announcing your arrival. Your voice was chopped and strained as your hands shook with anticipation. 

“Damon, Marie! Have you guys heard from–” 

You were stopped in your tracks as you met eyes with her, seated at the check-in desk sipping coffee from a bright orange mug.

“What the FUCK! Cora, where– why…where have you been?” you squealed as you approached her, your hand reaching out to touch her to see if you were imagining things. “Why weren’t you at home?” Your last sentence came out as a hushed whisper only meant for her, as your other two coworkers walked away from the scene. 

Her normally chipper and honest demeanor was replaced by something you weren’t familiar with as her eyes fell from yours, her words skipped and uncertain as she tried to explain herself. 

“It’s nothing, Sammy, baby… I– I went over to Cameron’s for drinks with some of the restaurant crew after work last night… I had too many drinks and decided I shouldn’t ride home, shouldn’t walk, it’s nothing, I just…stayed there.” Her story would make sense if she had ever fucking done something like that before. 

“Cameron’s? Baby, you hardly know him, and where is your phone? I’ve been calling all morning…” you pestered, still out of breath. 

“It’s dead, it’s in my bag…” she said, leaving her sentence with no more explanation as she nonchalantly sipped at her coffee. 

“And you didn’t think to charge it? To text me from someone else’s phone to let me know where you were? Fuck, Cora, I almost sent out a search party out for you…” your voice began to raise. “You never–why did you…?” You were at a loss for words as you tried to understand her reasoning. You knew she would have been just as worried if it were you… well, you think. Your blood was boiling for a whole other reason now, as you knew she deliberately chose to keep you in the dark for the entire night, and well into the morning.

She stood from her stool as she glanced to the double glass doors behind you, meeting eyes with her family of three for their early morning surf lessons. She placed her hand gently on the center of your chest as she still avoided eye contact. “Sam, I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking clearly. Please, don’t be mad…” She left you standing there in the middle of the shop like a dumbfounded idiot, her explanation offering you quite literally nothing. Your hands dropped to your sides as you fought with admitting defeat. That was really fucked up of her…

Things only got progressively worse after that. What once was a loving and beautiful sex-fueled relationship turned into one of secrecy and absence, the action of her not returning to your bed each night becoming something you got quite used to. 

Drag-out fights left her crying in your arms, pulling her back into your shanty of a home you’d finally found for $400 a month. Both of you soaked from tears and the rain outside after you told her to just go… only to have her tumbling back into your bed, ravishing each other like it was the first time you’d ever laid your hands on her. 

‘Don’t make me go, Sammy… this is our home… it’s ours…” she’d beg as you fucked into her, sprawled out across the mattress. 

‘I’m not making you go… you keep choosing to leave…”

But yet, the vicious cycle continued. The best thing in your world, the most joy you had ever felt, continuously choosing to stay away for days on end like some type of terrifying nightmare. After so long, you stopped following her location on your phone. You stopped making sure she was okay, wherever she was. You stopped letting her into your house when she’d come back begging for another chance.

Fuck it, you’d decided, losing all the fight you had left in you when you heard through the grapevine that it wasn’t her partying that kept her at Cameron’s, it was Cameron himself. 

That was the fight to end all fights. The worst one yet, when she did everything but admit that she’d been cheating all along. God damnit, you should have known. All the red flags were whipping across your face, your gut screaming at you day in and day out to listen to it. But you didn’t, because you loved her. Until that fight. 

That was a long, long time ago. And after that, she never came back home.

◇

Tonight, as you work on your third scotch and deliberate on going and scooping up a girl on the dancefloor and sneaking her away for a night of revelry, your mind feels more jostled than normal. 

For the past five weeks or so, Cora had inched her way back into your life after a year of separation, friendly at first, and seemingly more mature than when she had left. But, like the addictive drug that she was, she cast her spell across you, hypnotizing you into falling back into bed with her on multiple drunken occasions. 

‘I’m still trying to fucking heal from you Cora, none of this feels right…’

‘I know it doesn’t baby… I’m so sorry… but nobody can love me as good as you… nobody can get me right like you can…do you know what I mean? I still crave you, baby… Don’t tell me you don’t miss me…”

After five backslides, you’d begun to fall into a routine with her again, not giving one single fuck if she was with Cameron or not. She’s still beyond addictive, a substance so disturbingly pure that you swear she isn’t as tainted and devious as she seems. Her entire being is laced with some kind of other material that you swear could end up being your demise. 

The sex is even better than it was before, rounds upon rounds of the most beautiful love you’ve ever made, but you know deep down that it is far from such. There is no love in that home. No laughs shared, no blissful reconnections that end with breakfast in bed. No early morning dates out riding the waves together… No, all you do is indulge in each other’s bodies after nights of too much weed and too much alcohol, using each other to get exactly what you want and nothing else. 

You can’t seem to pull yourself away from her spell, sneaking her into bar bathrooms and out onto the beach to hide her in the dunes, spilling yourself into her without a care of any repercussions. You’re drunk on her. A slave to your impulses, a traitor to your own devices. It hurts. It really fucking hurts. You know your heart still lives within her, but hers is so far gone that you don’t think it has a home at all. And you know for a fact that it doesn’t belong to you, anymore.

You think you’ve successfully managed to slip through the cracks on her list tonight, not having seen her for a few days, now. You don’t frequent this bar in search of her, like many of your friends think you do. You were here first, this is your spot. But apparently it’s hers again, too, much to your simultaneous dismay, and deep-seeded pull to fulfill your dependency on her. It’s a double edged sword any way you toss it. 

“Haven’t seen her tonight, Sammy, maybe you’ve escaped her wrath yet again,” Scotty jokes as he slides into the barstool beside you. Scotty knows everything about you, and you him. You’d never admitted it to one another, but you’d probably call him your best friend. After living and working side by side with him for the past three years, you’ve been forced to like each other no matter how opposite you may be. You both share a love for surfing and it’s a language you both can understand, so when it comes to your fateful relationship with Cora, he gets it. 

“Yeah, maybe so,” you agree with a sigh. “Kinda weird for a Saturday though. She’s usually got her fingers in my belt loops by now.”

Scotty scoffs a laugh, running a hand through his waves. “God damn, you’re still tied up in her eh? You ever gonna let yourself be happy?”

You sigh a deep breath of disappointment in yourself. “Tied up’s not the words, Scott. I’m fully aware that I’m a sick individual who can’t seem to stay the fuck away from her. Why am I like this?” You ask your friend over the loud music. “Should I seek help?”

“No helping you, little brother!” Scotty teases as he rustles the hair on your head. “She must squeeze that thing right,” he jokes. 

“Yeah, she fuckin’ does,” you agree, avoiding eye contact with him. “That’s all it is now, man. Swear.”

“Don’t lie to me, Sammy boy. I know you better than that shit. You telling me you have no emotions when you sleep with her? No feelings anymore?”

You grit your teeth, holding back the truth. “I dunno, I mean… we were serious, man. I loved her. Now that we’re doing this shit again…” Your inner monologue with yourself fights to the death once again, your head and your heart fighting an endless battle with one another. “It just is what it is right now.”

“She still with ol’ boy?” He asks. 

You shrug. “Don’t know. Don’t care,” you say blankly as you take another sip from your glass. 

“So you’re just fucking, now. No strings attached?”

“That’s it, my friend,” the admission feels lifeless, as you know you still hold a candle for her.

“You know she’s using you right? This can’t be healthy for you…I know she broke your fucking heart, man,” Scotty goes on, adding a little empathy to his tone. 

You simmer on his words for a second, knowing they came from a place of complete honesty. He’s entirely right. 

“I’m guilty, I’ll admit to that,” you say. “My heart’s losing but. My body’s winning,” you cheese a smile at him, feeling transparent as you admit to letting a woman use you for just your body. 

“Livin’ the fucking dream, my guy,” Scotty laughs hard as he places a hand on your shoulder, finishing off his beer. “You want another?” He asks as you turn back to lean on the bar, finally feeling the effects of your intoxication hitting you hard. Numbing the pain you so often succumb to. 

“Ah, maybe one more. Gotta open tomorrow,” you say, winking to the bartender to add one more to your tab. 

“You still uh, you still think the deal’s gonna go down?” Scotty asks as he leans his head in closely to yours. 

“Hope so, everything is on track for it to be official by beginning of next season,” you explain. You hadn’t told many people yet, but the original owners of Ten Toes had decided to take an early retirement, and since you and Scotty had become their most trusted and knowledgeable employees, they offered you the business as a partnership. “You think we can do this?”

It’s a large endeavor, and you are terrified beyond belief, but you try your best to see it as the opportunity of a lifetime, taking the reigns of an already successful business and making it into your own. All the pieces are already there, all you need to do is sign your name, and your dream career of being an entrepreneur is yours for the taking. 

Scotty takes his new beer in his hand, leaning it in to cheers against your glass. “I think we can do this.”

You nod at him as the two of you share a moment, letting the realization fall on you once again. “We growing up, finally, Sammy boy?”

Just as his question rings through your ears, you catch sight of her. The pretty blonde who holds every single key to all the chambers of your heart. The one you’d settled down with, the one who could truly care less about anything besides stringing you along for no more benefit than her own agenda. 

She catches your gaze from across the bar, pulling her hair behind her ear as she begins to saunter your way through the crowd.

“I hope so, Scott. Maybe tomorrow, though. Looks like I’m staying an immature asshole for tonight.” You tilt your chin her way, causing Scotty to follow your gaze her way. 

“Fuck. She showed. Thought you might actually get a night of freedom,” Scott complains with the slightest bit of clip to his tone. You know Scotty is worried about you, wants the best for you. And you do, too, but for tonight you’re going to allow yourself to think with the wrong head yet again. And with that tight dress she has on, you’re going to fucking enjoy it, too.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, man,” Scott says with defeat as he slides his half-drank beer mug across the bartop. 

“Night Scott.”

Her eyes haven’t left yours since you caught sight of her, the breeze blowing up the ruffles at the bottom of her stark white dress. She’s making her way closer, her perfectly tanned legs sauntering across the floor as you finally break your gaze, turning to the bartender to order her a drink. 

You feel her presence behind you, the smell of her perfume already wafting across your nose. She pulls the stool that Scott had just inhabited a few inches closer to you, leaning her chin down into the crook of her folded arms.

“Where’s Cameron?” you ask lowly as the bartender slides her glass in front of her.

“Hello to you too, Sam,” she barks from behind her arm, sitting up to squeeze the lime into the vodka.

You cut your eyes her way, knowing that sometimes it wasn’t unlike her to show up at this bar and flirt her way into your embrace, only for Cameron to show up an hour later and whisk all of her attention right away. It’d only happened a couple of times, but still yet, it stung. 

“I said where is Cameron?” you bite, really not feeling like pursuing this if he was going to show up. 

She sighs a quick breath of aggravation. “Not here. Not coming.”

You sip at the scotch that’s discontinued burning your lips, now numbing not only your mouth but your ability to make decisions, too. “You came all the way over here by yourself, again?”

Cora flips her brown leather bag up onto the bar, her multiple keychains hanging off of it clanking against the wooden bar. “Yeah, Sam, I did. I’m actually… back in town, kind of…” she trails off, smoothing her waist-long locks against her hip. 

All the blood rushes from your head, straight into your extremities. Fuck. Back in town?!

“What do you mean kind of?” you ask, beginning to tap your toes against the bottom rung of your stool again. 

“I mean I’m working on getting back over this way… looking for a.. place…” She speaks almost as if she’s embarrassed to be admitting this to you.

“What, things not working out in la la land?” you scoff. 

“Can you cut the shit, Sam?” she slams her glass down. “God, everything has to turn into some bullshit argument with you. Every single time.”

You can feel the resentment billowing up in your chest. You know that she has regret, and she lets it show every time you’re together. But you revel in the fact that she made her bed, now she has to lie in it. And everytime she ends up back in your bedroom, you press the dagger a little further, knowing that hurting her just as much as she hurt you is enough to get you through. Until the next time, of course. 

“I’m not arguing, Cor. Just asking.” You make a point to keep your words short. If an argument is going to happen, again, it won’t be by your hand. 

She huffs. “I just… want to be on my own right now. Figure my shit out. Plus the surf sucks down there, anyway.” You can tell she’s lying. 

You smile behind your glass. “Cameron only lives fifteen minutes away, doll. Can’t imagine it’s that much different.”

“Why are you pushing the Cameron agenda? We’re not even–”

“Not together? Do you think I’m stupid, Cora? People talk, and I talk back. It’s not a fucking mystery,” you run your tongue behind your teeth as you feel the rage boiling up in you again, knowing that this fourth scotch isn’t doing much to help. “Everyone knows what happened, what you did to me. So just admit it, you’re unhappy because the grass wasn’t greener. Now you want your old life back, that what it is?”

You know this isn’t a discussion that needs to be held at this bar. You know that your words are flying a lot faster than you’d intended. But you deserve to bitch.

“Sam, you really don’t want to do this,” Cora hums as you hear the band move from one song to the next, the crowd finally riling up at the late hour.

Your skin is burning with rage at the realization that she’s seriously thinking about moving back here again, after everything that had happened. After knowing what she did to you. Cheated, lied… then allowed herself to play you like a marionette, a puppet she could call on whenever she needed a quick fuck. 

No. No. This is your home, now. 

“No, I kinda do, Cora,” you raise your voice a little, turning your body toward her to face her completely in your stool. You could feel the intoxication slurring your words and blurring your vision. “Admit it. You left me because I obviously wasn’t what you wanted, so you ran away without even having the decency to tell me why… to even break things off before you hopped into bed with Cameron. Admit it! You came here looking for me tonight, didn’t you? Looking for the same goddamned thing you always are.” You were borderline yelling at her, now. But it felt good. It felt good to finally get it all out, the alcohol doing away with all your inhibitions. 

She cowered away a little, sitting back in her seat as her face got more red with each passing second. But you’re smarter than that, this is all part of her act. 

“You think I came here just so you’d take me home again, Sam?”

“Yeah, Cora! What the fuck else would you be here for?! This happens way more than it should. Honestly, it’s slutty behavior, and it’s not a good look on you, it never has been.”

Just as your last word leaves your mouth, you feel the icy stickiness of vodka splashing you across the neck and chest, the lime slice thudding against your stomach as the cold liquid drips down into your lap, followed by a hundred slivers of ice. 

You throw your hands up into the air as you scoot your stool back, catching the attention of a few people seated nearby. “What the fuck, Cora?! Are you fucking crazy??” you scream, brushing off the vodka that dripped down your chin. 

“Fuck you, Sam!” she yells as she grabs her bag and jumps from her seat, rushing down the steps back out onto the beach. You glance to Marcus, wordlessly telling him that you’ll pay your tab tomorrow.

You follow her down the steps out onto the beach that is nearly empty, now. You can feel your feet tripping over themselves as you chase her to the pier, the tide already coming up well above the beams. The wind is whipping furiously, now, and the storm you predicted earlier is most definitely on its way. 

“Cora! Stop!” you shout, ordering her to slow down. 

“NO!” she yells over the howl of the wind that was now blowing tiny specks of sand against your legs. “Leave me be, Sam!”

Finally she makes it to another set of stairs that lead up to the road, not far away from what used to be your home with her. “Cor! Please!” you beg. You don’t know why you’re chasing her, your chest still dripping with the vodka soda she decided to douse you with. Why? Why follow her at all? Fuck her, fuck this… but your legs carry you, yet.

She stomps up the stairs, finally turning and crossing her arms across her chest when she reaches the top. Her eyes were red, but no tears wet her cheeks. “What? What, Sam? What do you want me to say?” she barks. 

Your body is like a magnet to hers, pulling you instantly into her bubble. You reach up and brush away the invisible tear that you know is bound to fall at any second, willing yourself to catch it before it decides to escape. “I want you to fucking admit it to me, Cora! Be fucking real with me for once! Tell me everything, not just the parts of the story that benefit you!”

She rips herself away from your hand, turning and walking through the parking lot. “I fucking can’t Sam! I won’t! I know I’ve screwed everything up, and it’s all my fault!”

You chase after her again. “Why, Cora?! Be a fucking adult and tell me! I deserve at least that much, don’t you think?” Your breath is heaving again as you practically beg her to just speak to you.

She continues running through the lot and down the street as the clouds continue to push across the dark sky, threatening rain. You can smell it in the air as a few flashes of lightning flash over the sea again. 

She finally stops at her car, standing beside it as she furiously tries to dig her keys from the bottom of the bag. You finally catch up, maneuvering your body to stand between her and the door. She’s in full-on sobs, now, choking back the cry that you’ve seen her put herself through time and time again. “Let me go, Sam,” she begs through clipped chokes.

“No. You’re going to talk to me. I’m–I’m sorry I called you… that. I shouldn’t have said that, and I deserve to wear this fucking vodka,” you say reluctantly as you brush it off you again. “I’m not letting you into this car until you talk to me. Tell me the truth. Once and for all, Cora.” You could feel the sadness sticking in your throat, all the old emotion you had for her bubbling up again. Old love is a strange thing, the way it intertwines itself in your bones, strong and stoic until the person that shared it with you comes back and makes it fragile again. Like cracked glass, you begin to shatter for her. 

“Tell me you cheated on me. Just say it. Tell me you love him more than you ever loved me, and I’ll let you go,” you say with defeat, hot tears filling your eyes. “I just need to hear it, please… I can’t do this anymore, Cor…”

Her hands come up to cover her eyes as she turns and paces, your final request hitting her as hard as it hit you. You can’t do this any more, you can’t chase her for months on end, only for her to race back into the arms of someone else. It’s time to end it, if it’s going to end at all. Still, even after all this, you’d do anything for her. 

Finally she gets herself together again, standing tall and sturdy before you. You watch as her hands slowly make their way to wrap around your waist, her chest still heaving, too. Just the feeling of her skin on yours is enough to make every muscle in your body relax. Her hands gripping into your back, her cheek pressed to your still-soaked chest. “I’m sorry, Sammy. I’m so sorry…” she cries.

“Sorry for what, Cora? Please…”

Her arms tighten around you as her mouth finds your neck. “Please don’t make me say it… I can’t stay away from you…”

You slump with defeat, but the wet kisses she’s started to lay onto your throat begin to cloud your judgment. “Please say it, baby. Just be honest with me for fucking once…”

Her teeth bite into your ear lobe making you hiss, and she leans into you, pressing her core right against you. God damn her. It isn’t fair, all the times you’ve let her get the best of you, using you and manipulating your feelings. She knows all your weaknesses, and your most prominent one is her. Your eyes peep open through the tears, seeing the palms still blowing sideways in the wind. It’s going to pour at any second. 

Her hand snakes its way between you as she takes your already hardening dick in her palm, not caring if anyone is even around to see. Fuck her and her ability to melt you into putty every single fucking time. “Cora…” you grit as she squeezes you in her hand. “Tell me you still want me…”

“I think it’s pretty fucking obvious, isn’t it baby?” she laughs through a sob. “I want you, I’ve always wanted you.” 

You can’t stop yourself from grabbing her face forcefully in your hands, pressing her tear-soaked lips to yours in a fiery and wanting kiss. Her nails grip into your back, raking across it and back over your stomach as she continues to squeeze your still-covered cock. Your mind is racing with thoughts, but what’s fucking new? Here we go again…

Raindrops begin to patter on your head and on the hood of her car as loud thunder rumbles in the distance. You kiss her hard, just like you always do after some time apart. She’s delicious in every sense of the word, her skin still glowing from the sunscreen oil she applied to her shoulders earlier in the day. The sand still caked on her long blonde strands, the taste of the lime still sour on her tongue. Everything about her, delectable and addictive, and once again, you can feel yourself dancing with the devil.

“This is such a fucking grey area, Cora. I hate when you do this to me…” you mumble as you break away, the rain falling harder, now. 

“Let me make you happy, Sammy, please. That’s all I ever want,” she pleads, kneading you in her hand. 

You grip her shoulder, turning her to put her back against her car door, switching places completely. You push her back, pinning her against the door. You can feel the sexual tension rising with each passing second as you grit your jaw, wanting nothing more than to devour her right here where you stand. “What would make me happy is if you tell me the truth. But that’s not going to fucking happen, is it?” you ask, raking your eyes over her face.

“The truth is that I’m a fucking fool for you, Sam. And I always will be,” she admits, her teeth biting at your lip as the two of you pant into one another, the need growing heavier by the minute. You thrust your hips into her touch, your body begging you do something.

“I don’t think you’re the fool here, Cora.” The rain begins to fall in giant beads, bouncing off the metal car hood as the thunder rips through the sky. “Park across the street and come meet me up in the shower,” you order her as your hand grips her ass, pulling her even closer into you. 

“Are you su–”

“Don’t make me think about it,” you say as the rain begins to soak through your shirt. “Just get in the car.”

◇

You know the hot water is going to sober you, and the last thing you need right now is a clear head. You strip the soaked shirt from your limbs before you even make it inside your house, flicking the kitchen light on as you search the cabinet for a glass. You pull the scotch down from the top of the refrigerator, pouring a few fingers as you take a long drink, letting the liquor get you back where you needed to be. This is all so fucked... You feel so fucking weak.

You reach into the freezer and grab the ice tray, popping a few cubes free and dropping them into your drink. You roll your neck on your shoulders as you take a deep breath, making your way upstairs to the bathroom. 

You eye yourself in the mirror as you push your hair back from your shoulders, and your reflection meets you with a disapproving look. As the years go on, you notice yourself looking more and more like your father, his pointed features becoming more apparent as you mature toward the age he was when he passed. Your eyes are red, your skin is blotchy, and your expression is way past defeated, knowing that here you are again, about to drunkenly make the same mistake you’ve made time and time again. 

You can still feel the scratches she left behind on your skin as you step into the steamy shower, the hot water stinging where her fingernails tore at your skin. The feeling of her hand on you over your shorts, the remnant taste of the lime on her tongue. You’re still so attached and devoted to her, when all she’s ever done is give you quite literally, nothing. You’re the fool.

After a few minutes of standing motionless in the water, you hear your bathroom door creak open, and her footsteps enter the small room. 

“S’me,” she mutters, and you kick yourself into gear.

“Get in here,” you demand, your attitude on one hundred as you surprise even yourself. You hear her begin to undress. 

The curtain pulls back, revealing her completely nude self as she steps in to join you in the shower. “Hey…” she says meekly as you fill your hand with shampoo. 

“Hey.”

You step to the side, letting her get under the water. You watch as chill bumps cover her body as her temperature adjusts, her head falling back to soak her hair as she shudders a little. You watch her perfect tits bob a little as her arms reach back to wet her hair, her nipples hardening as the water rushes over them. Your eyes drift down to her chest, her stomach… her tan lines more apparent now in the dim lighting of the bathroom. Perfect. Always so perfect.

She finally wipes the water from her eyes as she steps out from the streams, and you motion for her to turn around as you put the shampoo from your hand into her hair, beginning to massage it softly into her scalp. 

After a few seconds, she finally speaks. “Why’re you so good to me, Sammy? After everything…after me treating you the way that I do…?”

Her words take the breath from your lungs, making you second guess this whole thing. “I think you know why, baby.”

“But I don’t deserve your attention, much less for you to be washing my hair for me.”

You bite back what you want to say, instead channeling your dad and his wisdom. “Sometimes showing your love selflessly to someone who doesn’t even want it means more to them than telling them that you do. You might not remember all the times I told you how much I loved you, but you’ll probably remember me showing it.”

It’s silent for a beat as your fingertips rub into her scalp. 

“Loved,” she murmurs.

“What?” 

“You said loved. Do you not…”

Ah, fuck. 

You swallow hard, unsure how to even answer that question. “I don’t know what you even want to call it anymore, Cora. It’s… a mess, you know?” You level with her. You feel her nod as you turn her to rinse her hair. 

As you meet her face again, she avoids your gaze as her eyes jump to the ceiling, blinking away guilty tears. Maybe she’s finally beginning to understand…

“Of course I still feel something for you, I probably always will. We spent years together. Things like that don’t go away in the blink of an eye. But, you mistreated me, Cora. And now you won’t even admit to it. You don’t even want to be civil enough to give me the benefit of knowing the truth. And that tells me… maybe you never even loved me back in the first place.” Your words of admission make her bite both of her lips in, her chin beginning to shake as she fights back the tears again. Her eyes stay trained on the ceiling above you. 

“I did, Sammy. I swear I did. I do…” she whispers. 

You shake your head as the last of the bubbles fall from her strands. “No. See, no. You can’t love me anymore. You can’t love me and then sneak back into the sheets with someone else. It doesn’t work that way. Don’t you understand that?”

She wipes the water from her face again, her eyes red with disappointment in herself, but you hold steady. “What we had, it was good. It was perfect. I wanted it all with you, Cora. I wanted the flower pots on the porch, the planning dinner while we make breakfast, the surfing from the time the sun comes up until it goes down again. Sharing a home with you, sharing a closet, sharing my deepest fears and all my memories… you were it. It was going to be you from then on out. But you tarnished it. All my trust in you is gone, especially now since you still won’t even give me what I need. I need reciprocation. You don’t bring me happiness anymore. You bring me doubt, and suffering, and bad decisions… So no. You can’t love me. I…I can’t let you.”

She stays silent as your words sink in, the water now steaming up the air between you. 

“...Yet here I am in your shower with you. In our old home. That you invited me back to, knowing and going along with the exact reason I came here in the first place…” she shakes her head. “You’re just as helpless as I am, Sammy…”

She steps closer, gently craning her neck to meet your lips again. What started as a peck, a barely-there tap that spoke more words than you needed it to, quickly turns into a rushed and fervent kiss, your tongues dancing and fighting against one another as her hands grip into your damp hair. She’s so completely overwhelming to you. You’re unable to even form thoughts as you feel her lips on yours, so velvety and sweet. Four hands, already gripping and pulling at each other again, her breasts pressed against your chest as they slide over you. 

“Tell me, Sammy…” she pulls away. “Do you still crave me? Do you still think about me when you lay down at night?”

Her hand grasps at your hair, pulling it back as she starts in on your throat again. The feeling of her, so addictive and so blinding. Her mouth and tongue gliding against your skin as the hot shower continues to pour over you making you dizzy as that last shot of scotch begins to soak into your bloodstream, giving you just the right amount of confidence to get through this again. 

You swallow and bite back a moan at the feeling of her mouth on you. “Of course I do,” you admit, as much as you don’t want to. 

“Have you ever had someone fuck you the way I did? The way I do?” she goes on, her lips making their way down your shoulder. 

You refuse to answer, knowing that all she’s doing is using her siren song to lure you back to right where she wants you. But the funny part about it all is that you’ve already succumbed to it.

Instead of speaking, you slip your hand between her folds, making her entire body quiver as your finger finds her clit within seconds. She steps her feet apart a little as you pull her wetness up, coating her all over. “God, Sam…” she purrs as her head falls back. You move your hand to let your thumb go to work, wasting no time in letting your fingers enter her completely. Everything happens fast, your sexual pull to her undeniable and unable to be ignored. She cries out, her sounds bouncing off the plexiglass walls of your small shower. 

Her hand finds your dick again, stroking it right in time with the circles of your thumb against her. You grit your teeth, sending your middle two fingers even deeper inside of her, flicking your fingers against her most sensitive spot. “Oh my god…” she cries again, her hand gripping hard on your shoulder to hold herself up. 

You know how her body works, and you know that she is liable to get off at any second, so you drop to your knees, knowing that you’d do anything in the world to taste her release on your tongue right now. You’re blinded by desire for her, her words from earlier  falling completely to the wayside. 

You pull her leg over your shoulder while she leans with her back against the wall, her hands ruffling hard into the roots of your hair again. “Baby, fuckkkk…” she wails as you let your tongue dip into her, pressing it as deeply as it will go. The water is falling directly onto your face, and you feel like you might be drowning, but you don’t need air right now. If you’re going to suffocate, you’re going to suffocate just like this. 

Her hips jut forward onto your face, rolling slowly as she begins to corner your tongue right where she wants it. If she’s going to try to say she still loves you, you’re going to make her eat her words. You reach one hand behind her, gripping at her ass as you feel her body begin to shake. You knead your fingers into the muscle, pulling her further onto your mouth, flicking your tongue against her clit as you add just the right amount of suction. You pull your hand away, signaling with the two fingers that were just buried inside her to come on, let you have it. 

“That what you want baby? Want me to come on your face?” she asks, panting through her words as she pulls your hair incredibly tight. 

“Mhmm…” you reply, making sure to vibrate the word directly on her clit. 

Her hands hold your head in place as you feel her stomach muscles tighten, and you do all that you can to hold her upright. Finally you feel her letting go, coating your face and tongue as she mutters obscenities into the thick air. Her hips tremble in your hold, but the taste of her is immaculate, the sight of her letting go for you forever being burned into your brain. 

You hate it. You hate this.

With one final pull of your tongue across her, you stand back up, taking her tits in your hands as you delve your face onto her collarbone, sucking hard at the skin purposefully leaving behind a bright pink cherry hickey. “There. See if Cameron notices that tomorrow,” you jerk, knowing that it will piss her off. 

“Fuck off, Sam. Are you fucking serious?” she bites as her words come through a little more heated than the blissful expression her face gives. 

“Yeah, I’m fucking serious. Now, do you want me to fuck you in here, or on the bed?” you ask, pressing a hand to her stomach to push her against the wall again. 

“I–I…”

“No, none of that. Tell me what you want,” you reply with a little bit of a slur, watching as her eyes glint with surprise. 

“Fine,” she breathes. “Both.”

“Both? Fuck, baby. You’d think after how the night has gone you’d ask for the bare minimum, but. God, pulling more out of me than I even bargained for. Just like always, huh?”

You know you’re being a jackass, but you really don’t care. If you’re only fucking her for the sake of it, and she isn’t going to give you the truth you’ve been searching for, might as well do it up, right?

“Spoiled. Always so fucking spoiled,” you bite again.

“Sam…”

“Shh. Stop talking. Turn around. The only word I want to hear is my name leaving your mouth,” you demand.

She does what you ask as she turns around and faces the wall, pressing her cheek up against it as you pat between her thighs, having her step apart a bit as you take yourself in your hand, pumping a few times before lining up with her. You take a second to pull her hair to the side, sucking her skin into your mouth again as you finally push yourself into her. The angle isn’t the best, but you make it work, bending your knees a little to press into her as far as you can. 

“Motherfuck, baby…” she coos as you thrust further inside, savoring the feeling of her wetness coating you once again. 

“Hmm-mm. My name, baby,” you say as she begins to arch her back a little, leaning away from the wall to give you deeper access. Her right hand comes back to pull at her own asscheek, stretching the skin as she cuts her eyes at you.

“S-Sam…mmy…” she utters as you begin to furiously pound into her, the muscles of her ass like shockwaves across water.

“There it is, baby, that’s all I wanna hear…” you grunt as you gather up the hair that’s splayed down her back, picking it up into your hand and wrapping it around your fist.

You use it as leverage to arch her back further as you let your other hand slap across her ass, the sound of the smack startling her into a fit of needing moans. “Fuck, Cor… you feel so fucking good...just like always…” you say as your hips continue into her, messy and slick as the water continues to make everything a soaked mess. 

You swear you could do this for the rest of forever, but even through the thickness of the air around you, and through the clouds clogging up your inebriated mind, something about sex with her suddenly feels different. Even in the heat of teetering on the edge of an orgasm, you feel like the earth has shifted, a giant crevice metaphorically forming in the ground between the two of you, separating you by what felt like miles.

Something is off. No, not off. Gone.

Completely just… gone. Just like that. 

You look down at the gorgeous body of the only one who has ever made your heart beat fast, and suddenly you see her just as she is– a woman.

A woman who has lied to you, cheated on you, tested your patience and made you question your every move. Manipulated you, used you in every sense of the word. And though she told you tonight that she still loves you, could you even trust her enough for it to be the truth?

This isn’t what you want. This isn’t even close to the happiness you know you deserve. Scotty is right. He’s always been right. 

But as your body and human instinct begin to defeat the thoughts rushing your mind, you shift gears, pulling her hair up to meet her ear with your mouth. 

“You said both, right?”

You pull yourself out of her, hearing her cry out at the loss of contact. You reach behind you and turn the water off, reaching outside of the curtain to grab two towels. You toss one to her and dry yourself off a little with the other, quickly running it through your hair as you rip the curtain open. “Hurry up, go get on the bed.”

She gives you a side glance as she squeezes the water from her hair, stepping out and into the bedroom. You follow her, your bodies still dripping wet and red from the heat of the water. If you’re going to do this for what you’re deciding is going to be the last time, you’re going to do it right. 

“I said on the bed,” you bite as you watch her hesitate. “This used to be your house, why are you being shy?”

“I… I don’t know, you’ve never really acted like this before, just… I picked out this comforter, and you still have it…”

You stand for a second as the flashes of lightning fill the room, the sound of the rain absolutely pounding on your metal roof. You shrug, unknowing of what else to really say. “I mean, why would I get another comforter?”

She shrugs again as she sits down on the bed, slowly inching herself backwards as you watch her hair drip onto the sage green material she once was in love with. 

“Look, Cora, you came here to hook up, right? Are we gonna finish up, or what?” your tone surprises you, you don’t even really know who you are right now. And she’s right, you’ve never really acted like this before. But in all honesty, this is the very first time ever that you feel like getting yours, so she can leave. And never come back. You’re washing your hands of this bullshit. The rose-colored glasses are being thrown into the fire, and you don’t even care to stick around and watch them melt.

“Yeah, Sammy. Come here… show me what I’ve been missing,” she says with a pull of her pointer finger. 

You damn near roll her eyes at her. What she’s been missing? Is she fucking serious?

You shake your head and scoff, kneeling down to crawl across the messy bed covers when an idea pops into your head. 

Love, huh?

You can make love…

You lean down, pressing slow, sweet kisses to the insides of her thighs as you move from there to her still-dripping cunt again. You let your tongue ghost over it again, making her shiver at the contact that you’d so graciously blessed her with earlier. “You cold, babe? Want to get under the covers?”

She nods her head, and you pull the puffy green cover over the two of you, instantly warming the chilled air around you. “That better?” you ask, trying to throw on the charm.

You kiss all over her body, gently running your tongue over the places you know will make her shiver and squirm, paying special attention to take your time. Your hands rub into her as your tongue drifts, making your way up her body slowly as the thunder rolls in the background. You make your way up to kiss her, letting your lips dance passionately across hers as you feel her body beginning to want more from you. She cranes up, her hips jutting as you can tell she’s getting antsy. Her hands finally wrap around your waist, pulling you roughly into her. 

“Want you, Sammy…please…” she begs as she breaks away from the kiss. 

“Patience, baby… you want me to show you?” you ask, leaving the question open-ended on purpose, the sentiment of love suddenly feeling like poison in your mouth. 

She nods hard, wrapping one hand around your neck, and the other around your dick, massaging her hand up and down the shaft as she tickles her fingertips around the head. It makes you shudder, and you feel yourself become impossibly hard in her hand. 

You reach down and roll your fingers through her folds again, making sure she’s still where she needs to be. “So wet for me, baby… always so soaked. You think about me sometimes, huh? Think about me and get all excited…make yourself get like this…” you breathe into her ear, your voice just a whisper as you taunt her. 

“Yes, baby. Always, all the time… miss you so bad…” she says, but you hear no ounce of honesty in her tone. None. 

Finally, her hand guides you to her opening, and you press forward again, filling her slowly at this new angle as her head shoots backward into the pillow, her mouth gaping open as you enter her, inch by delicious inch. You grit your teeth as you watch her face in awe, her doe eyes finally coming down to meet yours as you hit the hilt.

“Baby, god, please…” she groans, pulling hard at your hips. Watching her already falling apart like this is exactly what you want. You begin to slowly fuck into her, rolling your hips deviously slow as you rock into her, paying special attention to take this slowly again. 

You back up, pulling her knees up to her chest and holding them there as you roll your hips into her again, hitting her at another impossibly deep angle, low and slow. “Jesus Sam… you’re so fucking good, baby… please keep going…” her moans are pleading and her eyes flit open and closed; you can tell she’s absolutely enjoying every single second of this. 

You’re enjoying it, too, but that crevice in the ground is only becoming wider, sending you further and further away from feeling any type of connection with her. Suddenly you’re on another planet completely.

You let her legs fall to the sides again as you go back to missionary, resting either elbow on the sides of her head, putting you face to face again. You take her in a kiss again, licking your tongue into her mouth as you let it quiet her whimpers. 

“Like this baby? This how you like it?” you ask, rolling your hips with even more passionate force.

“Mhmm.. yeah… just like this… just me and you…” she pleads, taking her tits into her hands as her breath picks up. 

You lean back again and cross one of her legs diagonally between you, hitting her from the side now. Her hands grip into the sheets as you hear the wetness between your skin smacking together, her breathing picking up significantly. “Oh my godddd, what the fuck…” she cries, her body absolutely falling apart for you. But still, you hold strong, not letting any emotion at all come through. And to your continued surprise, it's fairly easy. 

“Roll to your belly,” you demand, and you pull out just long enough for her to do so. You enter her again, and she stays flattened against the mattress. You maneuver her legs so that they’re closed together, making her feel ten times tighter than she did before. You fall against her back, letting your body weight do most of the work as you continue quick thrusts, now.

After a few minutes, you watch as her hands grip into the comforter again, holding on for dear life as she whines, turning her head sideways to look at you. For the first time in your life with her, you see love in her eyes, but not the kind that you yearned for so heavily. Not the kind that was going to give you everlong happiness. 

“Sammy… I’m close baby…” she says, and you feel her walls fluttering around you. You reach a hand under her, finding her clit again and rolling it under your middle finger, giving her double stimulation as you continue from the back. “Oh my god please, yes…” she cries, and within seconds, her body is silent and shaking as she hits her peak, her breath hitching in her throat as she does so.

You aren’t far behind, the sound of her getting off striking a chord deep within you to carnally follow after her. But you are careful. 

You deliver a few especially forced and quick thrusts before pulling all the way out, letting yourself go across her back. You pump yourself with your hand as you make sure you finish all the way, still yet feeling nothing at all for the woman beneath you. Had you finally broken her spell?

You collapse beside her, lying on your back so as not to get the bed too messy. You’re panting and tired, fanning yourself with your hands as you feel the humidity from the storm rolling in through the open windows. After a few seconds of catching your breath, you sit up and go into the bathroom to get her a warm washcloth, returning within seconds to get her cleaned up. 

“Thanks, Sammy,” she mutters, her tone very different than it was just a few minutes ago. She rolls over to face you, pulling the thick blankets over her body. You both lie there in silence for a few minutes as you contemplate what to do, now feeling a little clarity from the alcohol leaving your system. 

“Why did you… ya know…” she asks shyly. 

“What?”

“Why did you pull out?” she asks, taking you by surprise. 

“Well, you’re not my girlfriend anymore, so. Think that’s a good reason.” You’re glad you’re able to keep up the careless demeanor that so graciously fell upon you earlier. 

She’s stunned silent for a second. “I’m not anybody’s girlfriend, Sam.”

You laugh through your nose, the notion of her answering part of your request only just now coming from her. “Hah, good to know. Fucking two hours late.”

“How many times do I have to say I’m sorry before you’ll believe me?” she asks, rolling up to lean on her elbows. 

“I guess as many times as you want to say it, I don’t know,” you quip, not really feeling like entertaining this same goddamned conversation for the thousandth time. 

“Well,” she says lowly, “I am. And I’ll keep saying it. For as long as it takes.” You bite your tongue before looking into her eyes, her bright green irises staring back at you with absolutely zero emotion. She’s still not telling the truth. She’ll never fucking tell you the truth.

“Yeah, here’s the thing, Cora.” You roll over to lean up on your elbows, too. “You can say you’re sorry a million times, but it doesn’t mean shit when you don’t have the intention of changing your behavior. I’ve begged you to be real with me, and I’ve never gotten it. I haven’t gotten your true self in ages, Cor. I don’t even know who you are anymore. I’ve given you a hundred chances. And the fact that you want to move back here is a little unsettling for me, to be honest. Scotty and I are about to inherit the business, and I swear to god, I can’t have a distraction like you around if I’m going to run this business the way it deserves. I know you’re not being honest with me. I know you, and I feel like I know you even less now. I deserve happiness. I deserve to get what I give, and I know you’re not the person to give it to me. I’m not perfect by any means, but at least I’m willing to listen, and change my ways if I need to. I’m frankly tired of the back and forth, Cor. I’m exhausted. Showing you how much I care for you and then you rushing back to Cameron, it’s not what I want. It’s never gonna be what I want.”

“Why do you always have to bring up Cameron, Sam?!”

You smile, her actions proving exactly what you intended them to.

“Because you becoming defensive when I mentioned him just now instead of becoming defensive of literally all the other shit I just said… really put it into perspective. That’s all I needed to hear.” 

“What the fuck do you mean?!” she cries, her voice strangled. 

“I mean, you’re practically numb to all the other shit I said until I bring him up. Only then do you try to defend yourself. Only then do you even hint at being truthful with me. I’m fuckin’ done, Cora.”

You begin to stand from the bed, grabbing a t-shirt from the closet and throwing it her way before pulling on a pair of shorts. 

“That’s not what I mean, Sam! You know this! Where are you going, are you leaving?” she says in succession. 

You run your fingers through your hair, turning back to look at the one who was once the love of your life still naked in your bed, begging you to come back, but all you can feel is the couch downstairs calling your name. 

“You can sleep here, I work early tomorrow. Just make sure you lock the door behind you when you leave,” you say as you open your bedroom door, listening as she calls your name from behind you over and over until the sound of the rain drowns her out.

It fucking hurts, it really does. But the rush of relief you get as you make your way down the steps and into your living room is almost enough to knock you over. Finally. Finally… your pull to her no longer feels like a rope wrapped tightly around your hands. Having sex with her just now brought you a disconnect that you’ve never experienced before. No longer did it feel like she was woven into the deepest depths of your soul, but instead she was just a section of your life that you experienced. And now, you’re ready to move past it. 

Did that really just fucking happen? Did you finally do it? 

You curl up on your cozy couch as you listen to the heavy rain now turn into a drizzle, the orange glow from your salt lamp in the corner making you feel more at home in your house than you ever have. You know you’re about to get the best sleep you’ve ever gotten, dreaming about something other than her haunting your mind. You feel like the whole world is now at your fingertips, ready to be taken advantage of, and lived.

◇

As your bare feet struggle to stand on the wooden bartop, you balance yourself in the center, leaning back to check with Scotty and Marcus. 

“How’s that? Is it dead-center?” you ask as you bite a nail between your teeth, a hammer in one hand while you hold on to the ceiling with the other.

“Little to the left! There…there! Perfect!” Marcus yells out as you position the nail in the saltwater-worn wood of the bar. You pound the nail in, and grip the string that’s fastened securely on the back of the old photo frame. You hang it over the nail, making sure the picture is hanging balanced and straight. 

You hop backwards down off of the bar, standing back with the other two as you place your hands on your hips. “Damn, that does look good, doesn’t it?” you agree as you look at the photo of you and your dad hanging perfectly over the bar, you about 9 or 10, his hand on your shoulder as you pose with your very first surf board.

“He would have loved it, my man,” Scotty says with a pat to your back. “I never even met him, but I know he would have.”

You nod. “Yeah, thanks for letting me put that up, Marcus. I’ll see it more here than I will at home…” you tease as you join Scotty in your respective bar stools.

“That’s an understatement,” Marcus agrees with a laugh. “You two are here more than I am.”

Cora never came back downstairs that night, nor did you go up to tell her goodbye when you left for work that next morning. She didn’t leave any notes, send you any texts… and when the day came for you and Scotty to sign the paperwork setting you up for the rest of your lives, she was the absolute last person on your mind. 

She never came back into town, either. If you had to guess, she probably moved the complete opposite way, much to your delight.

Now, you don’t think of her when you’re out on the water, you don’t think of her when you smell her favorite sunscreen. She’s still a memory, of course, and if she called you today saying she needed you to fix her bike or sell her a new board, you would. But that would be the end of it. 

You’ve taught yourself what it means to be loved by yourself, and yourself alone… knowing that at the end of the day, you’re the one that has to comfort yourself to sleep, and no one is going to love you more than you. It’s fucking corny, you know, thinking of life in that way. But it makes sense, and fuck, if it isn’t liberating.

Life’s peaceful air feels different now. Even surfing feels more fulfilling than it ever has. You’re headstrong, you’re confident. You feel like you’ve gained more knowledge and wisdom from owning this business than you ever thought you would, all in part to the memory of your dad, and what would have made him proud. 

Even Scotty is proud of you, your best friend on earth. The two of you together are a force, bringing in more money to the company than it had ever seen before. You’d never tell anyone that, though. And you’ll never flaunt it. 

You’ll just sit at Donovan’s every night in your bar stool beside the ice machine, laughing with Scotty as you scream Sweet Caroline, and drink anything but scotch.

◇ ◇ ◇

xoxoxo J

@wetkleenex-gvf @britney-gvf @gretas-sweat @josh-iamyour-mama @highway-tuna @bestfriendsallstrungout @jjwasneverhere @gretavanbrie @writingcold @thewritingbeforesunrise @myleftsock @edgingthedarkness @its-interesting-van-kleep @jjsooobsessed @ageofcj @starcatcher-jake @capnjaket @cozyjakey @jakekiszkapunchmeintheface @stardustjake @dancingcarbon @builtbybrokenbells @gretavangroupie

[kyra0aryk]

It just hit midnight, meaning it's now Trans Day of Visibility. I came out as trans to most of the world on social media 1 year ago. I wrote this tonight while kinda tipsy and introspective, and maybe more suited for y'all than the normies on facebook.

.

.

.

A year(+) in transness

it's been 1 year since I came out to everyone on social media.

It's been 1 year (and one week) of starting hormones

It's been 1 year of self discovery, self actualization, self recognition.

Coming out and being trans saved my life.  It's been a crazy year with so many changes and so many things to process. In one year I've moved into a new apartment, finalized my very amicable divorce with my best friend forever and ex wife (lolol), I've found so many new friends, a lot of love (t4t is love, t4t is life), starting creative endeavors like working as the director of photography for an entirely trans produced written acted webseries that will start shooting at the end of April. I've struggled through transphobic moments and ideology, I've dealt with the stares and extended looks, the silent judgment as I walk through target or the gas station.

So many people see transness as something to fix, something to cure, something that is unbecoming, something that is degenerate.

But in my year of being out and proud of my trans identity, I've found that I am not out to transition to pass as a cis-woman. I don't give a fuck about societal norms of beauty or sexual standards. Being trans is innately beautiful in itself. I've found peace in the idea and fact that most of you (yes you, I'm speaking directly to you) will see me as a 'genderfucked girl thing who used to be a boy'. I hope that you can see me and accept me as the woman I am, but I know that's not possible with the social norms and politically brainwashed climate we live in.

I've come to peace with your stares and silent judgment. 

I came out as transgender so I could be the hot genderfucked transgirl I am. If that makes you uncomfy, welp I'm sorry. I exist. We exist. We always have. We always will. And we aren't out to fit neatly into your norms.

[wumblr]

there's this pattern of behavior among, oh, i don't know, my ex, mullenweg, musk, bezos, trump, gaetz, degeneres -- where they don't care one bit about a single other person in the world, but they care A LOT, AN IRRATIONAL AMOUNT, about what other people think of them. like absolute self absorption to the point of dehumanizing others. the only utility other people have is to reflect a positive view of them back to themselves

and it's the most delusionally deranged self-inconsistent thing, like why do you care what other people think if all 8 billion of them are disposable to you, insubstantial, lacking internality, not worth as much as you? like it's a tacit admission that their persona is all a ruse and a performance (i mean all personae are but i think most people are not so disingenuous). the only purpose other people could possibly ever serve is a barometric gauge of how well they're fooling all the other trifling, insubstantial human beings

i mean i guess that's kind of just entitlement, isn't it. they perceive themselves to be entitled to treat everyone like shit and still be lauded and celebrated as a good person. anyway this is why you always see them like... starting meme repost pages. doing improv. which is i think inherently neutral but like. you know the type i'm talking about, right. there's a difference between someone who reposts jokes and someone who reposts jokes because they're desperate to be the center of attention. but like they're lacking the crucial insight to apprehend the fact that being funny or likeable requires life experience, which is. guess what. made of interactions with other people. and they think they're having those but they can only see themselves in other people. no wonder they're cruel at the drop of a hat

[obsessedtomone]

Unravel Yourself Before Me ⛓️ Chapter 8 - Close Call▸Shigaraki x femReader

Chapter Summary:

◤ From the moment he saw you in the convenience store, he’d already labeled you as a major pain in the ass.

The way you stared back at him in disgust—the way everyone fucking stared at him—like he was some piece of garbage to be thrown out, made him want to strangle you until he saw the light leaving your eyes. 

You must’ve thought you were so fucking cool, talking back to him when you had no clue who he was or what he’s capable of.

Just another one of those irritating clueless fucking NPCs. ◢ Setting: University AU - No quirks (unless degenerate personalities count) Tags: Slow burn, Eventual Smut, Unhealthy/Toxic Relationships, Humiliation, Mentally Ill Reader, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to ??? Warning: Dead Dove – Do Not Eat | Mind the tags TW: Implied Su/Self H, Dubcon, Reader has a super shitty past like actually, Shigaraki Tomura is his own warning.

AO3 Crosspost | Chain Divider by firefly-graphics

Chapters: One • Two • Three • Four • Five • Six • Seven • Eight • Nine

Chapter 8 - Close Call

Time is passing by, leaving you behind. 

You know that because you’ve been watching the changing colors seeping through the old glass panels of your dirty windows, dancing against your almost-white walls. 

Sometimes, the fog in your cerebrum would lift long enough for you to hear things like motorcycles racing down the empty streets. Or the neighbors arguing with each other, somewhere alongside the building.

You don’t remember when or how, but your head ended up hanging off of your bed and you’re now boring holes into the floor with those empty eyes of yours. Maybe you’re lucky enough to form a blood clot soon, have a stroke and finally get away from this shithole people call life. On better days you’d snort at the thought, but today is not one of those. 

Today, you feel empty.

Somewhere deep down, you think you feel hungry too. 

When did you eat last? 

You’ve been laying on your bed like this for hours, maybe even days, just wasting away, tuning in and out of thinking, occasionally interrupted by the sound of your friend trying to reach you, but you haven’t been reading the past few texts at all.

They have a key to your apartment, but they don’t use it in times like these. You’ve made a deal that as long as you sometimes reply, they won’t try to come and bother you. 

You need space. So much space. Space to pretend you don’t exist.

Last time you shut down like this was somewhere last year, after your ex—that ex—found out where you lived and showed up to ‘talk’. Talk with his fist against your face, when you told him, knife in your hand, to fucking dare get any closer. 

It was a good thing that Taylor has the sixth sense of a helicopter parent, otherwise you might have cut his throat open. He’d left after, but not before you told him that if he were to show again, you’d expose all the dirt you’ve had on him, even if it meant you’d rot in prison too. 

You should have known he’d try to get back at you somehow, probably happily selling the porn to Shigaraki first chance he got. 

But that was your fault and your fault only, wasn’t it? 

You chose to be with him. You chose to stay with him despite all the things he put you through. You could’ve just left, but you didn’t. There is always a choice, isn’t there? You always have a say in life. You could’ve said no, could’ve walked away from the monsters, could’ve killed yourself at least, but you didn’t. 

Your mother, your teachers, hell, even Shigaraki was dead on. You’re nothing but a series of failures, disguising yourself as something else, pretending you’re functional. You ruined everything. You always do.

It’s hard to breathe right now. 

You’d sunk yourself to the floor, curling up in a ball and screwing your overflowing eyes shut. You count to ten, you pick different garbage around your room to look at, but you still can’t breathe. The tightness of your throat doesn’t let up, but it’s better to feel suffocated than to hyperventilate until you pass out. So you crawl to the meds next to your bed and overdose on them if only a little bit. Enough to keep you sedated for the rest of the day.

It’s good that Taylor isn’t here to see you like this. They almost put you in the looney bin last year when they called the police and paramedics, thinking your corpse might have been rotting in your apartment. 

You got really mad at them, that you remember. The police dude wrote the both of you up for wasting his fucking time with ‘dramatics’, so your friend ended up getting a copy of your apartment key and a promise from you.

It makes you shake your head, thinking back on it. 

You’re leaning against the bed frame now, still on the floor, the empty stomach making the meds kick in faster than they should be. It feels nice to feel nothing. You hope you someday get to feel nothing forever. Maybe someday soon. 

You envy your friend. They aren’t as fucked up as you are. They don’t need to shut down. All they usually needed was drugs, parties and sloppy hook-ups, none of which would make you feel any better right now. None of which ever made you feel any better.

The back of your head hits the frame and you exhale deeply. It feels like your bones are creaking whenever you move. It’s hard to, but you should count your blessings and keep yourself grounded. 

Like how you didn’t get fired from your part-time yet, when you called your manager Gene and told him you didn’t know when you’d be able to come back. He’d told you to not worry about it, to take as many days off as you needed ‘kid’, and you figured it had to do with that glint of sadness he has in his eye, every time he looks at you. 

That kind of proves to you that not all people in the world were assholes. There are a few of them that still care about you, even if you could count the amount on your fingers.

Funnily enough, that’s what you do, high as you are right now. You raise your hand in front of your face, and you start literally counting on your fingers.

There’s Taylor—one finger down.

There’s your manager—second finger down.

There was that arcade nerd, the one you should quit worrying over at this point. You didn’t message him again despite telling him you would, and it still fucking bothers you for some reason. But he still counts as a positive, so you put another finger down. 

Would he be weirded out if you messaged him now? Maybe you could hit the arcade with him, someone outside your bubble and forget you were you for a second.

You’re staring at the ridges of your fingerprints when you realize you’d spaced out again. 

A distant ringtone brings you out of your daze, and you glance at your phone. You’d changed your number. Was that last week? How many days have passed already? Fuck if you remember. You should probably order take-out before you pass out again. Some good, greasy fast food, you think. Yeah, fast food sounded really damn good right now, fuck your savings. Dead people need no savings.

Why the fuck is your phone still ringing? Ring, ring, ring. It’s fucking annoying. Should you answer? You reach for it and look at the display. Another unknown number. Was it another creep? How did they find out? Your head hurts. Should you pick up?

Ah, fuck it. If it really is another creep angling for a hook-up, you might take them up on it. Shigaraki probably posted the rest of the videos on social media by now, maybe even made your address public. 

It’s okay, at least that’ll give you the final push to put an end to this miserable party of one. 

So you pick up the phone. “Hey,” the last person you wanted to hear from says quietly, swallowing some of the grit in his voice thickly. You frown, but you don’t reply. He clears his throat and tries you again, “I uhh—I… got this number from your friend.”

God, did he fucking threaten them? You should be getting mad, but the meds make you feel nothing.

“It’s been a while since you, uh…” You hear him curse under his breath as he trailed off, “It’s been two weeks. Your friend, uh… Taylor? They told me you’re not feeling well and—”

“What do you want from me?” you snap, hearing your voice sounding rougher than you remembered it to be. Prolonged dehydration, if you had to guess. You’d like to taunt him, to piss him off, but you didn’t have the energy. You couldn’t care less anyways. Nothing fucking matters.

After a moment of hesitation, Shigaraki replies, voice calm and low, “Come back to school.”

You snort, raising your phone to your face and almost end the call if not for the bright screen fucking blinding you for a second.

“I deleted them,” he says, attempting to keep you from hanging up. It works.

“Huh?”

“I removed the thread. After you left. It doesn’t exist anymore. Anywhere. At all.” Shigaraki sighs. “Told your friend first, but they said you haven't read their DMs yet.”

For a brief second, you think about it, realizing you’re supposed to feel what—relief? 

You still feel nothing.

“Okay. Why,” you say, not ask. 

You don’t understand. He wanted you to suffer, so why would he go through the trouble? You don’t understand, but thinking is really hard for you right now.

“I’ll… tell you when you come to school. Have you eaten yet?” 

If you didn’t know better, you would’ve thought you heard concern in his voice. Thank god you know better.

It takes you a while to reply, but he doesn’t press you for some reason. He just waits.

“Why do you care?”

“So no, then. Do you…” Shigaraki trails off, hesitating, “Do you want to grab a bite with me? I’ll—I’ll pay.”

“Shigaraki.”

“Yeah?”

“Why the fuck would I go anywhere with you?”

“Let me take you out once and you’ll find out,” he promises.

A promise you didn’t care for him to fulfill.

“We’re not friends,” you bite, huffing in disbelief. “We’re not even on friendly terms. I screwed you over and you got to ruin my life in return. The end,” you assert, going over the list with him, “How stupid do you think I am? Even if you got rid of the thread, everyone on campus fucking saw everything and at least a few saved it. The damage is—”

“Fucking done, I know, I…”

You roll your eyes, feeling the beginnings of a headache to form, still waiting to hear whatever stupid bullshit excuse he had to say. But he only curses and sighs. 

Honestly, you get him. Somewhat. 

It’s not hard to figure out how someone ends up being as fucked up as he was, especially not when you come close to it. He’s damaged as hell, masking his insecurities as his confidence, whatever joke of a father he has, letting him come home with big patches of dark bruises and scars. 

You’re familiar with it and it makes sense for you, but he shouldn’t be. Rich people are weird, but they’re also cowards. They don’t stand out like he does, they mostly keep to themselves. 

Whatever family he has obviously doesn’t care about what he does, not enough to keep the dirt behind closed doors at least. And they should, because Shigaraki is as destructive as it gets. Either he was born a natural psychopath and his dad doesn’t fucking care about him or… he too is an insane piece of shit—

Fuck’s sake. Are you seriously rationalizing his behavior right now? God knows you didn’t go to fucking therapy, only for you to fall back into bad habits. He hurt you. He is the bad guy. What makes him different from your exes and other people that have abused you in the past? Nothing.

You can’t excuse his behavior just because you see some similarities between the two of you. You shouldn’t relate to him just because you’re pretty sure you would’ve ended up like him, but were lucky to know better. 

You know all that, but at the same time, haven’t you been through worse than what he's shown you so far? Would it be labeled as self-sabotaging if you tried to see what compelled him to change overnight? To get to know him for real this time?

Ahhh, this headache was really getting to you! Yeah that must be it, because why else would you shit on all the years you spent building your life up and heal, only to destroy it using five little words—ones you’ll probably spend the rest of your life regretting.

“Where… did you want to meet?”

Shigaraki’s ears perk up at that, phone slipping from his hand and crashing onto the floor. You hear muffled curses and a hasty reply, “Fuck, really?! You’ll come?”

It’s like you hit a reset button and he’s more or less back to that awkward gamer dude in your first CS class together. Or maybe you’re hardcore coping while you’re dizzy and numb. Self-sabotaging the way you would’ve if it was any other residual college creep you expected to call for a hook-up earlier. 

Yes, that’s it. He’s not special, you’re just really fucked up. Didn’t you always love the calm before the storm and the smell after the rain?

“Keep fucking asking and I might just change my mind. I’m gonna shower first and—oh,” is the last thing he hears before you trip and—thud—face plant. “Fuck,” you say softly, your eyes closing against your will. 

Okay, maybe taking too many pills on an empty stomach clearly wasn’t as smart as you thought it would be.

“Hey—okay?—llooo?” 

His panicked raspy voice is the last thing you hear before you’re completely out of it. 

You fucking hope it was for good this time.

────────

The first sign that you’re still unfortunately very much alive, is that you don’t feel anything like the promised nothingness or the forever inexistence you hoped to achieve after your oh-so-tragic passing. Where the fuck would they bury you, anyways? 

Instead, the first sound that your brain is able to register, is a loud pounding in the distance.

Followed by people yelling.

Feeling your mind slowly booting up, you attempt to get up. Instead of succeeding, you slip and fall again several times, groaning audibly at the weakness in your muscles. Around the third attempt of bruising your knees (and not in a good way), you finally get to your feet.

After that, you embark on your miserable trek, clutching your empty, hurting stomach and slowly making your way towards the source of the obnoxious pounding. It feels an awful lot like deja vu.

“Fuck off! This is your fucking fault—” is what you hear, immediately recognizing Taylor’s voice, arguing with…?

“Get off my fucking case! If you would’ve checked up on her, we wouldn’t even be here, you dumb—”

And of course, he’s here too. 

“Shut the fuck up, you creep! Don’t get me started, you crazy asshole! Do you even know what she went through, after you—”

“I have fucking neighbors too, you know?” 

Both of them stare at you as if you became the eighth wonder of the world overnight, prompting you to raise an eyebrow. 

“Well, you look like shit,” Shigaraki breaks the ice first. 

You and your friend look at him in disbelief. 

“What?” he mumbles, turning his head away, hand habitually reaching to scratch at his scarred neck. “It’s true.”

You roll your eyes at them, watching Taylor gearing up to reply to him, but you open the door for them to come in.

“Whatever. Just don’t talk shit about the mess,” you say, walking first and kicking random things out of your way. “I don’t have a couch, so find something to sit on, or don’t. I don’t really care.”

Immediately after finishing your sentence, you trip on something and see your life flash before your eyes. Shigaraki is quick enough to grab you by your waist, making you stiffen up and shoving him off as soon as your feet feel stabilized enough.

“Do not fucking touch me,” you hiss at him. He huffs, frowning right after.

Normally, you know he wouldn’t let that slide, but he’s definitely been acting weird lately. 

It doesn’t matter, because you don’t have willpower nor the energy to unpack his nice guy behavior from the past few interactions with him, no matter how much it gnaws at you.

Instead, you’re distracted by the sounds of Taylor knocking shit over, opening and closing what seems to be every single fucking drawer and cupboard of your two by two kitchen, trying to find something—anything—that was edible enough, presumably for you to eat.

“I’m fine. You really didn’t have to come over. Especially not you.” You glare at him and say it like you weren’t starving to death and ready to be put in a coffin if they hadn’t shown up.

“Like hell you are!” your friend replies sharply, not bothering to spare you a second glance in their quest of finding food.

So your eyes land on him again, noticing his head hanging low and the mop of white hair messily covering his face as he furiously scratches at his neck, almost drawing blood from the sensitive skin. You can’t see his expression and honestly you didn’t really care to. Is he acting this way because of the phone call?

“Yuck, stop that.” You swat his hand away harshly when you notice him breaking skin.

Shigaraki finally meets your eyes and you notice his dark eyebags. 

He looks far worse than he normally did, and that alone says something. Usually he’s so confident and full of himself, so much so, that him looking at you the way he does right now—uncertain and perhaps a little lost—looks incredibly out of place. 

What is making him so uneasy?

“What?” you spit, but he doesn’t reply. 

Instead, he grunts and looks away. The fuck is his problem?

“Okayyy! So!” Taylor makes their way over with a glass of water and hands it to you. “Yooou have absolutely fucking nothing to eat! Incredible news, I know.” They roll their eyes, placing their hands on their hips while you immediately start chugging the glass down. Was plain water always this fucking refreshing?

“Shigaraki. How about you be a big boy and go to the store while I help this bitch clean up? Nothing too heavy on the stomach, ‘cos she hasn’t eaten in a while. Isn’t that right, sweetheart?”

You don’t know how you missed it but oh. Your friend is mad. Incredibly so. But that would come later, when you’re stable enough to take an honest-to-god beating from them. Right now, what they’re saying is absolutely mortifying to you.

“Wha—Why the fuck would I go?” Shigaraki snarls at Taylor, but is only met with a smug look.

“No because yeah, why the fuck should he?” You glare at him. “Fucking go home already.”

“You shut the fuck up, princess. No one asked you,” Taylor snaps at you and your eyes widen, but before you can say anything, they quickly reply to him, “And sure! I can go! Can you clean around, take her clothes off and help her take a fucking shower? Can’t you see she can barely fucking stand?”

“I’m not a fucking child!” you yell, but both of them ignore you. 

Shigaraki’s eyes widen and a bright red flush spreads on his pale features. 

Seriously?!

Taylor snorts. “That’s what I thought.” 

Both of them are fucking insane. Maybe you really did die and this is your hell.

First of all, is he seriously acting fucking flustered? He’s literally seen god knows how much disgusting footage of you either naked or fucking something. Not only that, but he also decided to post said footage online, for everyone to jerk off to. Is this the same fucking guy who pinned you to the wall in a public hallway, telling you how undeserving of his cock you were because you were a little mean to him?

That train of thought fills you with newfound anger, but before you could really kick him out of your house, Taylor fucking interrupts you again.

“I know I took you with me on a whim,” your friend begins, referring to the only black fucking sheep in the room, “But I really don’t trust leaving you with her while I run around, okay? And honestly, she’s also about to snap at me for showing you where she lives, so you better fuck off now while you can. That’s the least you can do for her after everything.”

Oh.

Oh, right.

“Taylor, seriously? What the fuck were you thinking?!” you can’t help but shout at them. You know your friend was careless, but letting Shigaraki personally stake-out your living environment was definitely pushing it.

“Wait! Wait, wait, wait! I can explain!” were Taylor’s famous last words, as you deliriously started hauling any object or piece of trash you could at them.

Tomura glances at you a final time, before quietly slipping past the both of you and out of the noisy apartment. 

Your friend wasn’t lying to you, they really did take him on a whim. Not only that, but they had a whole ass mental breakdown when he texted them back about what happened.

He doesn’t really understand why they let him see you after all that he’s done, figuring they must either be really fucking dumb, or a horrible friend. 

Not that he’s about to complain, though. This is a golden opportunity for him to learn what makes you tick and how to break you just enough to build you up again for him. 

Without risking you killing yourself in the process.

It’s a point of concern he’d need to consider very carefully in the future, unlike today where he’d almost fucked up, underestimating just how fragile your will to live is. 

It’s fine, he tells himself as he’s walking down the stairs of your building. Hell make you fucking want to live. He’s gotten this far and besides, there’s never been an end boss he couldn’t conquer before. 

Little did you know, the past few weeks have been rough on him too. Not that you’d ever find out.

Or care.

───────

The bell rang and he was still standing in the hallway, back where you’d left him, looking off in the distance and hoping to materialize you again out of thin air, while students poured out of the classrooms. Was the hallway always this narrow?

Scratch, scratch, scratch.

His neck was unbearably itchy at the thought of you rejecting him again. At the thought of himself messing up. He never messes up. It didn’t make any fucking sense.

He shouldn’t care about you.

You were nothing to him before.

───────

From the moment he saw you in the convenience store, he’d already labeled you as a major pain in the ass.

The way you stared back at him in disgust—the way everyone fucking stared at him—like he was some piece of garbage to be thrown out, made him want to strangle you until he saw the light leaving your eyes. 

You must’ve thought you were so fucking cool, talking back to him when you had no clue who he was or what he’s capable of.

Just another one of those irritating clueless fucking NPCs.

Yet irritation turned to amusement, once you managed to fuck up in front of him, fumbling at your pockets in search for what was presumably your cash. Such a fucking mess that you were. 

He couldn’t help but giggle at your incompetence. Weren’t you bitching at him only moments ago? It was an incredible turn of events, one that was fitting, for an idiot like yourself. Did you need someone to save you? That’s alright, he could treat you this time. Tomura liked it when people owed him, after all. It allowed him to own them.

And he didn’t want to believe his luck when he immediately spotted you in class, the very next day, sitting in his favorite seat. Really, things couldn’t have been better set up for him. His favorite little bitch, going to the same university he did, sharing classes with him.

He couldn’t have found a more convenient toy to break if he tried.

“Yo, sponger.” Tomura grinned, feeling excitement growing inside of him.

Your brows pinched in surprise and then disbelief, fueling the thrill coursing through his veins. It was funny, he thought, seeing you getting all frustrated like this. By the look on your face, he’d bet a significant amount that you thought the store was the last you’d see of him. And doesn’t that fucking suck for you, to sit next to the guy that humiliated you, not even forty-eight hours ago? 

Fuck, he reveled in that expression.

He hasn’t been feeling this giddy in a decent while. Especially not lately, after he’d botched a few important missions that had been assigned to him. It bummed him the fuck out, but he managed to find the perfect outlet to recalibrate his temper. You.

“Why—” you started, and he inhaled softly, watching expectantly as you were visibly losing your mind over the encounter. “How did you even recognize me?”

Your irritated tone sounded so, so sweet to his ears. Not even the professor walking in could’ve held him back from messing with you. 

Tomura leaned into you, the subtle smell of your body wash entering his nose as he whispered, making you visibly shudder.

“I’d recognize an ugly fucking skank like you literally anywhere, idiot,” he said, wondering if it was enough to get a rise out of you. He hoped you’d bite back, so he could push, push, push. You were so much fun and he’s just met you! 

The jab must’ve done the trick, because you physically recoiled at his words. How far could he take it, he wondered. It’s been a while since he indulged in female attention since, generally speaking, women avoided him like the fucking plague. For reasons he wasn’t oblivious to. 

Tomura knew what he looked like, his status and horrible personality doing nothing to help him in that regard, save for a few crazies that got off on his violent nature, and the hookers Master occasionally booked, despite Tomura turning him down every time.

It made perfect sense to him, the way people were afraid. He’d been walking this earth causing as much damage as he could and wishing to decay every living breathing thing that crossed his way, that’s how much he fucking hated everything, everyone. And they too, hated him. Except, they hid it well most of the time, not wanting to become part of his famous track record, to give him a reason to retaliate.

But then—then there was you. You, who openly displayed your disgust, from the first fucking second he’d set his eyes on you. You who didn’t bother to fucking hide it, to cower, to walk on eggshells in order to not upset him or give him a reason to fuck with you. You who wore it on your sleeve, who wasn’t afraid to be found out, but instead made sure he’d heard you.

And boy did he hear you, crystal fucking clear.

In fact, here you fucking were, leaning into him, together with your smug-ass face, about to hit him with what he was sure to be the dumbest counter of the century, reaching your arm around his backrest and doing your fucking best to avoid all contact with him. 

He didn’t have time to think of ways to punish you, for treating him like he’s about to infect you with some deadly disease, because—

Because the warmth that radiated from your body—your nose almost touching his—the puff of air coming from your arrogance, landing on his skin—it all unexpectedly sent his brain into overdrive.

People never get close to him. He never lets anybody get close to him.

But you fucking dare to.

His breath hitched, chest filling with anticipation.

You had the nerve to fucking chuckle in his face, before saying the thing you thought would eat at him the most:

“Look dude,” you began and he watched as your smile turned vicious. You’re so close to his face, so close that he could just— “I’d hold up a mirror, so you can take a good fucking look at yourself, but you’d probably have to buy that for me too.”

Then you snorted and Tomura’s eyes widened, brows knitting together. He turns away, one hand habitually reaching his neck to scratch that newly formed itch.

He’d—He’d felt his chest tighten! Fuck! That was unexpected. You were so fucking cute. 

It takes him a fucking second to compose himself, since your bratty little comeback comment went straight to his cock. He’d need to adjust himself in just a second, head filling with ideas on how to deal with that and soon.

That means, if I play this right—

Tomura’s hand dropped from his neck, and he finally turned to you with a completely new gameplan in his mind.

“If you don’t kill the stupid goblin at the beginning of the stage, the final boss won’t carry your S-Grade,” he casually stated, pointing at your screen with his finger, doing air-circles around a section of the minimap on your screen.

“Huh?” 

He frowned. Were you fucking slow? 

He opted not to ask, giving you a pass because you are playing one of the best MMOs today—good pick by the way—and by extension making it fairly easy for him to find common ground with the one cocksleeve he actually wanted to fuck.

That thought surprised him too, but he couldn’t dwell on it much because he had to hurry and quickly get on your good side. Do all that before you found out who he really was and all the half-truths reach your ears, completely fucking obliterating his chances with someone he’s actually into for once.

You were looking at him all stupid and confused now. Tomura found it extremely endearing to witness.

“Tch. Your run, dumbass. You’ve prolly been grinding for hours, only getting it once or twice because you never think to kill the stupid goblin and only ever do it by accident.” He shrugged. “No one ever fuckin’ does, so they don’t find the pattern without looking up a guide.”

He fully expected you to tell him to fuck off—maybe even hoped it would happen—but instead you were surprisingly obedient, listening to his advice. The challenge you were facing had completely overwritten the fact that you didn’t even want him breathing the same air as you, merely seconds ago. Interesting.

So while you were busy trying out the suggested strategy, Tomura took his time to really observe you. He leaned in closer, testing the proximity limits, but either you had really shit self-preservation skills or you didn’t care, because he couldn’t believe how oblivious you suddenly became towards his presence.

Why act like you dislike him that much, then let him get this close to you? So close that he could easily inhale the nice scent of your shampoo and run his fingers through your hair. Grip it hard and make your pretty head bob up and down his—

“Ugh!” you groaned out loud, slamming your fist against your desk and making him stop in his tracks. Students sitting in the row before you glanced back, but you were too absorbed in the game to care.

Close. Too close.

His hand was hanging in the air, just behind your head and almost making contact with you. He quickly retracted it, going back to just observing you. One dirty look from him and the students flinched, opting to turn around before he got angry.

But Tomura was far from angry. 

Instead, he was struggling really hard to keep himself from spiraling down the rabbit hole of things he wanted to do to you. 

Dirty, downright fucking depraved shit that he’d only ever seen generic male protagonists in eroges do, after picking all the right dialogue options to get to the part where he stuffs his female interest full of his cock.

Depraved shit he’d admittedly never thought he’d ever want past the walls of his bedroom, where he’d occasionally spend his nights watching just enough unhinged pornography to calm himself down, hours after some stuck-up bitch walked by him with the tightest fucking skirt known to man.

It was new, this feeling of desire. 

Not desire for violence and torture. Not desire to gain more strength or power. 

The desire to have you. 

The seed had been planted somewhere along the way of meeting you for the first time and now that the roots run deep, he was starting to want to rise up to the challenge and get the nasty bitch sitting next to him to submit to him. 

How many silly pretend dates would it take you to let him drag you into his room? 

Tomura’s eyes landed on your neck. 

What would you sound like if he marked you—if he covered your body in so many bruises and hickeys, the whole damn world would know you were his? What was your favorite co-op game? Would you sit in his lap while the two of you would play together? Would he be able to get you to cockwarm him while you were playing? What was your favorite take-out dinner? Your movie? Did you also have a plethora of unpopular takes he could debate you on? Are you a virgin? Do you play other genres aside from MMOs? Could he get you to wear his hoodies too, maybe touch yourself, sweat a little and give them back to him? Let him fuck you stupid against his bed while wearing them? Would you take him like the obedient girl he knows you’ll learn to be?

He wasn’t stupid. He knew he’d have to tame you somehow, but you’d understand, wouldn’t you? You would become his favorite little plaything. 

Tomura couldn’t stop—couldn’t stop his thoughts from spiraling out of control as his need to have you grew exponentially by the second, especially when his cock became so fucking hard, it was straining against the fabric of his jeans and beginning to hurt. 

If only he could skip the introductory phase and get to the fucking cutscene.

Fuck, he had to stop himself before he bent you over your desk and pounded your pussy for the whole lecture hall to see. So he took a mental step back and resolved to watch over your gameplay, impatient fingers twitching as he did.

And it wasn’t the degenerate thoughts he was harboring in his mind that shocked him, no. What really shocked him was the fact that… he kind of really enjoyed watching you play.

You weren’t as good as he was (he doubted you’d ever be), but you were decent. Better than Spinner, at least. The gear that your character was wearing was made up of only legendary sets, ones he’d even use himself—if only with a few modifications. That’s the kind of gear that you had to grind a long time for and be lucky for it to drop from bosses that only spawn once a month.

He briefly scratched at his neck and by the time you’d finished your second run, a really good idea formed inside his head.

“Told you so,” Tomura said. It made you scoff and roll your eyes, which in turn made him frown. 

It’s alright, he thought. You needed time. People often got annoyed with him when he was right. You’ll come around and even if you didn’t, you’d still be really fun to debate with, he could already tell. 

You looked so fuckable while pouting too. It made him want to see you cry.

“No need to get salty. Took me like a week to figure it out by myself and it drove me fucking insane too,” he mentioned, thinking back fondly to all the controllers he managed to break. Kurogiri advised him to stop creating unsightly holes in the walls of his room, but Tomura threatened to use his head next if he didn’t shut his fucking mouth. Good times. “And I’m pretty good at these types of tells in games y’know? But the design of this one made no fucking sense. What’s your IGN? I can add you and we can raid together.”

He drummed his fingers against your side of the desk, arm placed firmly against the surface as he waited for your reply. He didn’t catch on to the fact that it was him that pissed you off. Not the game itself. 

His plan was flawless. Partaking in one of his favorite hobbies and getting to know you better into you becoming the ultimate fucktoy pipeline, would be the absolute peak. He’d take it slow, for sure, eventually sweeping you off your feet, impressed by his abilities, knocking your pride down a peg or two. You’d fucking learn to like him too, he resolved.

He wasn’t all that bad if you left out… a lot of things.

“Sorry?” 

You fucking looked at him as if he grew another head and Tomura saw his vision of your future together beginning to crack.

What’s wrong? 

He felt his body starting to itch again. Why the fuck were you looking at him like that? You were supposed to want to get to know him too, weren’t you?

But the bell rang before he managed to say anything to you, too stunned to move a muscle, and you scurried off, his red eyes never leaving your figure until you were well out of his sight.

He was wrong about you. How? How could he be wrong? 

He’s never fucking wrong!

But he was. You were exactly like the rest of them.

Stupid bitch.

It was fine. He’d find a way to teach you a lesson. 

And soon.

───────

The store’s lights changed, compared to the first night he’d met you. 

Instead of the brightness that blinded him, there’s now a soft fluorescent glow, doing its best to light the small establishment up. The air here still smells like a blend of dirty mop water and tobacco smoke, all mixing into a disgusting but familiar musty scent.

Behind the counter isn’t the usual cashier, but an old lady who’s smoking inside the establishment. Tomura scoffs, figuring it must’ve been the owner, unable to otherwise explain the audacity.

He finds himself fidgeting while looking around the aisles with various food objects. Would instant noodles count as ‘not too heavy on your stomach’? He doesn’t know. After all, Tomura doesn’t often find himself having to care for anyone before. He always has Kurogiri to do that for him.

Shaking his head and scrunching his nose, Tomura keeps searching. It takes him about two minutes of googling whatever the fuck to even look for, and another three of pacing around the aisles, eyes lighting up the moment he finally spots the canned article in question.

It was one of your favorite comfort foods, not that he knew at the time.

[butmakeitgayblog]

How degenerate does #fletcher au get?

I mean, pretty damn degenerate 😅 They're exes, so they already have that established intimacy, they've already shared all the softness and love and being completely head-over-heels feelings that comes with new relationships. They've already known those highs of being obsessed with each other and wanting to share everything and learn and tell the other everything about themselves. They were together for over a year, so this wasn't just a throw away relationship.

But then they broke, and on such a sour note that truly neither of them actually wanted. So you have all of that love mixed up with all this sadness and resentment in two people who are still wildly attracted to each other and who still have a lot of very deep feelings for each other.

Lexa gets into her extremely ill-conceived "relationship" with Costia as a self preservation - flailing and emotionally scrambling for anything that'd give even some comfort in the fallout -, but also as a way to hurt Clarke right back. It's shitty, but it is what it is and uh, yeah, it is effective.

So now you have two people who are in pain, and resentful, and who still love each other so much that every interaction is like ripping a scab off fresh wound. And that all translates into a powder keg of a situation once the dam breaks and they start to fall back into each other. Because it's not easy to pour those feelings out into words, but wheeew is it easy to pour it into sex. Angry fucking meant to hurt. Gentle kisses to help them come down. Cheating and hiding and lying to everyone including themselves, and maybe possibly making everything between them so much worse. But they keep going back because being together is ultimately the only thing that makes any of this feel better.

The sex was always fantastic when they were together, but now it's something else. It's something illicit. It's something dirty. It's that guilty pleasure that feels so terribly like an addiction. It's remembering how to make each other come in the five minutes they can steal away, and checking each other over for bite marks and scratches that they swear are simply accidents in the heat of the moment. It's fucking in bathrooms at house parties when they've spent the entire night pretending to ignore each other. It's sending the other back to their dates with the taste of their come still fresh on their tongue. It's late nights spent crying and fighting and slowly falling back in love under the guise of work or some other quickfire excuse to whoever is expecting them. It's each of them telling themselves this time is the last time... and then doing it all over again

[anghraine]

Hey, I really enjoy your fleshed out backstories on Darcy's family, and I was wondering if you have any thoughts about their origin and history! (ex: I read a really interesting fic where the "first" English Darcy was some sort of knight who received the land he conquered.) Do you have any thoughts on when the Darcy family became distinguished, their ancestry, etc.? I find the Austen contemporary allusion to the real Fitzwilliam family interesting, and was wondering if you think that family's origins also tie into it? So sorry for the rambly text :)

No problem at all! Sorry it's taken me so long to get to this.

First, thanks—I'm glad the pure/nearly pure headcanons are enjoyable, too. I did write a fic sort of like that, actually, longgggg ago (a brief snippet where the English house was basically founded by a Norman knight). I can see quite a few scenarios, though, within the limits of what we know.

This is going to seem like a bit of a tangent, but the interesting thing about the Darcys to me is that the status and consequence they grant Darcy are so overshadowed by the Fitzwilliams in fandom and academia—I think more than in P&P itself. P&P certainly emphasizes the Fitzwilliams more as characters (I do find them more interesting as a family) and the RL referentiality is much more distinct w/ the Fitzwilliams, so it's understandable, but I don't think they're the primary source of Darcy's pride and status in the novel.

In fact, several of the remarks about Darcy's status occur before anyone knows anything about the Fitzwilliams or his connection to them. This is Charlotte before the Fitzwilliam connection is revealed, for instance:

“One cannot wonder that so very fine a young man, with family, fortune, everything in his favour, should think highly of himself.”

I think sometimes the Darcys' position is regarded as "same as the Bennets' but with more money" (I think mainly as an overly sweeping takeaway from Elizabeth's argument with Lady Catherine), but it's noticeable that Charlotte attributes his status to both his fortune and his family's stature.

Here is Elizabeth at Netherfield (again, before anyone knows about the Fitzwilliam connection):

Elizabeth could not help observing, as she turned over some music-books that lay on the instrument, how frequently Mr Darcy’s eyes were fixed on her. She hardly knew how to suppose that she could be an object of admiration to so great a man

She clearly doesn't mean greatness of character, but his status as Mr Darcy of Pemberley, and she clearly feels a sense of pretty profound social inequality here, to the point that even setting aside the insult, she can't really think he'd even look twice at her. It doesn't make her deferential(lol) or lack self-respect or self-esteem—it's more of a pragmatic sense of the disparity of their positions within their class, fundamentally determined by their fathers' families.

It's Wickham who reveals the Fitzwilliam connection, but Wickham also associates Darcy's pride with the Darcys/Pemberley:

“Yes,” replied Wickham; “his estate there [Derbyshire] is a noble one. A clear ten thousand per annum.”

“Yes; it [pride] has often led him to be liberal and generous; to give his money freely, to display hospitality, to assist his tenants, and relieve the poor. Family pride, and filial pride, for he is very proud of what his father was, have done this. Not to appear to disgrace his family, to degenerate from the popular qualities, or lose the influence of the Pemberley House, is a powerful motive.”

Despite Wickham going on to talk about Lady Catherine and Lady Anne, Pemberley's aristocratic scale and the late Mr Darcy's moral character and the Darcys' popularity and influence are all linked together in his account. Now, this is Wickham, so the degree to which that's true is debatable, but it certainly doesn't contradict the treatment elsewhere.

Interestingly, he also suggests that part of Lady Catherine's status comes from Darcy's and not only the other way around. Lady Catherine would likely disagree, lol, but she does have some respect for the Darcys and de Bourghs:

“They [Darcy and Anne de Bourgh] are descended, on the maternal side, from the same noble line; and, on the father’s, from respectable, honourable, and ancient, though untitled, families. Their fortune on both sides is splendid. They are destined for each other by the voice of every member of their respective houses; and what is to divide them?—the upstart pretensions of a young woman without family, connections, or fortune!”

The lack of title is certainly worth mentioning for her, but the support of the Darcys and de Bourghs matters to her, a contrast to her perception of Elizabeth's family as basically not worth mentioning. She cares about the reputation and age of the Darcy and de Bourgh families as well as the titled status of the Fitzwilliams (and earlier, she attributed Georgiana's status to both sides of her family).

I argued in one of my other posts that there's no particular reason to assume that Lady Anne's marriage to a non-peer was a love match rather than an alliance that suited Fitzwilliam interests, given what we hear about the Darcys and given Lady Catherine's marriage into a very similar family. Both sisters marrying into old money, old-influence families looks to me like the Fitzwilliams were getting something out of it and not only the other way around. And Lady Catherine's respect for the ancientry of the Darcys and de Bourghs and the importance she sees in being backed by them fits pretty well with that to me.

So. My headcanon is that the Darcys are a prominent, powerful family in their own right and the connection to the Fitzwilliams was mutually beneficial. Moreover, I think all indication is that their prominence and influence is very well-established, perhaps longer and more securely than the Fitzwilliams'. Both the Darcys and de Bourghs have French-origin names, so given how similar their backgrounds seem to be, the kind of obvious assumption would be that both originated as Anglo-Norman families.

We don't know that for sure, though—they might not have been particularly significant that far back and risen to power sometime later. Mr Bennet does suggest to Mr Collins that Darcy has more to bestow than Lady Catherine does and Pemberley itself seems to be older, architecturally. Rosings is a modern house given to a certain amount of tasteless splendour and Lady Catherine's husband had the windows installed personally, while Pemberley's features seem to be mainly Elizabethan or Jacobean and are described as more elegant. We also know that Darcy's father owned multiple estates.

So it may be that the Darcys have a bit of an advantage over the de Bourghs in terms of how much influence and consequence they have and how long they've had it (though this is by no means sure). And it is intriguing that the nephew Lady Catherine earmarked for her daughter at birth was untitled Darcy rather than any of the others—I've kind of wondered if there was something other than simple wealth that she wanted for Anne and which none of her other nephews could provide.

This is long and meandering! But anyway, my personal headcanon is that the Darcys have been established in the Pemberley area for a really long time, and were reasonably prosperous and influential in their area from early on, but in a much more local way at first. Over time, they acquired more and more land and influence and status through politics and generally very pragmatic alliances through marriage, and had become fairly wealthy and influential by Elizabeth I's time. I imagine that the Tudor-/early Stuart-era Darcys very carefully navigated the political winds of their times and came out really well, with the resources to either drastically overhaul their manor-house or simply build the Pemberley we see from the ground up.

They were even more cautious wrt the civil war but managed to get through well enough, and have basically been on the way up ever since. They're political allies of their ducal neighbors but I kind of imagine there's a long tradition of finding the Cavendishes deeply annoying and somewhat tacky. At any rate, Mr Darcy's marriage to an earl's daughter was quite satisfactory for the Darcys in general, but not unprecedented, and Lady Anne was generally considered to have married a bit better than Lady Catherine.

[little-lovely-demon-doll]

Is This Considered Hypersexuality? /gen

Me trying to figure out if I'm actually hypersexual or if it's a term I'm using due to a lack of better terminology.

I've seen multiple viewpoints and perspectives in a search to find out if I am or not, but I'd like to ask real quick: Would the following experience recounted below count as hypersexuality? I created this sideblog because I didn't want this associated with my main, but here goes nothing.

CW: Grooming mention near the end

♡ Preamble ♡

Before I get into the meat and bones of things, I'm going to state ahead of time and I'm autistic and asexual, two factors that may or may not contribute to the broader consensus. I also have multiple OCD subtypes caused by multiple things, including childhood trauma. Now, I've always struggled on whether or not my experience counts as hypersexuality, and I often flip back and forth between calling myself such and not, but I think it's time to put the mystery to bed with a consensus. As for speaking to my therapist about this, I've yet to, and before I do, I'd like to get a broad consensus for experiences like this at the base level before I feel right to pursue it.

♡ The Experience Itself ♡

Ever since I was a young child, I've been having repeated, almost (if not multiple times) daily thoughts of sex or sexual acts, no matter in public, school, or private. My imagination is extremely active and utilizes pretty much anything that's available in-mind, including sexual content. My problem was worsened by consistent exposure to NSFW content. Throughout my childhood, I always had this consistent need to "relieve" myself, and as I grew older, I ended up getting sucked into extremely NSFW spaces as a minor, particularly from ages 11-14. Nowadays, I have these kinds of sexual thoughts at least once a day, and I've even had some incredibly unwanted ones, including about my associates, family, and closest friends, and even best friend who's sex-repulsed due to severe sexual trauma.

As for the distress factor, they usually only really disturb me when I'm in public, but for the friend ones, they can happen pretty much any time. I'm aware that distress is a large factor in the hypersexual experience, but I usually just deal with it unless it is actively disturbing enough to cause distress, since typically distressing things don't stress me out nearly as much as they should. An exception to this would be sexual thoughts that play into one of my OCD subtypes, and I usually feel incredibly disgusted by those, as well as the thoughts I get about the people mentioned above. The need for self-relief tends to come at random times, sometimes immediately after waking up. I'm unable to act on them if I'm anywhere but home, but there's that. Aside from that, I always feel this intense compulsive need to talk about sex and sexual stuff with my friends, share the sexual and NSFW content I've made to them, and more. I have reason to believe it could be due to the intense craving of familiarity from 2020, which was filled to the brim with sexual stuff, which unfortunately led to my victimization in a grooming situation, but then again, there could be more to it than just that.

As for further details, there's always this background libido, but I can become easily distracted to forget about it for a little while. Nonetheless, it's still there, waiting to return. There's also this intrinsic need to just sexualize myself, but it mostly stays contained to my head due to minor reasons, but the moment I'm 18, it's probably going to devolve into public displays of self-sexuality. Hell, my 18th birthday has been extremely romanticized for years because of the sexual stuff that legally opens up then. I've even taken to using a hentai game that my degenerate ex-friend played in order to divert and alleviate a lot of these thoughts, but also to get that sense of familiarity back. It's also caused me to lose multiple friends and it's further jeopardized multiple relationships, even affecting my real life.

Is there anything I missed in this self-assessment? What is your assessment? Would YOU consider my experience to be hypersexual in nature? I heavily appreciate any help or pointers in the right direction!

[tired-fandom-ndn]

ugh, thank you, i thought i was the only one bothered by those "look at this writer/animator/etc. who works on a kids show who might have *GASP* a fetish??!?!?!?!! that pervert might have put their degenerate-i mean, sick kink into their content where a CHILD could see!!" posts, like, it genuinely makes me uncomfortable how close so any self-proclaimed "progressives" are to getting into qa/non andp/izzagate type stuff, even outside of fandom contexts (ex. kink at pride)

[context]

It's so ridiculous! Like people are acting as if something that they never noticed or cared about as a child is now traumatic and grooming because it MIGHT be a fetish thing to SOMEONE. There's never even any proof that the artist specifically has a fetish, someone just discovers that a fetish exists somewhere and it could POSSIBLY apply to a specific preference of that artist and boom, they're not a predator and grooming secretly slipping their perversions into children's media.

Even if the artist DOES have a fetish, these people didn't notice anything when they were kids and kids today aren't noticing anything either so obviously it is not actually traumatizing or hurting anyone so who the fuck cares.

[variousqueerthings]

johnny feelings reheating in my neck of the woods. what a guy (self-sabotaging, suffering from ptsd, kind of a dick, not good at taking accountability for anything, if he cries that's tantamount to admitting defeat (defeat at what? nobody really knows least of all johnny), blondie, he's got one year fifty+ years to make it work, softest voice in the valley, ex-ace degenerate, homosexual)

[ourladyofomega]

Trigger warning: obscene sexist language.

I woke up one morning to open my social media. I was in panic mode because a “friend” chose to out me right after going to bed. Eight hours for everyone to see exposed secrets about me. And I knew who it was. He had a thing for putting other’s personals out in the open. It’s his “freedom of speech” where it gave him license to be cute and then take it back with a “just kidding!” Not funny at all.

I didn’t appreciate him manufacturing drama. He was up to his old games again. I messaged him asking what in the fuck was he thinking? According to him, I posted something desperate (I didn’t). That prompted him to sell me another hare-brained scheme of his. Here we go again.

He had a female friend of mine who, according to him, “was back on the market”. Great choice of words. Every one of his other friends he’s tried setting me up with never clicked. Hands to the side while lazily saying “hi”. No self-care. Feeble-mindedness. Wrong vibe. Social miscues. They were instant disqualifications for me. It’s left me keeping both my silence and distance from them throughout the day, then never to see them again. Now, he wants to set me up with her.

I was absolutely reluctant to go for it, because I knew how this was going to go. I pushed back and told him multiple times that I was not interested. But, like any forceful person who automatically becomes deaf when they hear the word “no”, kept shoving harder. Then came the pitch.  

The way that he described her; truly disgusting and tasteless:

"Dude! She has two kids. Just got divorced. I’ll invite you over and introduce you to her. You both talk to each other for a bit, then go right in the bedroom with her. A little on the meaty side. She’s got some flabby tits. You both do your thing and be in-and-out in 15 minutes. 1-2-3. That's it. You’re done!"

(Sigh.) Seriously?

Not only had he used such “colorful” copy to describe her, but he also tried coercing me into sleeping with someone I had zero interest in. And for what? So he can announce a special update for all of his friends to see? Is my life that much of a spectacle to him? He can fuck right off.

I remember when I had a girlfriend in high-school and my circle of friends came over to congratulate me. Ten of them...including him. High-fives and pats on the back. Looking back at it, it was real distasteful of them to make my (later) ex- look like a victory or conquest. These days, my dating history is absolutely no one’s business.

This was who I once considered a “friend”. (There were other things he's done that made me distance myself from him.) Never in my life had I felt ashamed being associated with anyone, ever. They say having certain people in your life lowers your worth. At that point, I was embarrassed knowing him. He’s that intrusive gossiping aunt who shows up uninvited, whom no one wants anything to do with.

But, that's the type of person he was. A once-divorced American sex pig with a porn collection and an anti-feminist sentiment. A total degenerate. No wonder why his then-wife left him for a better man (after he paid in full for her lap-band surgery), divorced him, kicked him out of the house, and won custody of their kids.

The sad part? He's even worse off than before. You really don't want to know. But, every day I do a huge favor to myself. The more you're repulsed by someone, the more of an effort you'll make to never turn into them.

[burningtheroots]

What's your opinion on the whole concept of "Transandrophobia/Transmisandry" VS "Transmisogyny" from a radfem perspective?

A little context of why the question: Lately (as in this month and so) there's been a lot of infighting in Transblr between TIFs and TIMS over the whole thing of "TMA" and "TME" ("Transmisogyny Affected/Excempt", take a guess wich one is for each sex), over if trans men can and do suffer systemic oppression for being both trans and male (or "masc"), if trans women can and do still hold systemic power for being "amab" and if one side can opress the other and yada yada

The "funny" thing it's that one particular drama that kinda starter everything was that a group of TIMs/a couple TIMs and some TIF pickmes (ex 4chan/lolcow-type users) between eachother started saying how "Those Transandro Trutring Cuntboys/Pooners need to be Puppypegged, fatten up and impregnated agaisnt their will so they become chiller and stop whining about false oppression" (exact same terms and core message) because there was a lot of popular liberal TIF blogs discussing that "Hey! Despite transitioning to ""mascs"" or not-women, society at large and even the stunning and brave transgirls from our own community treat us like shit and even below human! Isn't that weird?". Because of this the "gay queer masc" user @/spacelazarwolf called this groups of TIMs and self hating TIFs disgusting 4chan-y "transandrophobic" degenerates rigthfully, and it kinda just went down more since then to this day 🤷‍♀️

Hey!

I‘m sorry that this took so long, I saw your message but didn’t find the time to read and reply to it at once. 💀

So, I haven’t witnessed this infighting, but from what you described, it seems pretty obvious, at least to me:

The trans community knows exactly who is male and who is female, despite constant denial, and treats its members accordingly.

Trans men and other non-women identities claimed by TIFs are female, and they‘ll always experience misogyny — and TIMs will always have male privilege.

"Transandrophobia" is basically misogyny repackaged, and it doesn’t surprise me that the TIFs (who are female) get silenced and harassed in their own community by TIMs (who are male) and their handmaidens.

This just proves further that it‘s a men‘s rights movement — otherwise trans women (males) wouldn’t talk over trans men (females) and throw such misogynistic insults & threats at them. "Puppypegged", "impregnated against their will" etc. speaks VOLUMES.