#she’s done things way worse than cheating and he rarely punishes her

[sarafangirlart]

I love how Hera betrayed Zeus in literally every kind of way EXCEPT for cheating. Even when she had children outside him she produced them asexually and fueled by spite. Gotta respect a hater with standards.

[chickensarentcheap]

 These two  used  to argue about even the stupidest, most insignificant little things.  LOL.   Both are just so damn stubborn and neither likes to be the first to admit they're wrong, which just makes things worse. But now that they're 13 years into things and have learned to communicate without letting feelings get hurt and tempers to flare,  they very rarely argue.   It has to be something pretty serious for them to get heated with each other.    

2. Tyler is usually the one that approaches making up first.  He's very sheepish when he know he's done or said something wrong and needs to make things right. Esme holds onto it a bit longer to punish him I think LOL.   As for the actual making up, sometimes it's just a snuggle, sometimes it's more than that ;)

3. As often as they can.  They've learned the hard way how quickly everything can be taken from you.  And neither want something happening and the other not knowing how the other truly felt.   And they put down the firm rule that you never go to bed or leave the house without saying it.

4. These two have been through a lot together, and they eventually sought out both couple and individual therapy.  And they still go, even though there's no pressing issues in their marriage.  It helps them communicate better and they're now able to have rational disagreements and can be very open and honest with one another.   Esme has always found it easier to talk about her feelings and her struggles, whereas Tyler always held back out of fear seeming weak. Now he's very open and honest.

5. Oh these two constantly shit talk one another lol.  They've always had a very playful and teasing way about them as a couple.

6.  Esme is very much an extrovert, and Tyler is the opposite.   At first it was a struggle to get over, but now Tyler loves the fact he can go places with her and never say a word. Just stand there and smile and nod and let her do the socializing. Both are very stubborn however, and that tends to cause some issues when neither will back down and admit wrong doing lol.    She's also a very affectionate person, whereas he wasn't used to that kind of thing and had to learn to accept and nurture her love language.

7.  After the kids go to bed and clean up is finished, they always go for a walk on the beach together. It's normally the first chance all day they've gotten to be alone and have a conversation.   They can finally pay attention to one another and devote their attention to each other.   He always gives her a piggy back ride back to the house.  normally they'll watch a bit of tv and eat the hidden junk food,  and then she'll read for a bit in bed while he does work stuff on his lap top.  Normally adults things after that ;)

8. No. They have no regrets.   Both believe everything happened the way it did for a reason.

9.  The only reason they'd ever break up is if someone cheated.  I think in the end, she'd handle it better than he would.

10.  Neither of them would know what to do without the other.  They are the centre of one another's universe.  Each other's spouse, lover , confidant, best friend.  They both lose so much if something happens to the other.  Tyler freely admits he doesn't think he'd survive it.  Not mentally.  He admits he'd likely go back to drinking and the drug use.    He doesn't even like considering a life without her.    Esme would be be a shell of herself, but she'd keep going for her children.

@tragiclyhip​

[kiarcheo]

Every Woman Needs a Little Madness in Her Life

                                      (Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac, Act 4)

‘You can be my Cyrano.’

‘Doesn’t he die at the end? And the guy he writes for too, before him?’

‘You know, what? Let’s forget about that.’

Read on Ao3

                                   ——————————————–

Anne Boleyn was known for lots of things including being good with words. Insightful participation in classes. Witty jokes. Biting retorts. High-graded essays. Flirty banter. You name it. But when it came to talking about her feelings in a serious manner or when sweet words were needed...well, suddenly her mastery of the English language seemed to disappear.

Unfortunately, that was exactly what she needed in order to woo Catalina. Or at least get the chance to try.

Henry had mentioned how much lower maintenance than Catalina she was, relieved not to have to bring flowers and plan interesting dates and be sweet all the time…which…first of all, rude! But then again, it gave her an insight on what dating Catalina would be…and Anne wanted that. She was sure she would be much better than Henry, not that it would take much. For sure she would never cheat on her.

If only Catalina would give her a chance. Sadly, her usual methods don’t seem to work. Her flirting had never let her down, but every time she approaches Catalina, she seems to develop a foot-in-mouth disease. All that comes out from her lips are either dumb jokes or lame pick-up lines and even the rare times she thinks that she managed to sound at least like a normal person without embarrassing herself...well, Catalina still looks like she is questioning why God chose to punish her like that, by sending Anne her way.

But luckily Anne knows someone who is good with words, the sweet, nice, romantic kind of words.

Enter Kat, her cousin and best friend.

‘Run that by me again?’

‘I want to leave notes to Catalina to woo her so that when I ask her on a date she will say yes.’

‘Okay.’ Kat nods. ‘I get that.’

‘As a secret admirer.’

‘You’re losing me.’

‘And you’re going to write the notes.’

‘Yep. Completely lost.’

‘What? Why?’

‘How are you supposed to convince her to go on a date with you if she doesn’t know it’s you? And why I’m the one writing?’

‘Secret admirers are cool. Romantic. Henry used to complain about Catalina making him watch rom-coms and stuff like that.’

Kat pulls a face at that.

‘I know, I don’t know what I was thinking dating him, but!’ Anne raises her index in the air to stop whatever her cousin was going to say. ‘Listen to me. She likes that. But she doesn’t like me. Right now, the mere sight of me sets her teeth on edge. And I keep making a fool out of myself whenever I try to talk to her. So the notes are gonna do the work for me, they will woo her, she’ll be interested in meeting the secret admirer and BOOM! That’s me!’ She gestures to herself. ‘I mean, maybe she’ll be confused enough to give me a chance?’ She trails off, confidence waning. ‘Kat? Say something?’

The younger girl tilts her head, staring at her cousin. ‘Ok,’ she says after a beat. ‘I can sort of see it. Maybe. But why do you need me?’

‘Because I can write kick-ass essays and I can come up with bawdy songs that are a work of art, if I say so myself, but…do you remember when I had that assignment in high school and I had to write a love letter?’

Kat laughs at the memory.

‘Yeah. Exactly.’ Anne isn’t upset. That had been a clusterfuck of epic proportions. Worse thing she has ever handed in in her whole academic career. ‘And you’re a poet.’

‘I’m not.’

‘And if I do it,’ Anne ignores Kat’s words, ‘at best I’ll end up with something like…Roses are red, violets are blue, Henry was a dick, I want to date you.’

‘Maybe don’t write her that.’ Kat grimaces. She feels like it’s her duty to stop her cousin from embarrassing herself in front of her crush more than she has already done.

‘See why I need your help?’ Anne grabs her hands in hers. ‘Pretty please with a cherry on top?’

‘Put away that pout.’ Kat sighs, lips twitching as she tries not to smile at the childish pleading. ‘Okay.’

‘Really??’

‘You know that there are not a lot of things I would not do for you. I still don’t think it’s a good idea.’ Kat just wants to point it out one last time. ‘But it’s not gonna hurt anyone.... except possibly your dignity.’

‘Don’t worry.’ Anne waves it off. ‘I’ve lost that ages ago’

/

‘What are you doing?’

‘Shhh.’ Catalina yanks her friend behind the vending machine. ‘I left a note saying that I want to meet my,’ she air-quotes, rolling her eyes, ‘secret admirer.’

Not so secret anymore. Catalina had nipped to the loo while studying at the library and as she was returning to her place, she had seen Anne Boleyn leaving something on her desk.

Cathy nods. Catalina had shown her the note and they had compared it with the others that she has been finding in her bag, on the desks she usually sat at or in her books, after leaving them unattended either at the library or at lectures and seminars. There were no doubts it had been Anne all along.

Convinced it is a set-up and tired of waiting for the punch line that would make her the butt of the joke, Catalina had decided to take matters in her hands.

‘Where are you?’ Anne storms out of the room, phone to her ear. ‘She wants to meet me. See you behind the theatre.’

‘No.’ Cathy doesn’t need Catalina to speak to know what she is thinking. One look at her is enough.

‘Yes.’ Catalina grabs her wrist and before she knows Cathy is walking across the campus, the theatre their unspoken destination.

When they arrive, Anne is pacing. Giving them her back is another girl, they can only see long, dark hair with pink tips. She is sitting on a bench, her head following Anne’s movement as she walks back and forth in front of her, gesticulating as she is talking.

Catalina drags Cathy with her until they are closer, hiding behind a tall hedge. They have no clear visual, but they can hear them now.

‘I need you to write a note!’

Catalina and Cathy share a look. The younger girl puts a hand on her friend’s arm. Catalina can say all she wants that she has always known it was nothing but a prank, but Cathy isn’t her best friend for nothing. She knows that she was hoping it was real.

‘Catalina wants to meet me!’ Anne continues, an edge of panic in her voice.

‘That was, like, the whole point, no?’ the other girl sounds confused. ‘Just reply to the note and say yes.’

‘You do that.’

‘Why?’ A single word, the resigned tone of someone used to deal with whatever nonsense Anne Boleyn usually comes up with.

‘I want a nice, sweet note. And knowing myself I’d mess it up somehow.’

‘Okay, let’s say I write it. Then what happens?’

‘Hopefully she won’t slap me when she sees me?’

‘Yes, hopefully she doesn’t.’ The girl nods. ‘And then?’

‘She agrees to go on a date?’ Anne looks tentatively hopeful.

‘Exactly. Where you’ll have to talk to her without using my words as intermediary.’

‘You can come with me!’ Anne exclaims. ‘Come on!’ she gives a playful whine. ‘You can be my Cyrano.’

‘Doesn’t he die at the end? And the guy he writes for too, before him?’

‘You know, what? Let’s forget about that.’ Anne waves her hand as if she could physically send the thought away. ‘Oh. I can get an earpiece and you can tell me what to say! Like spies!’

‘We are so not going to do that.’ They can’t see the girl’s face, but it’s not hard to imagine she is wearing a deadpan look. ‘Annie.’ Affection is clear in the uttering of the name. ‘I can’t always be there as the third wheel to feed you lines.’

Anne doesn’t say anything.

‘Just be yourself.’

‘Terrible advice,’ Anne scoffs. ‘That’s how I got her to hate me.’

‘She doesn’t hate you.’

‘Yes, she does. She likes the person who sends her sweet messages.’

‘Which is…you?’

‘But the words are yours. What am I even supposed to tell her?’

‘Don’t know. Just be sincere. What do you like about her? Tell her that.’

Anne looks unconvinced. ‘I tried that.’

‘I don’t mean like…flirting. Or attempting to. What it was...telling her that you like when she gets hot and bothered?’

‘Something like that,’ Anne admits sheepishly. She meant it in a sexy way, but Catalina interpreted it as her saying she likes to annoy and irritate her. Which happens quite often, but it’s not exactly what Anne was going for. Damn the English language and its contronyms!

‘Just...you know...talk about the way her eyes light up when she defends her argument in class. How you could live in an ocean of her thoughts, because you find her mind fascinating. How you want to get lost in her arms. Even just telling her that she is smart and pretty would be a good start.’

‘Are you sure that it’s not YOU who has a crush on her?’

‘Absolutely. That’s my evil masterplan. Get her to agree on a date with you so that I can then swoop in and steal her.’ You don't need to be able to see her to guess the girl is rolling her eyes. ‘I mean, her hugs are pretty nice.’

‘How do you even know that?’

‘She saw me crying in the toilets once. Hugged me. Comforted me. Offered me a proper tissue and some wipes so that I would not scrape my face raw with the paper towels.’

‘When was that? Where was I? Why were you crying?’

As the girl waves Anne’s concern away, Cathy turns to Catalina, who shrugs. Maybe if she were to see the girl’s face...but at the moment she has no precise memory of that episode.

‘So you approve of her as my girlfriend because she gives good hugs?’ Anne must have been reassured, because she is back to her teasing.

‘No, you dumbass. But, you know, someone taking the time to comfort a stranger… she is a good person.’

‘I can already see it. Movie night at home. The two of you cuddling and me in the corner of the couch, all alone with just the popcorns as company,’ Anne carries on with over-the-top dramatics.

‘God gave us two arms so we can cuddle two people at the same time.’

‘You’re such a smart cookie, aren't you?!’ Anne reaches out to pinch her cheek, but her hand gets batted away. ‘So you’ll write the note?’

‘Fine.’

‘Really?’

‘Why do you sound so surprised? Have I ever denied you anything?’

‘You stopped me from having revenge on Jane.’

‘You were drunk and you wanted to set fire to Jane’s house. Which is a flat. In a building. Full of other flats. And other people. Who had done nothing to you. So forgive me for stopping you from committing arson, possibly killing people, and getting thrown in jail. Besides you know that hurting other people and illegal stuff are the only things I generally won’t do when it comes to helping you out.’

‘So illegal stuff is not completely out of the question?’

‘Within limits.’

‘Wait! Don’t you have a lecture?’ Anne suddenly switches gears.

‘Not if you need me.’

‘Get up!’ Anne holds out her hand. ‘We can talk about it tonight, have a sleepover and all that jazz.’

The girl takes her hand and stands up. ‘Anne,’ a beat, ‘we live together.’  

‘Come on!’ Anne ignores the comment. ‘I’ll walk you there.’  

Catalina and Cathy peep up from behind their hiding spot to see them walking away holding hands. Then they look at each other.

‘So?’

‘So what?’

‘It seems like she actually wants to date you.’

‘But didn’t why she write the notes herself?’ Cathy wants to say that Anne actually explained why but Catalina goes on. ‘And who is that girl?’

Cathy shrugs. ‘Maybe Jane knows her?’

Right. Catalina had forgotten that she is Anne’s cousin. Next stop is Jane’s flat. The one that would have been set on fire had it not been for the mystery girl’s intervention. She wonders if Jane knows about the danger she narrowly escaped.

‘So…Anne Boleyn is your cousin, right?’

‘Yeah?’ Jane is a bit wary. Usually nothing good comes from such a question.

‘She was with a girl today.’

‘Jealous already?’ Anna jokes, as she leaves the room to make some tea. She is not as close to Catalina as her flatmate is, but she can’t help herself. Anne being Catalina’s secret admirer...will wonders never cease!?

Catalina glances at Cathy in search of assistance, but her friend looks as helpless as she is...how to describe a girl they had not actually seen...and without admitting they were spying on them.

‘Pink hair,’ Cathy blurts out.

‘Oh. Katherine.��� Jane’s confusion disappears from her face. ‘Katherine Howard. She is my cousin too. Second cousin,’ She specifies. ‘We’re not particularly close. Me and Anne had problems and…well, if you have a problem with Anne, you have it with Katherine too. Doesn’t matter if it had nothing to do with her. Nothing comes close to Anne’s level of protectiveness of Katherine except Katherine’s protectiveness of Anne.’

‘So they are cousins too?’ Catalina asks, just wanting to make sure she understood correctly.

‘More sisters than cousins but yes,’ Jane confirms, and Cathy can see the relief on Catalina’s face.

‘You talking about Boleyn and Kat?’ Anna returns.

‘You know them too?’

‘Kat better than Anne, but yes. Why?’

Catalina swears them to secrecy, before telling them what they have heard.  

‘I can see that.’ Anna nods. She had been a bit surprised to hear that Anne had written those notes. Those words. Not that Anne is heartless or anything like that. But heartfelt words are just not the way she shows her love from what Anna knows about her. She would say that of all the five love languages, words of affirmation are definitely at the bottom of the list. She has spent enough time around her and Kat (and heard about her from Kat) to know that she is more about quality time and physical touch, with acts of service and gifts peppered in…and she’ll do all of that while teasing and making fun of you. Anna had been confused at first. But the more she saw Anne with Kat…She would give her cousin the world if she could, nobody who knows them would ever dare to suggest otherwise. So Anna had come to the realisation that Anne is more likely to show that she cares by roasting you rather than by waxing poetry about you. But Kat...Kat writing those notes makes so much more sense. That’s more her style. And she’d do pretty much anything for Anne.

.

‘Right.’ Cathy lightly slaps her thigh. ‘It’s time for me to go.’

‘Yeah, me too, actually,’ Anna says looking at the clock on the wall. ‘If you give me two minutes to get ready, we can head out together?’

They are walking in silence when Anna speaks up. ‘What’s up?’

‘Uh?’

‘You had a weird expression when Catalina was talking about her secret admirer being Anne and all that stuff.’ Anna glances at Cathy. ‘I know we’re not close or anything,’ it’s more like…their best friends are close friends, so they sometimes hang out together, ‘but if you want to talk…’

Cathy hesitates. ‘For…a while, I have been…’ she takes a deep breath as if steeling herself, ‘jealous…wait, no, envious of Catalina.’

It has been eating at her and it’s not like she can talk to her best friend about it.

Anna mulls it over. Then she goes back to what was her original question. ‘You fancy Boleyn?!’

‘No!’

Anna is taken aback by the outburst.

‘Sorry. I see why you’d think so, but no,’ Cathy apologises. ‘I...just...wished someone would write me those notes. So when we found out that it was Anne I thought, I don’t know, that I wished she was writing them to me?’ she struggles to put her thoughts and feelings in words that make sense. ‘Which was a bit weird because I was never really interested in her before? Sure, she is beautiful, I have eyes. But nothing more, you know? And even after...it was...not like I fancied her, but I wanted to? Does it make any sense?’

Anna lets out a noncommittal hum.  

‘Anyway, I was feeling so guilty because, well, Catalina liked the messages too, and more important, she likes Anne, no matter how much she protests. So to find out that I never had any feelings for Anne because she was not the one writing the notes?’

‘So, what? You’re in love with Kat now?’

‘Not…in love. But I might have a crush on her brain? Her heart? Which I realise now it sounds very weird, I don’t even know how the girl looks, please never repeat that to anyone,’ Cathy rushes out.

‘I think you should actually tell Kat that yourself.’

‘What??’ Cathy expected teasing, certainly not…that. Is Anna encouraging her?

‘What do you know about Kat?’

‘Uhm…she has a way with words? She is Anne’s cousin? And Jane’s apparently? She has pink hair?’ Cathy is racking her brain, but that’s all she got.

‘You have never seen her? For real?’

‘No. Just saw the pink hair. We were…’ Cathy clears her throat, a bit embarrassed, ‘sort of hiding?’

Anna appears to be debating whether to say anything about the last part or not. She decides not to. ‘Look. Kat is a lot of things. She is sweet. Funny. Loyal. Creative. Smart. Protective. Gorgeous. And the last bit is what most people choose to focus on. Complimenting her mind is definitely a good way to get in her good graces.’

‘Do you think I have a chance?’

‘Not up to me to say, is it? But,’ she tacks on seeing the disappointment on Cathy’s face, ‘do I think you could be compatible? I don’t know you that well, but I’d say yes. And you’d probably be a step ahead everyone else.’

/

‘Fancy seeing you here, you’re not around often.’ Cathy mentally facepalms. What a crappy opening line to start a conversation with her crush for the first time.

‘Waiting for Anne.’ Kat doesn’t seem too bothered. ‘Are you waiting for Catalina?’

Cathy nods.

‘Katherine. With a K.’ She holds her hand out. ‘You can call me Kat.’

‘Catherine. With a C.’ She shakes her hand. ‘You can call me Cathy.’

They smile at each other.

‘I hear we have to thank you for Lina and Anne getting together?’

Kat shrugs with a small smile.

‘Did you write them yourself? Because I tried to look some up but could not find anything.’

‘Yes.’ She nods bashfully.

‘They were brilliant. Absolutely amazing,’ Cathy breaths out. She knew it already but hearing it from the girl herself somehow made a new impression. ‘You’re a poet.’

‘Not exactly poetry. More like...lyrics?’

‘Oh?’

Not the most explicative but luckily Kat correctly interprets that simple noise as interest. ‘Music is my major. Together with history.’

‘Interesting combination.’

‘No prospects for either of them,’ Kat jokes.

‘So you write your own lyrics.’

‘And music.’

Did Cathy already mention how impressed she is? And curious? ‘What comes first?’

Now, Cathy doesn’t want to toot her own horn, but Kat does look pleasantly surprised by the question.

‘It depends. Music is more about inspiration. Words are…a way for me to express myself. Or Anne’s thoughts and feelings,’ she chuckles. ‘Lately I’ve been doing lyrics first, had a lot of work from her.’

‘You’re quite popular,’ Cathy comments out of the blue as yet another person passing by says hello.

‘Yeah.’ The reply is not particularly enthusiastic.

‘You’re more beautiful than I thought,’ Cathy blurts out, and if she was not cursing herself as soon as the words escaped her mouth, she is when she sees Kat’s face falling.

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s fine.’

It’s clearly not. Cathy feels like Kat is closing herself off.

‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

She had wanted to say something about her beauty being on pair with her beautiful mind but then thought it sounded too awkward.

‘No? So I’m not beautiful?’

‘No! What? No! I– God,’ Cathy stutters out, her panic blinding her to the fact that Kat is taking the mick. ‘Anna said–’

‘Anna said what?’

‘Oh man, I’m messing this up so badly!’ Cathy groans.

‘Messing up what?’

‘Asking you out?’

'Is it a question or a statement?’ Kat raises an eyebrow, amused. ‘What did Anna say?’ She adds on, curious. Her friend didn’t tell her anything.  

‘When Catalina started receiving notes, I was charmed. Then I was envious. And felt guilty because who is envious of their best friend??’ Cathy feels like she is getting the hang of explaining the whole thing.

‘You fancy Anne?’

‘No!’ Did Kat sound disappointed or is it just her wishful thinking? ‘I get why it looks like that. Anna thought the same. I thought I fancied Anne because I thought she was the one writing the notes. But she wasn’t. It was you. And I told Anna that I didn’t even know how you looked, but I liked your mind…and then realised how it sounded and asked her to never repeat it to anyone. And she said I should tell you because you might appreciate it? Being complimented about your brain rather than your looks?’

Cathy is thankful that in her blabbing she managed to at least leave out the part where they were spying on them. It will probably come out sooner or later, but at the moment the situation is embarrassing enough as it is without adding that.

‘Anna was right,’ it’s all Kat says, not fazed by the long rambling.

‘So you don’t think it’s weird that I sort of had a crush on your brain without ever having met you?’

‘Weirder than me writing love notes to the girl my cousin had a crush on?’

Cathy titters. Fair enough. ‘Was it weird for you? Or difficult?’

‘Eh,’ Kat shrugs. ‘I just thought about what I’d like to receive. Be told.’

‘I’m not really creative in that way.’ Cathy frowns slightly, before perking up. ‘But I’m great at research if words borrowed from other people are fine too?’

‘Well, that worked perfectly fine for Anne–’

‘So it could work for me too?’ Cathy asks hopeful.

‘Don’t know. Why don’t you try?’ Kat says coyly.

‘You mean I didn’t completely blow my chances?’

‘Chances at what?’

‘Taking you out on a date.’

‘Still have to hear an actual question.’

Cathy hesitates. The answer will be positive, right? Kat would not lead her on like this...right? Only one way to find out, she supposes. Cathy knows she will regret it if she doesn’t at least try.

‘Katherine…Kat…Will you give me the immense pleasure to allow me take you out on a date?’

‘Oh! We can go on double dates!’

Cathy wonders if Catalina will be upset if she kills Anne. From the exasperated and yet fond look she is sending to the girl, probably yes. And Kat would be too, if the bond that they share is even just half as strong as what other people say.

‘I’ll let you two get settled before showing you up.’ Kat seems unperturbed by Anne’s intrusion.

‘You should be worried,’ Catalina teases her girlfriend, ‘if her lovely notes are any indication, she got game.’

Kat winks at Catalina, before turning to Cathy, hand out, palm up. ‘Give me your phone.’

Cathy manages to fumble only a bit getting it out of her pocket.

‘In the immortal words of Santana Lopez,’ Anne announces once Kat has handed the phone back to Cathy, ‘gotta gay, gotta go.’

She gives Catalina a peck on the lips, before taking Kat’s hand and leaving.

‘It’s a yes to the date, by the way,’ Kat says loudly, turning her head, while walking away. This somehow prompts Anne to drop Kat’s hand, turn around, while keeping on walking backward, and shoot finger guns at them. She narrowly avoids tripping over a huge potted plant by the entrance, but only thanks to Kat yanking her out of the way in the nick of time.

Cathy and Catalina let out a synchronous sigh. They turn to look at each other. Understanding passes between them, even before it is vocalised.

‘What have we gotten ourselves into?’

[havetheavengersdoneanythingwrong]

Interlude — The Arrival of the Goddess

Times change, and with it, so do the gods.

“To try to make amends—“

It wasn’t ‘her’ that had done that. She understood that much.

But what ‘she’ did affected her as much as any other. Remembering the face of a man that wasn’t him, she overdid her job — and faced the cost for such foolishness.

There was something in the murky haze she spotted — something to support and grow.

She couldn’t walk back ‘her’ actions, but she could step forward and rebuild.

—

“I’m done with you! I never want to see you again!”

…

…Aah.

She found herself moving ‘home.’ Even if ‘home’ is more of a concept, to her.

She had ‘territory’ not far from here. Surely.

…

“…That was…”

‘Her.’

A ‘her’ that did something foolish. Repeatedly. Fear of family being hurt had undercut her ability to reason — had led to what appeared to now be her expulsion.

“…That’s what I’d get, being a minor goddess. Easier to kick me out.”

…Yet, that bitterness now felt hollowed. Certainly, there remained anger brewing — that she’d been tossed over the edge, despite doing it with good intentions.

“And more than that, these pantheons aren’t immune to cheating bastards. It’s more prevalent then ever.”

—

A man who wouldn’t stop wailing.

It was a horrible, cursed sound.

For his sins, she cursed his soul. She would not stop cursing him.

The wailing, she felt, was soulless. Irritated her. Enraged her.

She couldn’t forget that obnoxious cry.

—

Yet she couldn’t even blame that woman. Idealistic though Quetzacoatl was, she wasn’t the sort to be fooled so easily. More than that, she had failed many times over to understand where the pursuit should end.

…And yet, that wasn’t her.

That was ‘her.’ A copy, summoned and descended. A different ‘Tlazolteotl.’

…One tossed away all the same.

“…”

…Certainly, where she stood — at some ‘brink,’ a temple in a ‘somewhere’ no longer on Earth — she found herself remorseful.

Angry; enraged, even; but more than that, sorrowful.

…That was ‘her’ fault, ultimately. And that wouldn’t change.

“…And she’s too stubborn to go back on her word so easy.”

‘…As she should be.’

…Even with what had just happened, she had to commend Quetzalcoatl. The stubbornness she possessed made adultery impossible for her — nor forgiving those who tried.

…

“…Now what?”

…The sunset stop the ‘temple’ was beautiful. She took a seat, and gazed upon it, as steam began to rise.

Quetzalcoatl wasn’t unreasonable, but that was still ‘her.’ And Quetz was rarely one to exaggerate in her wording, even if angry.

She knew Quetzalcoatl well enough to know that. She was her sister.

…The rock that composed the temple… Despite all this time, it still scratched at her feet when she moved about. Her gaze moved from the sun to the ground she stood on — steam now surrounded it, but the basics now stayed the same.

…The people who made this temple, back then — piece, upon piece, to connect with the gods, to find forgiveness and partake in rituals to appease them.

‘Arrogant, the lot of them’ — those gods, who took the mantle of humanity’s saviours and protectors. Her sister felt as though she were the only one who hadn’t grown too used to their power — watching that god commit the very same sins she so furiously raged against only convinced her further, even as she levied curse after curse upon the wailing man.

—

“Please..! I didn’t..! I didn’t think, and..!”

…What was it with these Mayan gods and crying like fools?

That man — Chocl — was a fool.

He comes to her hoping for forgiveness for the most grave act of all.

A human was one thing. They were flawed; made mistakes; could recover.

But a god was above that. They had to be above that — they were the paragons Tlazolteotl was trying to help the people look up to.

To help the people become like them.

And the insult of approaching her now, failing the one task they were given, desperately wishing for her to bail him out for something he had no excuse for—

And the insult of approaching her now, a goddess of a pantheon that ran side-by-side with his, to beg for forgiveness that he had by no means earned. For the insult of a Mayan god approaching an Aztec goddess, for forgiveness she only offered humans.

“…You’re a damnable fool.”

The man looked upon her, his eyes widened with the sort of fear she almost loved to see. The fear of an adulterer facing their crimes — an adulterer she grew to respect, a higher-up, that she was now in charge of punishing.

He was better than this.

And he began to cry, yet again, in regret.

—Disgusting.

A disgusting man allowed himself into the pantheon, and made a fool of them all.

She raised her hand, forced it towards the weeping man — riddling his form, cursing him to weep, silently, as long as it would take to make up for such a foolish sin. As long as it would take to mend the heart of the brother whose wife he slept with, and loved.

…She would never allow the crying of a foolish adulterer to disgrace the pantheon ever again. Surely — she swore.

She would never place trust in these gods. Never again.

—

…And yet, here she was.

Viewing the people around her family so lowly, recalling that incident where even a god fell to those vices, she went overboard.

“…Damn you, me.”

…Another look down to the temple.

…People would repent here for their actions. She could even recall raising her curses on some she disavowed in similar locations.

The higher gods oversaw her actions, judged her every move, yet she still arrived to deliver that safety from the curse.

…

“…You appear to be in a pinch, Tlazolteotl.”

…

A familiar voice, behind her. The goddess of filth turned herself around slowly, facing another goddess.

A familiar, older woman. A blue band of woven fabric covered her chest, paired with a carefully-made silver and blue skirt, landing at her knees. Golden necklaces adorned her neck — golden cuffs on her lower arms.

“…Coatlicue.”

“My, you haven’t made an enemy again, have you?”

Coatlicue placed a hand to her cheek, her spare hand still at her side. Her icy blue eyes stared daggers into the opposing goddess; without hostility, only a kind curiosity.

“…It was a ‘me.’ After the previous incidents, I had been too cautious. Had gone overboard — harmed Quetzalcoatl, and her husband.”

“…Hmmm… A conundrum indeed, isn’t it?”

The woman sighed, and took a seat on the temple roof’s floor — steadying herself with a hand, resting the other on the ground.

“…Putting it lightly, yes. Damnit… I highly doubt I could even show my face around here for a while.”

“…Well… Moping about won’t help you.”

“I just got off the news. Forgive me for being a bit lost.”

…Tlazolteotl took a seat before Coatlicue, and breathed out a long sigh.

“…What do I do? That thickheaded sister of mine… I doubt she was exaggerating. Gods, she should at least know where I’m coming from, but…”

—

“Your intentions mean nothing when the result is hurting me!”

—

“…Damnit, couldn’t she have..?! Why did I..?!”

…The goddess of filth, perhaps from all the moisture in the air, didn’t notice she was crying — the goddess across from her only waited for a few seconds longer.

“…She prefers kindness, does she not? Kindness and heroics.”

…But Coatlicue’s words caused the woman’s eyes to shoot up.

“…You know as well as I do I can’t do that.”

“…I think you can, Tlazolteotl. There is more than just ‘her’ story — surely, you can find a different Master to help.”

The woman smiled, leaned back, as Tlazolteotl furrowed her brow.

“That’s impossible! Summoning a god is already next to impossible, and—“

“—It happened with Quetzalcoatl, one of the strongest of us. You are nowhere near her strength, no offence to you.”

…A period of silence befell the two, as the sun descended further. The darkness of night slowly overtook the atmosphere — the light atop the temple fading away.

“…How do I know I will find a Master the way she had? A Master as good as hers?”

…At this, the goddess only smiled.

“In time, you will find it. Time is far more subjective to us, my dear. I’m sure that you can redeem yourself before your sister’s return.”

“…”

“…Have some faith in humanity. Chocl may have broken the pedestal you placed those of us on — but not all have done as he has. I trust you have learned that the hard way.”

“…I’ll… try.”

The goddess faded, leaving Tlazolteotl alone.

“…That crying.”

…The woman furrowed her brow; and covered her ears.

It was raining again; wasn’t it?

“…Damn you, Chocl. In my foolishness to prevent another you… ‘I’ have landed myself here. Damn you.”

…And yet — a Master.

Someone she could try to help. Someone she could try to cooperate with to mend what she had broken.

…A possible…

…

“…What sort of Master would I want..?”

…The woman got to thinking. Surely, someone she could get to listen to her — but someone who wouldn’t indulge in vices. Someone who wouldn’t toss her in the field and kill her, and someone she did not have to curse.

…

“…Someone… normal.”

—

…In the Chaldea summoning room, a ruckus had commenced.

“—Y’know, that hurt like hell! Thank god I’m all gooey and all.”

At one end of the room, the haughty goddess of justice, Astraea — gazing at the other end of the room, containing a widely-grinning Ritsuka who had reformed into their orange-haired visage after being squished against a wall.

“You ought’a be careful with your tosses, Astraea! You might activate the summoning stuff.”

“Can it, Ritsuka. After thieving that cake from the Chaldea fridge, I won’t leave without justice being served!”

“—Really?! That’s what you took issue with?!”

The two went back and forth, as I slipped in — checking the camera feeds, I knocked on the Chaldea door before just walking in, just in time to see Astraea politely wave to me before running towards the other Master.

“I see it’s business as usual over here.”

“Yep—! Just your average throwing sessiOOHHOHOHO”—

—I had to quickly run backwards before Ritsuka crashed into me, as he instead crashed into something far worse in hindsight.

The summoning controls.

“…”

“…”

“Why did they make the ‘summon button’ this easy to accidentally press?”

“…Fucking mages.”

“Yeah, blame them. Not, uh, me.”

—And in a moment—

—

…Suddenly, the goddess felt a tug.

The tug originated from ‘somewhere.’ A ‘somewhere’ beyond her reach.

This was not what she knew — this was not what the Caster of her knew.

This was something else.

And yet, the odd still held curiosity to her — as the stone temple she stood on, illuminated by the morning sun, now suddenly became an all-encompassing vortex.

…Something this strange — surely, the way to regaining favour, restoring her sister’s faith in her, restoring her faith in others lay here.

If restoring the faith of her family required helping another — she would have to try.

She would most certainly be dead if she did not.

“…Here goes.”

—

In a moment, the summoning room was filled with steam.

Astraea, myself, and Ritsuka had to spend the first few second hacking our lungs out — coughing from the sudden increase of moisture, as the technology threatened to fizzle out under the less-than-amicable environment.

But among the haze, the figure of a beautiful woman, with piercing green eyes and a gaze that may even put Kiara to shame.

“…It appears I have been summoned, at last. I suppose this is my chance at setting things right.”

…The haze cleared, slightly. A woman clad in black and red, who approached Ritsuka — looked them up and down, and then moved to me.

Her eyes looked through me, as though dissecting me with her mind — taking in every feature, before leaning in with a mischievous grin.

“…Hm… Perhaps I may like this more than I thought. I am Tlazolteotl, the goddess of steam baths, among other things. I’ll be in your care, Master~ ♡”

[365days365movies]

April 10, 2021: The Graduate (1967) (Recap: Part One)

Some Like it Hot got Oscar-stiffed. So did this film!

This film got seven nominations at the 1968 Oscars, and took home Best Director and NOTHING else. It was nominated for Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actress, Adapted Screenplay, and Cinematography, and got NONE of them. Hot damn! That surprises me, because this film is RIDICULOUSLY iconic.

I mean, hell, The Simpsons has homaged it at least twice, which I know from the above GIF and the following GIF. And in that one, the teacher in the background is Dustin Hoffman, HOMAGING HIMSELF

There’s been a stage adaptation, AFI called it the 17th best movie of all time in 2007, while also putting it on 5 other lists, and but it on the Movie Quotes list TWICE! Leonard Maltin’s seen it before he dies, the Library of Congress has it in their collection, and it launched Dustin Hoffman’s career into the goddamn atmosphere!  And that’s not even mentioning the one thing I’m looking forward to the most:

The music.

Look, I’m not exactly a big music nerd, by ANY means. I’ve heard songs, but can rarely identify the band or person playing them. I was in an acapella group, a steel band, and chamber orchestra, so I’m no foreigner to music. I’m just...not a big music nerd. But I DO know Simon and Garfunkel, and the more I hear of them, the more I like them.

Scarborough Fair/Canticle, Bridge Over Troubled Water, Mrs. Robinson, Cecilia, I Am a Rock, ALL of them are good classic folk rock songs that are easy to remember. AND I KNOW IT’S LAME TO LIKE FOLK ROCK I DO NOT CARE SUE ME IF YOU MUST. Oh, and I didn’t even mention the most famous of their songs, whose fame was aided by this film’s success. But, uh...I’ll hold onto it for now.

In fact, for now, let’s just jump into the film in and of itself! The Graduate is a classic, and it’s been on my list for a while. It’s more of a romantic comedy, but it’s primarily a comedy (from my understanding), so it’s fitting that I throw it in here. Let’s go!

SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Recap (1/2)

We start on a plane as it lands, joining Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), as he leaves the plane and walks through the airport. We also start right away with a BANGER, and the most iconic song on this film’s soundtrack: The Sound of Silence.

Classic. CLASSIC! One of their best! Not my favorite, but one of their best for sure! But OK, after that, we get to know Benjamin a bit more. He’s a recent college graduate and in a state of melancholy, not quite knowing what to do or how to feel about his new situation. This is to the confusion of his father, Mr. Braddock (William Daniels) and his mother, Mrs. Braddock (Elizabeth Wilson).

Urged to attend the party in his honor, he reluctantly goes downstairs, where he’s absolutely accosted (nearly assaulted) by all of his parents’ friends. One of these friends, Mr. Maguire (Walter Brooke), somewhat awkwardly pulls him to the side, and brings him out side. He wants to say one word to him. Just one word.

After that...interaction, Ben takes the opportunity to escape, as all of his accomplishments are being read out loud to the throngs. And I have to say, you can feel just how overwhelming all of this is for him. It’s a palpable anxiety. He goes back to his room to get away from everybody and just look at his fish tank. Just a celebration of the introvert’s experience right here, and I can dig it.

But this private reverie is interrupted by the barging in of one Mrs. Robinson (Katharine Ross), who pretends to have mistaken his room for the bathroom, but sits down and smokes anyway, despite his protests. She asks what making him upset, and notes that’s it’s more of a general feeling than a specific one. She understands and readies herself to leave, but not before asking him to give her a ride home. He reluctantly accepts, and takes her home. She invites him in through some subtle manipulation and...well, you know where this is headed.

An absolutely classic line and classic exchange, and I’m kind of surprised that it happens this soon into the movie, to be honest! She denies the accusation...kind of, and he asks her apology. But she brushes it off, and asks if he’d like to see the portrait of her daughter Elaine, which he’s quite enthusiastic about. But while there, in her room, things continue to get awkward as she basically undresses in front of him.

Mrs. Robinson continues to deny that she’s trying to seduce him, but it’s all basically gaslighting to get him to admit that he wants to be seduced. Damn, Mrs. Robinson, what the fuck? And it’s actually made WAY FUCKING WORSE when she tricks him into getting into a sealed room, where she traps him and tells him that she’s interested in sleeping with him, whenever he wants to. Ben is OBVIOUSLY frazzled as fuck, especially considering the basically near-rape situation he’s currently in.

Thankfully (maybe), the sound of Mr. Robinson’s car pulling up allows enough distraction (and adrenaline rush) for Ben to GET THE FUCK OUT of there, and he runs into Mr. Robinson (Murray Hamilton) in the process. Noticing how frazzled he seems to be, Mr. Robinson tells Ben to relax in his youth, and having a few flings with the ladies while he can. He brushes off all of this, and gets out as soon as he can.

Soon after, summer begins, and not really in Ben’s favor. He’s used again as a prop for his parents and their friends, as his father got him a SCUBA suit that he demonstrates in their pool, despite his protests and wish to be heard. And people...people don’t listen to Ben, huh? I genuinely feel bad for the kid, because it really does seem like nobody attempts to listen to what he wants for how he feels, his parents included. But he seems to get the solitude he’s been seeking as he sits beneath the pool. But that’s overlaid with the realization that Ben actually WAS seduced by Mrs. Robinson, and he gives her a call to meet soon afterwards.

They meet at the Taft Hotel, where Ben is his typical nervous and awkward self, and goes to get a room for the two of them. And it’s now that I should mention that this dude is EXTREMELY twitchy, like goddamn. I know they were saying that he’s “the kind of guy who was to fight them off”, but I DO NOT see it, not gonna lie. 

After a bit more awkwardness, they meet in a room at the hotel, where the clearly still quite nervous Ben struggles with the whole affair (pun intended), including the fact that she is one of his parent’s friends, and that this is a fast start to their relationship. But, Mrs. Robinson being Mrs. Robinson, she once again manipulates him into just getting on with it...and it works.

Once again, The Sound of Silence plays, as summer passes on and he lazes about the pool during the days, then goes to sleep with Mrs. Robinson in the nights. But he doesn’t seem to enjoy any of it, as the two halves of his life are so separate, and he separates them in his mind. And that’s done by some very clever camera work and production design, honestly.

This transitions into a version of the folk rock duo that I hadn’t heard before: April Come She Will, as the affair continues forth. This is interrupted by the frustrations of Ben’s father, who asks what he’s going to do after his collegiate career, tired of his lazing about and doing nothing for...a few weeks. Really? JESUS, DAD, LET ME RELAX!

His time with Mrs. Robinson is also a bit awkward, as he’s craving some sort of relationship outside of specifically sex, and she’s entirely uninterested in that kind of relationship with him. As he tries to start any form of conversation, she reluctantly enters one, which reveals some parts of her relationship with her husband. Specifically, they don’t really love each other, and were forced to marry because she became pregnant with Elaine. It also reveals that Mrs. Robinson is a somewhat broken woman, emotionally.

It’s also revealed during this conversation that Mrs. Robinson DOES FUCKING NOT want him to take Elaine out on a date, but won’t explain her reasons for that. After prying, she says that she doesn’t believe he’s good enough for her (although I don’t quite believe that, personally). This makes him upset, and leads to an argument that almost causes him to leave. But still, she forbids him to go out with Elaine.

That’s made even MORE complicated by the fact that Benjamin’s parents force him to ask her out on a date, and he does so reluctantly, which makes Mrs. Robinson VERY upset. And I gotta say...I don’t think I like anybody in this movie. Like...at all. I only kind of like Ben, although I really only feel bad for him because he has no agency in his life. Not a big fan of Mrs. Robinson, who’s upset by a situation she’s entirely responsible for, and is cheating on her husband. Ben’s parents are annoying, and Mr. Robinson...I dunno, sort of puts off these sleazy vibes, but that’s just a feeling I’m getting.

Elaine seems nice, though, as the two go on a date together. But in order to please Mrs. Robinson, Ben does his absolute damndest to sabotage the date. Starts off with reckless driving, then transitions into ignoring her almost entirely, and then takes her out to a strip club for the date. Which is all understandably extremely upsetting; again, it’s not exactly endearing me to Ben, and it’s not working on Elaine either, who’s convinced that Ben is doing this to punish her specifically, and I don’t fucking blame her!

She runs off crying, and he goes after her, realizing that he’s been a dick and that he really doesn’t want to be. They go get food at the A&W, which is making me both hungry AND nostalgic now...fuck, I really want some food from A&W. But with that, they actually have a good time when he opens up to her about how he’s felt since college ended, and she does something nobody else has: she listens to him.

OK, I’mma get some food, but this is a good place to pause for now! See you later for Part Two!

[countessrivers]

🤷🏆(i want a rant about you know what/who for either of these) 😎 🎵

🎵 - What do you listen to while you read?

Generally can’t listen to anything with lyrics as it just distracts me. If I have it turned down low so it’s more like background noise it’s okay, but I prefer putting on a score (MoS is my go-to) or sometimes just nothing at all.

😎 Who is your BroTP?

Stepping away from DC for a moment, but Harry and Ron. I love them. I love them so much. They’re the best Best Friends ever.

🤷 What thing that your fandom loves do you just not “get”?

Prepare yourselves for some long ass thoughts on Barbara and why I don’t like her and why I don’t get why other people do.

I don’t get the Gotham fandom’s love for Barbara. And this is on two levels. Firstly, she’s a bad person, that somehow, to me at least, stands out in a sea of bad people. Because there are others on the show who are murderous and cruel and selfish and petty, but Barbara has always felt worse to me, I think because so much of her behaviour is toxic and abusive in a very real way, a way that I recognise. Barbara treats the people around her badly, consistently, and is straight up abusive to every one of her romantic partners. She treats Tabitha like shit again and again, abusive in both physical and emotional ways, and she’s manipulative with Renee, employing classic abuser tactics to turn Renee’s desire to stay healthy into an attack on her to create guilt, deflecting blame off her for that and other parts of their relationship. It’s the worst with Jim though. Throughout their relationship in S1 she abused his trust, ignored his boundaries, was manipulative, controlling and jealous, tried to gaslight him on more than one occasion and then either A. cheated on him, or B. left him to immediately hook up with an ex who was as knee deep in the stuff Barbara said she was afraid of as Jim, and then got mad that Jim wasn’t sitting around waiting for her when she finally came back months later, having run out of other options (and either way, she left Jim via letter, which is just a crappy thing to do). And then following her breakdown her behaviour escalates to murder attempts, physical assaults, repeated sexual harassment, and on at least two occasions, outright sexual assault.

And she is never, ever held to account for any of it, by the narrative, by the fandom, or by the other characters. When anyone tries she turns it back on them, or the one questioning her is made out to be the bad guy, and she doesn’t ever apologise or make amends or work for any kind of redemption, which would be fine if she stayed a villain, unrepentant to the end, but that’s not what happened. Which is why I will never be happy with her being the mother of Barbara Gordon. Aside from the fact that I wouldn’t want her anywhere near a child, nor do I think the character we saw for 5 seasons would want to raise a child, or be able to (remember how she told a 12 year old she should start using her looks as a weapon to manipulate people? And that time she actually did take her 10 year old daughter out of the house/away from whoever was taking care of her to drag her across town to an empty club in the middle of the night while there were criminals loose to get a gun?), she was Jim’s abuser, for years, so for her to be the mother of his child, the mother of Barbara Fucking Gordon, leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. Even when she was pregnant she spent half the time using it to punish Jim for not wanting her back. Everything about it was so spiteful and I hate it and it was a bad choice all around and they shouldn’t have done it.

And I have my suspicions as to why she gets away with all of it, why the fandom, and even the writers I think, don’t see her behaviour as anything particularly bad. There’s almost a wider issue of letting the female characters off easy for particular kinds of behaviour that male characters would, do, and rightly should get called on, stemming really from the idea that it’s fine if it happens to men. Lee can slap her partner and ignore his explicitly stated personal boundaries, he’s a man, that’s fine. Selina can lie and deliberately hurt her partner again and again, that’s fine. Female characters can beat and abuse and assault male characters, romantic partners even, and it’s no big. Barbara can spend years sexually harassing someone and there’s nothing wrong with that, because it’s happening to men, it’s fine, gurl power, etc etc.

It’s a general “problem”, I guess, that’s beyond Barbara, but for me her treatment by the fandom is the worst. I just don’t really understand why she’s so beloved, because most of the fandom seems intent on pretending she doesn’t do 99% of the terrible stuff she does, which is insane to me - love a villain for the things they do, love them because they’re villainous. It’s fiction, it doesn’t mean you approve or whatever, but the bad things they do are a part of them. If you can’t handle that, if you have to change everything about them, then you’re not really loving the character at all, you’re making up a whole new one. I mean this even extends to her relationship with Tabitha - Barbara treats her horribly, and Tabitha spends half her time seeing someone else, but the fandom holds them up as their perfect, healthy, appropriate representation lesbian queens (also erasing their bisexuality in the process). Again, if you have to erase or ignore almost everything about the characters and their relationship and their history and their personalities in order to ship or stan them, then you’re basically just making up new ones. More than anything, I just don’t understand that.

Which brings me to my other point, because the second reason I can’t stand her is the writing. Erin is a great actress, does the best with what she’s given, but Barbara is just so badly written. So, so bad. And it’s not that the writers can’t write well, even with stumbles and bad choices, the majority of the show’s characters, male or female, are written well, particularly the villains, but for whatever reason they just didn’t with Barbara. She has no consistent personality or goals. She’s twenty different kinds of crazy, which one which time just depends on the episode. Her personality and mental state and wants change multiple times each season. Who is she? 

And it’s frustrating and infuriating watching a character be so inconsistent and aimless, especially when it interferes with other story arcs, which is what happened time and time again with Barbara. It’s pretty obvious that the writers had no idea what to do with her after season 1. There was a decent enough arc following her breakdown, where you could track what she was after - Jim, her love and hate and obsession twisted up so that she wants to hurt and kill him as much as she still wants him, but after the coma, she just loses focus, and it never really comes back. She floats between the other villains with very little point, like the writers couldn’t come up with a story for her, so they just stuck her in scenes. Her personality jumps all over the place too. Like, is she crazy, is she faking, is she a little crazy and faking the rest? Who is she with? Who is she working for? What does she actually want? Who is she?

And when they do manage to write something more substantial for her, it rarely makes much sense. Barbara suddenly wants to be head of the underworld? Okay then, came a little out of nowhere, but okay I guess. Then she’s an arms dealer???? Then she’s Sofia’s lackey????? Then she’s the god damn head of the League of Assassins??????????. This last one being the worst for me. Barbara’s involvement in the League arc was 100% unnecessary and in fact made the whole thing more confusing and nonsensical and is the most egregious example of the writers just sticking her in somewhere because they didn’t know what to do with her. Ra’s was only interested in Bruce to begin with, so why bring her back at all? Why give her the power when he and others explicitly name Bruce as his heir? Why would the League follow her, a criminal, and not Ra’s’ actual heir, or idk, one of his daughters who are already involved? Why would they keep following her once it became clear she had no intention of fulfilling the League’s mission? Why did she look like that chick in the painting? Why was Ra’s into her, given that literally everything about her is antithetical to everything he stands for? Why any of it?

And then there was her incredible writing in season 5. The whole pregnancy thing was badly done and pretty much the worst way to bring Barbara Gordon in, but besides that, the writers once again had no idea how to write her so they pretty much spent the first half of the season turning her into Oswald.

So yeah, that’s why I don’t like Barbara as a character, and why I don’t understand why so many people love her now.

And that’s today’s Unpopular Opinion

[waywardwhump]

Carry On

When she opened her eyes, she saw that the sun had risen.

Soft movement against her chest. Fluffy. Breathing.

The moment Danielle moved, Scourge's eyes opened. He stood, tail tip twitching, but he didn't move from where he sat until she sat up. It took several seconds too long for her to register the noises she was hearing as meows. Uncaring about the pressure against her side or his insistence that she lay back down, she curled in on herself. Her leg hurt worse now, too painful to bend, or else she'd have curled up tighter. More than the pain, though, she was cold. The house was freezing.

Winter already?

Teeth chattering, and thoughtless of Scourge's presence, she pulled herself up and made her way toward the back of the house. All the way back, to crawl under the covers of the bed. Frosty covers, they pressed against her skin and made her feel colder, but she knew if she waited there long enough they'd warm.

Cat followed. Jumped up to rest next to her. Cats were supposed to be independent. Cats don't follow their owners around. This wasn't even her cat.

Wished Rachel was there. Rachel could give her hugs and get her warmer faster.

She'd be there. Eventually. She'd find her. She found her before.

...although...

Inside of a house. How was the doctor going to find her...?

Laying there, it occurred to her that maybe her partner was looking for her, but she just couldn't locate her. That might be why she wasn't there yet. Shit, she should've thought about that before.

This meant she was going to have to move again. Leaving the house wasn't an option. She wouldn't make it one block.

When she stood, she took the blanket with her. Grabbed the pillow and held in in her teeth. Went back into the living room. Dropped her things on the floor. Should drink more water. Should eat. She did both. Glanced over the chicken on the floor. Cat still hadn't eaten. If it didn't eat soon, she was going to have to throw that away and get something fresh out. Went to the kitchen, refilled the water bowl. Refilled her bottles too. Returned to the living room and remembered that Rachel didn't know where she was only after she'd sat down.

Right. That thing. She needed to do that thing.

Cat was against her back.

She pulled out her comic supplies from her backpack, pulled out a paper. On that paper, in big letters, she wrote...

She wrote...

Dr. Evans.

Doctor's name. Dr. Evans.

Doctor wasn't going to see this there though. She had to do something about that. Find tape. Something. Got back up. Wandered the house. Found a nail sticking out of the wall by the sliding glass door, and that would do nicely.

Problem. She couldn't go outside without the cat running away.

She put the cat in the bathroom and closed the door. He meowed in protest. It'd only be a few moments.

Danielle grabbed the blanket from the floor and wrapped it around her shoulders, clinging it close to her chest as she limped toward the front door. It felt like she'd been going at this for a long time. Probably had. Her leg was in agony. Everything was sore. Her palm hurt. Whatever happened to her, it hadn't been nice.

Zombies. Zombies happened.

Out on the porch.

Turned around, set to pushing the nail through the paper and into the outside of the door. Used the palm of her uninjured hand. The door was tough, but she was stronger, and she kept at it until it was good and pushed in.

Looked out at the neighborhood. She still didn't have the gun with her. That was probably bad, there were still monsters out. She could see them, lumbering, not too many now, but enough. One of them noticed she was there. She watched it make its way for her, slowly. Should do something about that.

Danielle leaned back against the door. There was a story they told her, about how a guy had to fight someone bad. Tiny guy. Not at all strong, but he was supposed to fight this giant. It was an unwinnable fight, but the little guy, David, he prayed really really hard, and then he threw a rock, and then the rock killed the giant. The people who told her that story used it to motivate themselves and others to stand up to their obstacles. If God helped him take down a giant then He can help anyone overcome anything.

Bad thing was closer now. It didn't really have red eyes, or wings, or the sharpened edge of a dragon's muzzle.

Oh, but there was another story about David. People didn't dwell on it much. It wasn't so nice of a story.

David did something bad. What was it he did? There was a...wasn't there this bad guy? This...he was one of God's chosen, but he ended up being a tyrant, and people wanted to get rid of him but they were afraid of killing him. Started with S...or, no. No. Because the thing that happened with David, there was a song about it, from the kid's movie with the ogre. There was a lady that David liked, and he like, cheated or something for her. Murdered for her...?

And his punishment for this was to lose his kid.

The story focused on David and his faith, but the thing that always upset Danielle was that the kid wound up being punished for something they didn't do. Everyone always focused on David's reaction, but rarely did they go, 'oh, right. Poor kid.'

Demon was at the porch now. She really needs to move. Sluggish, but she finds the handle, and goes back through the door. Closes it behind her. Hand on her cross, thumb digging into one of the arms as she makes her way back to the bathroom. Lets the cat out.

She's so tired.

Back to the living room, back on the floor. She wraps the blanket around her tightly and rests her head on the pillow. Laying on her side. Cat presses into her back. He was meowing, but quieted once she settled.

The sun was still up the next time she opened her eyes. Significantly lower, but still daylight.

She drank water and she checked the can of chicken.

Half of it was gone. Good. Good thing.

Cat pressed into her side. Meow. Meow. Meow.

"...what do you want?"

Stupid question. She knew what it wanted.

Better question. "Why do you care?"

Her hands are shaking, and her injured one burns, but she picks the cat up and sets it in her lap. Listens to its frantic purring and noted that, although she was pretty fucking sure that it didn't like being held, it was tolerating her loose hug.

"Haven't done anything for you yet but piss you off. Food doesn't count, it's your right. So why do you care?"

Cats fur was matted with blood. Her blood. That had to be irritating.

She pressed her face into its side anyway. Fur was soft against her face, regardless of the filth.

"...I don't know you. You're not my friend."

The words were more breath than voice. Pressure behind her eyes, and she wants to cry. Something raw and painful dragging its claws over her insides, but she's too tired to weep. Felt the cat pull itself from her arms and readjust to lay down closer to her hip before she went back under.

Darkness, when she awoke. Dead of night. Shivering and sweaty, mouth dry. Blindly reached out for her water to fix that.

Strange noises. Probably nothing. Demons were made of shadows, but they're still too big to get through window or door. Queen Lydia's pissed that she can't get inside. Bad guys never win.

The edge of darkness softened, the first rays of sunrise. Just bright enough that she can see the faintest of edges that formed the world around her. Got more water. Opened a can of food and ate, not caring what it was. Canned fruit. Pets the cat in the dark. Went back to sleep.

Entire day went like that. Save for a trip to the sink for more water, most of what she did was rest. The sun sank, then rose, and sank again. Lost track of time, only knew that she'd been in the house for a while. Eventually she went searching for more blankets. Stole one out of the kid's room. Grabbed a couple from a cabinet she found. Piled them up on the living room floor.

Didn't keep her gun too close by, bad idea to have it within arms reach while sleeping, but it was close enough that she could get to it in a semi reasonable amount of time if she needed to.

Woke up early morning. There was a cat with her.

Pretty cat. Long brown fur. Bright yellow eyes.

Her mom had brown hair. She got her blond from her dad, and the light honey brown eyes from her mother.

She pet him, gave him scritches. Listened to him purr.

Her voice was quiet, but it sounded so loud.

"...are you my mom?"

There's no answer. Doesn't have to be, really.

Cat has her mom's brown hair. Cat's also been taking care of her this entire time. That's why he was so concerned about her. She didn't have to do anything, being her mother's daughter was enough.

Strange, though. Her mom was never a cat before.

"Mommy."

Pulling herself halfway out of that pile of blankets, she curled around him as much as she could without hurting her leg. A brief meow of protest when she moved, but only purring and head rubbing after.

"You've been gone years...you aren't supposed to leave."

Her attempt to edge her tone with accusation feel flat when all she managed to do was whine the words. Before she could think of anything else to say, the brush of fur quieted her, and she was asleep again before she could remember to be upset.

[dregstrash]

gilded crowns (pt. 5)

A/N: Thank you so so so sooo much for all your support with this story. I’ve finally figured out the plot and I’m hoping to post in more normal intervals now I’ve been free from the jaws of school. 

I am, as always, so grateful to everyone who has decided to ever read my stuff. Hope everyone likes this newest chapter!!!

Part 1 || Part 2 || Part 3 || Part 4

Description: Prince Kaz of Ketterdam has been subject of much mystery and speculation, but that doesn’t stop his brother, King Jordie, to arrange a marriage from happening to Princess Inej of Suli. Neither party are happy with the arrangement. Kaz has other ideas and if he can drive Inej away, he can get back to the plans that’ll silence the demons that plague his dreams. Of course, what happens when she proves to be as stubborn as he is?

Tagging: @birdskullsandboats @lavehl @hysteriaas @definitely-not-procrastinating @fromferfer @lupine-teddy @ifangirlninja @spell-cleaver @s-artsnstuff @locksandbobbypins @friendo-nintendo @thatonefangirl-mrc @readmeaway @looking-for-wisdom  @terrywho-cartoons  @mykitchenisonfire151 @ysitsohardtofindaname @timeinhereyes

(if you wanna get tagged please let me know!)

Kaz remembered the first time he was ever afraid. He and Jordie were exploring in the gardens and they had stumbled upon a garden snake. Jordie, curious and reckless as always, stalked forward a long stick in his hand. Kaz had yelped in surprise and warning, and Jordie just shot his younger brother the smile that had gotten them into trouble on more than one occasion.

“There’s nothing to be afraid of, Kazzie,” He crooned. He had forced Kaz to take the stick and push him slightly into the lumbering creature.

“Stop!” Kaz had protested as his brother continued to push him forward. Already images of the snake uncoiling and wrapping around its neck, forcing the breath out of his body were swimming in his mind. The very idea of losing that simple control of breathing had Kaz’s small hand trembling and shaking.

But Jordie hadn’t listened, he simply wrapped his bigger hand around his and guided Kaz to poke the snake. The creature hissed in surprise and slinked off deeper into the shadows faster than either could blink and Kaz let out a loose, hysterical laugh.

“See?” Jordie ruffled his hair the way Kaz hated and continued on their walk. 

“As long as you don’t give yourself time to be think, not much can scare you.”

Looking back, Kaz could admit that that was terrible advice. Especially to a boy no older than ten, but as he tried to sit calmly at dinner, he was glad for those words. Because if Kaz gave himself any room to hesitate in the plan that he had discussed with Nikolai the night before, then he would never be able to get the information he wanted.

“How are you liking Ketterdam, Princess?” Jordie’s voice filtered through Kaz’s thoughts.

“I like it just fine, Your Majesty, I thank you for your hospitality.”

“It’s no trouble at all. We rarely get visitors these days, and I’m sure my brother enjoys the company.” The insinuation was thick in Jordie’s voice, and Kaz didn’t need to turn to face Inej to see the stiffness in her face. In any other situation Kaz would have cut his brother in a withering glare. But instead he seized the opportunity with both hands.

“I am very much enjoying the princess’s company.” Kaz rasped, fighting for his voice to adopt a lighter tone. “And I believe that a union would not be so terrible between us.”

The noisy clink of utensils up and down the table suddenly stilled. Everyone gathered, Jordie, his advisers, the Suli ambassadors, and Princess Inej, all gaped at him. Ignoring them, Kaz plunged on, “I’ve taken a look at some of the reports of our trade routes, and I don’t see why the Suli won’t make good, permanent trading partners.”

“Wait--” Jordie struggled for words, “Kaz, are you saying that--”

“And I was actually hoping to make things rather official for the sake of the paperwork,” Kaz talked on, slicing his food, feigning his nonchalance, “But I don’t see why I would need to prolong this decision any longer.”

“Your Highness, could it be--” The Suli ambassador’s eyes were lit up with triumph and joy.

But Kaz didn’t let the interruption stop him, “I would like to accept the Suli’s offer of marriage, and be formally engaged to the Princess Inej.”

If a painter had captured this moment, Kaz would have liked to call it “The Surprise Before the Storm.” Because that’s what it was. His brother’s mouth had hung open, caught between a smile and astonishment. His advisers eyes were drawn in befuddlement. The ambassador was suspended in a look of complete triumph. And Inej, oh Inej, she was Fury incarnate with her cheeks flushed and her eyebrows drawn in furious lines.

Less than a second after Kaz said the words, the table erupted in congratulations and applause and a call for more wine. Jordie clapped his brother on the shoulder proudly, and told him that he was doing his country a service. He probably missed the fact that Kaz had winced at the contact, and he was sure to have missed the way Kaz had started to leave the room as the servants came flooding back in with wine decanters in their hands.

Kaz started the long walk back to his rooms, and he mentally mapped out the rest of the plan.

His brother would overindulge himself tonight, that he was sure of. Which meant official paperwork wouldn’t be drawn until mid-afternoon tomorrow. That gives the ambassador plenty of time to start making arrangements with Inej to plan the wedding and alerting her parents to the news. He turned a corner and weighed the other factors in his mind. More likely than not the wedding would be planned for the coming months that would give Nikolai plenty of time to--

Kaz’s train of thought staggered to a screeching halt as he was being shoved roughly against the wall with the tip of a blade resting at his throat. A thin, but feminine forearm kept his chest pressed back, and he wasn’t all that surprised to see Inej glaring up at him.

“How dare you?” She hissed out.

If her anger wasn’t enough, he could feel the heat of her body singeing his clothes, and he fought for breath as he tried to fight the wave of dizziness that had exploded behind his eyelids. He wanted to push her away, or tell her to move, but he risked looking weak. And he couldn’t afford that. So, he tried to breathe through it, but his efforts were impeded as his Adam’s apple brushed against the sharp edge of her knife. “Am I supposed to answer that question or wait for you to kill me?” Kaz mused. “This is the first time I’ve had a knife to my throat, so you’ll have to let me know as it looks like you’ve had a lot of practice.”

“You had no right to decide that without talking to me.” She said, ignoring the question in his voice.

“No right to already make an inevitable decision that would be forced upon us later?” He argued.

“No one was going to force me to marry the likes of you.”

“Is that why your parents left for Suli? Leaving you here to some sort of prolonged dream vacation?”

Her nostrils flared, but he knew that he had hit some unknown nerve.

“Our fates were sealed with our births, Princess.” Kaz continued. “I’m just doing it on my own terms.”

“This is not some decision that is only reliant on you. I’m not some unwanted present that you can take apart to fit your needs, Prince.”

“I never presumed you were.”

“Oh really?” She scoffed, “Because from what I’ve seen, that’s how you treat everyone.”

Something flashed in her eyes, and he knew that she was remembering that night at the Crow’s Club. That night two weeks ago, neither of them had acknowledged, that had caused a new line of  tension in their already strained relationship.

He resisted the urge to tell her that it was her idea to follow him, and that it was her fault that she had to witness the punishment he inflicted on cheating dealers (someone should have told the man that his boss had eyes like a bird, and the mercy of a demon). He also tamped down the need to defend himself that it was only a pinky, because in all honesty, he could have done much, much worse.

His goal that night was for Inej to see him for the monster that he really was, and somehow seeing it for himself brought an unexpected bitterness in his mouth.

Swallowing down his revulsion, Kaz pressed forward a little bit, risking cutting his own throat as he stared Inej down, “What do you expect, Your Highness? When you’ve already been taken apart, it’s hard to see anything as whole.”

She’d never really know what it really meant to be taken apart. She’d never have dreams painted in his mother’s blood as he recalled the way her head was slumped forward, her bed coated in the sticky wet blood. She’d never feel the absolute terror of finding his father drowned in his tub with a hooded man still dripping from the bathwater startle at the sight of the younger boy. She’d never know the blackness that suddenly gripped Kaz’s vision as strong arms forced his whole body into the water with the lifeless body of what used to be his father. The blackness that wasn’t strong enough to block the feeling of his father’s bloated corpse on top of his, as water forced its way into his lungs and a stronger hand kept him from the sanctuary of air.

“That’s no excuse, Kaz.” His name on her lips was much worse than any cold title or hint of disdain. Hearing her soft voice curl around the short syllable made him almost forget the precarious position they were in. With her holding his life in the palm of her hand.

“I wasn’t trying to make an excuse,” Kaz bared his teeth. She moved her position slightly and the bare skin of her arm brushed against the exposed exposed skin of his collar. The unexpected contact brought in a new wave of nausea and a surprising shock of panic.

Without thinking about the blade or what she might think, he hastily maneuvered out of her grip and growled when she tried to take a step forward. His chest was heaving slightly as cold sweat formed a new layer over his skin, and he tried his hardest to regain his composure.

When he straightened to look her in the eye, he ignored the vague look of concern on her face. He hadn’t been planning on letting the princess in on his plans, but he reconsidered his earlier decision. She was light on her feet, looked like she could handle herself in a fight, and heavily determined to not be married to him. These could all lend themselves to his favor if he played his cards right.

He coughed as if nothing had happened and brushed his suit nonchalantly, “The engagement is just a distraction, darling Princess. I just need more time to get some business in order, and once that happens, I’ll happily break it off, and you can go back to Suli to be offered on a platter to a prince who actually cares.”

Her earlier concern was soon taken over with surprise then suspicion .

“What do you mean?” She asked cautiously.

“I have some dealings with Strumhond that need a large distraction, and our wedding is practically made for it. I assure you, you will not have to be married to me by the end of it.”

She sheathed her knife with a practiced ease, and crossed her arms over her chest. She wore a deep purple dress tonight. The cut of it simple enough to not be extravagant, but still elegant enough to constantly assault Kaz with the simple fact that she really was beautiful. The deep flutter of his stomach as that realization dawned on him only had him scowling further.

“What exactly are you planning with that pirate?”

Kaz bit the urge to correct her, and shrugged, “It’s none of your concern.”

“I’m the one engaged to you, of course it’s my concern.”

“So you’re saying you do accept the engagement?” Kaz smirked. Inej gave him a blank look, and he almost laughed at the expression. He gave a flourished bow, “Until the next forced dinner we have to sit through, my darling fiancee.”

[ruwithmeguys]

Hey it’s the twitter user who just asked for S1&2 arrow reviews. So I just finished rewatching S1 and I’ve been curious about why Oliver went back to Laurel even though he didn’t love her. Did Laurel really understand Oliver? Because I’ve always thought Felicity was the one who understood him

Hithere! WELCOME TO THE REST OF YOUR EXISTENCE.

No,seriously; good luck ever leaving this ship! (Join us, we have all the OTP cookies - hah, I never even used to know what OTP meant)

I’msure there are other people who can answer this better, who won’t do it at workwhen I’m supposed to be, you know, WORKING (I am not a role model). But I wanted to give you a response pronto!

Here we go: Oliver… Laurel… Tommy.

Here’s the thing. There areall kinds of love. Oliver, laurel and Tommy were friends first before any ofthem slept together. The love Oliver had for LL was predicated upon thatfoundation of friendship. They’d been attracted to each other so they decidedto do the natural thing: date.

Now, just because two friendsare attracted to each other, doesn’t make the relationship this amazingshowcase of love or the perfect ship or the forever one and only. Chandler andMonica they aren’t.

They weren’t even Ross andRachel, not even close. And Ross had sex with another women four hours after their ‘break’. What aguy.

Did we see even THIS level of intensity from either side? Nu uh. And I tell you,if I start a show like Arrow and I’m supposed to be sold on their romance because where there’s a hero, there’s always a romance, then I want at LEAST angst.

What I believe - and have beengiven proof from Stephen and from others - is that when Ollie - which wasexactly who he was before the Gambit sank - was with LL, she brought out thegood stuff. But the goodness inside him was coated by his greed, vanity andselfishness. He was a dick who LL thought that simply by being with her, would not be a dick…

Wishful thinking to the tenthdegree. 

She was head over heels and deluded by it (that gif is really creepy - he was sleeping with them both there. Laurel was oblivious. Sara was besotted. Three people and not one understood the other).

But Oliver has felt attractionbefore for many other women and continued to not only feel said attraction, butto act on it; she was just one in the herd. Oblivious to the other sheep. From my count, Oliver slept with Sara, Samantha, Max Fuller’s fiance and, two women he went on a joy ride with whilst dating Laurel. Possibly more. Thedifference being that he and laurel held a history of friendship and care together -that he should have given a shit about - so it deepened the relationship fromsex buddies to boyfriend/girlfriend.

But he still cheated on herbecause it wasn’t this special thing that she thought it was. And he was withoutmuch of an ethics base or conscience back then. I’m pretty sure Oliver knew howmuch of an ass he was; in fact I think he thought he was a worthless pretty boywith mountains of cash, which he used to get his way. Deep down, Oliver was,is, a very good person. But ego, money and pleasure soaked up his view and hemade the worst decisions. Just because he started dating one of his closestfriends, didn’t mean he was going to stop partying and cheating and being said ass.

The fact that LL saw this as agiven is one of her many displays of wilful tunnel vision. She was the star ofher own story and the star doesn’t get treated that way. She was at the top ofOllie’s and Tommy’s and daddy’s and mommy’s priority list: she was a betterdaughter than Sara, Ollie would never chase skirts behind her back - they weregoing to get married and be rich socialites together after all as her originalendgame (S3) was to become a wealthy DA who’s clients were the rich criminalsOliver faces in S1 - Tommy would always be there, and daddy would always beproud.

She had a skewed perception asmany people often do when they’re young, inexperienced, ridiculous and lofty.

She’s allowed to be this way. Oliver was allowed to be a disaster boyfriend.

Your first love is rarely yourlast.

But LL didn’t just see Ollieas her first love: she saw him as her last.

Ollie couldn’t look that farinto the future, as evidenced by how he treated his education, by how hetreated women, by how he played around with Sara, by how he tried hard to bethis constant failure.

So when LL started pushing forfurther commitment - for living together like their other friends and being an‘us’ - Oliver made a run for it and grabbed some TNT along the way. Nothingbreaks up a relationship quite like sleeping with the sibling of yourboy/girlfriend. This way, he could be in a far off land when LL realised hersister wasn’t at college, when one of her friends blab about her, because Sarasaid it herself on the Gambit: she was going to be in so much trouble, whichOliver was counting on.

He wouldn’t have to do any ofthe work.

A real shining example ofboyfriend of the year.

But then the Queen’s Gambitexplodes, Ollie looses Sara and hisfather whilst bobbing around for days at sea and by the time he reaches LianYu… Ollie’s not really there anymore; he’s already altered.

The good in him, the strengthhe didn’t know he had comes out, alongside a heavy coating of self-loathing,violent tendencies and a consideration of turpitude.

There’s a scene that perfectlyencapsulates how Oliver feels for LL in those S1 flashbacks: he’s in the cavewith Shao Fei and he’s staring at her picture. He looks so sad and so guiltyand he says ‘I’m so sorry LL’.

He’s not sorry because heloves and misses her. He’s sorry because he fucked up.

And Oliver had no idea what hehad until he lost it, but it’s made all the worse because he feels like Saradied because of his selfishness. Without that guilt I’m not entirely certainhe’d have been so obsessed with the idea of making it up to her, but yes; ahuge part of wanting to return home was about fixing what he broke. Making upfor his mistakes. Gaining a reprieve from years of suffering.

He’s dangerously close tokilling himself in that first year: sometimes believing you’re at the root ofall evil can help you prioritise. He needed to live to make it up to LL.

He needed to survive.

It’s a defence mechanism. Helatched onto those feelings to keep going. THAT and he isn’t scum: he wanted tobe better. He denied the hope inside him but it was still there, waiting for the right time.

The right person.

Notice he never once tells LLor says to anyone after his return, that he wants to be with her. He’s only ever said that to one woman on the show.Word for word. Not an insinuation: a flat out factoid.

The very few things Oliversays in regards to LL and their former relationship after his return in S1, isthat a) thinking about her helped him survive in that first year, b) that hecouldn’t say he didn’t love her, c) he was genuinely happy that she and Tommywere together, d) he would never ever reveal to her who and what he really iswhich means he’d always be lying to her and finally e) that he was sorry andthat it would never be enough.

Romantic stuff it is not.

Even with that crappy list,there are more holes.

A)   He admits in the S4 and S5 flashbacks that,since he was so changed, he knew the person who he’d become could never returnto LL because he wasn’t the same guy. He said that he kept her picture as areminder of everything he’d done.

Her picture was a source ofshame: his self-inflicted punishment. She would always remind him of hisselfishness. ROMANTIC RIGHT?

B)   Saying that you can’t say you don’t lovesomeone isn’t telling them you do love them. It’s useless after the fact.When Oliver realised he was in love with Felicity he declared it several timesto her even though he thought he couldn’t be with her! The one time Oliver tells LL that he loves her is after her death, in ahallucination in 5.08 where he’s very literally apologising for lying to herand for not being the man she loved. He tells her that they could never have been, because who she loved died and he wasn’t that man.

He couldn’t love her the wayshe’d clearly loved him. He was finally given the chance to gainclosure by telling her ghost what he should have told the woman before shedied. She’d deserved to hear the truth years ago. Case in point, on herdeathbed he could only stare at her when she told him that he’d always be thelove of her life. Loving someone? It is FAR different to being the love oftheir life.

Do you know what being thelove of someone’s life is? It’s being at the source of the most powerful,profound and influential love a lucky person feels in their lifetime. The WHOLEof their lifetime. The person who is the love of someone’s life is the person whothat someone loves the absolute most, the person who changed their lives themost. No other love will come close. Oliver was that for LL. She knew she was not that for him.

C)    Do youknow the most revealing way of being in love with a person who is unavailableto you? Jealousy. Oliver never showed an ounce of it for LL and Tommy. In facthe cheered them on, waving them off with a smile because he was HAPPY for them;as if he was saying, all is well and all is good now. Hot stuff right; it really makes you want to watch thislacklustre rickety canoe progress…

D)    Wantingsomeone in your life means revealing yourself to them. It means sharing thingsyou’re too embarrassed, ashamed or afraid to do otherwise. It takes a lot ofcourage and we know Oliver possesses that trait in spades. And yet, he neverwants her to know his secret - the other half of him - and what plays a big part inthis is her initial reaction to his rage in 1.04. He scares her and she’s not shy in showing just how much. Her back and forth after that fact wouldn’t instil confidence either, never mind that Oliver already knew a relationship between them with the hood in the middle was doomed to failure.

Trust me, ifthe show hadn’t been brave and we’d been forced to watch a relationship thatmade little sense, we’d have gotten a good 12 episodes of LL being afraid ofOliver and overcoming her fear to a manageable basis. THANK CHRIST.

There was never anything to fear with Oliver: Felicity knew that immediately.The hood, the man under it – it didn’t matter. LL didn’t see what was therepast the scary skills and bloody arrows. Under the hood was the man she repeatedly claimed, she knew down to his bones. And yet… she didn’t see him there.

E)   A love powered by guilt is no love at all.There is a difference between the love you have for the people you care for andbeing in love.

Oliver did love LL. But he wasnever in love with her. UntilFelicity, Oliver had never fallen inlove before and it was vastly different to anything he’d felt, thank you WendyMericle.

He even behaves differently once we see it. Falling in love withFelicity made him a better, more hopeful person.

Loving LL in any capacity wasa constant reminder of his ‘sin’.

So when you say that you don’tunderstand why Oliver went back to LL in 1.21… well, wouldn’t you want to beabsolved?

Oliver wanted- desperately needed to hear one thing from all thewomen in his life who have had some sort of emotional sway in it.

Moira Queen: I’m proud of you(who you are and who you’ll become)

Thea Queen: Thank you (forbeing who you are and for doing what you do)

Laurel Lance: I forgive you(so let go of the past, I have: I hope you find happiness)

Sara Lance: It wasn’t yourfault (and what happened gave me purpose)

Shado: you didn’t kill me (amad man trying to hurt you did: let me go)

Felicity Smoak: I love youOliver Queen (I always have and always will be yours)

Being the boyfriend he shouldhave been, being given a chance do it again and do it right – sort of liketurning back the clock – must have felt like a massive relief to Oliver who, inS1, was clueless about what made a relationship work. Relationships based onthe past, don’t last. There’s nothing there to help grow and like the once wiseJohn Diggle once said:

Itisn’t about changing or saving a person: it’s about being with someone who’sthe right fit.

The aim, the goal line whenyou want a relationship with the one you love, is simply to be withthem. To grow with them. Not to makeup for being a jackass in the past. You do that by being a decent person. Not by doing this:

HelloLL, I want to be with you to make up for betraying you! The making of a dream ship, I swear.

If they’d gotten back togetherafter 1.23, the following would have happened:

1.     Oliverwould have been forced to see that they couldn’t hack it as a couple. Friendsand allies yes but not as a couple. It takes complete trust to share your lifewith a person and Oliver has never trusted LL to that degree and there isoodles of proof. He’s admitted to it; in fact he’s alluded to never being ableto do that with anyone other than a certain beautiful IT girl.

2.     Wewould have had to put up with a solid season of a force-fed, lacklustre romanceand then we would have had the dreaded love triangle once Sara showed up whichwould have been so much worse to watch than what actually happened.

3.     OnceLL discovers his secret, and it wouldn’t be because he tells her, he’d break upwith her on the principal that it was the last straw: his last lie to thiswoman who didn’t deserve it and she would vow to prove him otherwise. She’dreach to become BC and they’d have an off again, on again tedious thing thatwould have killed the show in a final, ten episode long, S5.

Tommy’s death led Oliver’s hearttowards the light. 

Tommy wasn’t supposed to die. He was a good guy trapped between opposing forces and in love with a woman who didn’t love him back. When he died, Oliver’s world changed perspective. he saw what should have happened as opposed to what they thought should have happened. 

The love Oliver and Ll thought they had didn’t culminate in this victory the audience probably expected it to be.It was both reborn superfast only to perish in betrayal. Now, LL and Tommy wereover and Tommy had pushed them both away… so why did both LL and Oliver laterfeel like that was exactly what they did? You only feel this, if deep downinside, there’s something wrong, something you haven’t admitted. LL didn’t feelit until after Oliver runs away again,which meant she’d been swept away by another lie once more only to realise, it was another rinse repeat.

Oliver felt it immediately.

Being with LL wasn’t worthbetraying Tommy, wasn’t worth his death. It wasn’t, because his love for herdidn’t match Tommy’s and he flipping knew it. It tainted anything that could have been past the point of noreturn and suddenly Oliver didn’t want to live in the past anymore because whenhe’d tried, he’d screwed things up further and the boy deserved not to want tokill himself so much. The past includes LL, which is why they barely spend timetogether afterwards and it lasts right up to her death.

Because what else do theyhave, except the past?

If their love had been more,then maybe… after time, they could have gotten past this.

It wasn’t.

Oliver didn’t go back to Laurel. He and Laurel tried topick up again right where they left off, withoutfacing what had happened which is what you do when you decide to re-writehistory, which is of course impossible. It’s just another lie. It’s the easyway out.

Let’spretend you never cheated on me!

Goodidea! Let’s also pretend my alter ego doesn’t scare you shitless and that you don’t secretly hate me for Sara!

Awesome!

LL didn’t want to face thefact that the best time in her life was over before it even started because shecouldn’t move on from the loss of it. Oliver didn’t want to face the idea thathe couldn’t fix his mistakes because it meant acknowledging what he’s alwaysbelieved: that everything that happened after the sinking of the Gambit, was because he’d lived as others died.

You know what the best exampleof being in love is on a TV show?

What it does to the character.

There is never one singlemoment where LL and Oliver make each other better. They don’t ever help eachother in any positive way. He gives her one half hearted lie in 1.21 whichflatters her ego and lights up her libido for cardboard sex and puts women everywherewith two brain cells to string together and a modicum of self-respect, to shame.

This is what happens betweentwo people who never got closure. Once the sex is over, the appeal wears offand reality sinks in and it flat lines.

The exact opposite of what happens when Oliver and Felicity sleep together,just in case you’re wondering what a successful TV romance looks like.

Stephen stated something oncewhen he was asked about his favourite moments in S1. He said that he reallyliked the moment where Felicity said, ‘if you’re not leaving, I’m not leaving’.

He said it stayed with Oliverin a profound way because, deep down, Oliver has always craved that. Havingsomeone who he could lace 100% of his trust in and who would never leave, despite the times he screws up- and screws up hedoes.

And stay Felicity does.

Every single time, even when they’re not together.

We know Felicity saw the realhim. He saw her. There was animmediate connection that neither understands at first because it’s too big. 

Patience is required. 

I firmly believe there was no romance in S1; but anyonewho watches S1 – particularly 1.03, 1.12, 1.15, 1.17, 1.21, 1.22 and 1.23 – can’t possiblybe blind to all the tiny details of building of trust, reliance and connectionbetween two people who no one saw coming.

There is no build betweenOliver and LL in the season which is shocking and it makes you question thesanity of her fans: the sole season that includes romance between the two and it’s barely even played with. The writers didn’t even try to do it the justice it supposedly deserved. No matter how many complaints the fandom has about the writers, they are not THAT obtuse. It was deliberate.

Why try when it’s not worth trying for?

Lastly, remember that Oliver wasso fucking lonely in S1, especially after the five years of hell. The kind of lonely you couldn’t possibly understand. There isn’treally a way to measure that.

If you’re thinking about himand Felicity, it’s like imagining the deepening of the ocean.They both have issues the size of Godzilla; the ocean’s depths have to be at least as deep - you don’t want them together in S1.Let him go find empty sex with LL where they don’t face, fix or talk about athing. Where they just let themselves pretend for a while.

It’s easier.

Something you need to rememberabout S1: the first season is always going to be the season of trail and error.You cast your lead character in different scenarios with different people andyou see what works.

A fact for you that you mightneed to hear: roughly when they started filming 1.03, they revealed 1.01 to theexecutives at WB and so on and so forth and… let’s just say they weren’t takenwith the onscreen chemistry for the relationship between O + LL. Or with KC’s portrayal. It’s difficult to work against a constant barrage of bitterness. There are otherfactors but I’m not talking about them.

Now, the template for the show’sromance was supposed to be this epic love between the two, as it is in thecomics. Now, I have ample experience with my favourite stories being translatedonscreen. What works on a page rarely works the same way on tv and the comicbook relationship was terrible anyway; why replicate it?

Just when they were trying tofigure out what to do… Emily does onescene, lights the place up, gives Stephen the most excellent chemistry I’veseen in years to play off and suddenly they have a path to follow.

They started building Olicityin S1. They’ve admitted it, but they wanted to do it subtly and BECAUSE they didit slowly, it was believable. Between 1.01 and 1.05 – they write 5 episodesahead of filming – there’s this constant, in your face message that laurel andOliver are meant to be. Then there’s this shift. They slowly introduce this ‘behindthe scenes’ thing with Felicity and Walter, interjecting her loosely withOliver’s story at just the right moments (the end of 1.08 is a HUGE indicationof where they’re going), before the scene in 1.12.

It isn’t a coincidence thatthe scene discusses trust.

He doesn’t talk about trustwith anyone in the season, excerpt her AND… Helena.

Helena trusted him with herheart and she realised he wasn’t ready, that he was still hoping to save thepast just as he hoped to save her and his ignorance hurt her. So when Felicityshows trust in him and he in turn. Proves she can… well it’s a huge deal.

You’d think trust would pop upbetween him and Laurel given their history. The fact that it didn’t speakswonders. In fact, it’s stunning how far apart the writers keep them in S1; it’salmost unfeeling. The lead up to their love scene felt way too fast for my tastes and thereason for the sex, shallow at best.Filled with lies. Rushed.

Crappy sex. A reunion of the body but not the hearts or minds.

Not thelove scene you show for this supposed great star crossed lovers thing they weresupposed to be: it’s a massive neon sign post so I wouldn’t think about it asanything more than two people who had no idea what was good for them, doing theonly thing they knew how to do. Have sex.

Let’s face it, they both suckat relationships. Tommy, the bachelor, knew so much more. He had their futureplanned: him and LL and the white picket fence deal and LL was so clueless, shethought a rebound with ‘Ollie’ was preferable. Idiot woman.

Don’t put too much stock inseason 1: I actually love the season because you can see the narrative linesthat will propel the show towards where they are now.

You can see the prison storyin it from S7. You can see Felicity’s importance and the trust that leads to theepic romance of the show. You can see LL’s death. You can see Prometheus andSlade. John Diggle’s eventual rejection of OTA. Quentin’s death. Oliver rising as a hero.

But even in S1, it was alwaysgoing to be Oliver and Felicity. Stephen said it and he meant it and the directors/creators and writers have been backing him up since 2013.

Yet you have to make room for error and Oliverhas to be allowed to learn, even when it’s infuriating and he does senselessthings for the wrong reasons. THAT’S why he goes to LL in S1. It was unfinishedbusiness.

Sometimes you have to go back to move forwards.

Hope that helped. There wereabout a hundred different ways I could have answered this but I had to sort ofrush it out because of work and my fanfics so I hope it’s at least coherent.

(NO GIFS ARE MINE)

[exo-kpopper]

My protector

Pairing: Woojin x Reader

Genre: angst, friendship

Words: 1k+

The first time you met Kim Woojin, you were having dinner with his family for the first time. You were dating Wooyoung, his older brother, and the older boy wanted to present you to his family. You had been dating for three months when that dinner happened. You were really happy with the eldest Kim and you didn't need anybody but him. He was kind and gentle and he was always taking of you. Woojin immediately supported the both of you and soon enough you became close friend with Woojin. He was just like his brother but it wasn't the same. Woojin was more like a confidant to you, the one you would go see when something was wrong. And that made Wooyoung extremely jealous. He didn't know how to handle the fact that the girl he liked was seeing another guy than him, even though it was his brother and only a friend of yours. For some reason, he wasn't able to trust you anymore. He was sure you would cheat on him with Woojin one day. But that thought never even crossed your mind. Woojin was a friend and nothing more. It was the same thing for him. He saw you as a little sister and he loved you exactly like if you were really his sister. But, of course, Wooyoung never saw it that way. He started to get angry at you at random moments and you didn't understand what was going on since he didn't want to tell you anything. A year had passed since you met his family and now it was really rare that you got the chance to see them since Wooyoung didn't want you to see Woojin. Every time you were having dinner there, Woojin was either not there or really occupied with his homework so he was eating rapidly and was going back upstares to his bedroom. It made you sad that Wooyoung was keeping you away from people you actually liked but you kept going like that. Obviously, you were meeting Woojin quite often and you talked to him about his brother, how you didn't know why you weren't seeing your stepfamily more often. He sadly smiled at you and told you to be careful. You didn't understand what he meant and you now had to come back to the apartment you were sharing with Wooyoung. When you passed the door, he came angrily at you and started to shout.

-WHERE THE HELL WERE YOU?!

It was the first time he actually screamed at you like that and you were slightly scared. You didn't like violence so you started to feel like crying.

-I... I was with a friend, you said in a low voice while a tear fell on your cheek.

You could see he was getting angrier but he calmed himself down and wiped your tear softly. You didn't know how to react to this but you didn't say anything. You softly pushed him away and went to the living room and tried to calm yourself down. He went next to you and slowly pet your hair.

-I'm sorry, baby. I didn't mean to scare you.

You shook your head up and down and you leaned on him, looking for some comfort.

-With who were you?

-With Woojin. I wanted to see him a little bit since we don't see your family quite much these days. I miss them, especially him, he's like a big brother to me...

As you were talking, you felt his muscles tightened around you but you didn't really pay attention to it.

-I thought you had understood...

-What are you talking about?

-I don't want you to see him, (Y/N).

-What?! Why?

-Girls with a boyfriend should go around with other boys. People might think you are something bad.

-What?! So you are telling me that I shouldn't see my friends anymore?

-Only boys.

-That's insane! Woojin is my confidant, the person I can talk to freely beside you. I can't stop talking to him.

-You. Will.

-No! Wooyoung! I love you, you don't have to worry about me dating other boys. They are my friends and that's it. Nothing more.

-You will listen to me. You won't see any of them anymore.

-But...

-I SAID YOU WON'T SEE THEM ANYMORE!

You moved away from him and stood up.

-You are so sleeping on the couch, Kim Wooyoung.

You then ran to your bedroom and locked the door to be sure he wouldn't come to join you in the night. You didn't understand why he was acting like this. He was seeing a lot of his girls friends and you never said anything about it but he was getting jealous over you being close to his brother. That night you went to bed without eating anything and when you were about to fall asleep, you heard the door slam, showing that your boyfriend had left the apartment. You started to cry and decided to call Woojin to tell him what happened. He did his best to calm you down but he didn't know how to. He would have taken you in his arms but you were living far from his house and he couldn't come at this time of the night. Plus, if Wooyoung came back and that he was here, he would totally explode. So you both stayed where you were, talking on the phone until your boyfriend came back home. You hong up and then tried to fall asleep for real, not being able to stay awake anymore.

***

A month had passed and you hadn't seen Woojin since the last time. You called each other once in a while when Wooyoung was not around but you were really missing your friend so you decided to meet him that day. You talked for hours on the bench you used to go to every Saturday a month ago. It's when the sky started to be dark that you realized how late it was.

-Want me to bring you home? It's not safe out here at night.

-Yes, I'd like that.

It took half an hour to come back to your apartment and you were both laughing all the way back. Once you arrived, he let you enter your building and waited to see you get into your apartment before leaving. But when you opened your door, Wooyoung was waiting for you and he started to shout at you again. The worse came when he saw Woojin through the big window. He looked at you with anger in his eyes and without any hesitation, he slapped you in the face, making your head turn and your cheek turn red. When Woojin saw that, he entered the building and joined you as fast as possible. Wooyoung was about to hit you again but Woojin stopped him before he could do anything.

-What the hell do you think you are doing?!

-I'm punishing my girlfriend. She has been a bad girl.

-How?! By seeing her friends? Man, you're so stupid! You are doing the same thing all over and over again. You are going to lose her if you continue like this.

-It's already too late, Woowoo. He lost me. Kim Wooyoung, I am breaking up with you, you said with tears streaming down your face.

You were hurt and ashamed and most of all your heart was broken. You couldn't stay with a guy like him.

-No, it's not over.

-Yes, Wooyoung. We are done.

-YOU CAN'T LEAVE ME LIKE THIS YOU LITTLE SLUT! he said while going to you to hit you again but once again, Woojin was faster and he stopped him.

-You heard her. Now take your stuff and leave. She deserves better than you. I don't ever want to see you again.

Wooyoung growled a little but he did leave after taking the most important stuff. You entered your apartment and Woojin followed you inside. And as you were about to break down on the floor, he took you in his warm arms and started to comfort you.

-It's okay, (Y/N)... He's gone now. I know it hurts but he won't touch you anymore. I'll be here to protect you.

You nodded some and started to cry out loud to let out all your pain.

That was the very last time you saw Kim Wooyoung and that was for the best. Because your protector was there to help you through this.

[carisi-dreams]

Cartel "what happened to her?" Please!

who wants almost 2k of drama & feelings? this when miguel & sonny have finally established their relationship and defined it as being exclusive. this moment is kinda pivotal in another big moment down the line. ;)

Miguel’s muscles trembled when he stretched to reach over towards the small table by his bed. His cigar was sitting in its usual place; a special box that had been passed down from his father that only had room for one cigar, a lighter and cutter. It was all neatly packaged in a way that was reminiscent of so much of Miguel’s life. Neatly packaged.

Except for the person laying next to him in bed. Sonny was not part of the neat package and recent events had Miguel going round and round internally about how they fit. If they fit. He had thought he could forgive Sonny and that a few rounds in bed together could mend the rift between them, but he was wrong. The sex was great, but there was no patch to slap onto broken trust. He flipped open the box and brought the cigar to his lips. It settled in the corner of his mouth and he chewed on it and played with the lighter before laying back against the propped up pillows.

Sonny’s gaze was fixed on the sheets in the space between them and Miguel watched as he traced mindless patterns into them. There was a slight tremble to his fingers and Miguel’s curiosity was piqued. It was rare for Sonny to be forthcoming with talking about his emotions and even less so about showing them.

“I know about Emily.”

All of the muscles in Miguel’s body froze and clamped down. He stared at the top of Sonny’s head and blinked once.

“Excuse me?”

Sonny looked up and finally made eye contact. There was a weary look in his eyes that Miguel couldn’t recall ever seeing before. He set his jaw and repeated himself, finally stilling his fingers.

“Were you ever going to tell me what happened to her?”

Miguel wrenched the cigar from between his lips and let it drop back into the box alongside the cutter carelessly. He shoved the box back on his nightstand and sat up straighter in the bed.

“Is that what this was about?” Miguel circled his hands in the air, as if to encompass all of the recent events. “You cheated on me because you—you what? You found out I was once engaged?”

Sonny appeared more agitated, although he remained lounging on his side in the bed. “You never even mentioned her before,” he grit out. “I had to find out from an…associate…and it made my look like a fucking fool.”

Miguel shook his head and smiled a humorless smile. “You look like a fucking fool right now.” He tore back the sheets from over his lap and hopped out of bed, then whirled to face Sonny with a jab of the air. “You were willing to throw out all of my trust in this relationship based on being momentarily caught off guard.”

He shook his head and picked up his boxer briefs to pull over his hips. His mouth was still twisted in the same humorless smile and the more he thought about what Sonny had done, the angrier he got.

“You should go, Sonny. This is…we both need some time to think or—“ he let his hands drop by his sides helplessly and half shrugged, folding his mouth in on itself. “This is not healthy. This is fucked up.”

Sonny huffed out a bit of laughter and bit his bottom lip. He made no move to get out of the bed or to get dressed.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

Miguel inclined his head. “You’re not—”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Sonny interrupted sharply as his voice raised. “We need to talk about this shit now. Not later. Not push it under the rug. Not run off to our corners and do some dumb shit—”

“Rich words coming from you.”

“—that’s just going to make all of this worse,” Sonny continued as if Miguel hadn’t spoken.

“Worse!?” Miguel swept his arms around the room. “Worse than you cheating on me!? Worse than you breaking my trust? Worse then you acting like a child every single time you—”

“You never trusted me to begin with, Miguel,” Sonny interrupted loudly. He finally pushed himself up in the bed as the first signs of anger begin to make themselves known. His face reddened as he gestured. “Who are you kidding?”

Miguel shut his mouth and shifted his weight with a furious look in his eyes.

“You want to honestly say you trusted me before I cheated on? Really?” Sonny continued. “You think I’m really that stupid and that I don’t see the looks you give me? Or that I don’t understand the condescending remarks you like to make? I get it, you’re all about commitment, Mr. wanna be family man, and I’m the playboy who you’re having to drag into a relationship.”

Miguel laughed and looked away as he set his hands on his hips.

“But make no mistake. I’m here, I’ve been here, because I want to be. That means something. I fucked up and I admit that, but when are you going to take responsibility for your hand in all of this?”

“My responsibility!? Please, enlighten me.” Miguel cocked his head and pointed with his hands clasped. “How am I responsible for you cheating?”

Sonny narrowed his eyes and for a moment Miguel held his breath, sure that Sonny would start throwing things at him based on the furious look in his eyes. He looked betrayed, which felt out of place given where they were and how they had gotten there. Even more than betrayed, Sonny looked disappointed and for the first time Miguel’s stomach twisted uncomfortably in a way he couldn’t put his finger on.

“You like this role.” Sonny’s tone was back to being detached, almost clinical. He looked away and stared down at the sheets covering his lap again. “You like being the one who is in control and who never messes up and who gets to call me a child every time I make a mistake. You’re in love with it.” Sonny looked back up. “You’re in love with loathing me as much as liking me,” he spat. “You push me and goad a reaction out of me and then you punish me and chastise me for having the reaction.”

Sonny’s gaze was sharp, yet tired, as he licked his lips. He looked as if he had exerted an enormous amount of energy as he sagged back in the bed and stared up at the ceiling. He reached for a cigarette and pushed it between his lips, but didn’t light it. It sat in the corner of his mouth and fluttered as he clenched and unclenched his jaw.

Miguel was at a loss for words. He took a few steps closer to the bed, unsure of what to say or how to get them back on track. The moment stretched out uncomfortably at first, but the longer it sat the warmer it got. It felt like the first plunge into a pool, shocking and cold until your body adapted and you were grateful for the reprieve from the heat. Sonny had succeeded in doing what neither of them had been able to do at this point, he had boiled their relationship down into a show of real vulnerability. The kind of vulnerability that was truly necessary if they ever wished to be able to one day break their cycle of affection and fighting that kept time like a clock.

“I’m sorry.” Miguel finally broke the silence in a low voice. He knew he should apologize, but it wasn’t until the words were out of his mouth that he found he really wanted to say them. “Sonny, I’m sorry. You’re right. It’s not fair of me.”

“It’s about control,” Sonny said plainly. The words were almost gentle, even though Miguel could see how they weighed on his shoulders. “It’s not fair and it’s not fun.”

Miguel climbed back into bed and reached out. When Sonny didn’t shy away, he let his hand fall on Sonny’s shoulder and trace a line down his arm to his hand.

“I know. I’m sorry,” he repeated.

“I’m sorry about cheating on you,” Sonny apologized. It was the first time he had said the words so plainly. He tentatively laced his fingers with Miguel and looked up at him from beneath his lashes. “I’m really sorry. I regret it. I wish I hadn’t, but I had. It just feels like…” Sonny let out an exhale on a heavy whoosh. “It feels like you’re holding so much back and keeping so much of yourself away from, but you expect me to jump completely in. It’s maddening. It makes me want to lash out to get your attention.”

“Emily and I met when she was in college. She’s…a little closer to your age? We hit it off, got engaged quickly—it was a whirlwind,” Miguel started to explain slowly. “We—it wasn’t a great fit, long term. We had—have—a great deal of affection and respect for each other, but my life…it’s a lot to ask of someone longterm. She didn’t grow up like you and me,” Miguel gestured between him and Sonny with his free hand and allowed a corner of his mouth to lift. “She’s—she just—she was the one who called the wedding off. I don’t talk about it because it makes me feel like a failure.” He shrugged and gave himself a wry smile. “But it’s all in the past.”

Sonny studied Miguel’s face. “Why does it make you feel like a failure?”

Miguel sighed. “Because I couldn’t provide for her the life she deserved…and I loved her very much. It’s not always enough.”

Sonny leaned forward and when Miguel swayed towards him he closed the distance and kissed him softly at first before deepening it.

“I don’t need you to provide for me,” Sonny murmured. Miguel nodded and brushed his nose along Sonny’s before kissing him again. “I don’t need you to love me—”

“But I do.”

Sonny smiled into the next kiss, then continued. “I just need you to drop the bullshit, alright?” He pulled back and framed Miguel’s face with his hands. “Can we—can we just both agree to drop the bullshit?”

Miguel bit his bottom lip and then they fell back together in a tangled embrace on the bed.

[gilbirda]

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Chapter 3: Rumours

It was a normal morning at the teacher’s lounge room when Bog first heard about the rumours around Marianne.

“Gosh, I can’t stand this,” the math teacher said, an elderly woman whose name he didn’t care enough to remember. Someone stepped forward and asked:

“What happened, Susan?” Yeah, whatever her name was. He kept on reading his book and drinking his coffee in his silent corner. It was rude to be the first one leaving so he waited at least until the first classes started to run to his Library.

“I stumbled upon that kid today, Marianne,” that made him listen. What about her?

The room fell silent and a few shuddered involuntarily. Bog didn’t understand why.

“Her eyes spook me sometimes. They are so weird,” the woman, Susan, kept going. “She had those headphones plugged in, you know? And she didn’t seem to know where she was going. We bumped into each other, fortunately I didn’t fall… But she looked at me and - and she said “sorry”!”

Bog blinked. Wasn’t that common courtesy? Why were these people freaking out because of Marianne being a normal human being?

“And what happened next?” someone asked. Bog thought it was the science teacher.

“Nothing,” Susan said finally taking off her coat. “She just kept walking on.”

“Are you serious?” the same teacher asked.

Understanding that he wouldn’t be able to finish his book anytime soon, the temporary librarian put it down and tried make sense of what they were saying.

“I’m not kidding you! She didn’t threaten me or looked like she wanted to punch me at all…”

“Does she…” Bog gulped, not realizing he had talked. Everyone turned to look at him, surprised that he even had talked. He never did. Well, I’m already here, he thought. “Does she usually do that?”

“Do what? Threaten people?” another teacher scoffed. He thought it was the English teacher, but he wasn’t sure. “All the time! Haven’t you noticed it already? I heard she had been tasked with helping you with the Library.”

“Yeah, well…”

“Doesn’t she irk you? Or tried to beat you up?”

“No, but…”

“Don’t mind her, honey,” Susan approached him, a gentle smile on her lips. She tried to put a hand on his shoulder but Bog flinched back. If the woman noticed, she didn’t say anything. “She is just… lost. Since what happened two years ago…”

This caught even more his attention.

“What happened?”

“Oh yeah, you weren’t here then,” the science teacher blinked in surprise as if the thought of someone not knowing what happened was unfathomable. “The kid got dumped by Roland.”

That’s it? The librarian thought. Dumped by some random guy?

“Yeah, it was such a tragedy. She was the Queen, you know? She had been the Queen of the Spring Ball since she started high school.”

“The Spring Ball?” Bog asked.

“It’s this big event the kids love. Actually it’s in a month or so, if you are interested, because teachers can go if we want to,” the English teacher (Grace, her name was Grace) added, but didn’t seem really excited about it. “Every year, near the end on the evening, a Queen and King are voted among the students and they’ll hold the title until the next Spring Ball.”

“And this Roland guy and Marianne…”

“They were Queen and King for a year, but now the Queen is her younger sister Dawn.”

I didn’t know she had siblings, Bog thought.

“And what happened?”

“She changed when she got dumped. Marianne stopped coming to school for an entire week! And then she came like this punk brat one day, listening to her music and ignoring everyone.”

“And getting into fights every week,” the science teacher said taking a sip of his coffee. “Ungrateful brat…” he grumbled.

“Is that a normal behaviour?” Bog asked, remembering her bandaged arm and swollen cheek from that first day. He did ask if she was okay, not really sure if her delicate skin would heal those wounds fast enough.

Almost every teacher scoffed.

“It’s the normal behaviour. Always angry and picking fights. With the boys!” Grace raised her arms to the ceiling. “I can understand if she’s angry with the other girls with all those hateful comments, but the boys haven’t done anything to her! And she’s a girl!”

Hateful comments?

“It seems that all kinds of rumours started to go around since Roland dumped her,” Susan continued, “and all about her and what happened for the Queen to be cheated on like that.”

Oh, Bog felt his own heart skip a beat. She was cheated on by her boyfriend? And the whole school knew about it? Poor thing.

He was about to ask more about what happened to Marianne but the bell rang before words could get out of his mouth. Like if the conversation hadn’t been a big revelation, the rest of the teachers rushed to get ready for a new school day dealing with their students.

The only teacher that took her time to go was the art teacher, whose name he did remember only because it was so weird and rare.

“You shouldn’t stick your nose in her private matters like this, Bog,” Aura, or “Sugar Plum” as she liked to be called, said with a very serious face. “And not from someone who isn’t the direct source of the problem. If she wanted you to know about this she would have told you.”

He knew she was right and that this didn’t concern him at all, but his curiosity was burning brighter that a bonfire.

“I know,” he said nonetheless.

Aura locked her impossible blue eyes, a shade lighter than his own, with him for a while before sighing and turning back to the door, her bag full of painting supplies tucked under her arm.

“Just remember that nothing is what it seems,” and with that she left him alone in the teacher’s lounge.

***

When Marianne arrived at the Library too many hours later, Bog had decided that whatever happened with the girl and her ex-boyfriend shouldn’t concern him; and if she decided to misbehave because of a broken heart, then it was her responsibility to mature past the childish fixation with only one boy.

So far, she had been respectful and even nice with him, so nothing else should matter.

“What boring and tedious job do we have for today?” she asked with a tiny smile, and for a brief moment Bog wished that she was happy for being here with him. It was absurd, of course, as this was only a punishment for getting into too many fights on school grounds. If she had her way she wouldn’t step on the Library at all.

Still, he felt an equally small smile creep into his face.

“Oh, nothing much,” he pointed to the still enormous pile of books to be catalogued. Two whole days and they only managed to get to the third shelf. There were fifteen of them.

“Damn.”

“Yep.”

***

Marianne didn’t speak much as she worked, which he was grateful for. She also wasn’t looking at him, too focused on the task at her hands, and he wasn’t sure why exactly this fact struck something in his heart. At least it let him look at her and really see the person she was, now that he has new information about her.

She really didn’t look heartbroken. Well, she didn’t have to, it had been almost two years since that, but still he expected her to show that in any form. Maybe her face? Her eyes? Everyone he somehow learned had their hearts broken looked the same: sad, grey and lonely. He himself looked like that once upon a time when he still believed in love, but no matter how much time had passed a slight trace of that was still present.

Wasn’t first love supposed to work like that?

But no matter how long he looked at her smooth, slightly angular face and her golden eyes he couldn’t see any of that. Bog would never have guessed any of the story the other teachers told him by looking at her alone.

“What are you looking at?” her sharp remark snapped him out of his musings. Marianne was a few steps in front of him with a book between her hands and a really angry expression on her delicate face. “Bog King?”

Bog blinked slowly, finding that he had absolutely nothing to say.

“Something’s on my face?” she asked, and if he were paying attention he would have noticed the slight trembling on her voice. “Speak.”

This was a whole new Marianne he hadn’t faced before. She was trying to be scary and menacing, and if he was another person maybe she would have managed to succeed in that; but what the girl didn’t know was that he could stand much worse than that.

“What have they told you?” she narrowed her eyes and put the book she was still holding down on the table next to her. “Speak!” she repeated, this time followed by a punch to his face.

She looked authentically surprised when he stopped her fist with a swift motion.

“How did you-?”

“Don’t get angry, kid,” he finally said. “And don’t try to punch me next time. You won’t hit me.”

She grumbled and took back her hand, cradling it on her chest. Bog worried that he had hurt her, but she seemed just fine so he didn’t move to ask her if it was otherwise.

“And yes, today I’ve been told some…rumours about you.”

Her eyes seemed clouded for a second and then her body instantly relaxed, but not in a good way. It was more like she had been the one punched in the face.

“I - I see.” Marianne took a step back, the fight completely gone from her like if a switch had been hit. Her eyes running around the room, everywhere but him and her body language told him immediately that she wanted to run away from there. Was he the only one feeling like something had been broken between them?

“Look, I know it’s-”

“You know nothing!” she said, her voice way too loud in such a quiet place. “Please, don’t. Whatever you were going to say, save it.”

Bog sighed. There goes the teenager.

“Having your heart broken is not the end of the world, kid,” he said, but even he felt like his words were hollow. “You’ll get over it.”

She scoffed.

“Is that everything they told you?”

The librarian blinked. Was there more story than that?

“Yeah…,” he looked behind her to the big windows of the Library, which showed a beautiful spring scene of the inner courtyard of the school. He liked those windows, but right now the beauty did little to calm his nerves. How difficult it was to deal with teenagers! “Actually…”

“What?” she crossed her arms over her chest, glaring with all of her golden might.

“I kind of wanted to hear the truth from you?” Bog looked at her and immediately looked back to the window again, obviously uncomfortable in this situation.

If he were watching the girl in front of him, he would have seen the epitome of shock.

“I know how rumours can warp the truth, and I have to admit I’m curious but… if you don’t want to talk about it… I’ll understand….” he finally looked at her shocked expression, feeling stupid for meddling with affairs that had little to do with him.

“You are right, I don’t want to talk about it.”

Bog sighed and turned back to his table, where he had abandoned his share of the work for today. What a way to ruin his peace and quiet, he grumbled in his mind. Why did he have to be such a stupid-

“But,” her soft voice made him stop in his tracks. “I think you deserve the truth.”

“Are you sure?” the man asked as he turned back to her. She looked up to fix her eyes with his, a determined shine on the rare golden shade.

“Positive,” Marianne sighed and uncrossed her arms, the tension leaving her body. “I got cheated on my boyfriend, my first one ever, almost since the first day we started dating. Everyone knew it but me. When I found out I dumped him.”

“Wait, you dumped him?”

“Heh, they told you it was him who did it, right?” he nodded. “Yeah, that’s what he made everyone believe. While I was away he made all kinds of public shows and flashy demonstrations that it was him who left me, because…”

“Because he didn’t love you back?” Bog gulped, feeling sick just by hearing this.

“No,” she shook her head and sighed deeply, looking down at her feet. For a moment she seemed troubled by her thoughts, pondering what she was going to say next. Was she going to lie? No, she said he deserved the truth and he had to believe her. “He cheated on me… and I ended our relationship… because I wouldn’t sleep with him.”

[wildernessuntothemselves]

Kookies And Cream

Word Count: 11.6k (oh man holy shit)

Genre: Smut, Angst, Fluff. The whole package. 

Author’s Note: You know the definition of a switch? Just look at the two characters in this story lol switch heaven

2k Requests, Masterlist

When Jungkook first came to room with you, you were less than ecstatic about it. You had only ever roomed with one other person before at the start of your freshman year of college, but you quickly got fed up with it. Not that your roommate was bad or anything. In fact, if you were being fair, you'd admit that she was a sweetheart. But you are an only child, and you were never used to sharing anything with anyone, and despite what everyone said about the joys of having siblings, you simply weren't interested. You have none and that's the way you liked it.

Tell that to your parents though. They were convinced that you needed the company after years of keeping mostly to yourself unless you had to, with the exception of a couple of close friends. They thought that if you keep at it, you're going to turn insane from being in your head too much. Where they got that shit piece of pseudo-psychology you don't know but it had enough hold on their minds to make them force you to get a room in the college dorms -yuck- and live with a stranger for an entire month.

Or it would've been a month anyway if you hadn't made that poor girl's life a living hell so much so that by the end of the third week, she was running away from your shared dorm room like the devil himself was behind her.

The series of students who came and went through your dorm didn't last long enough to qualify as roommates. Your record was six hours, that's how long it took to send one dude,-Hoseok, you'll never forget the name- running for his life. It's a shame too, he was cute, and you had to forever ruin your chances with him. But, oh well, there are much more important things in life, like having a bathroom all to yourself.

Soon enough, your college caught on to your reign of terror and they, not so kindly, asked you to vacate the premises and restore the harmony to the student body. Your parents were forced to rent an apartment for you, seeing as you weren't allowed in the dorms anymore and they lived too far away for you to stay with them. Yeah, they could've withheld their money from you and taught you an important lesson about the consequences of being such a spoiled child but they loved you too much to do that. They've never been able to deal any real punishment to their baby girl, and that's probably how you turned out to be so headstrong.

Little did you know, however, that your comeuppance was coming for you. It took five years, five long years where you enjoyed your solitude to the max, but just as you were enrolling in a one-year post-graduate Master’s program, instead of the peaceful send off into the working world you were counting on it to be, it turned into a shitshow of the highest degree with the arrival of a certain bunny-toothed brat.

Jungkook is the son of your family's next door neighbours. But other than the daily 'Good mornings' and the occasional dinner invitation, your families weren't really close, and the only contact you had with their shy son was that one year you tutored him in math. To be sure, you were shit at math but that didn't stop you from attempting to make some money off the kid.

You see, Jungkook had a painfully obvious puppy crush on you, and even though you didn't teach him shit, and what you did teach him was mindbogglingly wrong, he still never spoke a word of it to his parents, studying on his own and getting good marks just so he'd keep seeing you.

To say that you were a bitch to him would be an understatement. You'd frequently invite your boyfriends over, taking advantage of the fact that his parents were never around because of their jobs, and using his place to hook up with them, knowing Jungkook would never tell on you. You did not care or even notice much that you were breaking the boy's heart.

Eventually, though, he got sick of your shit and asked you to stop coming over. But he still didn't tell either of your parents, ever the sweet kid. You didn't hear or see much of him after that, and you suspect that was intentionally his doing, until now.

As if the universe was punishing you for all your sins against the boy, it made him appear again in your life, but this time you were the one who was going to suffer.

On the last day before your Master’s program was set to start, your mum dropped the bomb on you, informing you that your old pupil was to shack up with you this year, and no amount of whining or begging or scheming was going to get you out of it. She gave you an ultimatum: either you let him room with you and look after him, or she stops giving you money and leaves your spoiled ass out in the cold to fend for yourself. Any funny business from you and you're done.

You were in denial at first, convincing yourself that it couldn't possibly be that bad. From what you remembered of Jungkook, he was a shy kid who did anything humanly possible to please you. You were sure that his crush must be long gone by now but he would still be the timid boy you remembered. Right?

Wrong. Jungkook was the devil incarnate.

He was nothing like the boy you used to know. For one thing, he grew. Instead of looking down on him, he now towered over you. Not that you were expecting the boy to remain midget sized forever, but the sheer scale of his height change was intimidating. His long, thick thighs made him look all the more tall.

Speaking of his thighs, your next door baby neighbor had no right to grow up to have such drool-inducing thighs. He must be aware of how sexy they are because he always puts them on display, adorning them in slim fitted jeans -and sometimes leather fucking pants, seriously who was this kid- and giving you such dirty thoughts they could make Jesus cry.

The rest of his body didn't show such stark evidence of his muscle bulk, it was all lean and hidden underneath his skin and clothes, fooling you into believing that it wasn’t that strong. Until you made the stupid mistake of challenging him one day, taking away his dinner and threatening not to let him eat until he's cleaned the mess he always makes after him.

He had snatched the food out of your hands faster than you could perceive and pushed you on the sofa, restraining you with those damn thighs of his as he continued the Netflix show he was watching and paid no mind to your struggles to get out from underneath him. When he was done, he left the empty plate on the table and went to take a shower.

That was the first time you'd learned of his horrible strength, and throughout the next few months, you became aware of it more and more with each passing day. Like when you'd take too long in the bathroom and he'd physically remove you from it like you weighed nothing more than a towel in order to get ready for his day. Or on those rare moments when he would be kind enough to help you move some piece of furniture around so you could clean under it after that one time you almost got crushed under a storage unit you were trying to move. He never let you do that on your own again despite how hard you tried to shrug him off.

Most maddening of all is that he refused to properly address you, always calling you by your first name instead of Noona since your reunion even though you've never told him he could do that, but no matter how many times you corrected him, he simply ignored you.

He may be doing things way worse than that but that's the one thing that annoyed you the most. You've never allowed anyone younger than you to call you by your name before. Call it being power hungry but you liked the respect you got simply for your greater age and that's why most of your friends were younger than you. So to have a brat like Jungkook simply disregard you like that got on your nerves more than anything.

You couldn't even relieve all that stress he was causing you. Every time you'd invite a guy over, Jungkook would do something to make the boy leave. It was as if he was doing it on purpose. His ways varied. One time he decided to clean up the apartment all of a sudden, specifically your room, and when you and your hook up headed for the couch, he went to clean that too. Another time he invited his unholy friends over in the middle of your hook up and they made sure to disturb you as much as they possibly can. And yet another time he called your mum and told her that you wanted to talk to her mid-fuck... His ways were endless.

You'd tried going against your preference and heading to your designated hook-up's place instead of yours like the usual but that proved to be very challenging. When you had a one night stand at your place, you could simply kick the person out after you're done and enjoy a peaceful night of sleep all to yourself. But when you hooked up at somebody else's place you had to make the infamous walk of shame each following morning, with an empty stomach and a restless night of trying to sleep in a stranger's bed, fighting for space and never agreeing on the optimal temperature.

Of course, Jungkook found a way to make it even harder for you. He'd sometimes, somehow, manage to find where exactly your hook-up's place is and bang on his door until they'd open up then he'd pretend to be your boyfriend who caught you cheating, watching with barely contained glee as you got kicked out. Or if the hook-up was particularly nasty, like that Jinyoung guy, Jungkook would drag you out of the apartment himself. Soon enough, a rumor spread around the whole campus about a cheating senior girl and her crazy freshman boyfriend, and you couldn’t even find someone to hook up with after that.

Jungkook wasn't content with just fucking up your chances of getting laid for the entire year. No, he made it a point to rub it in your face by hooking up with a new girl every chance he got and doing things to her to keep her screaming all night. You didn't know what he could possibly be doing to make them go off like that short of a murder scene, but whatever he did, it kept you all up and made sure you got no sleep.

You spent months suffering through all this, wondering why the fuck he was acting this way until you got fed up and asked him about it one day. You weren't really expecting an answer, so far you had just chalked it up to him being a demon from hell sent to test out your patience. You certainly didn't expect the way he so nonchalantly answered you, "It's payback for all the times you tortured me as a teenager."

Damn, did that kid know how to hold a grudge.

After much struggling, you finally submitted to your fate, figuring that he'd get tired of torturing you eventually, but he never did. He only got worse until you couldn't even handle staying in your apartment anymore and only got back to it to sleep. That is if you were lucky enough and he didn't have another one of his girls over.

"Oh god, would you put on some underwear?" You scowl at Jungkook over your bowl of cereal, disapproving of the way he was wearing his grey sweatpants sans underwear and forcing you to see exactly what he's packing. "This is practically sexual harassment."

"Don't pretend you don't like what you see, baby," Jungkook says smugly, sitting down opposite you and spreading his legs, giving you an unfiltered view at little Jungkook... which looked slightly hard? You shake your head, must be just morning wood.

You get up and point your spoon at him, "See this whole thing right here," You circle your spoon in his general direction, "Is disturbing."

You throw the remainder of your uneaten cereal in the trash and put your bowl and spoon in the sink, spinning on your heel and leaving the kitchen, not noticing the pout now etched on Jungkook's face.

This was useless. You've never been good at studying outside your house. The conditions just were never right. The library was too quiet for you as you liked to read things out loud and talk to yourself sometimes, moving around as if you were explaining the subject to a classroom, and that just wasn't permitted in a library. Not to mention that it made you look insane. Cafes were too noisy and crowded for you as people socialized and talked at a volume higher than your internal voice and you couldn't even hear yourself think.

Today you discovered that the campus park was also out of the question as you constantly felt tiny phantom insect legs crawling all over your body. You snap your textbook closed and get up, brushing off the ghost insects and cursing Jungkook for forcing you out of your apartment, your safe haven. Grabbing your phone, you text Yoongi, demanding that he meet you at the nearest bar as soon as possible.

When Yoongi arrives fifteen minutes later, he sees that you've downed half a bottle of wine already. He raises an eyebrow at you, an amused smile on his face. "That kid got you hard, huh?"

You snort, "Fuck you, Yoongi, you should be on my side. But if you must know then yes, the devil spawn has me bested." You grumble and your entire face falls into a pathetic pout. "He's not letting me do anything, Yoongi. I can't eat. I can't sleep. I can't study. I can't even fuck."

"Why don't you just fuck him?"

You choke on your mouthful of red wine. After coughing and sputtering until you can breathe again, you smack your best friend hard. "How can you say that?!"

Yoongi shrugs, "Why not? From your fixation on describing his body to me, I'd say you want him."

"I was only telling you how inappropriate he's being!"

"Sure, love. That's why you were describing his body in detail to me." He gives you an unimpressed look and you blush. "You'd be killing two birds, or at this point four or five, with one stone. You'd get the fuck you've been running after for months, you wouldn't have strange girls keeping you up at night with their screams of pleasure because you'd be the one screaming." You give him a look of horror at that but he ignores you, "And he'd probably go easy on you after that. Since he would get to fuck you, he wouldn't be bothering you so much around the house... You get the idea."

"I'm denouncing this friendship." You declare but Yoongi merely rolls his eyes.

Your talk with Yoongi fucked you up, and you ended up finishing that wine bottle all by yourself in an attempt to drown the unwelcome thoughts he was giving you about your evil roommate. Ok, fine, so you may find him a bit attractive, there was no shame in admitting that, but you were not about to reward his behavior by giving your body to him. No, misbehaving boys like him needed to be punished.

You stumble all the way up to the door of your apartment, holding your keys ahead of you as if they had some kind of GPS to guide you home. You must have spent an entire ten minute stretch of time trying and failing to stick your keys inside the keyhole, and when you managed to stick one in, it turned out to be the wrong one. Exasperated and feeling like you were on the verge of a drunken breakdown, you start banging on the door, hoping Jungkook would have mercy on you for once and open the door for you.

But he doesn't, despite the fact that you could clearly hear him in the living room feeling on some girl, and he has to have heard you. Still, you bang on the door until you can't anymore. Feeling a storm welling up inside your stomach, you fall with a loud thump on the floor, wrapping your arms around yourself and praying you wouldn't humiliate yourself by throwing up right in front of your door.

You hear a rushed shuffling of feet inside the apartment before the door you were leaning on flies open and you fall to the floor. A familiar scent surrounds you as Jungkook turns you on your back to look at you, a concerned look on his face. "Hey, are you ok?"

Your traitorous eyes can't help but be drawn to his shirtless body, and you groan. "Ugh, go put a shirt on." You weakly smack his naked chest with your balled up fist, your drunken mind simply not able to throw up its usual defenses against the attractive boy.

Jungkook, on the other hand, takes offense to your words, scoffing and getting up to leave you on the floor. Your hands shoot out to grab onto his pants, pulling on them hard as you attempt to make him stay. "No, Kookie don't leave. Help me, please. I'm gonna throw up." You cry pathetically and he turns back to you, holding onto his pants to prevent them from getting pulled down.

"Alright, alright, but let go, you're gonna make me lose my pants."

You immediately let him go, managing to feel embarrassed enough to blush even in your drunken state. You feel strong arms wrap around you and pull you off the floor, carrying you bridal style and going in the direction you assume the bathroom to be.

Jungkook had a tight hold on you, pressing you up securely against his chest as he carried you off, and you were overwhelmed by the closeness. You could feel exactly how sculpted his body was and you were surrounded by his scent which surprisingly still managed to be pleasant to you despite your nauseousness. However, something about that scent felt familiar to you but you couldn't put your finger on it...

"Hey, is that Victoria's Secret?!" You exlaim, finally remembering where exactly you knew that smell from as he set you down on the floor in front of the toilet seat. You don't let him go as you pull him closer to you and sniff him up. "It is Victoria's Secret!"

Jungkook removes your body off of him and jumps back, a deep crimson blush staining his face. Whatever he or you were going to say gets interrupted by a fresh wave of nausea and before you know it, you're grabbing onto the toilet seat in a death grip and hurling the contents of your stomach into it. Jungkook uses that moment's reprieve and bails, bolting out of the bathroom and leaving you on your own. You were hurt but thankful, at least now he wouldn't witness the unsightly scene you were making as you gag and wretch your heart out.

You don't get to feel relieved for long though because after you overhear an argument you can't quite make out between Jungkook and the girl, you hear the apartment door slam shut before Jungkook is by your side again with a warm towel in his hand that he uses it to pat away the sweat running over your face in between your throwing up sessions.

When you've finally emptied out the contents of your stomach and then more, you shakily reach out to flush the horror scene in front of you and try to salvage any shred of pride left, but Jungkook holds you down and flushes it for you then he gets up to grab you a cup of water that you greedily drink up.

As soon as you're done, Jungkook sweeps you up in his arms again and carries you to your bedroom, laying you down and tucking you in before leaving without a word and you assume he's gone this time for good after he's done more than his duty.

But again you're wrong as Jungkook reappears with a cup of orange juice and a cup of water and he gently rouses you up from the superficial sleep you'd gone into, ignoring your protests and insisting that you drink everything.

"I can't. It will just make me throw up." You whine, fighting weakly against him to let you go back to sleep.

"You need this, ___. I won't leave you until you drink it." He holds the freshly squeezed orange juice to your mouth and you begrudgingly take a sip, figuring that the faster you drink it up, the sooner he'll let you get your much-needed sleep.

At long last, when you've lightly sipped your way through both cups, he asks you some questions -Can you breathe alright? Is there any pain? Not even here?- and he makes sure you're extra tucked in before he finally closes the light and lets you sleep.

You barely register the bed dipping beside you as you clutch your head in an attempt to keep it intact against a ravenous headache ripping through it. You hear a soothing voice calling out to you, and strong, sure hands pulling you up and removing your hands from your face, replacing them with two small pills at your lips and a cup of cool water to wash them down.

After some time, when your headache finally calms down enough for you to be able to look up at your merciful savior, you see none other than Jungkook looking down at you with concern upon his face. Before you can stop yourself, you mutter out, "Oh, it's you."

Jungkook's worried frown turns into one of irritation and he bites at you, "You're welcome." before getting up to leave in a huff. Your hands reach out to grab onto him, looking up at him in earnest and speaking sincerely, "Thank you, Jungkook."

His features soften at that, "I'm gonna make us some breakfast."

"Oh, you don't have to do that." You wave your hands in front of you,  not wishing to cause him any more trouble.

"I'm gonna make us breakfast." He repeats firmly and you slump down into your bed as you watch him leave, silently feeling thankful that he didn't listen to you when you hear your stomach grumble in hunger.

As you wait for him, you look around your room aimlessly and your eyes land on your vanity chair that was displaced from its usual spot to where it now resided next to your bed, and it doesn't take you long to realize why. Jungkook must have slept on it the night before in order to keep an eye on you. You feel incredible guilt and shame wash over you as you think about how restless his night must have been in that uncomfortable chair just so he can watch over you when he didn't even have to.

When Jungkook gets back to your room with a tray of eggs and fruit, you thank him again quietly, and despite you not clarifying what exactly you were thankful for, the small smile on his face lets you know that he got it.

You were happily munching on the delicious food when you hear him clear his throat and ask timidly, "Did you sleep alright?"

You turn to him but you see him focused on his food, purposefully avoiding your gaze. "Yeah. I mean way better than it would have been without your help."

He nods and then hurriedly lobs a piece of orange into his mouth, restless under your gaze, but, nervous as he is, he doesn't chew on it well enough and it gets stuck in his throat and he starts coughing violently. You rush to his side, hitting his back and helping him dislodge the offensive piece out of his throat then you hand him your cup of water and watch as he chugs it down, finally breathing again.

Jungkook looks up at you, giving you an uncertain look. You're confused at the conflicting emotions in his eyes until you realize that you still had your arm around him, unconsciously rubbing your hand up at down his back. You quickly withdraw your hand and you both fall into an awkward silence.

"Listen, Jungkook." You start nervously, taking a big gulp of breath as his doe eyes turn to look at you. "I know you've done so much for me already just this past night, but would it be too much to ask you to set aside your grudge against me for just a few weeks? You see, exams are coming up and I really can't study outside the house. If things continue like this I will flunk. So I would really appreciate it if-"

"Ok," Jungkook cuts your rant off and you stare at him wide-eyed.

"Ok?"

"Yes, I was being immature anyway. What you did to me was a long time ago and I should've just gotten over it but instead, I acted petty and I'm sorry." He looked genuinely troubled and at war with himself so you rushed to ease his mind.

"No, no, I was honestly such a bitch to you, and I deserve all that I got." You smile in amusement at his shocked face. "But it's got to stop now or my parents will kill me because I failed my tests and then you'd have no one else to torture."

"I wasn't trying to torture you," Jungkook says sheepishly.

"Peace?" You smile, extending your hand to him and he takes it right away. "Peace."

In the following month, your view of Jungkook makes a 180 turn. Now that he wasn't making it his mission to make your every waking (and sleeping) moment a living hell, you realize that he's actually not that bad. No, scratch that. You realize that he's fucking golden.

He's funny, frequently making your sides split from laughing too hard. He has the most hilarious little reactions to everything and he is never afraid to make himself look like a fool just so he would see you crack a smile on a dreary day. On your part, you also enjoyed making him laugh. While you weren't nearly as funny as he was, you loved to hear him laugh, the sound so youthful and silly, it always lit your world up. Luckily, Jungkook seemed prepared to laugh at all your antics, no matter how pathetic, and you got to hear the heartwarming sound often.

He is the picture of the perfect gentleman, always prepared to help you any way you needed. From helping you open jars of your favorite honey to bringing you Chinese takeout and binge-watching Netflix with you when you just couldn't bear to face the world that day.

He texts you good morning on the days he doesn't see you. He texts you goodnight when one of you is out late. He texts you 'how are you feeling?' just before you head into an important test, and he texts you 'how did you do?' the minute you get out of the examination room.

He may still act like a brat a lot of the time but now you know that it's just him teasing you and not because of a decade old grudge. And he more than makes up for it with the countless sweet little things he does, not that you are ever really annoyed with his teasing anymore. Jungkook has a heart of gold. You've never encountered anyone as sweet and earnest as him. He wore his heart on his sleeve, his every emotion raw and real, and you find yourself doing everything in your might to keep it this way, to protect him from the cruel world that would seek to get its dirty hands on such perfect innocence.

Jungkook's face became an indispensable constant in your life. His laugh a lullaby. His smile a ray of sunshine. His eyes more precious than the most beautiful night sky.

If someone had told you just a month ago that you'd be sitting on your sofa, yanking the textbooks and meticulously written notes out of Jungkook's lap and genuinely trying to ease up his pre-exam stress, you would've laughed in their faces and called them insane.

But here you were, hands cupping Jungkook's precious face and telling him to take deep breaths to match your own.

"Jungkookie, please relax. You've studied more than enough, honey. You'll do great." You speak after you're convinced that he was breathing again. You caress his cheeks softly and he closes his eyes and unconsciously leans into your touch. Your heart flutters at his reflexive action and you have to jerk your hands back to your sides, making Jungkook's eyes snap open at the loss and a small pout appear on his thin lips.

"You need to go to sleep. It's the best thing you can do now." You clear your throat, standing up and dragging him behind you towards his bedroom, avoiding eye contact at all cost. "Research has shown that you retain information and score better on exams if you have a good night's sleep beforehand."

You lay him down on his bed and pull the covers over him. Jungkook props himself up on a pillow to look at you, his tired eyes lighting up with mischief. "Oh baby, I love it when you talk science to me."

Your hand shoots out lightening-quick to smack the increasingly shameless boy in an effort to hide the blush on your face. Really, he's getting too familiar with you.

Jungkook lets you deliver the hit. Even though he could've easily stopped you with his freakishly good reflexes, he lets you have this one with a light-hearted laugh on his part. Again, your stupid heart does a backflip at the lovely sound.

Your new relationship with Jungkook was bad for your health, you lament, muttering a 'goodnight' to the overgrown child and preparing to make a dash for sanctuary outside of this hazardous zone. But Jungkook is too cruel to let up.

"Will you sleep with me?"

"W-what?" You choke on air, knowing exactly what he means despite the dirty part of your brain pathetically praying that it's the other meaning, while your poor heart agrees because at least then it would get a break from this emotional abuse.

"I would sleep much better if you're here with me." He looks up at you, bright hope mingling and exploding with the stars in his eyes to make the brightest nebulas. He has to know what he's doing to you. He has to, that manipulative brat.

You practically swoon and fall to the bed, not even caring that you despise not having your space when you sleep. Something told you that you'd enjoy Jungkook's presence more than your beloved solitude. And despite warning him to keep to his side, you wake in the middle of the night to find yourself good and cuddled up by the boy, and your previous suspicion is confirmed. It's the first time you've ever woken up not feeling cold as Jungkook's body heat forms a force field of warmth around you and you find yourself snuggling deeper into him. Your body fits perfectly into the concavity of his own and his limbs surround you, making you feel safe but not caged. You were as comfortable as a lovebird under its mate’s wings and that thought deeply worried you.

Finally, exams were over, and with them the transitional period of your relationship with Jungkook. The stress and trauma of exams and the need to survive them had brought you closer together. You'd take turns calming each other down. One day you'd be the level-headed one, taking Jungkook out of his own mind and making him see that things weren't really that bad, and the next day he'd be the one convincing you that, no, you shouldn't just drop out and become a stripper.

Past the first few awkward and unsure times, cuddling together has become a habit. Whenever one of you was particularly stressed about something, they would crawl into the other's bed and make them play with their hair and rub their back until they fell into a peaceful sleep. Truthfully, you felt perfectly fine half of the time you slipped into his bed, you were just craving his touch. It wasn't your fault that his body felt like your own little sanctuary and his voice resembled that of an angel.

If you were being honest with yourself, you would admit that your life with Jungkook was becoming more domestic than any friendship had any right to be. He made you breakfast and coffee every morning to coax you out of your habit of oversleeping and you made him dinner every night to dissuade him from his usual meals of junk food and coke. You cuddled and slept together most nights. You went out on cute little 'dates' around the city, both coming from a small town and making it a mission to explore as much of the city as you can. You've never thought to do that despite having spent three years here prior to Jungkook's arrival. It wasn't until he suggested it one day that you suddenly found yourself starving for a little adventure, spurned on by Jungkook's reckless youthfulness. He made you feel alive.  

So why weren't you dating? Because despite him now being a grown ass man, he is still a whole four years younger than you are. You’re doing your Masters while he is just a fucking Freshman. You've just graduated from college and he’s just graduated from high school. How many more ways can you phrase it? Your friends never let you hear the end of it. They had gone up into a mini-riot when they'd learned that you used to babysit him ages ago.

Yoongi was the only one not losing his shit over this. He still thought it was a stupid idea -Jungkook is too young to be serious about this, not to mention he's your neighbor and your mothers know each other- but at least he wasn't treating you like you had committed some kind of crime.

You never really cared what people said. You're not the type of person to plan your life around pleasing people, but your friends' reactions made you falter because if that's what they thought then what did Jungkook himself think? He is the only one whose opinion on this mattered and if everyone thought it was a bad idea and you were sick for wanting him then that's probably what he would think too.  Maybe all his gestures and actions are as innocent as him. He is probably doing it all with pure intentions and you're just a sick crazy lady who's reading too much into them.

After all, he's never once hinted at wanting something more with you, and it's not like you can exactly ask him about it. With any other person you would have, but because of the delicate circumstances of this situation, you obviously couldn't, and so you decide to just bottle up all of your emotions until you find a way to get rid of them quietly and for good.

At first, you wanted to distance yourself from Jungkook until you can reach an extent that is acceptable for two people who were just friends, but Jungkook didn’t let you even try. Despite how reserved he might appear to those who don’t know him, in real life, Jungkook is a human koala; he’s incredibly clingy, and once he holds on to someone he doesn’t let them go easily.

So it didn’t matter how busy you told him you were. Like the huge softie he was, he planned his schedule around yours, content with merely sitting in silence with you as you studied and he played his video games, every once in a while reaching over to squeeze your hand or draw mindless patterns on the back of it and smiling angelically at you. When he’d do that, you would never have the heart to reject him like you're supposed to do and tell him that you need both hands to work. You'd just let him hold it as your progress slows down significantly -only partly because of the practicality of working with just one hand but mostly because of the storm of butterflies in your stomach called into existence by his touch- and his character dies dozens of times while his teammates scream at him.

In the end, you resorted to inviting Yoongi over whenever possible, knowing that Jungkook is timid around the older male. He’d kept his distance the first few times you’d done that but when he realized that this recent development was becoming a constant thing, he’d tried to overcome his shyness and reach out to you. You could see the hesitation in his every move, in the way his hand would linger in the air for a second before touching you. Or in the way he’d stutter when he’d try to deliver his normal banter, mischief absent from the words and replaced by a confused insecurity.

But even that didn’t last long because every time he’d try to get closer to you, you’d turn to Yoongi and touch him instead. It broke your heart how easily that affected him. The look of betrayal in his eyes deeply reminiscent of those long gone days when you’d discard him to have fun with other boys.

After the most heart-wrenching period of time in your life where you had to watch yourself break down Jungkook after he’d innocently offered his heart to you, trusting you not to break it again, Jungkook finally learns his lesson.

He stopped reaching out to you all together and started keeping to himself, only talking to you as much as a roommate needs to talk to the other. He stopped inviting you out to things and rejected your own invitations to him. Even the cuddling stopped and you were back to being cold again. It all made your heart ache, this wasn’t what you wanted. You just wanted to keep at a healthy distance from him so you’d quit your infatuation with the boy three years your junior, but you wanted to remain friends. Damn it, you never meant to lose him.

But it would be unfair to him to push for it now. Even on the off chance that he’d trust you a third time, you didn’t want him to. You needed to stop being so selfish. Jungkook deserves to get his distance from you and find a girl his own age who’d love him and never even think of hurting him. He deserves the best in this shitty world and that wasn’t you.

And so you’d turned a blind eye when Jungkook started behaving rudely towards you. You don’t know what triggered the sudden shift in his behavior exactly but you’d chalked it up to him taking revenge on you again and to be honest, you more than deserved it. Except this time it wasn’t teasing and prank-like humor, this was straight up brashness. Even during his most intense bouts of revenge, he always picked his words carefully, taking care not to say anything actually offensive, but now he’s turned into this guy who just says whatever without giving a fuck about people’s feelings. Abrasive and cocky, only Yoongi could match his new bluntness. It’s almost as if he was actively trying to imitate the older boy...

Stepping up to the door of your bedroom, you don’t have long to wonder why it was wide open when you've always closed it before you left. Your confused thoughts screech to a halt when you see a large figure laying on your bed, but the fear is quickly replaced by worry when you realize that it’s Jungkook. It's dark and you can’t see all that well but you could recognize that voice anywhere, even if it was coming out in soft whimpers and choked sobs like it was right now.

Your heart clenches painfully in your chest at the thought that Jungkook might be crying. Oh god, what if he’s realized that you’d purposefully distanced yourself from him and he’s hurting? Jungkook has always been sensitive even if he was bad at expressing his emotions. Maybe he’s heartbroken over your recent behavior but he doesn’t know how to tell you that. What if...

Your self-disparaging train of thought is gradually derailed by a curious detail in Jungkook’s movement. His body moves minutely but nonstop and with a rhythmic quality about it. His face nuzzles into your pillow as his body writhes on top of the bed, almost grinding on...

When you hear his “cry” again, soft and sounding suspiciously like your name, you’re almost struck down with the truth of the what was happening in front of your eyes. Jungkook was masturbating. In your bed. To your scent. To the thought of you.

As though a woman possessed, you step into the room and slam the door closed behind you. Jungkook jumps at the sound and turns to face you, pulling up the covers around himself.

“Kookie, what are you doing here?” You ask with sickly sweetness, pretending you don’t know exactly what he’s been doing just a moment ago. A plan forms in your mind. A bad, wicked plan that you certainly shouldn't follow, but after witnessing the boy so high on just the thought of you, you can't seem to bring yourself to care much.

This proves that you've been torturing yourself for no real reason. Jungkook does want you, at least sexually. If he wants you and you want him then there is no reason to keep feeling guilty about it. There is no reason for you to deny yourself from the pleasure of having him. The only real danger here was getting your heart broken when the boy invariably tells you that he's only in it for the sex, but at this moment you are desperate enough for him that you couldn't be bothered to care about that. Let the future you deal with the heartbreak, you'll enjoy the sex.

Jungkook pulls the covers tighter around himself and subtly tucks himself back into his pants, or so he thinks anyway. “I was waiting for you. I wanted to sleep with you.” He answers lamely, again with the suggestive words, except this time you knew it’s the second meaning he really wanted.

“So you’re finally done being a brat?” You can’t help but scold him, still feeling a little petty and upset.

“Only if you’re done ignoring me.” He replies defiantly despite the incriminating situation you've caught him in.

You stare him down, thinking of your next move as Jungkook squirms under your gaze. You don't address the fact that you hadn’t cuddled for weeks now, and start getting rid of your uncomfortable clothes until you’re standing in front of a shocked Jungkook in just your underwear. The boy feeling equal parts embarrassed and turned on.

“What? It’s hot.” You answer his still scandalized expression with a smirk. You slip into bed and press your back against him, ready to commence with the cuddling without a care in the world, but Jungkook wriggles away before your ass can touch a certain part of his body.

“You know what? On second thought, it’s probably too hot to cuddle. I’m just gonna go back to my room.” Jungkook stammers and attempts to get up but you quickly turn towards him and shove him flat against the bed, pouting, “No, stay. I’ve missed you.”

Jungkook stares up at you, frozen, as you wedge one leg between his, your thigh nestling against the hardness you find there. “Oh, what is that?” You exaggerate your surprise, having way too much fun with this.

“I’m sorry! I’ll leav-AH” Jungkook’s squeaks are interrupted by a loud cry when you run your hand under the cover, searching for the thing that was poking your thigh and ending up palming him through his pants. He throws his head back against the pillow, all fight leaving his body at once. “Oh my, Kookie, are you hard?”

You don’t really give him the chance to respond as you press the heel of your hand against his balls, slowly kneading them. “You are hard. You were trying to get me to cuddle you when you’re this horny. What a naughty boy.”

“No, I w-wasn’t.”

“Really? You told me yourself just a minute ago. The only other explanation is that I've caught you masturbating to me in my own bed and you thought you could lie to cover your ass... But that can’t be, can it, Kookie? You're a good boy. You'd never do something like that.” You purr in his ear, enjoying the way the boy was hyperventilating under you from the mixture of adrenaline and arousal, choosing to keep silent as he enjoys the humiliating handjob.

“Throw the covers away, baby.” Jungkook obeys your order despite the shudder running through his body and the flames of shame threatening to light him up.

“Now, pull down your pants and boxers -no, sweetie, I want you to do it." You say when he looks like he is going to protest. You weren’t going to force him into anything. If he wanted this then he needed to act like it. You were done feeling like the aggressor in this relationship.  "I need to know that you want this too.”

“Oh baby, look at you.” You coo when he obeys, running your fingers lightly over his cock and tongue poking out to lick your lips at the stream of precum leaking from his round tip. “You’re so pretty.”

Jungkook wasn’t big by any means, he is average if not leaning more towards the small size, but damn if he didn’t have the prettiest cock you’ve ever laid eyes on. His shaft stuck out from the middle of his black curls, fat and soft to the touch, and his head flared and glistening with precum, making your mouth water.

You get up on your knees and shuffle down until you’re nestled between his thighs. Jungkook cranes his neck to look at you, anticipating your next move as if his life depended on it. Unable to take it anymore, you bend down and swipe your tongue across his slit then eagerly pull it back into your mouth. You and Jungkook both moan out at that, him with desperation and you with content. “You taste so good. So salty yet so sweet.” You coo, bending down again to take his head into your mouth, sucking on it to gather all the precum that has leaked out.

Jungkook’s hips involuntarily push upwards, seeking the pleasurable heat of your mouth but you immediately pull back, smacking his thigh lightly in reprimand. “Tsk tsk, you think you deserve my mouth, baby, after the way you’ve been treating me?”

“I’m sorry.” He whimpers pathetically, making it so hard for you not to just shove him into your mouth and give him the kind of blowjob that would melt his brain.

“You think that just because you have such a pretty cock that I wouldn’t be able to stop myself?” You say even as you bend down to lick at him some more, swiping your tongue from the base right to the tip then going back down with a trail of kisses down to his balls, lathering them with your tongue as you look up at him, his erect cock partially obstructing your vision. “So, so pretty.”

“I’m sorry, noona.”

Your head snaps up, eyes widening at what he’s just called you. Jungkook is still as teary-eyed and desperate as ever, but now there was a definite sly glint to his eyes. “What did you just say?”

“I’m sorry. I’ll be a good boy from now on. Just please suck my cock.” A ghost of a smirk distorts the lovely shape of his lips as he watches you carefully before adding. “Noona.”

You never knew that a single word could hold so much power over someone. Hearing Jungkook finally call you Noona fills you with an insatiable need such as you've never felt before. You push his sweats even further down his legs until they're past his knees then you straddle one of his thighs, ignoring how embarrassingly wet your panties have suddenly become, and start grinding your pussy against him. Under your breath, you mutter a prayer of thanks to whatever god is out there because if they had listened to your wishes of having Jungkook address you properly before, you wouldn't have been able to stop yourself from jumping his bones each time he said it.

“You little brat.” You spit, feeling yourself already perilously close to the edge when the muscle in his thigh reflexively contracts as he feels your juices sticking against his skin. No, you won't give him the pleasure of making you cum first. The brat doesn't deserve it. You fist his cock and pump it brutally up and down, your hand blurring over it and not leaving him any room to breathe.

“Noona, noona, stop please, I’m gonna cum, noona, ah, ah, no-uhhh, noonahhh,” Even in his pleasurable delirium, the boy still doesn't shut up.

When his orgasm hits him, he suddenly stops resisting and spreads his thighs as he convulses, cumming all over himself and filling you with the urge to fuck him, to just climb on top of him and give him what his eyes are practically begging you for even after his last orgasmic shudders subside.

As if reading your mind, he sniffles up at you, “Noona... take me.” Like a whore, he spreads his legs some more, purposefully drawing your attention to his pretty cock that still hasn’t softened yet.

Your mind was foggy and pumped full of sex chemicals. You knew you couldn't make a halfway responsible decision in that state. You needed to decompress so you ignore his request altogether. Taking off your panties, you climb up Jungkook's body until you're hovering over his face, your pussy mere inches from his eager tongue. Without any prompting, Jungkook cranes his neck upwards, warm mouth immediately going to work.

He runs his tongue teasingly between your clit and vagina, careful not to touch the areas where you're most sensitive until you tug harshly on his hair, "Jungkook." You warn through gritted teeth.

Smiling insolently, his bunny teeth adding to his aura of mischief, he zeros in on where you want him the most, your clit. Except he only gives it little bunny licks, his tongue poking at it teasingly and his eyes staring up at you playfully. Maybe in another life, a life where you miraculously had Jungkook to call your own and where you could fuck him every day to your heart's content, you might've been able to deal with and maybe even enjoy his teasing, but this wasn't a perfect world. You were starved for the doe-eyed boy with the pretty cock and you simply had no patience for his antics.

You push yourself off of him, snapping, "If you won't eat me out properly then I'll take care of it myself."

Immediately, his hands that were previously clawing at the sheets shoot up to grab your hips and pull you flush against his face. You don't need any sorrys or promises from him as he makes his good intentions clear when he finally gives you what you've been waiting for all this time, and by the looks of it, what he's been waiting for too.

He licks your clit roughly, alternating between swirling his tongue around it and flattening right against it in firm, deliberate strokes until you can't hold up your own weight anymore. Your knees give out and you fall, almost crushing him if it weren't for the punishing grip he had on your hips. Far from getting overwhelmed, he uses your weight to press you further into his mouth, his tongue rapidly flicks between your lips as you hear the hungry licks echo lewdly around your room, your moans soon joining them, "Oh god, Kookie, right there baby. Please whatever you do, don't stop."

You're not the least bit embarrassed to hear the endless stream of whines coming out of your mouth for him. He was giving it to you better than any other man before. Technically, he may not be the best out there, though he was pretty damn close, but he more than made up for it with his sheer enthusiasm. If there was a doubt in your mind that Jungkook wanted you, no needed you, in that moment it was erased forever.

The consuming pleasure causes salty tears to sting your eyes and blur your vision so much so you can't even enjoy the erotic sight of Jungkook between your legs, his big, innocent eyes in an almost obscene contrast to his nimble tongue that did unspeakably sinful things to your pussy so you just close them and let yourself be devoured, one hand clutching onto the headboard and the other buried in Jungkook's hair as you cry out for him in hoarse raptured moans.

His tongue travels down to your hole and thrusts inside of you, making you whimper, "Oh god, almost there baby. Please, just a little bit more."

Since he couldn't use his tongue to stimulate your clit anymore, he puts his big nose to good use, rubbing it against your clit, and you hear muffled chuckles reaching your ears as he feels the way it makes you clench around him. When your orgasm washes over you and your walls begin spasming too strongly for him to keep pumping his tongue inside of you, he quickly goes back to your clit, sucking it into his mouth and flicking it harshly with his tongue, practically dragging you screaming through the devastating orgasm.

Soon, it all became too much for you to handle and you pull away from him. Attempting to sit up on shaky legs, you watch transfixed as a string of saliva and cum connects his tongue to between your legs, but before you can observe the tantalising string as it breaks, Jungkook yanks you back down and licks up your cum hungrily, too addicted to the taste he's been craving for so long to let go.

The tears that have been collecting in your eyes reach their breaking point and start running down your face from the pain of oversensitivity, and Jungkook finally loosens his grip enough for you to throw yourself to the bed, laying by his side as you both gasp for breath. He, of course, regains it much earlier than you do and turn towards you, engulfing you in his arms and rubbing his hard cock against your thighs needily. "Can I fuck you now, noona?"

Despite your poor pussy protesting against it, there is nothing you wished for more at this moment than to just let him put his pretty cock inside of you and fuck you until he tires himself out. Still, the mind-blowing orgasm he just gave you helps your mind clear up a little bit and you regain some of your sensibility. Fighting against your debilitating need for the boy, you groan, "Kookie, we can't.

“Why?” Jungkook asks, irritated. Stubbornly, he runs his hand down your stomach and between your legs, prodding a finger against your entrance before pushing it in easily. "You're still dripping. You want me."  

“I do, I really do." You sigh in both pleasure and annoyance as he pumps his finger slowly in and out of you, the tip of it dragging against your walls, searching for that spot that would drive you crazy. You can't believe how fast he can get you horny and ready to go again. "But I can’t take advantage of you like that. You’re going to regret this in the morning, I’m sure of it.”

“I’ve wanted this for years, you think I’m suddenly going to just decide that I don't want you after all?”

“But you’re too young...”

“I knew it!” Jungkook spits at you, turning abrasive again and yanking his finger out of you, making you whimper at the loss. “Well, I’m sorry I’m not your fucking Yoongi-oppa and I’m sorry I’m not like all those other assholes you’ve always loved so much.”

“No, Jungkook, you're misunderstanding me. I’ve never loved them.” You try to hold onto him as he fights to get away, but he’s too strong for you. He pushes you back on the bed and stands up, but before he can leave and the pain and heartache can have their way with you, you shout for him. “I love you!”

He whirls around, on guard and incredulous but with a slight tinge of hope that he wishes didn’t show so clearly on his face, “Don’t play with me now.” He warns.

You fall silent, realizing too late the gravity of what you've just confessed, your mind half convincing you to take it back, but Jungkook latches onto your words and refuses to let them slip by.

“You love me?” Jungkook breathes in disbelief.

“Don’t worry about it, forget I said anything." You squeak, attempting to salvage the unsalvageable. "We're both very tired and confused. Let’s just go to sleep so we won't say something we might regret in the morning.”

“Like hell, I will!” Jungkook shouts, getting back on the bed and cradling your face in his hands. “Tell me the truth, do you really love me?”

'No. No, I don't love you.' That's what you should say. That's the only right thing to say.

“Yes. Is that too bad?”

Jungkook wants to say no, he wants to tell you it’s all he’s been dreaming of since you’d gotten close over the end of last semester. Yeah, he’s always had a crush on you, but it was more physical than anything; wanting what he can’t have, but after he’s gotten to know you, he's desired no one else. He just never dreamed that you would feel the same way, especially since he was so different from the type of men you usually go for.

“You sure don’t act like someone who’s in love.” Jungkook’s lips are pressed into a thin line, his stubbornness and ego kicking in as he tries to hold his emotions back. He can't just fall to your feet the moment you deign to give him a little bit of affection. He'd like to think he isn't that pathetic.

“What did you want me to say? Did you think I’d risk telling you just so you would laugh at my face and call me sick?”

“Are you blind or just stupid? Do you not know how in love with you I am?”

“Don’t say things you don’t mean, Kookie.” You say in a small voice, already feeling in way over your head, and not needing him to encourage you further.

“I love you, noona.” Jungkook sighs, giving in faster than he'd care to admit, and smothers you with kisses as if they would convey his sincerity.

“No,” You say, even as you allow yourself to be swept up in his kisses. And you allow him to keep going as they turn sexual, and he starts laying open-mouthed, hungry kisses all over every exposed inch of your skin. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

Frustrated, he presses you into the bed with his body. “Stop telling me what I should say or how I should feel. I’ve been acting like a fool for the past few weeks trying to be someone you would actually like. I’m not going to just let you brush this off when you've finally admitted you like me. Me. I’m not a toy you can play with whenever you feel like it.”

He leans down to kiss you again but this time you meet him halfway, pouring all your emotions and apologies into the kiss before the gears turn in your head and you fully digest the meaning of his words. Suddenly, you pull away, “Pretending to be someone I would like? Is that why you were acting like such an asshole to me?”

You turn from shocked and pissed off to just pissed off as all traces of assertiveness seep away from Jungkook’s body, leaving behind an unsure little boy who’s lost for words, and that's all the answer you need.

“On your hands and knees.”

“What?” Jungkook flinches under your hard gaze.

“Either you get on your hands and knees or you get out. It’s up to you.” You say coldly, leaving no room for discussion. Jungkook springs up to get into position in fear that you would change your mind and decide to kick him out anyway. He feels embarrassment whorl around the pit of his stomach as you lower his sweats down his ass, only to be dispersed by the sharp slap of your hand on the newly exposed skin. You deliver two slaps to each side and then say, “You had me worried half to death over your attitude and now you’re telling me that it was all just play pretend so you could act like some tough guy you think I would like?”

Slap. “You were always a nasty little shit but this really takes the cake.” Slap. “You were out there making me fall for you and getting me all horny like a fucking virgin.” Slap. "Almost giving me a heart attack from the guilt and need.” Slap. "All while you had no fucking clue to what you were doing to me. Acting like a misbehaving brat to get my attention?"

Jungkook was trying to suppress his grunts of pain but little quiet whimpers still reached your ear here and there so you stop. “You don’t have to take this, Jungkook. You can still leave.” You say, smoothing your palms over his red ass and gently massaging it.

“No... It's Ok.” Came his breathy reply that sounded suspiciously like a moan.

"Do you- do you like this, kookie?" The boy doesn't give you a response save shyly dropping his head to the mattress so you reach between his begs to find his dick hot and throbbing. "Baby boy..." You murmur, deciding not to press on in order not to embarrass the young boy any further.

You push his white shirt upward as you pump his cock slowly, bending down to trail a line of kisses down his spine and delighting in the shudder you feel passing through it and into his cock as his sticky cock thrusts into your hand.

“Spread your legs wider. And keep them open.” You instruct, bending down and licking at his balls from behind. He immediately goes against your orders, trying to close them. You sit up, taking your hand off his cock and slapping his sore ass, making him yelp. “I said keep them open. Do you want me to stop?”

Jungkook hurries to open his legs again, “Please don’t.”

Satisfied, you bend down again, tongue teasing his balls from behind and hand wrapped around his waist, tugging firmly on his cock that was leaking precum on your sheets, adding to the mess of bodily fluids that had already ruined them. You can feel Jungkook's thighs shaking, their strength no match to the pleasure coursing through his veins. When -at an upward stroke- your thumb swipes over his engorged head, Jungkook cries out, “Noona, I don’t want to cum on myself again, please.”

You didn't want that as well. Despite how lovely the boy looked messed up all over with his own cum, you needed to have him inside of you right now after he's made his feelings known to you. You flip him on his back easily as he gives you no resistance. Not wasting time, you grab his cock and quickly sit on it, closing your eyes and letting out a sigh of relief as you finally feel it wedged snuggly inside of you.  

You must have taken too long enjoying the warmth and stretch because you soon feel Jungkook's hands clawing at your hips and when you open your eyes again, you see him worrying his lips to keep from pleading for you to move. Taking pity on him, you grind your hips in a circle, moaning in contentment as you get a feel of how his cock fits perfectly inside of you.

You gradually increase your pace, starting to lift your hips up and bounce on his cock, and Jungkook decides he doesn't feel like lying down helpless and at your mercy anymore. He starts bucking his hips up, thrusting his cock as far and fast into you as it could go until all that's coming out of your mouth are pleas for more.

"Ah, baby, fuck me just like that. You're gonna make me cum so fast. Won't you be good and make noona cum, baby?"

“You’re so damn spoiled.” He complains, snapping his big hand harshly against your ass. To your shame, instead of berating him, you moan out and clench around him in response.

“You like it, noona?” Jungkook purrs, a shit-eating grin spread across his face as he throws your words back at you. He slaps your ass again more harshly which only causes you to clench around him even more, leaving no room for denial. “Yeah, Kookie, I like it. I like it so much.”

“Fuck yourself on my dick, noona. I want to see you use me to get off.” Jungkook orders, giving you one last spank. You plant your palms on his chest and dig your feet into the mattress, using them as leverage as you bounce erratically on his dick, so close you could taste it in the back of your throat.

"Baby, just a little more, please." Your hand closes over his larger one, trying to drag it towards your pussy but it stays put. "You want it? How much?"

If he thinks you were going to fight him then he better think again. You were needy and on the verge of insanity. "I need it so bad. I'm so horny, just a little touch and I would cum, Kookie."

"Just a little touch, huh?" Jungkook asks, enthralled. He lowers his hand closer to your pussy but only his thumb moves to hover over it. "Liars get punished, you know?"

You nod vigorously, anything to get him to touch you. In all truth, you wouldn’t mind it either way. You'd enjoy anything as long as he touches you. When you still don't feel his fingers on you, you start whining, bouncing impatiently on his cock. "Kookieee, you said-"

You get interrupted when he finally flicks his thumb lazily over your clit, and true to your word, that slight touch is all that it takes for you to cum. "Oh god, Kookie..." You grunt, feeling light-headed as your pussy contracts around his hot and twitching cock, and his fingers dig into your bones.

Without warning, Jungkook pushes you on your back, climbing up your body and pressing the head of his cock against your lips. “Open up.”

In a daze and your orgasm not even over yet, you open your mouth and he shoves himself inside, his dick filling your mouth with cum while your pussy is left neglected and contracting around nothing. You move a hand between your legs and rub yourself furiously, the abandoned orgasm quickly rolling into a new one. You gasp from the sharp spike in pleasure then you close your lips around his head before he can take it out of your mouth, sucking dutifully on it and milking out every last drop of his cum. But before you can spit it out, Jungkook grabs your jaw and forces your mouth closed, “Be a good noona and swallow my cum.”

You don’t know why you are so weak against the boy but you immediately obey, swallowing back the bitterness and opening your mouth again when Jungkook digs his fingers into your cheeks, wanting to make sure that you've listened. Satisfied with your empty mouth, he prods his thumb inside and moans, “I’ve always wanted to do that. Every time you’d yell and shout at me, I’d want nothing other than to pin you down and stuff my cock into your mouth to shut you up till cum and saliva are dribbling down your chin. Man, just thinking about it is making me hard again.”

You frown, pushing the cocky boy away and sitting up. “Hey, just because I agreed to swallow your nasty cum this time doesn’t mean you can talk to me this way.”

"Why? You prefer when I'm all cute and submissive? And you say you won't be with me because I'm young." He snickers, tongue poking out and teasing lewdly along his lips. "I don't mind either way as long as I get to eat you out and fuck you again. Or you fuck me. It's all good."

"You little..." You grab him in a chokehold that he easily brushes off in a fit of giggles, pinning you to the bed and giving your lips a quick peck. "I really do love you, noona. Will you be with me?"

He stares down at you, a timid and fearful look marring his doe eyes as he undoubtedly questions whether what you've told him before was just said in a moment of passion and that you'd take it back now that you've gotten what you wanted.  You hurry to ease his worries, "I love you too, Jungkook, and nothing would make me more happy than being with you."

"Even if I'm younger than you?"

"You love me and I love you. That's all that matters, don't you think?" You caress his cheek and watch with a thumping heart as his bunny grin takes up his entire face.

He grabs your hand with his own and moves it towards his mouth, tenderly kissing your palm. "Yeah."

Author’s Note: Feedback is always welcome

[mrschangrettawrites]

Hell Hath No Fury

Summary: You had been betrayed for the last fucking time

Pairings: Tommy Shelby x Reader (formerly), Tommy Shelby x Grace (mentioned), Luca Changretta x Reader (main)

Words: 1531

Notes: Spoilers for season four, female reader, I should be working on other things but instead I’m doing this. Drag me. I highly highly highly recommend installing the InteractiveFics extension from the Chrome store if you can. To add your name and last name simply install the extension, then click ‘Need to replace something other than Y/N?’ and in the value bar put Name and put your name in the Replace With bar, then click change! And be sure to tick Store this replacement so that you don’t have to do it every time.

I also want to say thank you all so much for the love and support that all of you have shown for this story! It really was unexpected and so so appreciated, honestly it has made me all the more motivated to get these out! I hope you all enjoy!

Tagging: @timeless-flogging @decaffeinatedeaglefart @goghadventuring @sophspark @possiblyafangirl @buckybarnesisalittleshit @aya-fay if you would like to be tagged in future chapters just send in a message!

One//Two//Three

CHAPTER FOUR

It had taken what felt like forever to calm down Curly, and assure him that despite the gunshots, you were perfectly safe. The Italian that had been sent after you had managed to escape, which was partly true, and left him to tend to Diamond and her broken stall. Although you had given him some shreds of truth, you still felt bad for lying to Curly. He was a good sort, odd, but good, and always gentle with the horses.

Matteo had been able to sneak back to his car while you distracted Curly and you met him two blocks away where he proceeded to drive you to the hotel where he and his brothers were staying. The ride was silent and tense, and you kept one hand on your gun the whole way, but you had a feeling that Matteo would see this through. If nothing else, delivering the wife of Thomas Shelby to the head of the Changretta family would certainly be an accomplishment.

A talk with Luca Changretta was all you wanted, and although Matteo had been suspicious, it was better than the alternative. As a show of good faith you even gave him back his gun, which had surprised him. You didn’t know what he was expecting, but you had feeling that it wasn’t this.

You had never been to the Inkberrow Hotel, and you were somewhat impressed with it and the implication that the Changrettas had plenty of money to spend. Growing up the way you did, any sign of wealth impressed you, even after all the money Tommy had gained in recent years.

Before you could see Luca Changretta your presence had to be explained, which Matteo did on his own. You weren’t entirely sure that this wasn’t all together foolish, but you didn’t say.

After a few minutes and a surprising lack of raised voices, Matteo came back out into the hall. “He’ll see you.” And that was good enough.

The first thing you noticed was how big the room was. It seemed to be the same size as your mum’s living room, bigger even, and you couldn’t help the internal rise of an eyebrow. The second thing you noticed was Luca Changretta.

He was taller than you had expected him to be, taller than Arthur, and he had the same commanding presence your mum could muster at the tip of a hat. And he was very handsome, with his black hair slicked back and a strong profile that added to the general air of intimidation. A part of you felt bad for noticing, you were married after all. But Tommy had done far worse, and your idea was far worse than finding another man infinitely more attractive than your husband.

Luca Changretta smiled, and you immediately felt as if you were staring at an apex predator. “Mrs Shelby,” he said, the words falling from his mouth as languid as a cat. A big one maybe. “My brother tells me you wish to talk to me.”

“Name.” You said. Hearing the name ‘Shelby’ made your skin crawl. “I would prefer it if you called me that, Mr Changretta.”

There was the smallest hint of surprise on Luca Changretta’s face before he smiled again. “In that case, please call me Luca.” He sat behind the large desk at the center of the room, pulling out a toothpick from his pocket and putting it in his mouth. “So, what is it you wish to discuss?”

“I want to help you.”

The idea had only been half formed when you had first spoken to Matteo, but the time it had taken to be able to talk to Luca had allowed it to grow, like a creeping vine, wrapping itself around your heart.

To your surprise, Luca laughed. “You want to help.” He said, before glancing at Matteo. “She wants to help.” He chuckled, rolling the toothpick from end of his mouth to the other. “That is a very kind offer Name, but you’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you.”

“I didn’t expect you to.” You said. “Which is why I’m going to tell you about Polly.”

For a brief moment, there was a flicker of apprehension on Luca’s face and you saw him look over at Matteo again. “What about her?” He asked slowly.

“Tommy knows about the double cross. The whole thing had been his idea.”

That had changed the atmosphere. It became heavier and you could feel the tension, yet somehow you were unbothered.

You had been apprehensive of the whole idea at first, too many things could go wrong and you weren’t keen on the idea of putting Polly in danger. But none of that mattered now.

“Is that so.” Luca slowly rose, making his way around the desk. “Why are you telling me this?” He leaned back against the desk, almost sitting on it. “You’re married to Thomas Shelby after all, why do you want to help us?”

“Because he’s a right bastard.” You weren’t any mood to sugar coat things, and you figured honesty would be the best course of action in this situation. “He’s cheated on me for the second time and this time he got the girl pregnant. He can fucking rot for all I care.”

There was a brief silence, but it was broken when Luca laughed, looking back at Matteo. “L'inferno non ha furia.” He said, more than a little amused.

“You haven’t begun to see my fury.”

Luca raised an eyebrow, grinning so widely you wondered if he was holding back another laugh. “You speak Italian.” “My grandmother was from Sicily.” You clarified. “She immigrated here after marrying an Englishman.” Your grandmother had never said much about Sicily, in fact she rarely spoke at all, and when she did it was always in Italian, which meant your mum and later you had to learn how to speak it. It wasn’t something you talked about much either, mostly because no one ever really asked and you never found it important or interesting enough to mention. It was the worst during the war, your mum refused to speak Italian outside the home out of fear that someone would mistake her for an Italian spy. She didn’t feel comfortable enough to let the language leave her door again until 1922.

“Well, that explains it.” Luca said. “My father always said that Sicilian women are more dangerous than guns.”

A sudden air of sadness came over the room, as Luca went from playful and pensive, and you found yourself feeling empathetic towards him.

“I’m sorry about your dad.” You said softly. “He never should’ve died.”

What you really thought was that none of this, the vendetta, the deaths, needed to happen. The only reason why it was happening was because Lizzie had fallen in love with Angel Changretta, a development that you had supported. You had been furious with Tommy when he tried to interfere, after all it was none of his business who Lizzie saw. John had married Esme which left Lizzie to pursue whatever man she wanted. Now you felt that a part of you better understood why he had done that.

“Thank you.” Luca gave you what appeared to be a genuine smile and a part of you felt warmer for it. “So, Polly has been playing me has she?”

“Yes.” You said, pulling yourself back into the moment. “She went to Tommy after she got your letter and they came up with the plan together. She would give you a time and place to go after Tommy and set up an ambush. None of you know Small Heath all that well and Tommy planned on using that to his advantage.”

“You realize that this means Polly is back on my list.” Luca said, raising a brow. “Doesn’t that bother you?”

“She knew about the pregnancy.” You said, still stinging from that particular betrayal. “As far as I’m concerned she’s as bad as Thomas. But, you don’t need to kill her. Or Thomas.”

Luca took the toothpick out of his mouth, rolling it between his fingers. “Then what do you suggest?”

“Take everything else from them.” You said. “As far as I’m concerned, death is too quick and too good for them. But if you take away what they have, the business the money the empire, that’s a much slower death. A more painful one, and it’ll hurt Tommy the most. He’s always wanted power, so how better to punish him than to take it away?”

There was a pause as Luca appeared to be thinking your suggestion over. He looked up at you with an expression you couldn’t read, the corners of his mouth twitching. “It’s a shame Mr Shelby doesn’t know how to be loyal to his wife.” He mused. “It seems he’s lost a valuable ally.” He stood up straight, putting the toothpick back in his mouth. “Thank you for your help Name, I’ll contact you if I need to.”

You didn’t ask how he would do that, you just assumed that like Tommy and other gangsters, he would find a way. “Have a good day Luca.” You said.

“Oh, I’m sure I will.”

Translation: L'inferno non ha furia-Hell hath no fury (according to google translate)

[starboyjxmin]

Angel (Jungkook x Reader) Pt. 2

Synopsis: You were in love with the stars but sadly, was kept apart from them thanks to mathematical equations that made it impossible for you to touch them. They were the South and you were the East, always together but never touching. Until a curious hybrid becomes the bridge and eventually, your personal galaxy infested with stars.

Warnings: Bit of Angst, Fluff, Mentions of Abuse and Childhood Trauma, Mentions of Smut, Kinda Blood Play (I’m sorry)

Genre: Romance, Hybrid

Word Count: 5,276

Pairing: Jungkook x Reader

Maybe the galaxy is one unity and in its eyes, it holds the stars. Maybe the universe was just one person.

"Why are you always looking at me?" Jungkook tugged on his collar as he sat on the floor of the living room, watching a superhero movie that was honestly boring you. Despite how many times you had told him that he could sit on the couch with you, he would politely refuse and mutter how he would be punished. It was confusing as to why he thought he would be punished for something you tried to make clear to him that was okay, and who was it that would punish him because he wasn't your son or pet. But then again, he sort of was.

"I'm sorry." You were forced to turn your attention from the bunny hybrid to the TV. You were never a huge fan of Batman, to say the least but Jungkook could feel your eyes on him, which clearly discomforted him enough to talk, something he rarely did. You watched as the disturbed man did with his ways in Gotham by having a good night job and a shit day job that made him seem like he was pimping himself out in a way. Jungkook would let out a few gasps or if he was very excited, he seemed giddy. You noticed that he would slowly get near your legs and was farther away from the opposing side of the couch.

This caused you to smile.

According to bunny experts, it would take a bunny a few days to get familiar with their new home and within time, they were to get affectionate with their owners if comfortable and the familiarity was becoming done.

"You're looking at me again." He had stopped inching towards you 5 minutes ago and now you know why.

"I'm sorry, baby." His left bunny ear twitched.

"I'm too big to be a baby." He stated so matter-of-factly.

" I'm sorry, sir." His attention soon left the tv and the god awful movie and was given to you. Jungkook was cute as well as very beautiful which was strange to say and admit, even if it was internal.

"Do you.." His voice grew quiet. "Regret?"

This caught you very off guard.

"Regret what?" He began to fumble with his fingers as his ears seemed to be flat and perpendicular to the back of his head.

"Do you regret adopting me?" You looked at the boy with the starry eyes who was busy looking at how he would play with his fingers nervously.

"Of course not, what makes you say such a thing? You know what. Come sit with me, please."

"No, I can't." You got off the couch and sat next to him instead. 

“Listen, I want you to understand that despite how you were treated and disciplined before about past rules you had to obey, that such things won’t happen here in our home. Okay?” Jungkook looked at you as his bunny ears shot up causing you to reach out to caress his cheek but stopped yourself, quickly tugging a strand of hair behind your ear.

“Our home?” His eyes seemed to twinkle at you, making your heart flutter. 

“Yes, our. I know that I adopted you and am your owner by law but I want you to come to think of me as a friend rather than a master.” 

“Okay. I think I can do that.” You couldn’t help but wonder what it was about him that made your heart just swell at his cuteness.

“Listen, just go down to the animal shelter-adoption center and ask them for companions but an emphasis on the companion or just saw a partner but this a flirty tone.” You were currently lying on your bed but instead of the head of it, you were laying on the foot of your bed with your heels resting on the wall, dangling above your headboard on the phone with one of your friends from your old complicated ass fucking math class. 

“Flirty?” She giggled at the word.

“Trust me, I think you would actually thank me afterward but like, you should like today.” You began to swish one of your feet side to side as the heel remained on the wall. 

“You sound so sure!” Your friend couldn’t help but continue to giggle which made you roll your eyes.

“You know how you said you would only date if it was a cat and a man? Because your idiot ex cheated on you but a cat was distant as it was needy which was perfect for you? A loyalty that wasn’t suffocating?” You heard her give you a hesitant yes. “Just go and save one of those precious boys. Then tell someone else to go until they all have homes The people there sell them kind of with a sex slave/toy vibe, it’s just bad..”

She gasped.

“Are you saying.. Hybrids?” She whispered the last part.

“Yes! But they’re from South Korea and they were just thrown there and all shady kept in the back because they were considered defective but are rare. I met one that was a black panther breed named Yoongi. I think you should go adopt him and then get Chelsea, your friend from psych, to go and adopt and so on until they are given good homes because poor babies were in stuffed together in a pen and shocked with a cattle prod while one was locked away in a cage for fighting the employees for harming them.” Just then, Jungkook walked in sniffing the air while scrunching his nose. 

“Oh my god.. what the fuck? That’s so inhumane of that place. Animals or not, mixed or not, they shouldn’t be treated as non-living precious children. That really pissed me off.” You heard as a chair scraped the floor from her side of the line but just as you heard that, you felt Jungkook slowly and very cautiously get on the bed next to you while still sniffing around. “I’m going to take the squad with me and adopt them all right now. I love you bye!” Minnie was always the very activist of the group as well as the most educated but it came as no surprise since she was a law student with a minor in star studies. 

“B-” 

“You smell strange. Very strange.” You quickly hung up as Jungkook cut you off from saying goodbye to your friend. He was hovering over your belly button, sniffing closer down.

“Wow, rude.” You quickly sat up and hunched over with your arms crossed, shielding your lower body. “I’m on my period, I know I probably smell gross okay? I don’t necessarily have the best reproductive system which causes heavy flow.” He was very confused. Smell gross? He laid down on the bed as you were earlier but had his knees up, afraid that if he had his bare feet up like you had yours earlier, you would yell at him.

“You don’t smell gross. You smell like you need to be mated.” What did he just say?

“I-ugh no. Mated? What?” Your bunny turned to you with a surprised look.

“You don’t know what your body needs and it’s driving me insane.” His eyes weren’t starry anymore, in fact, they were dark and marked with something far more dangerous.

“Um,” You slowly started to get off the bed, remembering how the man at the center said that they were all a little more animal than human. Based on your research from bunnies, the males liked to assert dominance and when there was a doe which was always ready to breed, they were compelled to always “assist” because they had no heat given that their system was quite different from other animals. “Kookie, I’m going to go out. Is that fine?” You almost smacked yourself. Why would you ask that?

“Why are you leaving?” He turned onto his stomach with watchful eyes as you backed away a little more from the bed given that you had gotten off of it. Keeping him in your room now seemed like the stupidest idea you could have ever gotten. 

“I need to pee.” Jungkook watched as you quickly walked out of the room. He didn’t get why you were suddenly acting jumpy around him. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to you how your body function was. Were you not educated properly on it? Jungkook didn’t have much time to think about anything once he noticed that it was dusk outside, remembering back to when he used to watch from outside the confinements of the lab, sneaking his way towards the direction of the windows with the lion hybrid and fox hybrid. Taehyung and Jungkook were rather bigger than their fellow fox friend so they always had him do the tasks that would have been more difficult for them given that the bunny hybrid was muscular and tall while the lion hybrid seemed to be gaining lots of weight, making him very attractive and fuller. But the fox was small and thin so he could crawl through places.

He wondered, as the sun slowly began to set if he would ever see the wolf who became the alpha of the strange pack who acted more of a father to him than the two scientists who were raising him. He thought of the panther who wasn’t always the most talkative or affectionate but would let the bunny eat with him whenever he was given large pieces of meat, urging him to at least eat it in small bits since there were times his “parental roles” would forget for days to feed him his fruits because they were too caught up writing and researching the experiments done to him. He never did like meat but who was he to say no even if the panther was tiny? Jungkook wondered about Hoseok and Jin, the two dogs that were always playful and affectionate to the whole group. Jin acting more like a maternal figure to the bunny and would tell him jokes to pass the time. He now remembered how close the wolf was with the other dog while the panther did the strangest thing and behaved affectionately to the other dog named Hoseok who was always smiling even if he along with Jin were treated the worse back in the lab. 

He wished deeply he could just get one last time to thank them all for being a family to him. Jungkook rolled over until he could see the floor.

His mattress which was on the floor right next to your bed was covered in pillows and blankets. You had explained to him before that it was because of his anxiety which he was beyond grateful for but now since he had established himself more properly in your- his home with yours, maybe he could start to sleep in your bed. After all, he was the buck and it was natural for him to establish dominance. 

A scream was followed by a crash. 

“(Y/N)?” Jungkook quickly jumped off your bed, running to where the scream had originated from. He yanked open the door of the bathroom just to find you with wet hair and in a towel bend over on the floor, crying. “What happened?” 

Your face felt red as you tried to get up but moving your forearm from the hard, cold title hurt a lot, so much that a whine shot out of your mouth. 

“Help me up, please.” Jungkook immediately crouched behind you, very aware of your scent and that your ass was up for him to easily touch but he tried his best to ignore his very strong animistic urges. He wrapped an arm from under you, around your stomach and pulled you up, sitting back on his butt as he pulled you into a sitting position between his legs. You were sobbing still, rubbing your elbow and your forearm as you leaned back into his chest. “I’m sorry,” You choked out. “I’m not injured but my fall really fucking hurt.” He moved his free arm and pressed his hand onto your chest as he pushed you forward with his chest, making your upper body weight be all on his hand as he releases his grip on your waist, directing his now free hand onto your back, rubbing soft circles into your back with his palm. sometimes patting you like a child.

“Shh... It’s okay.” You snorted.

“I’m not a baby who needs to be burped or a child who just suffered the loss of their toy.” You sniffed as he continued.

“My friends use to do this to me whenever I wasn’t injured, just hurt. I found that it really helped. I also felt safe.” There was still a stinging pain all down your arm but it wasn’t enough to make you cry anymore. 

“Thank you, Kookie.” He felt his heart beat a little harder.

“You’re welcome.” 

“I don’t know how to say this but I am bleeding and I can feel it so I need you to get out so I can change and also, I think I either stained my towel or your jeans.”

“I don’t know how to say this but I don’t mind and I think you aren’t in any condition to be dressing. I’ll help you.” He hoped for some strange reason that you did just bleed onto his jeans, marking him as yours. 

“No.” You squirmed out of his lap and stood up, holding the towel up. 

“Either you bleed on me, or you wet me from the water from your short shower.” Right on his thigh, there was a small dark stain. 

“I’m so sorry, just please get out so I can do this. I’m really embarrassed.” He stood up, making you curse yourself for ever thinking it was a good idea to have gotten such a big hybrid but then again, it would have probably been more difficult for you to keep a panther or a wolf at bay. Jungkook reached behind you, grabbing your panties, shorts, and the shirt you had on the edge of the counter top of the sink.

“You told me that it was our home, to see you as a friend, you have been giving me a lot of liberties since adopting me which has led me to see you as a not so dominant head of this home. Not to mention how you stay around me a lot. I am a very social creature who needs be brought in pairs because of it. But given that seem to be the leader of the ring here and a female no less,” He kept his eyes on you as he placed his hands on yours that were holding onto the towel to keep it up. “I seemed to have imprinted on you.” You felt hypnotized by his galaxy infested eyes, letting him remove the towel as he kept his eyes on yours.

“I thought only owls do that.” He placed the towel on the sink and grabbed the shirt, throwing the rest of your clothes over his shoulder and placing the opening of the shirt over your head.

“So do wild cats which is a very dangerous thing for them to do, wolves, foxes, birds, almost anything can if they need lots of attention and care,” You put your arms through the sleeves as he kept his eyes on your face. “For rabbits, it’s rare.” He took your panties from his shoulder and kept them in his hand as he saw your face contour into embarrassment.

“Hold on, I need to first clean myself again and put a tampon in.” Jungkook felt a sudden urge to groom you his self but kept his eyes locked on your face as he watched you turn, now he kept his eyes on the back of your head and he watched you rummage through the contents of the drawers of the sink. You turned to him, blush all over your face. “Could you please turn around?”

“How else will I be able to know how to care for my doe?” His doe. You were in huge trouble. 

“Kookie, please turn around. This is uncomfortable for me.” If his plan was for you to submit yourself to him so he could establish himself as the dominant, you weren’t going to let him. 

“Okay.” He turned and as soon as you did, you wiped yourself with baby wipes, discharging them into the trash bin next to the toilet and quickly, with a bit of a struggle since you were standing and it was a bit awkward, inserted the tampon, throwing the shell away. 

“Okay, I’m done.” You washed your hands and dried them on your shirt as Jungkook now held up your panties.

“Now we need to finish dressing you.” 

“Let me make this easier for you so you don’t have to crouch down or look at me.” He kept his eyes on your face as you sat up on the counter of the sink. “Okay, come.” You would be lying if you didn’t think that he looked incredibly hot with how he carefully slipped them up your legs with his eyes still on you and slid them up onto your thighs until he couldn’t anymore. “You’re very cute, Jungkook.” He wrapped his arms around your waist, picking you up from the sink and setting you down, proceeding to pull them up until they covered you and were on fine. 

“Shorts now?”

“Mhm.”

“They’re more animal than human, don’t think of them as equal.” The employee’s voice of the center whispered to you as you stood in darkness. “If this one wishes to give you any trouble, just yell and I’ll come in, okay? He is a wild rabbit after all.”  Just then there was light at the end of the room that was almost pearly like. A tall figure began to walk in.

“You’re my doe.” Jungkook’s tenor voice echoed all around the room with sultry notes. His accent was calming you but the figure continues to make its way to you.

“Kookie,” You couldn’t see the person’s face but it was now in front of you, a few inches away. 

“You smell like you need to be mated.” The figure dropped down to its knees, burying its face into your soaking, clothed core. You let out a mangled whimper as the figure began to fervently lick you, emitting its hot tongue through your panties where they were soaking from where they covered your entrance.

Your hands gripped onto the person’s head, tugging their hair as they now moved their tongue into the side of your panties, tasting your glistening lip.

A deep grunt emitted from the person as they slipped their tongue into your warm, wet core.

“Don’t stop, please.” The person angled their head now so they were pressed into you as they wrapped their arms around your thighs.

“Fuck, you taste better than a doe.” The person was Jungkook. He tightens his hands on your thighs as he bit off your panties only to continue assaulting your hole. 

“Jun-” Pain surged through you as you realized he was biting your clit with his buck teeth, almost as if he wanted you to submit to him. “IT-”

 You woke up only to find the pain still there. What were you dreaming? You began to pant, feeling just how lubricated you were and the burning desire to be fucked hard seem to rule you.

“I told you.” Jungkook was sitting at the end of your bed, his pupils wild as his lips were swollen with his starry eyes on your hand which was going to rub your clit but quickly moved away.

“Wha- I’m sorry?” You probably looked just as fucked out to him as he looked to you. 

“You’re in heat.” He got up, walking towards you. “Your body wants something.”

“Humans don’t have heat cycles.” He sat down by your side of the bed as you scoffed at him, trying to ignore how you were pulsing.

“Maybe not since being evolved and out of touch with nature but you are clearly aroused.” 

“Go away.” You muttered as you turned your back, just to feel him getting into bed with you, pushing you forward a bit so he could fit and laid down behind you, molding onto your body. 

“It’s taking everything in me to not tear your clothes off and mount you.” Suddenly, his hand touched the soft skin of your hip, making your eyes roll back as you pressed your ass back against him, feeling something thick and hard.

“Please.” You whined as his hand found its way into your panties, cupping your heat.

“You are driving me mad, princess.” 

“WAIT!” You sat up, feeling beyond terrified. If Jungkook didn’t pull out your tampon, it would get stuck deep inside of you and it would be such an embarrassing time at your gyno.

But the rabbit wasn’t having it.

He growled at you as he flipped you over, sitting up from behind you. His hand that was previously in your panties was now on your back, pressing your upper body into the mattress and the other hand gripped your ass, pulling it up and pulling down your panties. 

“You’re such a sight to behold, baby.” If you were beyond terrified and embarrassed before, now you were beyond terrifyingly turned on and ashamed.

“This isn’t normal or okay.” You squirmed from under his heated gaze that didn’t give a single fuck in the world if you were on your period and had a literal plug in you to stop your flow from gushing out.

“You know what isn’t normal, pet?” He had leaned onto your back, pressing his clothed chest onto you as he whispered menacingly into your ear. A shock of new found arousal jolted right through you and into your pulsing core. Jungkook had really called you pet. He brushed his long, thick fingers against your blushing labia. “That you really adopted a hybrid human rabbit,” He snarled into the outside of the shell of your ear, causing you to whimper as goosebumps rose on your neck. 

Without any warning, he yanked the tampon out of you sending you in a very loud gasp.

“JUN-” He quickly down on your neck, subduing your shriek into a very long, and loud moan instead. 

“Shh,” He began to coax you as he started to fervently lick your neck as well as your shoulder. Just then you felt him slide in effortlessly three of his fingers into you without any problem, making you moan into the sheets as Jungkook continued to lick your shoulder, now moving towards the back of your neck.

“Please don’t,” You whispered in sweet agony into the sheets as began to pump his fingers into you, causing the silence of the room to be cut with the sounds of your arousal, blood, and his long fingers being thrust into you at a face paced speed. 

Just then, Jungkook pulled his fingers out, resting them on your ass. You almost felt a bit disgusted with the feeling of how much liquid was coating his finger, probably staining your skin.

“I’ll stop, I’m sorry.” He pressed a chaste kiss into your back before sitting up. It wasn’t that you wanted him to stop, you just wanted him to not stop. But this was all too sudden. If you let the starry-eyed boy fuck you, he was sure to claim dominance over your home and over you as well so you stayed there with your face in the sheets and your ass up in the air, breathing hard.

“I need to shower.” You mumbled. The thought of him, an actual part animal part human, fucking you on your period seemed so primate and savage that you couldn’t help but buck your hips back involuntarily, wishing there were some sort of contact on your swollen clit. 

Jungkook watched as your body seemed to be screaming for him to breed it, feeling a snarl in his throat but tried to reason with himself. He had to cling to his humanity, the part of him that was more reasonable and knew that he couldn’t just take you. The sight of you still offering yourself to him, how you had bucked your hips back towards him as a muted whined came out from you and the way your body trembled as you breathed. It was enough to make him almost lose himself.

“I-I’ll help you.” 

“No, just-” You turned your head to the side. “I want this.” Your voice was small as you admitted to your true desires. Jungkook couldn’t believe it.

“No, I’ll wash you.”

“Please,” You wanted to shake yourself at how much of a child you sounded right now begging him. “Please, Kookie.” At first, nothing happened. You knew he was probably thinking it through. All you could think about was how a cramp was starting to happen, making you suddenly twist at the pain.

“Look at my pet,” His voice was dark, full, and rich as you felt him smack your ass really hard with his heavy, rough hand sending you into a frenzy over how your skin was prickling with this delicious feeling of pain all over it. “You’re so ready, aren’t you?” You felt his hand leave your ass, causing you to almost be verbal about how you wanted him to keep his hand over you. “Hands behind your back, hold onto your forearms.” Jungkook’s tone was curt and hard, causing you to immediately listen to the bunny hybrid. As soon as you had done what he said, he grabbed onto your linked arms, lifting you up a bit and sitting you done on his muscular, large thighs. “As you said before, my lord-” What was it about his voice that sent you in a whimpering mess and the fact that he was addressing you in a title that was for men of high ranking just sent you even more into a mindless mess as you tried to grind your swollen self on him, “you treat and see me as your equal. Correct?”

“Yes!” He contracted the muscle of his thigh as a reward to your response, making your walls clench over nothing. 

“Well, pet, you and I are very different once we step into this room and your body needs me. Understand?” You were panting at this point. “Understand?” He shook you a bit with his hand that was still gripping your linked forearms. 

“Yes, I understand, I understand.” You were practically sobbing this time. He let go of your arms, causing you to fall back into his chest, heaving. A soft yet tight, thick band was placed around your neck as Jungkook fastened it with a click. You let go of your forearms, reaching up to feel what he had put on you. “A collar?”

“You can borrow mine.” He gently slides his hands down to your shoulders, squeezing them. This was becoming something way different than anything you could have ever imagined. 

“Thank you.” You were leaking all over his thigh but instead of feeling horrified with yourself, you were almost proud. It wasn’t about ownership, it wasn’t about how he was dominating, it was about how he didn’t find a naturally occurring thing to be weird and how he was getting you almost naked. 

Naked. A state of complete vulnerability and the opportunity to let someone see you in your true self. 

It wasn’t something that you really did. 

“Do you still want to do this?” His tenor soft voice danced around your head as he moved to kiss your temple.

“No,” You managed to breathe. “I want to see you instead.”

“You can.” Jungkook let you get off his thigh to sit in front of him. His starry eyes were more than vibrant as he looked over you, taking in the long white t shirt that was stained by the hem. “I’m here.”

“May I see your bare chest?” You remembered how the first day you brought him home, he had scars all over his chest but quickly hid from your sight. You had told yourself to ask him later on when he had trusted you more. 

The sight of you, knowing that you were quivering underneath the rather translucent pale shaded shirt with the russet stains on its hem and how you still had his collar one that had a carrot charm dangling from it with the word Kookie etched on the flat silver back of it, brought him to heel. You hadn’t fought him about the collar, you did see him as an equal, enough to be willing for your pet hybrid to put such a symbol of slavery around your neck. It was true. You really wanted nothing more than to care for him. Jungkook knew this now as he finally got to see you in such an intimate lighting.

“Yes.” He whispered as he began to take off his shirt by grabbing it from the back of the neck, pulling his shirt over his head and discarded it to the other side of the bed.

“Can I touch you?” Jungkook didn’t know how to speak. He had lost the ability to once his scars were out for you to see. He gave a quick, tight nod as he saw you moving closer to him. 

It was amazing to finally see his scars fully and properly. Kookie had jagged, long scars on his chest. One was three lined and fell across one of his pecks, slightly outside of the areola. Another was a gash from his belly button to his side, almost horizontally straight. You reached out, feeling the long since scarred tissue underneath your fingertips carefully. Your fingers traced the outline of the one near his belly button, dragging your fingertip to where it ended, feeling Jungkook’s taut muscles contract underneath you.

“I was 12 and didn’t behave when my scientist caretakers told me to keep still on this surgical bed. I wanted to go play with the rest of the bunny hybrids and I was so impatient that I moved when they had a surgeon with a scale in front of me that when he had made an incision near my belly button to put this tracking device shaped as a pill in me, I moved and it caused him to slice me.” You stayed still, not knowing how to react to what he had said. “They were very mad at me.” He spoke in a small voice. 

“I’m sorry.” Apologizing to him wasn’t going to do anything for him and you knew this but it felt like the only appropriate thing to say at the moment. You looked up to see he was already looking at you. “You hold the Pleiades in your eyes.” He gave you a puzzled look as one of your hands left his scars, moving to touch his ear to which he immediately melted into your hand. “Globular clusters are clusters of old stars that are closer given that their age causes their gravity to bound to each other. Kookie, you have the Seven Sisters trapped in your eyes.” You scratched behind his long, bunny ear as his left leg began to slightly twitch.

“Can I sleep with you?” Your hybrid managed to whimper out.

“Let's get washed up first and then we’ll see.” Jungkook opened an eye to see your smile and the collar still adorning your neck. 

He was happy. 

He was safe. 

He had a home.

Part 3

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[miraculart]

His True Home- CH.2

- Ch.1 -  Ch.2 - AO3 -

Summary: Lotor didn't want to meet the princess. Why would he? Wasn't he enough for his parents? He wasn't. His parents robbed him, they took his childhood, his innocence, his claim to the throne. But he's thankful, the one thing his parents did right for him, was introduce him to his best friend, his new family, and his true home.  Pre-Canon Lotura Friendship AU

Rating: T

WC: 3341/6765

   The Galrani Prince and the Altean Princess, best friends since early childhood, best friends now, on the dawn of her 18th quinent. No being could deny the closeness between the young rulers; the prince spent every free moment of his time with the princess, plastered to her side. 

   This was the way things were, and to the blissfully unaware, one might have believed they were betrothed by their regal fathers. However, tensions were rising between the two kingdoms. Emperor Zarkon wanted the power of quintessence to himself to save his ill wife, Honerva. King Alfor believed this was wrong, and that the vortex should be sealed, preventing worse evil from escaping what lay beyond the rift. The two rulers, once best friends and trusted battle partners, were seen fighting each other more often than their common enemies. Their conflict remained tame for a time, before Honerva’s health took a turn for the worse. With Zarkon newly invigorated, Alfor spent the majority of his time on Daibazaal overseeing the quintessence research and monitoring Zarkon’s actions. Unfortunately for Allura, this meant Alfor would not be returning for her coronation ceremony.

   Prince Lotor was keenly aware of his parent’s actions, for quite some time now he referred to the pair as his parents only when he needed to exploit his royal privilege within the Galrani Empire. Otherwise, he rarely mentioned his mother, and he addressed his father only as “Emperor.” When Lotor received the news that Alfor would not be returning for his daughter’s coronation, the lividity he felt was beyond comparable reason. It was the Galrani Emperor’s fault Alfor was away on his daughter’s special dobash. Out of spite, Lotor took extra leave from his conquering duties. Though elated to spend more time on Altea, he feared punishment for insubordination upon his return.

   He had surprised Allura by returning five dobashi earlier than planned. He couldn’t tell her about their fathers’ fights but, he could tell her about all of the incredible worlds he saw, and the amazing journeys he went on while away. He protected her. That was his true purpose. She would never know the torment of war, or the struggles of their kingdoms, not if he could help it.

   Lotor sighed, his breath a pale flame, igniting the frigid air. Allura leaned against his side, content at sapping the little remaining warmth from his body. They stayed like this, silent, their breaths mixing into a golden inferno, the sun peeking over the flickering ocean horizon. Neither would break the unspoken limbo to complain about the damp, dewy grass soaking their evening wear, nor the biting, bitter cold. On the dawn of each their birthdobashi, they’d greet the morning sun, then watch the peach-colored clouds billow across the quiet fields until breakfast, it became tradition. 

   This was a particularly important dobash for Allura, she’d be officially coronated into the royal court of Altea, formally recognized as a ruler by her people. Alfor had asked Lotor to participate in the royal guard for the event many cycles earlier, who was he to deny the honor? Lotor admired the princess, her eyes their usual kaleidoscope of deep sapphire and blooming amethyst hues. They also reflected the dawn this morning, and in them he saw the galaxies he traveled so fervently. She pivoted with a soft smile, catching his gaze. He shook his head, ruffling her unkempt curls, formidably hiding his embarrassment.

   “Ready for your coronation?” he spoke softly, looking off to the distance.

   She brought her knees to her chest, and rested her chin on them bashfully. “I suppose I’m as ready as I ever will be... I’ve been training for so long, it’s really just a formality. I’m far more nervous than I know I should be though.” She buried her face into the folds of her night dress. “I wish father were here to help me through it.”

   He scowled. He wouldn’t tell her the real reason Alfor wouldn’t be there for the birthdobash celebration and coronation of his only child, it would crush her. Instead, he opted to wrap his arms around her shivering figure, partly to warm, mostly to comfort her. 

   He rest his chin on her head, it would be uncomfortable to speak, but the words demanded presence. “You know he would only miss it if something extremely important were happening. Besides, it’s as you say: ‘merely a formality.’ In Alfor’s eyes, you’ve always been the heir, with or without a proper coronation.” He felt her soften, relaxing in his embrace. “Don’t forget, your mom, Coran, and I will be there to provide all the support you need.”

  She hugged him tightly, contorting her body into what couldn’t have been a comfortable position.

   “Thank you, Lotor…” she mumbled. “You know it means the world to have you there with me.”

   He returned the hug gently, “You know I wouldn’t miss it for the universe, Princess.” He untangled himself and chuckled jubilantly, “Enough of this seriousness, it’s your birthdobash! Let’s go have fun before you join the stiffs!” Propping himself up, he brushed the wet grass and leaves from his pants. He gave a goofy bow, extending his hand enthusiastically. “Assistance, madam?”

   Allura rolled her eyes, reminded of their age old gimmick, but played along, taking his hand. “Why thank you, kind knight, however can I repay you?” She swooned, mocking him in a fit of giggles.

   “Why, a quick race to breakfast would certainly be payment enough I think. Your highness?” He paused, searching for a response. She met his gaze, wordlessly accepting his challenge, fire in her eyes. She didn’t pause a moment before sprinting towards the palace grounds.

   He struggled after her, slipping on the wet grass. Her voice echoed over the hilltop, “Ready go!” Bearings returned, he raced down the hill following her lead.

   Huffing, he barreled into her, wrapping the girl in a large hug and pulling them down, turning to cushion their fall on the well-kept lawn. “Not fair, your highness! But even cheating I can still catch you!” he laughed triumphantly. She just laughed along, collapsing into his chest. Both royals were severely out of breath, and the princess’s dead weight was not helpful in replenishing Lotor’s dwindling supply of oxygen. He pushed her off lightly, gasping for air.

   “You’re getting faster!” he managed to confess through several desperate gapes.

   She pulled a face, “Unfortunately, I think that’s the last race we’ll be having, now that I have to be all proper and lady-like.” They frowned together, reminiscing in the care-free times of old. Change occurred around them at a pace much faster than either cared to admit or acknowledge.

   Coran’s cheerful voice sang overhead. He bellowed, “Well, good morning! Princess, Lotor, I assume you’re ready for breakfast?” The large man peered over the two of them, a glint in his eyes, his bushy orange mustache curled up in a bright smile.

   “Good morning, Coran! Breakfast sounds amazing!” Allura responded cheerfully, Lotor regarded him with a nod and a forced smile.

   Coran helped Lotor up, then turned to aid his joyful charge, chattering senselessly about coming events. Lotor gestured to the hall, urging Allura to hurry along so they could eat. She eventually caught on to his silent plea and began wrapping up Coran’s increasingly elaborate conversation. Lotor threw her an exasperated sigh, rolling his hands together. ‘Get on with it!’

   She held up a finger in his direction. ‘Just a tic, I’m almost done.’ Smiling, she pointed a hand to the doors, Coran nodded curtly, turning to continue his walk about the grounds. She skittered to Lotor’s side, apologizing. “Sorry, you know how he is once he gets going!” she confessed.

   He shot her a look, lacing his words heavily with sarcasm. “Yes, of course, it’s him that gets going, most definitely not you.” He extended an arm to her, politely offering guidance to breakfast.

   She backhanded him lightly on the arm with a scoff, feigning offense, but took his arm, marching in together for their morning meal.

   Lotor’s reflection cringed with him as he glowered at his mirror. The Altean armor fit him well, much better than any of the Galrani combat suits he wore. It was lighter weight, and much more breathable than his battle gear, the white plating complementary to the platinum tones in his hair, but accenting his Galrani skin tone. 

   He gripped the smooth wooden corners of his vanity pushing against the rage boiling his blood. He could’ve been an Altean. He would have grown up under Alfor’s intent care, instead of Zarkon’s ignorant neglect. He could’ve been raised a boy, instead raised a soldier. Zarkon’s fault, it all was, the training he went through, the torture he endured, the absence of Alfor from Allura’s life; Zarkon’s fault. 

   Lotor would see his revenge when his parents could no longer withstand the quintessence, when Zarkon decided to pass the Empire on to him, then he would get his revenge. He’d run the Empire with an iron fist and a golden heart. No longer would the worlds he conquered have to suffer in poor living conditions and fear. They would be liberated from their slave conditions and they would work together with the Galra in a state of mutually beneficial symbiosis. He would protect them, all of them. And as for Zarkon? He and Honerva, the batty old hag, would die knowing everything they worked for was destroyed. Yes, when that time came, he would obliterate Voltron and every other trace of quintessence and it’s powers. No being would be corrupted by that evil ever again. Allura would never feel alone again.

   A light tap on the door roused Lotor, his thoughts scattering as quickly as they formed. Throatily, he shouted “come in!” scrambling to get the final pieces of the armor together.

   Coran eased open the door slowly, dressed in formal attire himself. He muttered “If only the Princess would keep her room this tidy…” under his breath.

   Lotor smirked, “Now Coran, don’t let her hear you say that! You’ll get an earful about your awful cooking mess! None of us need be reminded of that horror.”

   Coran blinked, then shuddered. Cooking, a battle hard fought, but not won. “Right you are, right you are…” He gave Lotor a once-over. “Your armor is wrong here, let me fix that for you.” He came up behind Lotor and fidgeted with some of the shoulder padding in the back. “There! Much better! Now what to do about that mane of yours…”

   Lotor shrugged and rolled his shoulders around, whatever adjustment Coran made, the suit somehow fit him better than before, and was far more comfortable to move around in. It was almost like wearing training johns, the material was so flexible. He focused in on Coran’s prattling.

   “-do you think?” Coran looked at him expectantly. Lotor totally missed the question.

   “Yeah, uh, sure?” He answered, nervous about what he may have agreed to.

   Coran clapped his hands together loudly, making Lotor flinch. “Oh, splendid! I’ll bring Kavella in right away! She’ll be thrilled to get her hands on that wondrous hair of yours! Lord knows you never let anyone touch it.”

   Lotor panicked, he hated people touching his hair. Well, anyone but Allura that is. “No-no actually, I was thinking-” The door slammed loudly against its frame, bouncing back open, Coran hurried out to find his favorite stylist. Lotor sighed pitifully. “Well, so much for that idea,” he grumbled aloud to no one in particular, “guess I’ll just braid it.”

   Another knock on the door, softer yet, despite its being wide open. “Can I come in?” He turned, locks curled carelessly around his fingers, tangled, no doubt.

   “Allura! Aren’t you supposed to be getting ready for the corona-... oh.” His mouth ran dry, like cotton balls suddenly replaced his teeth. “You look beautiful, Princess.” Allura floated into the room like some sort of cloud. No, it was the dress she’s wearing, a fabric so thin and elegant, the gossamer glinting. The soft purple and pink hues were uncannily similar to the dawn, bringing out her eyes and accentuating her natural beauty.

   She tucked one of her loose curls behind a pointed ear, “You’re doing that wrong. I was always the better braider between the two of us.” She sat on the edge of the bed, patting the comforter in front of her, an invitation to sit. He sat, the bed creaking precariously from his unbalanced weight.

   Lotor turned to look at the princess, but gentle hands pushed his head away, soft fingers running gently through his hair, detangling the impressive fisherman’s knot he’d managed to tie. “Look up for a tic, it’s gotten harder to braid since you got so much taller than me.” He obliged, relishing in the safe, familiar touches. He’d never let anyone touch his hair, and he’d never admit to how good it felt when Allura played with it.

   “There you go, all done.” She pat him patronizingly on the top of his head.

   He glanced back up at the mirror, admiring her skilled handiwork. “You get better every time, Princess, I’ll have to catch back up.” He ran a hand down the elegant raised braid cresting his scalp, impeccable. “Thank you, without you, I’d be at the mercy of Coran’s stylists. Can you imagine the gawdy hairstyle they’d have chosen?” He joked, but he couldn’t have been  more grateful. Being with her was just what he needed to quench the vengeful fire eating at his soul.

   She smiled, “Oh, something awful I assume. Like-” she gasped for sarcastic effect, before lowering her tone dramatically “-shaving it?”

   He feigned injury, lamenting his damaged pride “Oh princess, why must you wound me so? You dare even tease at the murder of my precious locks? A crime worthy of highest treason! Punishment? Death by hugs!” He leapt from his ever-dignified position as a princely puddle on the ground to tackle her into a bear hug.

   Allura fretted, pushing his full dead weight off with relative ease. “Oh, careful! This is delicate fabric!”

   Lotor sat up, well aware of the stress looming in the back of her thoughts. His own coronation wasn’t all that long ago. “I’m sorry, Princess, I wasn’t thinking. Now, let’s get you to your coronation, shall we?”

   “With this crown, this staff, and by the powers vested in me, by the Royal Court of Altea, I hereby name you ‘Crowned Princess Allura of Altea, successor to the throne, and commander of the royal guard.’ Rise, and greet your followers.”

   The guards snapped to attention, Lotor among them, pride bubbling over in his chest. She did it, she made it through the coronation. In his position as captain por tempore, he called the final commands to end the ceremony. His quintents slaving through officer training weren’t so useless after all. “Atten-hut! Present arms!” He couldn’t contain the grin on his face as the thundering clamor of the ceremonial axes filled the chapel. “Ready… break!” He roared, rushing out the doors to congratulate Allura.

   He flew through the doors, heavy dark wood clanging against stone, to find... him, Alfor, in loving embrace with his daughter. “King Alfor, you’re home! What a fantastic surprise!” Lotor advanced joyously, before meeting murderous eyes, halting him in his tracks. “Wh-what happened?” Alfor pushed Allura briskly but carefully to the side, knocking her off-balance.

   “Your father refuses to see reason. The alliance is broken. This means war.” He spat spitefully in Lotor’s frightened face. “Guards! See to it that every Galra is removed from the premises and put into holding for further questioning. I’ll take care of the Prince myself.” Pandemonium broke loose, sounds of screaming, broken dishware, and pathetically one-sided battles echoed through the long halls in the once peaceful, sacred church.

   Lotor froze. Does he help the innocent Galra people escape? Does he assist his army in detaining them? Why was Alfor doing this, why does he suddenly hate him? A firm hand clenched down on Lotor’s shoulder, shaking him free of his shocked stupor.

   A much kinder look in his eyes, Alfor pulled him aside. “Come, my child. We have much to discuss.” Lotor scanned the chaotic surroundings frantically. Where was she?

   Lotor broke free of Alfor’s grasp, pinning the older man to the wall. “What of Allura, where is she? Was she taken? Why weren’t you protecting her? Answer me!” Lotor growled his accusations dangerously. Alfor raised a hand in response, yield.

   Lotor’s eyes glared with a dangerous inferno of fury, fear and betrayal. Alfor realized this was most directed towards him. He took a long, slow breath before answering calmly. “Allura is safe, the guards helped her to the palace before I gave the order. You failed to notice in the commotion.”

   Lotor pulled away, slightly less aggravated, but still infuriated. “Commotion?” He spat, Alfor’s political tongue had a way of de-escalating situations. Fine within his kingdom, but while explaining his own acts of tyranny, hypocritical and alarming. “This isn’t commotion, this is chaos! Why are you doing this? Are you going to send me away too?”

   Alfor rose, pulling the invigorated prince into a hug. “I cannot force you to leave. You are a member of my family, and my guard. You will always have a home here on Altea. With us. With Allura.” He stared forlorn into Lotor’s tearful eyes. “I caution you to think however, about the impact your staying here will have on your empire and your people. You are a ruler, Lotor. It’s in your blood. With your parents corrupt and your military fading, your people need a strong leader, a protector. Right now, you’re the only one that can give that to them. I do not hate the Galra, only Zarkon and his greedy pack. There’s a hidden tunnel just down this hallway. If you follow it, you should reach your shuttle without harm.” He gestured to a darker sector of the hall.

   “Should you choose to stay, you will be admitted as a permanent member of the royal guard and you will serve in Princess Allura’s private detail. You can never be adopted, coronated or married into our family line as long as you have galra blood in your veins. As war with your empire grows, the people will begin distrust you, and I cannot promise you your safety, guard or not.” Tears began to cloud the old ruler’s eyes, mirroring those of the heartbroken child before him. Lotor knew what he must do, but it tore him apart: his gentle soul, shredded. “Son, it pains me so dearly to face you with this choice. One you should never have to face, to stay here or return home-” Alfor started.

   Lotor’s resolve shattered, he sputtered through heart-wrenching sobs, “Daibazaal isn’t my home! It was never my home! My home is here, in Altea. I don’t want to return to my people if it means I leave you.” His voice cracked near the end, and he dissolved into Alfor’s supporting arms. “B-but I know I can’t stay.” Lotor confessed somberly, regaining what little composure he had to offer. 

   “I swore an oath to my people. And now I swear an oath to you, Alfor. No matter where I go, what deeds I do to protect my people, near or far, soon or an eternity away, I will find my way back home. I will come home. Thank you, Alfor, for everything.” He paused to wipe away the hot tears burning his face. “Please, just, make something up to tell Allura, so it’s easier for her to let me go. Turn me into a villain if you must. If I see her now, I don’t think I’ll ever leave.” With stinging words on his tongue, and a final embrace, Lotor ran for the tunnel, tears like acid in his eyes, a black hole consuming the tattered remains of his heart.

AN: Poor little Lotor, nowhere to go and no place to call home. (Song ref anyone?) He never even got to say goodbye...

Man, that was fun. I love being on break, so much time to write and relax. Well, with chapter 2 done my obligations with this piece are done for a while. We’re switching off chapters, so my lovely partner in crime (@damianwayynes ) will take the controls for chapter 3. I’m super excited to see what she has up her sleeve, true writing genius there. Check out her other work on her writing and art blog @litttlewings, well worth the read!

Comments, questions? Love to hear them! Feel free to PM, ask, or reblog with responses, your feedback makes our day! 

~M

(Please don’t repost. It’s not cool, it’s cruel.)