#she's just wanted to be on equal footing with him this whole time :(

[haileycantcometothephonern]

Scars

Spencer x fem!reader

Prequel fic to this part (but can be read alone)

CW: pregnancy, kidnapping, torture, angst, also a little bit fluff. (not proofread)

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18 months ago

You felt the kicks before you felt the warm sun rays waking you up from your deep sleep. Your baby has been quite excited, you can tell. She is keen to meet her mom and dad, it seems. You open your eyes slowly and crack a smile at your very pregnant belly.

Sydney. That's what you both decided her name would be. Such a pretty name really. You immediately got up to make yourself some breakfast as your daughter isn't so calm when she starts to get hungry.

You then remember the absence of your husband. You really hoped he would be here before next week, as that's when your due date was and your daughter might come out any moment now. You didn't want Spencer to miss such a pivotal moment of your child's birth. You knew how much he looked forward to it.

As you make yourself some breakfast filled with all kinds of nutrients, your mind goes through all of your pregnancy journey. Spencer and you have always wanted to start a family and you were blessed with your angel a few months ago. You were both equally excited about the new edition to your family and made sure to do thorough research about how to ensure that she's safe and healthy.

Spencer was also very present these past few months, putting his foot down when he is needed here by you or your daughter. You really appreciated his support throughout your pregnancy but since a few weeks he has been quite busy. You understood that he can't keep putting off work to stay with you, but you also wanted him to do that for you. Maybe it was selfish, but you were also on the verge of giving birth to an entire human and you wanted your husband there to support you.

You thought back to the call with Spencer last night as you had your breakfast and wondered when you'll get another update from him. You eventually realized that you're focusing on him too much and he must just be really busy saving lives, so you ended up watching some movie on the TV.

Ring. Ring.

You were jolted awake from your morning nap by your phone's ringtone. You immediately hoped that it was Spencer calling to tell you that he's home bound.

"Hello"

"Hey, baby! How are both of my girls doing?" Spencer sounded tired.

"We're doing good, would do better if you're here with us though." You pouted.

"I know, love. I'm already on the jet, and wanted to check on both of you before we started. Will be there by evening." He sighed into the phone and you can feel him physically relax his shoulders. The case must have been a tough one, well tougher than usual anyway.

"Oh that's great news. I'll start on dinner soon. Love you baby, say love you to papa syd." You tried to make Spencer feel a bit less stressed and you honestly felt really glad that he'll be home soon.

"I love you both, stay safe until i get home." Spencer parroted back, and you can hear the caution in his voice.

You suddenly remembered that you forgot to inform about your doctor's call last night.

"Uh Spence, Dr. Min just called me yesterday. She wanted to see us tomorrow, I told her that I'll let her know if we can after I spoke to you today."

"What did she want to talk about? Is everything alright? Are you okay? Is Sydney okay?" He immediately questioned with worry.

"Yes, yes, we are completely alright. And Dr.Min did not tell me what it was about as she had some emergency and ended the call urgently. But I'm sure it's nothing serious." You said with a doubtful tone, you didn't want him to overthink it during the whole ride.

"It's okay, baby. I'll call Dr.Min, and ask her what it's about. Just take care." Spencer tried to reassure you and ended the call as the pilot was ready for take off.

You ended up taking another nap while snacking on some fruit platter as you were still full from your breakfast when you were once again woken up by a knock this time.

You checked who it was through the peephole first, Spencer instilled this cautiousness in you. It was just some delivery guy, maybe it was the new blanket you ordered three days ago for Sydney.

You excitedly open the door and were about to take your order when the delivery guy is pushed aside and you are being dragged out of your house by two really burly men. You wanted to scream, but they had their guns pointed straight at your belly. You gulped and cooperated with them.

"What do you guys want?" You tried not to sound so scared.

"Your husband knows what we want. Don't worry you'll get out of this unscathed if he listens to our demands." One of them replied and pushed you into a black jeep.

After that your memory goes pretty hazy, as you assume that they drugged you. You regain consciousness after a while, you don't know how long it's been but it was darker outside. You can see that through the only basement window in the room that you were held in. Yep, that's definitely a basement that you were in. You weren't scared as you had complete trust in your husband and his colleagues. You trusted them to save you and your baby.

You then heard some voices from outside the door. You remembered one of the voices was the man who brought you here. Just as you were about to concentrate on what they were talking about, the door to the room opened. In walked the two men who kidnapped you.

"Dr. Reid, as promised. Your wife is here, unscathed. Just get us that plane, our money, and Jason. We'll be out of your hair." He screamed into the phone, you assume Spencer is on the other side of.

"No I'm not going to do anything until you let me talk to her." Spencer tried to sound as neutral as he can, but even you can sense the fear in his voice.

"Alright, suit yourself." The kidnapper placed the phone near your ear. "Speak."

"Hello, Spence?"

You could hear the relief in his voice when he asks you to stay strong like you always do and that he'll be there to get you soon.

"Everything will be alright, baby. I'll be there."

And you believed him. Because why wouldn't you. You believed him with your whole being. You believed him. You made that choice. You let him deceive you. You let him deceive not just you, but also your daughter.

Spencer wasn't there. He wasn't there to save you. He wasn't there to save Sydney. He wasn't there when they cut you. When they left bleeding to your death. When they left Sydney to die with her mom. You still don't have complete memory of what happened after the call.

BAU unlike every other time, failed to deliver on their promise and failed to save you or Sydney. The kidnappers tried to get what they wanted by harming you, thinking that'll motivate the BAU to submit to their demands. But this time, the kidnappers were wrong.

Spencer found you that night, almost at the verge of dying. His heart stopped at the sight of you. Multiple cuts on your arms and your collarbone. One large gash on both of your wrists, blood flowing out uncontrollably. If only they were a bit faster, if only Hotch would have agreed to their demands. He knew that he couldn't blame anyone else but himself for what happened that night. He stayed by your side at the hospital until you regained your consciousness.

"Spence, What happened? Where am I? Where's Sydney?" Your frantic voice woke him up from his seat beside your bed. He looked like he'd been through some kind of apocalypse, maybe he was. His hair unwashed and disheveled. His beard, unshaven. His eyes, sunken, surrounded by pigmentation. He looked like he was crying non-stop.

Your thoughts immediately went back to that night.

"Sydney. Where's Sydney, Spencer?" You asked cautiously.

He looked like he was on the verge of tears and held your hands. His lips opened and closed, and tears started streaming down his cheeks.

"No, no, no. It can't be. No, not her. Spence." You were beyond frantic now. The tears came first.

You didn't want to believe that she was no more. Your love, your angel, your baby. Your Sydney.

You sobbed and sobbed and hiccups echoing off the hospital walls. Throughout it all Spencer held you, letting you express your grief. He had his time, although he thought no time could heal this wound. He wanted so badly to redo everything.

The BAU had all visited you and him, offering their condolences. Hotch showed up too, expressing his regret and guilt. Spencer assured him that he doesn't hold anything against him. You didn't reply to anyone. Not him, not his mom, not your parents, nor your friends. You didn't have anything else to say. You didn't know what one says when they feel like their soul has been snatched away. Their voice had been hijacked. Only thing you can know and feel for sure was the ache in your heart and the emptiness in your womb.

Days passed away before you knew it and it was finally time to go home. Spencer packed everything up from your hospital room and called out to you.

"(Y/N), It's time to go home baby." He whispered slowly placing his hand on your shoulder.

You looked away from the windows and towards him. Yes, nobody is at fault except Spencer. It was him who promised to keep you and your baby safe. But he was nowhere to be found on the day you actually needed him. He was the one who caused all of this. Your brain, filled with grief couldn't decipher what it was thinking or where your thoughts are taking you. You knew only one thing for sure, you wanted to hurt someone. You wanted him to hurt.

"Spencer you killed her. You killed my baby." Your voice was barely a whisper, you almost thought he didn't hear you. But the way his eyes dulled and filled with guilt showed you that he did hear it.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry, baby." He said, he sounded wracked with guilt. He started sobbing.

That was the first time in a few days you felt some kind of sick relief. A part of you ached at seeing him like that. But the sick satisfaction over took every other feeling.

"Spencer, I'm going to hurt you until I can find peace. I promise, and I don't break them like you do." Your voice was filled with vitriol. Spencer never even imagined that you could look at him with such hatred in your eyes, but he was proved wrong today.

He knew he was going to be blamed for everything. And he blamed himself too. He was okay with taking everything from you, because he knew behind all that hatred and vitriol, there was love. So he was willing to be your punching bag for however long you want him to be.

You realized that Spencer was going to accept it. And you knew you were just getting started. Maybe this will end up hurting you both, but you felt like that's what the two of you deserved in the end. For failing to save her. Your Sydney.

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a/n: Not that satisfied with how this turned out, wanted to write fluff but it turned out into angst 😭😭. anyways i'm thinking of writing a fluff series next and maybe an angst one too. deleted one on my old blog, want to restart it.

[tuxedo-rabbit]

Oof.

Estryd's return to the temple of Bhaal was painful this time for different reasons.

Estryd's relationship with the temple and her father is a bit more complex in this playthrough. Though she did have a period where she actively resisted it all, she eventually fell in line.

She learned to accept the urge and try to work with it. The temple had, until recently, always been the only safe place she could return to when people learned her true nature and turned on her.

She hates her father but she loves her father. The urge comes from him, it's intrinsic to being the God of Murder. They are the only two beings who can really understand what that means and in Estryd's eyes, that gives them a closeness that she will never have with anyone else. And yet, Bhaal keeps her at a distance. She prays often, he rarely responds. Nothing she does is ever good enough. His control of her life is absolute.

Estryd's issue with the urge has never been about wanting it gone, it's been about wanting more control and independence in her own life. She is a-ok with being the bringer of end times. She has accepted that is what she must be. But until the time comes when she must enact Bhaal's plan, she wants to be allowed to choose not to kill people she doesn't particularly want to, whether that be for pragmatic reasons or because she cares for them personally.

That's it, that's all she's wanted.

When Estryd asked for this at the temple, Bhaal responded by killing her.

[osarina]

ᡣ𐭩 I LAUGH LIKE ME AGAIN (SHE LAUGHS LIKE YOU)

FEATURING: dazai osamu

SUMMARY: four years apart and the ultimate question is about to be answered: do you and dazai really still know each other, or are you clinging to a fantasy of the past? you decide to put it to the test with a game of wits and questions when dazai gets back to your apartment—but as the game drags on, dazai starts to wonder if maybe he was wrong. worse, if maybe he would prefer to be wrong.

(wordcount: 14.5k; ņsfw; fem!reader; port mafia executive!reader, jealous!dazai, possessive!dazai, smoking & drinking, unprotected sex, switch!dazai, switch!reader, undertones of angst (happy ending). lmk if anything is missing, im rushing to get this out!)

AUTHOR'S NOTES: guys here it IS - sorry it's late, but TRUST it's worth it. i'm so proud of this fic, genuinely one of the things im most proud of writing. this is technically a part 2 to he's my collar but can be read as a standalone

It takes far too long for Dazai to make it out of the Port Mafia headquarters, with both Akutagawa and Chuuya prowling about like the dogs they are. He wonders if you tipped either of them off—Chuuya, in particular—because the slug had been looking around like he was searching for someone. He thinks you’re entirely wretched for it, knowing that if he got caught, he’d be trapped in that damp and filthy torture chamber until he managed to finagle his way out, and he plans to make it known to you just how entirely displeased he is by the situation. 

The path to your apartment is achingly familiar, and the giddiness in his chest is something he hasn’t felt since the day he left. He knows that he should probably be more careful—he’s still in Port Mafia territory, your apartment spans the top floor of the easternmost building of the five towers—but he also knows that you’re the only one with direct access to the cameras in this building so he’s more reckless than he would’ve otherwise been. 

The floors tick up agonizingly slowly, Dazai swears that there must be something wrong with the elevator because it’s never taken this long before to get up to your place. His fingers thrum against his thigh, and his foot taps the ground impatiently. He paces from corner to corner within the small space like a caged animal. He thinks that maybe he should be taking advantage of the time alone, come up with some better excuses as to why he didn’t say anything to you before he left.

“I wouldn’t have left,” isn’t going to cut it. As true as it might be, it’s not the full truth, and Dazai knows you’ll be able to sniff it out in a matter of a few seconds with a clear head. He’s not walking into a cheerful reunion between old lovers, he’s walking into what’s about to be a stressful game of chess against a strategist whom Dazai has always considered a near-equal, a battle of wits against a woman whose whole life has revolved around political warfare. If he wants to keep his dignity intact and his secrets safe, he’s going to have to be incredibly cautious with what he says to you and even with how he reacts to what you say to him.

Still, he can’t help the giddiness. The excitement. He’s missed you. He’s missed you so much that it hurts. He’d thought that over time, the longing for you would go away, but it never did. If anything, it got worse because, over time, the pictures of you started to lack the soothing feeling they used to bring to the aching in his chest. Over time, he started to forget the sound of your voice and the sound of your laugh.

He’d known that you’d been sent away on foreign business not long after his last call to you, but he didn’t think Mori would actually keep you abroad for three whole years. He’d been hoping, maybe, that he could stumble into you one day. Or maybe just watch from afar, get close enough to hear the sound of your voice again. He’s been grossly denied of you for too long, and he knows that it’s of his own doing but that only makes it worse.

When the elevator dings, announcing his arrival on your floor, Dazai is sorely unprepared for the conversation about to take place. He steps into your penthouse, eyes drifting around the familiar vast space.

Like your office, not much has changed since the last time he was here. Your coffee table is still set down a few centimeters too close to the couch in the living room—the same couch he had his first kiss on with you when the two of you were sixteen and drunk on champagne celebrating a successful mission. You still hang your black jacket over a chair instead of properly on a hanger, it’s why it always has a crease on the back—he’d noticed it when you left your office, and he can’t help but smile slightly at the confirmation as his eyes linger on where it’s draped over one of your kitchen chairs. 

You tried to convince him that you’ve changed in the years the two of you have been apart, but Dazai doesn’t think you’ve changed much at all.

You’re leaning against the windows, looking down on the city—he knows you must’ve heard the elevator, but you haven’t bothered to look his way yet. There’s an indecipherable expression on your face and a glass of wine in your hand. You’re still dressed in your suit and Dazai notices there’s a glass of whiskey on the rocks untouched on the kitchen table. He shrugs off his trench coat and drapes it over yours, hoping that the scent of you seeps into it because he’s gone too long without it.

His fingers curl around the glass of whiskey you’d left out for him, and for a moment, he swears that he’s eighteen again. He’s making his way to your penthouse after a long mission with Chuuya, you’re expecting him—you always are—and he can never push away the fondness that squeezes his chest when he finds you lounging back on your couch, flipping through channels to find something to watch, a glass of his favorite whiskey set down on the coffee table next to where your feet are propped up as you wait for him to show up.

He wonders if you even care to remember what his favorite is. He wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t.

He makes his way out of the kitchen and back into the living room, and he’s reminded that he’s not eighteen and you’re not waiting for him to show up after a mission because you finally look at him, and his breath catches in his throat.

He thinks you look a bit older now than you did four years ago—to be expected, of course—and there’s a coldness to your eyes that hadn’t been there before. Impossibly, he thinks that you’re somehow even more beautiful than you were when he last saw you, and he realizes again, throat tightening, that even after three years of no contact with you, he’s just as in love with you now as he was the day he left.

He knew it back then before he left, even if he never said it. When he was eighteen and could only feel any inkling of pleasure when he was with you; it wasn’t like he’d never tried to have sex with other people, he’d whore himself out for information at any given chance and slept around frequently after you started dating a civilian to distract himself from the bitter jealousy he felt, but he’d never known how good it was supposed to feel until he slept with you for the first time. When he was seventeen and could only ever feel comfortable in your presence, seeking you out at any given chance when he couldn’t handle being around people anymore; he’d curl up in your office with your orange blanket, napping as you did work, knowing that you’d keep people away from him. He thinks he might’ve even known when he was sixteen when the two of you first met on the streets of the Kanagawa prefecture.

He wonders if you even believed him when he said it earlier—he doubts it, you don’t seem too keen to believe anything he says, and he doesn’t blame you for it. 

But whether you believe it or not, it’s yours—that rotted heart of his, shriveled and shabby, riddled with holes and decay, half-eaten by maggots and worms it might be, but it’s still yours. He thinks that it was meant to be yours since the moment he was born, and it’ll be yours even after the two of you are long dead. He doesn’t know how he’s meant to go without you again—he doesn’t think he can. He knows that despite the tentative ceasefire, the Port Mafia and the Agency are still enemies, but he knows in his heart that he won’t be able to leave you again. Even just the sight of you has condemned him completely. 

Then you speak, and at once, his entire world falls apart.

“I’m leaving again in the morning,” you finally say, tone flat and eyes sharp and shrewd as you look over him. He reminds himself that this is not a reunion, that he needs to get his head on straight if he wants to make it out of your apartment in one piece, but it’s hard. “I was only brought back to smooth things over with the government after the whole fiasco with Fitzgerald and his American cronies. I’ll be leaving for Russia in the morning to meet with Tolstoy and Nabakov. Hopefully, gain some intel on Fyodor Dostoevsky’s plans before the man makes another move on the city.”

He… did not anticipate that you’d be leaving again so soon. Something cold and sharp latches to his heart, like jagged nails ripping it apart. He makes sure it doesn’t show on his face.

“Be careful,” he tells you quietly. “Dostoevsky… he’s not someone to underestimate. Just-Just be careful.”

You raise your eyebrows, unimpressed, “I’ve worked with Dostoevsky before. I don’t need you to warn me about him.” 

Your voice is cool. Sharp. Dazai sighs, knowing that anything he might’ve said to you earlier in the night is lost to you, and he doesn’t know if he’ll have it in him to bare his heart again, only for you to scorn it. He’s not meeting with you as he knows you—as his closest friend, as his lover; he’s meeting with you as the Port Mafia executive. Not the version of you that treats with allies, wining and dining them with glittering eyes and playful smiles as you use your ability to ensure they never turn on the Port Mafia; the version of you that sits at the round table with enemies, with a quick mind and calculating eyes as you decide whether or not they’re worthy of being absorbed into the Port Mafia or if Double Black will be sent out to eradicate them. 

“I told you everything I had to say back at the office,” Dazai tries, and he wonders if you’ll let him get away with it—he doubts it, but it’s worth a shot, and it will at least stall for a few moments as he tries to forcibly turn the cogs in his mind to figure out the best way of appeasing you. “I missed you. I… couldn’t say goodbye to you, not if I was to leave. I…”

I love you.

He doesn’t say it; he thinks he was only able to push it out earlier in the night in the heat of the moment, the orgasm-induced haze fogging his brain enough to let it slip out in desperation to make you give him a chance. And it worked because you gave him a second chance when you invited him back to your apartment, but Dazai doesn’t know how to make the most of the opportunity. He thinks he’s a fool for not preparing for this before getting here.

You click your tongue sharply, lip curling up in something close to disgust, and Dazai is glad he didn’t speak his ‘I love you’ because he thinks he might’ve actually cried if that was your reaction to him saying it.

“The only things you told me earlier in the night were half-truths and sweet talk. I didn’t invite you back to my apartment to hear you beg for another chance, Dazai,” you say coolly, and Dazai desperately misses the sound of his given name on your tongue. The corner of your lip curves up into a half-smirk, eyes suddenly glittering beneath the dim lighting of your penthouse as you add, “Although, I wouldn’t be opposed to it after we talk.”

He thinks the fact that you’re already considering an after might be a good sign. He can feel his cheeks flush a bit at your words, but instead of letting himself get rattled, he takes a step forward, well into your personal space, as he dips his face down so close to yours that his lips nearly brush yours as he speaks.

“I’d beg pretty for you,” he whispers, letting his voice drop an octave as his gaze tracks down to your lips. “I’d even get on my knees.”

Unfortunately, you are entirely unbothered by the proposition. “We’ll see, I suppose,” you say, and then raise your eyebrows, signaling for him to take a step back.

He does, and he feels distinctly put out and rejected by your reaction, but he sighs and asks, “What did you invite me here for then?” 

He very much does not like the way your eyes glitter now—shrewd this time, more amused, dangerous, as if you know the two of you are about to tread down territory that he’s going to be unfamiliar with. You nod for him to follow you into the kitchen, taking a seat at the head of the table and motioning for him to sit opposite you.

He does.

“We can play a game,” you finally concede. Dazai settles back against his chair, fingers still tapping rhythmically against his glass of whiskey, a terrible habit that Dazai has accrued whenever he feels cornered. Not a frequent occurrence, but damning when it is. Your eyes linger on them, and he knows you’ve pinpointed the tell. He forces himself to stop, but from the way your lips curl up, he can tell it doesn’t matter. “Ten questions each. Yes or no answers only.”

Dazai notices that you pointedly leave out any rule about the honesty of each answer—intentional, surely, so he probes.

“How do we determine the winner?” Dazai asks. He finally takes a sip of the fine whiskey you’d poured for him, and his question from earlier is answered. His favorite. There’s a warm feeling in his chest at the realization that you’ve remembered it even after all of these years.

Your lips curve up into a sharper and wider smile, teeth glimmering like knives beneath the soft lighting of your kitchen. The glass of wine in your hands is suddenly more reminiscent of a gun being pointed at him than your choice of alcohol, and he feels as if he’s already made some egregious mistake in your eyes.

“After we give our answer, the other has to decide whether or not it was truthful. In the end, we’ll both see how many the other got right. A test to see how well we still know each other,” is all you say in response. You’re mocking him and his insistence that the two of you are still the same, but Dazai intends to prove himself right. You tilt your head to the side and then say, “The prize is to be determined by the winner. I’ll ask the first question.”

Dazai winks, a lecherous comment already on his tongue about the prize, but the withering look you give him is more than enough to make it die before he can let it loose. He pointedly takes another sip of his drink and sinks in his seat.

He thinks that this should be an easy win. You’re quite the adept liar, but you’ve always had a glaring tell. Well, he amends, it’s glaring to him, at least. Not many others would be observant enough to catch it, and even if they were, only someone with an abundance of experience with you would be able to put it together. His gaze flickers up to meet yours, wondering if your lashes flutter right before you tell a lie. It’s such a simple and subtle tell, so casual that it took Dazai a year and a half to put together, but it was hard to miss once he did.

You hum to yourself as you give off the appearance of thinking about a question, but Dazai knows you better than anyone, and he’s certain that you already have all ten prepared, so he rolls his eyes at the faux show of uncertainty. 

“We both know you know what you want to ask,” he finally says. “Do us both a favor and quit with the theatrics.”

Your lip quirks up in amusement. “And here I was being gracious giving you more time to formulate whatever lies you’ll try to get away with,” you drawl, and Dazai nearly flinches.

“You know me so well,” Dazai sighs to hide how disconcerted he really is. “The question?”

You stare at him for a moment, and your lips curl up into a deceptively soft smile that almost throws Dazai off because, god, he’s missed you. And he knows you’re looking at him like this just for this specific reason because you’re a despicable bitch who knows that he’s always been easily unsettled when people show any semblance of affection toward him, but he can’t help the way he falters.

He tries to brace himself for whatever invasive question you’re about to ask regarding his reasons for leaving. Tries to prepare himself to lie cleanly because he’s sure you’re as aware of his tells as he is of yours. 

Then you ask: 

“Did you defect because of something Oda asked of you?”

Jesus. Right for the throat. You really don’t pull punches. 

Dazai’s throat tightens at the mention of his old friend, but he’s able to keep his expression clear of the sudden pain that your question brings on. You’re watching him carefully for reactions, gaze hawklike as you study his face, and Dazai is not about to let you pinpoint any more of his tells so early in the game.

He figures that this is an easy question; you already know the answer but want to hear the confirmation from his lips, so he decides to tell the truth.

“Yes.”

“The truth,” you say, an indecipherable expression on your face. He wonders if you want to ask what Odasaku asked of him, but that’s not part of the game and Dazai has no intention of answering that.

Be on the side that saves people. If both are the same to you, become a good man.

You might laugh in his face—Dazai Osamu, the Demon Prodigy, a good man? The idea is blasphemous, and he thinks it might actually hurt him if you scoff or laugh in response to hearing that, so he keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t give away more than he has to, hoping that you don’t just straight up ask him.

You open your lips to speak, and Dazai braces himself for the prying question, but instead, you only probe, “First question?”

He wonders if your whole first question and the implications of it was just a means of trying to throw him off because now he’s fumbling trying to remember what he wanted to ask you before you hit him with it. He wouldn’t put it past you to play dirty like that—bringing up his dead friend and his last request just to unsettle him to give you the edge.

“Did we meet during my underground years after I defected?” he finally asks, and yeah, he knows the answer to this question. The missing half of his ear and waking up in the old safe house he used to hide out at with you is more than enough evidence for him to come to a definite conclusion, but he wants to hear it from you.

“Yes.”

Dazai inhales sharply and then murmurs, “That’s the truth.” And then, more loudly and far more affronted, he accuses, “I can’t believe you shot half of my ear off.”

He expects you to toss him a wink and a sharp grin, unrepentant and even finding amusement in his offense, but instead, your expression falters for the first time since he’s arrived. Something strange crosses your face; for whatever reason, his words leave you conflicted and Dazai suddenly feels even more nervous than he already was because now he can’t help but wonder what he might’ve said to you in his drunken state. 

He supposes that’ll have to be another question, but first, he’s going to have to figure out how to phrase it to get a yes or no answer first, without being vague enough for it to be a waste of a question or easy for you to misconstrue.

You hum after a few moments, taking a pointed sip of your wine. Dazai watches curiously—you’re bothered still, you’re not even trying to hide it. He knows you have better control over your facial expressions than this, so he thinks maybe it’s a ploy to get him to start spiraling down a path of useless questions. Put off by his sudden inability to discern your schemes, a part of him wonders if maybe you were right because the him of four years ago would’ve seen right through you right now.

“I’m afraid it had to be done,” you sigh with faux regret, but he can tell from the way the smile on your lips doesn’t reach your eyes that you’re not into the banter. “Were you able to fulfill Oda’s request?” 

Fuck. This time Dazai can’t withhold the grimace that spreads across his face. He tries to keep his voice light with a deflecting comment, “My, bella, you’re really hitting with the deep questions tonight, aren’t you?”

You raise your eyebrows, tilting your head to the side as you wait for an answer, not giving him any room to formulate a response to your question. He finally sighs and shakes his head, taking a long sip of his whiskey. He wishes he had a pack of cigarettes on him, suddenly desperately longing for the pleasant burn of the smoke against his throat; he needs the buzz badly right now.

As if you could read his mind, you shift in your seat a bit and stuff your hand into the pocket of your slacks. It takes a few seconds but you fish out a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, sliding them across the table over to him. If he wasn’t already so in his head over the question you asked, he’d make a quip over the fact that you still know him so well despite your insistence otherwise, but he only pulls out a cigarette and lights it, looking curiously down at the familiar brand.

“Since when did you start smoking these?” he asks quietly, eyes fluttering shut as he tilts his head back and takes a long drag of it. He exhales slowly and then adds, “Thought you liked the other ones, in the green box.”

“Teal,” you correct, and then frown a bit. “... Switched after you left.”

Dazai’s eyes flutter back open as his gaze focuses on you, wondering if the implication you left up in the air is something he can take at face value or if it’s just another way of trying to get him to lower his guard. But from the way you suddenly don’t meet his eyes, Dazai thinks you might be being honest: you switched because they reminded you of him.

Dazai’s chest suddenly feels heavy again.

“... No,” he finally responds to your second question. “Not yet, at least.”

“... Truth,” you say, and Dazai’s lips curl into a wry smile.

“Unfortunately.” The word slips out before he can stop it.

Your gaze flickers back up to him, curious, but Dazai doesn’t give you the chance to dwell on his comment, asking his next question: “Did I… admit anything to you that night that I wouldn’t have said while sober?”

His fingers tap rhythmically against his glass of whiskey, half-empty now; he’s anxious to hear your response.

“You did,” you confirm.

Dazai grimaces because that’s another truth, and that is not good. But just like how he doesn’t offer any context for his answers, you don’t either. He doesn’t know what he might’ve admitted or how you might’ve taken it—he’s going to have to waste another question on this topic.

“Truth,” he murmurs.

You hum and then ask, “Do you still blame yourself for what happened to him?”

“Come on,” Dazai complains sharply, tossing you a dirty look now. His jaw is tight. He wonders if you keep asking about Oda as some sort of sick revenge for him leaving, ripping open wounds that never properly healed so you can dig your fingers into them and twist around. You don’t look bothered by his outburst, waiting patiently for a response. He lets out an angry sigh, looking away and taking another long drink from his glass and another drag of his cigarette. 

He voices his first lie, “No.”

You let out a puff of air, rising to your feet and making your way over to the opposite counter, you grab the bottle of whiskey and bring it back over to him, topping off his now-empty glass before pointedly holding out your hand. He passes the cigarette over to you, tilting his head back to watch you bring it to your lips—a part of him longs to lean forward, to slide his hand behind your neck and cradle your head as he brings his lips to yours, inhaling the smoke as you exhale it, dizzy off the proximity to you, high off the buzz of the nicotine, just like the two of you would do when before he left.

He refrains, if only barely.

You exhale the smoke, a small cloud billowing around you—Dazai mourns the waste—and then you pass the cigarette back over to him. Your fingers brush his as you do, and a spark shoots through his arm at the touch.

“A lie,” you finally say, looking down at him with a frown. “You shouldn’t blame yourself. There was nothing you could’ve done to save him.”

“You don’t know that,” Dazai says tightly, averting his gaze from you as you make your way back over to your seat across from him. “If I’d been faster-”

“If Mori wants someone dead, then they’ll die,” you interrupt him, a grimace on your face as you look down at your wine glass. “Trust me, Dazai, there was no saving Oda Sakunosuke.”

Dazai pauses instead of snapping again, catching the expression on your face. Haunted, as if you’re speaking from experience. He tilts his head to the side and then asks quietly, “Are you talking about your ex-partner? Itou?”

If Dazai remembers correctly, he died on a mission when you turned eighteen. You never told him the circumstances, and he never asked, but it was the first and only time you ever broke down in front of him.

The corner of your lips tightens, “Is that your next question?”

Dazai barely withholds a frustrated sigh. 

“No,” he says quietly, and then asks, “Did I tell you why I couldn’t say goodbye? The real reason?”

He holds his breath now as he waits for your response. One way or another, this question is a double blade: if he did tell you why, then he’s at another disadvantage because he’s going to feel distinctly bare and vulnerable; if he didn’t tell you, he just admitted that he lied back at your office, at least partially. 

After what feels like an eternity, you finally say, “Yes.”

The truth. Dazai wonders when you’re going to utter your first lie, if you will, or if you’re trying to make some sort of point by being honest with him. He voices his answer and then waits impatiently for your next question as his mind races.

He desperately wants to know how you responded to him back then. Would you have come with him had he come to you before he left? Or would you have chosen the Port Mafia? He wonders if he should ask, make it one of his remaining seven questions, but he doesn’t know if he has the guts to hear your answer, so maybe he’ll just change the subject.

“Are you enjoying yourself at the Agency?”

For the life of him, Dazai cannot figure out your angle. First, the prying questions about Oda and now asking about the Agency. He doesn’t know what he expected at the start of the game—you’ve always been unpredictable, but even more so now. He’s never had such a hard time reading you or your intentions before.

He starts to feel even more doubtful, wondering if you were right.

Maybe he doesn’t know you as well as he thinks he does anymore.

But this is an easy question, so he says the truth with little hesitation, “I am.”

Dazai swears the corners of your lips curl up into a soft smile, but it’s gone so quickly that he might’ve imagined it.

“Good,” you say quietly. “I’m glad.”

Dazai’s lips part, a warm feeling spreads through his chest at the honesty in your tone. Desperately, he wants to know what’s going on—where’s the rage and the betrayal he expected from you? The hate? Why do you seem… okay with all of this?

Irrationally, he starts to wonder if everything from the office was just a heat-of-the-moment conversation. If now that you’ve had time to sit on your thoughts, you’ve realized… realized what? That you’ve moved on from him? That you don’t care what he does anymore? That you’ve accepted that he’s no longer a part of your life? The warmth in his chest disappears, edged away by a sudden coldness and desperation because he thinks he’d rather die than go back to a life without you.

Even more irrationally, he remembers the comment you made back at the office, the admission that you’ve slept around since he left. Oh god, what if you really have moved on?

He knows his next question.

“The people you slept with—were they all one-night stands?”

He doesn’t want to know the answer unless it’s a yes.

You raise your eyebrows at the abrupt shift in his line of questioning, and then, to his absolute horror, you say, truthfully, “No.”

“What do you mean no?” he asks angrily—he thinks if he was a bird, he’d be puffing his chest out in irritation. He feels antsy suddenly, he needs to move around. He starts tapping his foot against the floor, his fingers against the glass. And again, he thinks you’re a despicable bitch because you only look amused at his question as if he’s not beside himself with righteous fury.

“It’s not your turn,” is all you respond with, and Dazai has a distinct urge to throttle you. Then you ask, “Do you feel like you belong there?”

He halts.

His fingers freeze from where they’re tapping against the glass, his foot freezes mid-motion. His lips part as he’s confronted with the very question that he’s been struggling with for two years now. He wants to yes, if only to maybe be a little spiteful, to rub in your face that he’s somewhere good and he’s somewhere where he belongs, and it’s not somewhere with you. A cruel dig to get back for the aching in his chest at the thought of you being with other people, but he knows that you’ll catch the lie, and more importantly, he doesn’t want to hurt you like that.

Maybe he has grown a bit because the Dazai of four years ago nearly killed your civilian boyfriend when he found out that you were dating someone besides him and then promptly made a show of sleeping around to try to get back at you.

So, instead, he says quite honestly, “I don’t know.”

You tilt your head to the side. “Not a yes or no answer, but I suppose it works. How curious.”

He hates your cryptic comments. Pointedly, he side-eyes you as he takes another long drag of his cigarette. Already, it’s nearly down to the nub, so he puts it out on your table, ignoring the distasteful look you give him, and then reaches for another to light as he asks: “Were you in a relationship with any of them?” 

You roll your eyes at his prying, and he cannot hide the abject horror that crosses his face when you say, “Yes.”

“That better be a lie,” he complains, and when you look at him as if to ask if that’s really his guess, he makes a show of pushing out his bottom lip and looking away as he says: “I cannot believe you dated other people. Cheater.”

“We were never even dating, Daz-”

“Yes, we were,” Dazai protests instantly, entirely aghast at your words. “We absolutely were. What does that even mean? Of course, we were dating. Everybody knew it. Ask anybody. Ane-san knew. Gin-chan knew. Chuuya knew. Even Mori knew. We were so dating, you-”

“You never officially asked me to be your girlfriend, which is, unfortunately, the most fundamental step of dating,” you interrupt him, and Dazai stares at you in disbelief.

“I bought you flowers, we fucked exclusively,” Dazai complains, aggrieved. “We were definitely dating, and you definitely cheated on me because we never broke up.”

“If we were dating,” you emphasize the if very pointedly, and Dazai is distinctly put out by it, “then we broke up the day you left without saying goodbye.”

Dazai withers. He has no witty comment to return fire with, so instead, he just takes another sip of his whiskey, grateful for the combined buzz of the alcohol and the nicotine to distract him from the overwhelming guilt he feels whenever you bring up how he left you.

“Do you feel like you belong more with the Agency than you did with the Port Mafia?” 

Your next question is an amendment to your previous on, and it leaves Dazai just as lost.

He wants to belong with the Agency. He does. Desperately. He wants more than anything to feel as at home and comfortable in the light as he does in the dark. He doesn’t want to question his place among them anymore, he doesn’t want to wonder if he sticks out like a sore thumb. He wants to enter the office and feel like he doesn’t have to pretend to be someone he’s not, just so he can keep his place with them. He doesn’t want to have to fear at every corner that he’s going to revert to old habits, and they’ll see him for the monster that he is: a monster that should have never left the dark crevices that he crawled out from, a monster with blood so black that it strikes fear in even the most terrible mafiosos.

“No,” he admits the insecurity that’s plagued him to the one person he feels comfortable enough with to voice it aloud. He can’t bring himself to look up at you, wondering if the admission will give you some sort of sick satisfaction, if you’ll be happy that he’s not finding a place he can be comfortable in without you. Instead, he decides to rush to ask his next question: “The one you were in a relationship with, did you love him?”

He thinks that the question came across as far more timid than he meant it to be, and his eyes slide shut as he waits for your answer.

“There were multiple I had relationships with—” Dazai scoffs, of course, there were multiple. “—...but no, I did not.”

He lets out a soft puff of air, shoulders slumping a bit in relief. But his fingers are still tense around his glass, waiting for whatever question you’re going to ask next that’s going to dig deep into open wounds, stripping him of all of his masks and armor to force him to lay himself entirely bare in front of you.

“Did you really blow up Chuuya’s car before you left?”

His eyes fly open at the sudden change of pace in your questions, noting the smirk curling at the corner of your lips and the amusement glinting in your eyes. He accepts the olive branch quickly as he gives you a sharp smile and asks: “What do you think?” 

Your hand flies to your mouth to muffle a laugh, and the smile on Dazai’s lips becomes a bit softer as he watches you desperately try to get yourself under control. “You’re insane, you know that?” you finally say, still trying to bite back giggles. “He was so mad. Raged about it for weeks.”

Another question pops into Dazai’s head at the mention of Chuuya, and before he can consider whether or not he actually wants to know the answer to it, he asks: “Speaking of Chuuya, was he one of your trysts while I was gone?”

Suddenly, you are not laughing, and suddenly, Dazai regrets speaking.

“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Do not tell me-”

“He was,” you confirm.

Dazai’s glass of whiskey is empty. 

He grabs the bottle and drinks right from it, miserable.

“I think I would’ve rather been stabbed through the heart,” Dazai says mournfully, and though he keeps a faux-light tone with you, his throat feels like it’s swollen, and he feels a bit sick to his stomach.

He’s always been jealous of the bond you have with Chuuya. Absurdly jealous, even. You clicked with him quickly—you clicked with both of them quickly, and maybe it was a matter of the three of you being the youngest of the Port Mafia’s uppermost echelon, but Dazai doesn’t want to attribute it solely to that—but the way you clicked with Chuuya was different from how you clicked with Dazai. Two people so completely human locked away in the dark, clinging to one another to maintain some sense of normalcy; your and his casual humanity made Dazai’s lack of it irrefutable and glaring.

Regardless of the why, he never liked how close you were with Chuuya. 

Even before you were dating him—because you were dating him—a part of him had always felt sidelined whenever the three of you hung out together. Not because of either of your wrongdoings but just because it was hard for him to keep up with the two of you. He always felt a bit lost trying to, unable to follow along when the two of you would start laughing at jokes that he didn’t understand even when you explained them to him, when you would share glances with one another that spoke whole conversations he wasn’t privy to. The two of you got along in ways that Dazai would never be able to get along with anyone because there’s just something fundamentally wrong with him at his core. Chuuya, for all of his talk and fear regarding the question of his humanity, has always been so unfailingly human in ways that Dazai, to this day, cannot fathom to understand.

After you started dating him—because you were dating him—it only got worse because he’d see you with Chuuya and wonder if you were better off with someone like him instead. Dazai doesn’t know how to treat you right, clearly. He can’t even treat himself right; and Chuuya has always been the epitome of a gentleman, loathe Dazai is to admit it—Ane-san drilled that into the other boy where Mori only taught Dazai how to be cruel and unforgiving. The line between love and obsession has always been a terribly blurry one for him, and you have always wavered on either side of it—and Dazai, unfortunately, does not love healthily and obsesses so entirely that it would have most people running for the hills. 

For better or for worse, you’re not most people.

In his spiral of insecurity, he doesn’t catch the way your brows furrow as you put together some puzzle pieces. “Dazai,” you say suddenly, drawing him from his thoughts abruptly. There’s an accusatory look in your eyes that he really does not like. “Were you the one that booby-trapped my fucking apartment?”

Dazai snorts.

“You bastard,” you snap at him, and Dazai can’t help but bite the palm of his hand as a means of trying to stifle his laughter. “Mori thought it was a goddamn assassination attempt. He kept me under watch for weeks because of you. I couldn’t leave the towers without half of the Black Lizards with me.”

“Sorry,” he coos, not sorry at all. Dazai, because he clearly doesn’t know when to learn his lesson, then he promptly asks, “Am I better fuck than Chuuya?”

“Jesus Christ, Dazai, get off the topic of Chuuya and my sex life, it’s clearly only upsetting you,” you snap at him instead of answering the question. Dazai wants to argue and retain some dignity; he’s not upset, but then his entire world is shattered by your next words: “I am not answering this question.”

Dazai blanches. He can feel the blood drain from his face. He’d thought this was an easy question to make him feel a bit better. What do you mean you won’t answer? Does that mean Chuuya-

No. Dazai refuses to believe it.

 “No way,” he says, shaking his head. “He’s not a better fuck than me. You can’t possibly-”

“He’s not,” you finally say, and Dazai audibly lets out a sigh of relief. “But if you ever mention anything along the likes of that to him, you will never fuck me again, Dazai Osamu. Do you understand?”

Dazai is too relieved to even argue. “Yeah.”

“No more questions about my sex life,” you say firmly, and Dazai doesn’t respond, but he does agree internally because he doesn’t think his heart can handle any more scares like that. Your eyes sharpen again, and Dazai braces himself. “Were you the one to tell Mori I lied about being sick so I could skip out on the ball Mishima hosted when we were seventeen?”

Dazai’s eyes narrow right back at you and rather than answering, he shoots one of his own questions at you: “Were you the one to tell Mori I had his contact in my phone as ‘ignore’?”

You take his lack of an answer as an affirmative, correctly so. Dazai has no regrets about ratting you out to Mori because he was not about to attend Mishima’s event without you on his arm. He’d rather die. 

“You bastard, do you know the lengths I went to fake being sick? I wanted one night to relax without people breathing down my neck.”

“If I had to go, you had to go,” Dazai retorts petulantly. “I was not about to suffer with only Chuuya as company. You had no reason to tell Mori about the contact name besides to be petty. I fought with Chuuya for weeks because I thought he was the one to do it.”

You choke on a laugh. “Chuuya was so mad, he had no idea what you were talking about.”

“He tied me to a pole and swung me around for three hours,” Dazai complains, but there’s a smile on his lips as you burst into laughter, unable to stifle the giggles that spill from your lips.

“I know,” you wheeze, “I got it on video. We watch it sometimes when we’re bored and can’t find a movie.”

Dazai gapes, and you laugh harder, but for the first time in four years, Dazai finally feels… at home, he feels comfortable in his own skin again. He’s back in your penthouse, he’s drinking his favorite whiskey and smoking his favorite brand of cigarettes, you’re sitting at the kitchen table with him and laughing your head off at his expense, and for a moment, Dazai feels as if nothing has changed: he feels like himself again, eighteen and entirely enamored by the sight and sound of you, and you feel like you again, all of the doubt that had begun to rise to his chest as the two of you played the questions game long gone.

He falls in love with you all over again. Harder this time. Faster. He thinks he’ll fall in love with you again and again every day for the rest of your lives, each time more than the last, no matter how impossible it might seem.

He thinks maybe it’s not that he feels like he belongs with the Port Mafia more than the Agency. He thinks that it’s you. You’re the one he feels at home with. You’re the one he’s comfortable enough to be himself with. You’re the one he belongs with, always has, and always will.

After a few moments, you finally manage to get yourself under control, still giggling a bit as you look back up at him. Your smile is softer now, eyes gentle, more genuine than the smile you gave him before asking the first question. Dazai’s breath catches because when was the last time you looked at him like this—the last time anyone has looked at him like this? A warm feeling spreads through his chest; Dazai thinks he would stay in this moment forever if given the opportunity.

“Are you happy?” you ask quietly

Dazai blinks, startled, and an odd feeling spreads through his chest once your question registers. His lips part to answer, but no words leave them; he draws back as if he’s been slapped, a bit flustered and confused because that’s the furthest thing from what he expected you to ask. He wonders if you’d asked the last three questions to lull him into a false sense of security.

“I-” he starts to say but cuts himself off. “What kind of question is that?” 

He tries to deflect instead of properly answering, frowning, but you only raise your eyebrows, pointedly keeping your lips sealed to let him know that you expect an answer. He shakes his head and then sighs, bouncing the question in his head a few times before going for a cop-out: “When I’m with you? Always.”

You’re not pleased by his decision, frowning as you look away from him—he knows that’s not what you asked, not really, but you should have been clearer with your question if you wanted him to give you the answer you expected. But he doesn’t like the sudden disappointment on your face, it leaves his skin itchy and his chest longing for the soft look to return.

So he sits there, ruminating on the question. Is he happy? He should be, right? He’s saving people. He’s on the way to fulfilling Odasaku’s final request. He has a whole group of people whom he can rely on without having to fear being taken advantage of or betrayed at every corner. He’s happy.

But is he trying to convince himself of it? Why is he still trying to kill himself if he’s happy? Why is there a part of him that feels lonely no matter how surrounded he is by people? Why is it that when he’s at his lowest points, the only two people he wishes he could be with are you and Chuuya? Why does he ache for the days he’d spend dragging the two of you around Yokohama, causing trouble for Mori—the closest he’s ever felt to enjoying life?

“I don’t know,” he finally amends his answer, looking down at the bottle in front of him and the cinders of the cigarette dangling between his fingers. He lifts it to his lips again, taking one last drag of it as he tries to figure out what his last question should be.

There’s only one pressing question he has left, but he hesitates, unsure if he really wants to know your answer.

He forces it out anyway.

“Would you… would you have come with me back then?” His voice is quieter than he intended, cracks over ‘me’, and to your credit, you don’t react to the question, expression as eerily still as it was before, as if you’re considering your words.

A yes or no. It shouldn’t take this long for you to answer. Each second that passes feels like an eternity, and Dazai suddenly feels anxious, he doesn’t know why he asked this question because if the answer is no—if it’s no, then…

Finally, you let you a soft sigh, taking a sip of your wine as if to prolong his agony.

Your lashes flutter before you speak.

You lie for the first time that night.

“Yes.”

Dazai’s voice sounds far away as he says, “That’s a lie.”

“I guess you were right,” you say softly, but you sound so distant, like you’re on the opposite side of a long, empty tunnel and not sitting right in front of him. “We do still know each other decently well; you got them all right.”

Dazai doesn’t care. In fact, he would have gladly conceded a loss in this game, and he would’ve gladly admitted that maybe the two of you don’t know each other as well as you used to if it meant that he got the last question wrong because then he would’ve just given you a coy expression and asked if you’d let him get to know this new version of you too. You would’ve said yes, and he would’ve made quite the pleasurable night out of it for the two of you. Instead, he had to insist that nothing has changed, and now he has to come to terms with the fact that he was right and he had known you well enough back then to know not to ask you to leave with him because you would have chosen the Mafia over him. 

He’s so lost in his thoughts that he doesn’t even notice you approaching him until you’re leaning on the table next to him, index and middle finger coming beneath his chin to tilt his face up toward you. He looks up at you through his lashes, eyes searching your face, but he only finds another blank slate that he can’t read. His breath hitches when your hand slides from his chin to cup his cheek, and he can’t help the way that he leans into your touch, eyes fluttering shut.

“I would choose you over so many things, Osamu.” You speak his given name for the first time in years, but he can hardly find any comfort in it because he knows he’s not going to like what you’re about to say. Your fingers card through the tips of his hair, brushing the dark locks behind his ear as your thumb sweeps over his cheekbone. “But not over the Port Mafia. Just like how you didn’t choose to stay for me.”

“It’s not the same,” he says, voice hoarse. “It’s-”

“It is,” you interrupt, voice deceptively gentle, and he thinks you’re entirely unfair because he can hardly focus with your touch distracting him. He’s missed it so much—he’s gone four years without it, without any type of touch that wasn’t him getting his shit kicked in by Kunikida or an enemy. “You didn’t choose to stay for me. I wouldn’t have chosen to leave for you.”

“Why?” Dazai asks tightly, and he hates that when his jaw tenses, you smooth your fingers over it, and he unclenches it immediately.

There’s a sadder look in your eye now as you give him a small smile. “You know why.”

Of course, he knows why. He feels the hatred deep in his gut as his mind draws back to Mori. Because that’s who the issue is. It’s not the Port Mafia. It’s not your friendship with Kouyou. It’s not even your friendship with Chuuya that’s the issue. It’s Mori and your undying loyalty to him. No matter how much you claim to despise him, bashing him every chance you get, sneering at him whenever he tries to treat you like his daughter, Dazai knows that when it comes down to it, you’ll always choose him. You’d throw yourself on a sword if he asked it of you, and not for the first time, Dazai wants to spit in the man’s face for making you feel as if you’re eternally indebted to him for rescuing you from that warzone so many years ago; for making you feel as if you’re nothing without the Mafia, nothing without him.

“You don’t owe him anything,” Dazai says tightly. “You have to know that by now—you don’t owe him anything.”

“I don’t want to have this conversation, Dazai,” you sigh, sounding tired. Your hand drops from his face, and Dazai longs for your touch again instantly. His fingers twitch from where they’re resting on his lap; he only barely stops himself from reaching out for you. You try to smile as you change the subject, but it hardly meets your eyes, “It’s a tie then. No prize for either of us, hm?”

Dazai is not so inclined to switch the subject. He wants to press on this now that he has the chance; he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to rip you out from beneath Mori’s thumb, but he needs to at least try… but you’re leaving again in the morning, and Dazai also does not want to ruin this night with you. He doesn’t know when he’ll get another.

So, instead, he matches your half-assed smile as he looks up at you and says, “I didn’t say you got them all right. You only said that I got them all right.”

You raise your eyebrows. “Did I get any wrong?” you ask, amused.

No.

“Yes.”

“Liar,” you say, but there’s a fond lilt to your tone as you let out another puff of air, the smile on your face finally reaching your eyes as you look down at him. The soft lighting of your kitchen casts a pretty glow over your face, your smile is so entrancing that Dazai thinks he could stare at it forever.

“You’re so beautiful,” he breathes out, the words slipping from his lips before he can stop them. “I’ve missed you so much.”

He’s sure he must look like a fool right now, entirely enamored by the sight of you, unable to even fathom drawing his gaze away. He wonders if you’ll protest again, call him a liar, and shift away from him.

You don’t.

The smile on your lips falls, and a wrecked expression crosses your face as your eyes search his. Your lips part to speak, and he waits with bated breath for whatever you’re about to say—he thinks that if you deny him again right now, it might completely shatter all of the walls he’d so carefully built to protect himself.

“I’ve missed you too,” you whisper as if you’re scared to speak the words out loud—and how can he blame you when the last time you dared to speak them, he hung up on you, never hearing from him again until tonight.

God, the guilt he feels whenever he thinks of you returns with a vengeance, so intense that Dazai starts to feel sick to his stomach. He can’t handle it, so he does the only thing he knows how to do to distract himself from it.

His movements are clumsy as he pushes himself up to his feet, nearly tripping over the leg of his chair, and his fingers feel clunky as he lifts them up to cup your cheeks. For a second, he fears that you might move away from him, but you don’t, so he leans in to press his lips against yours.

There’s no tenderness to his kiss. Dazai kisses you like he wants to consume you, lips sliding messily against yours, blunt nails indent crescents into your cheeks as he holds you close. Usually, he would be embarrassed by his blatant desperation and lack of finesse—he’s never been a sloppy kisser, when the two of you were younger, you would always let out pleased hums into his mouth, lashes fluttering as he worked his lips carefully against yours, tongue sliding against your own as he traces his name on it. 

All of his finely honed skill is thrown out the window now as he kisses you like a man who has been starved for years. He has been starved for years—the quick fuck in your office did nothing to quell the longing he’s felt for you the past four years. He could kiss you for hours. Days, even, and it still won’t be enough. Nothing short of an eternity with you would be enough to make up for the four years he’s been deprived of you.

He lets out a low groan into your mouth as you nip at his bottom lip, hands sliding from your face down to your hips. He’d take you here. Right now. But he remembers the last time he tried to fuck you on your kitchen table, it ended with him choking on the barrel of your gun as you yelled at him for being gross (“I eat on this table, you heathen!”) and he’s not particularly in the mood to set off your temper now that he finally has you in his arms again, so it’s with much restraint that he grabs you by the hips to walk you back into your bedroom.

He can hardly concentrate as your fingers twist the hair at the nape of his neck, soft moans slipping from his lips, muffled against your mouth. It’s only sheer instinct and muscle memory that has him making his way from the kitchen and down the hall. He can’t bring himself to separate his lips from yours for even a second. And he’s a mess because he’s not coherent enough to force himself to breathe properly through his nose, so his lungs are burning and his head feels a bit light, but he doesn’t care so long as it means he can keep kissing you.

Turn left, turn right, second door from the end of the hall. 

His fingers fumble for the knob of your bedroom door, pushing it open a bit too hard, considering the way he hears it slam against the wall and how you tug his hair hard in retaliation. He doesn’t care, moans a bit louder even when your nails scrape his stinging scalp, and you let out a derisive noise against his lips before biting down hard enough to draw blood.

The taste of iron makes a slow smile curl at his lips, walking you back toward the bed, and it’s only when your knees hit the edge that you finally pull away from him. “If you broke my door, you’re fixing it, Osamu.”

Dazai’s smile is lecherous. “I’m gonna break something alright,” he croons, relishing in the way you immediately roll your eyes at him. It’s all so familiar—he can almost pretend that he never left, that nothing has changed since the two of you were eighteen, dumb, reckless, and in love.

Before he can press you back against the bed, he feels your fingers drop from around his neck to his waistband, curling around his belt loops. In an instant, you’ve twisted the both of you around, and suddenly, it’s the back of Dazai’s knees pressed against the edge of the bed as you push him down onto the mattress. He hits the sheets with an ‘oof’ and a hazy smile, surrounded by the scent of you, drowning in the sight of you. He thinks he might be in heaven. 

You shift on top of him, straddling his waist; Dazai’s hands instantly come to rest on your thighs, sliding up the sides to grab your ass and pull you more firmly onto him. He groans when he feels you grind down against his cock, and god, he’s already hard just from kissing you. He hears you snort above him, but Dazai doesn’t even have it in him to be embarrassed.

His lips part in a silent moan as you lean down to ghost kisses along his jaw, hands sliding up his chest. He feels you wrap your fingers around his bolo tie and tug it, you let out a sharp noise of distaste against his skin before murmuring: “I hate this ugly thing.”

He lets out a huff of laughter that quickly breaks off into a moan when your lips trail to the spot behind his ear that always makes him writhe. His fingers bite into your hips, pushing you down on him as he rocks his hips up into you—shit, he might be able to cum just from this. His cock is straining painfully against his beige pants, twitching as he grinds up against your clothed cunt. He thinks maybe if he fucks his hips upward a few more times, he might be able to push himself over the edge, but as desperate as he is to chase his release, he refuses to cum anywhere but inside of you.

Plus, he thinks he’ll be shamed to hell and back if he finishes in his pants with you hardly touching him. 

“Then strip me out of it,” he gasps, lashes fluttering as your teeth graze his pulse point right above the edge of his bandages. Fuck, he’d give anything for you to bite down—riddle him with marks he can’t cover so he can flaunt them off to everyone who looks at him. Dazai knows that there are countless men and women out there who’d die to be able to be called yours, he wants them to know he’s the only one who can take that honor. “What’re you waiting for?” 

You hum and then sit back on his hips—he bites his bottom lip raw as you unintentionally put even more pressure on his cock. He’s half dazed out, not realizing that your grip tightened on his bolo tie until you straight up yank it off of him, snapping the string around his neck.

“No!” he complains, watching with wide eyes and parted lips as you fling the now-broken bolo tie off to the side of your room. “Noooo, why’d you do that? I’m going to have to order a new one.”

“Boo-hoo,” you say dryly, hardly paying attention to him as your fingers curl around the hem of his vest, pulling it up over his head, snorting when he lets out a puff of irritation as his nose gets caught around the collar. 

“This is so unsexy,” he protests, rubbing his nose. “Shouldn’t you be more gentle?” 

“Stop wearing so many layers of clothes,” you retort, but Dazai is placated when you lean back down to kiss the corner of his lips, lashes fluttering as his eyes slide shut. He lets out a pleased hum as you kiss down his jaw, nimble fingers unbuttoning his final layer of clothing. He wishes he wore an undershirt just to watch you huff in annoyance. His breath catches as you nip at his skin and then murmur, “This better?” 

“Yeah,” he breathes out, voice wavering as you get down to the last button of his shirt, sliding it off of his shoulders and easing him out of it. His body shudders as your hands slide over the bandages wrapped around his abdomen. Fuck, it’s been so long since anyone’s touched him beneath his clothes, even with the bandages still acting as a layer between the two of you, his nerves are on end, sensitive to everywhere your fingers touch.

He wonders if you’ll pull off the bandages—it’s a line that the two of you only crossed once back then, and although the idea of it has him brimming with anxiety, he longs for the feeling of your skin flush to his.

He almost feels a bit embarrassed when you sit back again to admire him as if there’s not a scar-ridden body hidden beneath the bandages. You look at him like he’s beautiful, like he’s not a monster disguised as a man, like he’s human. Dazai has always felt distinctly seen beneath your stare like you can see through all of the masks he wears and see him for him, and that has not changed over the past four years.

He’s missed the comfort of it. He has. It used to unnerve him back then, thinking someone could see him so clearly when he tried so hard and so carefully to hide himself beneath layers of impenetrable masks, but after going four years alone, with no one for him to turn to, no one he could look at and have them just know what he’s thinking… 

Yosano once mentioned offhandedly that to be loved is to be seen, and Dazai thinks the only time he’s ever been seen—truly seen, down to his core, deep in his soul—is when he’s with you.

It was a very lonely four years without you.

“I thought about you every day,” Dazai tells you softly, the grip on your hips easing up as he looks up at you. “Made a list of places I wanted to bring you and then burned it because I never thought I’d get the chance to be with you again. Stared at old pictures of you all the time, couldn’t sleep without thinking about memories with you. Drank your favorite wine just so I could pretend I was tasting it off your lips.”

You bring your hand up to cup his cheek, and Dazai leans into your touch, eyes fluttering shut again. He kisses your palm, humming softly when your thumb runs along his bottom lip.

“There wasn’t a single day I went without you crossing my mind,” you admit quietly and Dazai’s breath hitches as he stares up at you, dark eyes wide and lips parted. He thinks he should say something, anything really, but it’s a lost cause. You don’t seem to mind, luckily, because you only lean down to brush your lips against his again.

This kiss is softer than the last, lips trembling against yours as your tongue dances along his inner lip. He thinks his cheeks might feel wet but he doesn’t dare acknowledge it; you don’t either, only using your thumbs to brush away the tears as they spill over his cheeks.

“Are you really leaving again in the morning?” he finally asks, and he hates that his voice cracks over the words.

You hum in agreement, still hovering over him, still running your thumbs along his cheekbone. His lashes droop shut, but he forces them back open as you speak. “I am. Bright and early. Flight leaves at six.”

His gaze flickers to the left, over to where your alarm clock is set up on your nightstand. 

12:35

He looks back at you, eyes swimming with desperation.

You give him a soft, wry smile. “We should make the most of the night then, hm?”

He doesn’t waste any time on that.

His grip on your hip tightens, and in one swift motion, he flips the two of you around, elbows resting on the mattress on either side of your head as he hovers above you. Your eyes glitter as you give him a coy smile, and again, Dazai falls in love.

Then, he ruins the moment.

“Tell me how you fucked Chuuya.”

Your smile drops. “Osamu, what the fuck?”

“Tell me,” he pouts, nudging his nose against your cheek and peppering soft kisses on your cheek and down your neck. His knees drop to the bed on either side of your hips, holding up his weight as he reaches down to unbutton your slacks, sliding them off your body. A smile flickers onto his lips as his fingers graze your panties—drenched, finally, evidence that he’s not the only one so affected by this. “Tell me. Were you on top? Did he take you from behind? Was he rough? No, it’s Chuuya-”

“If you care so much about how Chuuya fucks, Osamu, how about you go fuck him yourself?” you interrupt him.

Dazai gags.

“Don’t ever say that again,” he says and then returns to his mission, fumbling with his own pants now as he tries to yank them and his briefs off, unable to hold back the relieved sigh when he finally frees his cock, unceremoniously tossing them to the floor. “Tell me.” 

“Why do you care so much, hm?” you ask, reaching up to brush his hair out of his eyes. “I told you that you were better.”

You’re only trying to deflect from the question and he almost lets you succeed, partially placated, but he stays strong, leveling an unrelenting stare onto you as he waits for your answer. You sigh heavily, and he knows he’s won.

“Not rough,” you say as if Dazai hasn’t already come to that conclusion. Chuuya’s had a crush on you since the three of you were sixteen. Dazai assumed he had grown out of it, but evidently, he was wrong, considering he took the opportunity to sleep with Dazai’s girlfriend—because you were his girlfriend—the moment Dazai was out of the picture. What a little snake. Dazai needs to vandalize his apartment again. Maybe set up a few more bombs. He’s only drawn back from his mental spiral when you start talking again: “He took the lead. Wanted to see my face the whole time, make sure I was okay.”

“How gentlemanly of him,” Dazai says—he’s not bitter. He’s not.

“It was,” you agree, too genuinely.

Dazai squints at you hard. 

“Don’t look at me like that,” you say. “You asked.”

“You don’t need to sound so wistful.”

“Oh, shut the fuck up, Osamu, I’m not wistful.”

“How-”

“Are we going to talk about Nakahara Chuuya all night, or are you going to fuck me?” you interrupt immediately, looking increasingly incensed. Dazai only raises his chin at you pointedly—you’re the one that slept with Chuuya. “Time is dwindling, Osamu.”

Okay. 

Dazai’s gaze flickers back to the clock and then back down to you, withering a bit under your irritated stare. He sighs and leans back over you to kiss the corner of your lips, fingers curling around the hem of your panties to slide them off your legs.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs against your skin, his kisses linger against your skin now as he drags his lips down to your jaw. “The thought of him being with you…”

It makes Dazai want to do terrible things. The part of him that he locked up deep within rattles at the bars of its cage, furious and bloodthirsty. The trigger finger he’s been so careful to tame twitches with a desire he hasn’t felt in four years. The thought of anyone being with you makes Dazai sick to his stomach—Dazai is the only one who should get to see you like this, be with you like this—but the thought of Chuuya being with you is so much worse.

“You’re all I’ve ever wanted, Osamu,” you tell him quietly, fingers intertwining with his hair as he nips at your neck. “No matter how much I slept around, nothing was ever able to fill the hole losing you left. Not even Chuuya.”

Dazai exhales, shaky—the guilt returns, and so does the doubt because what right does he have sitting here being petty about what you did while he was gone when he was the one who left you behind without so much as a word? His eyes flutter shut, he spares a few more chaste kisses across your throat before lifting his face back to yours, kissing you gently.

“Let me make up for lost time then,” he says softly.

He doesn’t hesitate now, one hand dropping down to your thigh, lifting it to wrap around his waist as he presses his hips into you. His breath shudders when his cock slips against your folds, a low moan spilling from his lips. He has to reach down to angle himself properly, tip pressing against your tight hole.

The fingers of his free hands are shaky as he lifts them to cup your cheek. “Look at me,” he says, heat spreading through his abdomen when he realizes you already can hardly hold your eyes open, quick breaths escaping your lips as you try to keep yourself from cumming already. “Look at me, I want to see you.”

Your eyes flutter open, lidded and heavy as you look up at him, and Dazai thinks that maybe he could cum just from the expression on your face alone, inhaling sharply as his thumb drags across your bottom lip. He thinks maybe he should try to get ahold of himself, fearing that if he pushes inside of you now, he might cum on the spot, but his cock is aching so badly that Dazai thinks he might die if he doesn’t feel your heat around him immediately.

It takes all of his strength to keep his eyes from sliding shut as he pushes inside of you, desperate to see the way your face twists and your breath catches. Your lips tremble, chest rising and falling rapidly, he can feel your thighs tightening around his waist, and Dazai groans when your heels dig into his lower back, forcing his hips flush to you, burying his cock deep in your cunt. He chokes, grip on your thigh bruising; his abdomen tightens, and his head feels light.

No way, he thinks, gritting his teeth as he tries to hold back the waves of pleasure threatening to tear through him. He hears you let out a huff of laughter beneath him, and Dazai would shut you up with a sharp thrust of your hips, but he’s still desperately trying to regain control over himself, so he thinks that’s maybe not the best idea.

His forehead drops to rest on the pillow next to your head, lips brushing your ear as he lets out a low moan. He can’t even savor the way you let out a full-body shudder, fingers coming up to toy with the hair at the nape of his neck. Fuck, you’re so tight—Dazai can feel your walls tightening around him, spasming, his breath is shaky, and he tries to distract himself by pressing his lips to your skin, mouthing messily at your skin, sucking and nipping and counting to ten as he tries to settle down.

But it’s hard with the soft sighs you’re letting out, the way your fingers catch on his tousled hair, tugging enough to make his scalp sting. His head is so fogged that he can hardly think straight—god, he’s missed this, he hasn’t had the comfort of letting himself go like this in… since he left, really. His mind is always turning, plotting out ten, twenty, thirty steps in advance in fear of making a mistake, slipping up and letting the rest of the Agency see him for what he is, slipping up and their lives being the price just like with Odasaku. It’s only with you that’s ever comfortable enough to finally let the cogs in his brain slow and shatter, lose himself in carnal pleasures, lose himself in you; it’s been four years since he’s last had a reprieve from his own brain.

But he only lets himself slip halfway—tonight isn’t going to be about him, it’s about you. He has four years to make up for and he intends on getting a good start on it tonight.

He pants quietly as he lifts his head enough to bite your earlobe, tugging it gently before pressing his lips to your temple. “I’ve missed this,” he admits, voice raspy and clogged thick with emotion. “I’ve-”

He can hardly get the words out, and his breath catches when your hands slide from behind his head to cup his cheeks, forcing him to look at you. He thinks he must look wrecked—he can already feel the sweat beading on his forehead, and he knows his eyes are probably glazed over. You still look stunning, a soft expression on your face as you look up at him as if he’s not buried to the hilt inside of you. 

Unfair, he thinks mournfully. 

“What're you still holding onto, hm?” you ask, and Dazai only barely registers your words, sinking into your touch as you brush matted hair out of his eyes. He can finally bring himself to roll his hips—experimental, slow, trying to make sure he can actually move before trying to fuck you. Then you sigh softly, and he’s too out of it to try to make out the expression on your face as you say: “You work yourself so hard… always have. I’ve got you, you can let go, Dazai. C’mon.”

“No,” he hums, but his voice is strained, evidence of his struggle. “Tonight’s about my favorite girl.”

“Favorite?” you tease, lifting your shoulders off the bed to ghost a kiss against his lips that nearly has his hips stuttering—the conversation so reminiscent of one that the two of you had at seventeen it almost makes him smile.

“Only,” he amends quietly, kissing your nose, then the corner of your lips, and then nipping your jawline.

Just when he thinks he’s good to actually start picking up the pace, intent on fucking the thoughts out of you until you forget about your stupid flight in the morning, he catches a suspicious expression on your face, one that has his eyes narrowing.

“What?” he asks dubiously; your eyes are glittering in a way that he knows from experience is dangerous. 

You don’t say anything, just look pointedly at your thighs, then up to his shoulders. Dazai tilts his head to the side, recognizing what you want, and after a moment’s hesitation, he slides your legs up above his shoulders, folding them to your chest, eyes nearly rolling back at the new angle. Fuck, his hips do stutter this time, breath hitching. He has to readjust again, mentally focus on not cumming on the spot, and then-

And then you say: “He had my legs like this.”

A trick. 

Dazai knows it. 

You’re trying to make him let go of the thin thread of self-control he still has. To give in. To let all of the gears in his brain finally fall apart for the first time in four years.

He knows it.

He falls for it anyway.

Dazai’s jaw tightens, gaze snapping down to you only to catch a goading look in your eyes, a sly smile on your lips that Dazai has every intention of fucking right off your face. He inhales sharply, one hand sliding up your body to grab your chin, blunt nails digging a bit too deeply into your cheeks.

“Yeah?” he says, voice rough. 

Your lashes flutter and lips part as Dazai pointedly jerks his hips up. Your breath catches over a moan, and Dazai knows that this new angle is affecting you just as much as it is him.

“Mhm,” you agree, and just like that, the thin thread snaps.

He snaps his hips into you so hard that your bedframe bangs loudly against the wall behind it, quickly setting a steady pace, nice and deep, quick enough that you can’t even get a breath of air to your lungs before Dazai is fucking it right out of you. Already, he’s so fucked out that his mind is in shambles, one hand settling on your hip to hold you in place as he thrusts his hips into you, hitting that sweet spot with each stroke while his other hand, still cupping your face, slides down to your neck.

He doesn’t squeeze—wouldn’t dare to cut off the pretty noises spilling from your lips, moans of his names, choked gasps and cries between each rock of his hips—but the fact that you trust him, him, enough to have his fingers wrapped around your throat is always a quick way make him topple over the edge.

His eyes dart down to your chest, realizing, very unfortunately, that you haven’t taken off your button-up yet. He nearly bites down on his tongue in frustration as his hand comes down to your chest, careful to keep the pace of his hips as he hooks his fingers around the first button just to yank down, popping off half of the buttons of your expensive dress shirt and haphazardly pulling it off of you to toss it to the side before fumbling with the clip of your bra.

“Osamu,” you hiss, and Dazai revels in the way your voice wavers with each thrust, biting back moans. “That’s the second-”

You don’t get to finish your sentence. Dazai tosses your bra over with your discarded shirt and dips his head down to wrap his lips around your nipple, tongue swirling around the sensitive bud before rolling it between his teeth, and you’re gone—Dazai lets out a muffled groan around you as your back arches up into him, crying out his name, walls tightening around him as you cum on his cock.

“Oh-f-hah-fuck,” Dazai gasps as he rests his head on your collarbone, grip on your waist tightening. 

He has to physically force himself to lift his head, bracing his forearm on the mattress next to your head, desperate to see the way your eyes roll back, he can already feel himself teetering over the edge—the lewd sound of skin-on-skin, the sloppiness of his cock driving in and out of your cunt, he can feel your cum dripping down his cock, smeared on his pelvis.

His hand slides behind your head, lifting it from where you have it pressed against the mattress. Beautiful—the only thought that can run through his hazy brain is of you and how perfect you are, lips swollen and bitten raw, parted as pitched moans escape them, tears spilling from the corner of your eyes as he fucks you through your orgasm and right into a second. He’s the only one that should ever get to see you like this, with your clever brain fucked right and dumb, body writhing against the bed as you cling to him.

He leans down again, trailing sloppy kisses against your neck, gasping as he starts to feel his high approaching.

“No one makes you feel like this,” he says, or maybe he begs, he’s not sure if he’s making a statement or pleading for you to tell him it’s the truth. “Tell me. T-shit-tell me.”

“No one,” you sob over another moan, and Dazai can feel your pussy fluttering around him—he wonders if he’s already fucked you into a third. Usually, it takes longer. “No one, Osamu, you’re the only one.”

And that’s the only thing he needed to hear to give him that final push. His steady pace shifts into a more erratic one, sloppy and desperate, as he chases a high that’s just out of reach. His moans are muffled against your skin, teeth scraping your collarbone, mind a jumbled mess of thoughts of you. He feels your fingers trembling as you lift them to his cheeks, pulling his face up to press your lips against his, and that’s all it takes: he lets out a wanton moan against your mouth, pressing your legs further into your chest as his hips still against your ass, finishing deep inside of you.

Spots dance in his vision, head buzzing and ears ringing; he swears his orgasm lasts an eternity, body shaking and shuddering above you, letting out breathy moans into your mouth. He can feel his cum dribbling out of you, pooling onto the sheets beneath the two of you, so much of it that you can’t even keep it all in you. 

He doesn’t let his lips leave yours once—the kisses are messy and sloppy, devoid of all of the finesse that the two of you usually have, teeth nearly clashing, tongues sliding against each other’s. 

It’s only when his vision finally starts to clear and his head feels less on the verge of passing out does Dazai finally trails kisses from your lips to your jaw and down your neck before he finally collapses on top of you, mind entirely gone, like he’s floating on clouds. He pants as he tries to catch his breath, eyes lidded as he absently trails kisses along your chest and collarbone. He thinks the world could be ending around the two of you, and Dazai wouldn’t even have the capacity to notice. For the first time in four years, he really, truly allows his brain to rest.

He doesn’t know how much time passes, eyes drooping shut as he lets himself be enveloped by your arms, drowning in the comfort of your scent.

He doesn’t want to know. He’s scared to look at the clock and check.

“Tonight was supposed to be about you,” Dazai finally complains, burying his face in your chest as he pouts.

You only let out a soft laugh above him. “We have the rest of our lives for that… You deserved a break, Osamu.”

The rest of our lives.

Dazai’s throat tightens, vision blurring a bit at the thought—he can only barely bring himself to respond, and the words that slip out are not what he means to say: “I never thought I’d get to be with you like this again,” he admits, voice hoarse. “I never thought-”

“I know,” you interrupt, voice quiet, a bit shaky. “... I know.”

Of course, you know.

He can’t bring himself to say anything else, so he doesn’t, sinking into your arms and allowing himself the comfort he’s deprived himself of for so long. He almost starts to drift off—and god, he can’t remember the last time he’s dozed off willingly, only able to sleep after drinking copious amounts of alcohol or taking an even more copious number of sleeping pills. It’s not until you speak again does he stir back awake from the brink of sleep.

“What did he ask of you? Oda, I mean,” you finally ask, fingers brushing through his dark hair, lulling him further to sleep.

Dazai thinks that you’re cruel, asking him while his mind is still fogged from the exhaustion following his high, and he’s still half asleep in your arms, trying to regain his bearings. The words slip out before he can think twice, forgetting his fear of you laughing at the idea of him trying to be a better man.

“He asked me to be on the side that saves people… if both are the same to me, he wanted me to be a good man.”

The words dawn on him too late; he can hardly bring himself to look up at you, scared that he’s going to find an amused expression on your face or a derisive sneer. He wouldn’t blame you, he’s thought the same about himself ever since he left the Port Mafia, doubt and self-loathing riddling him with every step he takes in the light. He waits for the scoff, he waits for the laugh, he waits for-

“... I think he would be proud of who you’ve become, Osamu. I think you’ve fulfilled his request.”

Dazai does look up at you now, feeling particularly vulnerable, still scared that he might find a mocking expression on your face but he doesn’t. Only an uncharacteristically soft expression is painted on your face as you look up at the ceiling, a genuine one—a small smile and a look in your eyes that makes his heart feel warm. You don’t notice him looking until he lets slip out:

“I’ve missed you so much,” he whispers. 

(I love you, he means)

“I’ve missed you too,” you say back quietly.

(I love you too)

[trendywaifus]

you smack feixiao’s hand away from your cup of wine, casting your woman a quick glare before going back to talking to jing yuan. she pouts, resting her cheek against her palm, elbow propped up on her knee as she lazily tunes into the conversation about daily life between you and jingyuan.

“ i heard that yanqing and yunli has been getting along lately. is that true, jing’? “ you inquire, idly tapping a finger against the wooden surface of the low table. jing yuan chuckles, taking a sip of his wine.“ they’re getting there. it seems like their little “battles” are a form of kiddy dates. “ you let out a soft laugh, barely aware of feixiao’s hand sneakily reaching for your cup. noticing his fellow equal in title’s antics, the white, long-haired man shakes his head disapprovingly. she press a finger to her smirking lips as she slowly slides your cup towards her and—

“ you know i can see your hand from the corner of my eye, you sneaky vixen! “ you instinctively grabbed her fox ear and pulled at it.

she yelps, “ ow, ow! dearrestt, i was just kiddding—ouch! “

“ yeah right! what did i tell you about trying to drink liquor you know you can’t handle? this poor man told me you downed a whole thing of wine, destroyed his gazebo a few days ago, and passed out drunk! “

“ heh–ouch! i got a little carried away and i was thirsty—ouuuch! i was just visiting and wanted a—ouch, ouch, ouch!”

“ a visitor but not. a. guest! “ you hissed. jing yuan turns his head and stifles back a bellowing laugh at the comical sight of the merlin’s claw of the xianzhou yaoqing getting scolded by her lover. you finally let go of feixiao’s sore ear and sighed exasperatedly. “ you should of stayed with jiaoqiu at the tea house. there’s a reason why the loufu doesn’t sell alcohol when— “

feixiao stubbornly cuts you off, “ nonsense! to hell with it! “

she swiftly swipes your cup, brings it to her lips, and downs the strong, rich content. you and jing yuan’s jaw drop in astonishment as she gulps everything down.

“ fei—y-you didn’t— “

“ and i did! seee, mymostamazingbelovedmate?” she drunkenly slurs, slamming the cup back on the table. “ i can handle a little cup of wine jusst fine! your most fantastic lover can handle it! “ feixiao’s bright ocean eyes are already half-lidded and dazed as she clumsily stands up, nearly falling backwards trying to maintain her balance.

“ that’s not—feixiao! sit your stupid ass back down before you fall and hit your head! “

“ you should listen to your spouse. we wouldn’t want the lacking general to get a knot on her head after getting defeated by a mere cup of wine, hm? “ jing yuan advises casually before clearing his throat. he takes a long sip of his wine. you pinch the bridge of your nose because of his mocking comment.

“ haahhhh? “ feixiao glared angrily at the man before raising her foot, and slammed her heel down on the table, sending it flying in the air. did this man just purposely provoke feixiao? you can’t even call him petty at this point because she was the one who destroyed his property the last time he saw her.

“ let’s take this outside, jing yuan! just because my dear lover is here. . .doesn’t mean. . .i won’t. . “ feixiao trails off sleepily, losing her footing and falls sideways. luckily, her head lands safely on your lap, body stretched out perfectly on the tatami mat. you sighed in great relief, stroking her head as she sleeps soundly. “ you knew she’d do this which is why you made that comment earlier, huh? “

jing yuan simply smiles at you, the smug look evident in his golden hues.

“ not exactly. but i’ll say this, i forgive but i don’t forget. “

you roll your eyes at him.

[ssahotchnerr]

ellie is an animal person to a FAULT. one time you’re in the kitchen while aaron’s weeding the yard and you just hear

“can we keep him?”

“el- ABSOLUTELY NOT”

and then it devolves into classic hotchner bickering because ellie’s too stubborn to back down from a fight, no matter how pointless it is. you look up, expecting your daughter to have found a frog, a turtle, maybe a stray kitten at the wildest.

you look out the window, and clasped in your daughter’s outstretched hands is the largest opossum you’ve ever seen.

omg stop that’s too funny 😭😭😭

likewise, aaron's expecting to see a frog when he hears ellie's initial question. but when he turns around, sees the opossum in her hand, he literally jumps. like his first initial reaction is to fling it away!!!!! 😭 but the horror is soon replaced - he's impressed.

like you mean to tell him, his little girl is brave enough to catch that thing, while most would be running at the sight of it 😭

and clearly there's no way she can keep it, so he tries veryyy hard to keep his amusement at bay when he's like, "eleanor, no you can not keep it."

of course ellie whines in response, stomps her foot, and aaron turns back to the weeding because he knows her protests are coming (also to hide his laughter). without turning around, again, he says, "ellie, go put it back where you found it."

"why?"

"please."

"why!!!!!!!" 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

LMAO maybe he comes up with the excuse you're 'allergic' to opossums, and just outdoor animals to prevent another instance like this 🤭 which ellie buys 🥺 not wanting it to bother you 🥹🥰

you've also chosen to stay inside during this whole thing, deciding this is a Dad matter LOL. but you're thoroughly entertained nonetheless, watching/listening to the two of them go at it as to why ellie should or should not keep the opossum.

so she trudges off to the back of the yard where she found it. and puts it back (aaron did take a picture, don't worry!! plus he needs evidence because there's no way the bau is going to believe this)

aaron also just plainly watches her in disbelief and in awe 😭 ellie surprises him every single day, and this. he'll remember it forever 🥰

and so, ellie wanting to domesticate an opossum absolutely goes down in hotchner family history 😭 like that night at dinner, when jack's home from his friend's and aaron's like, "ellie, tell your brother what you did today. 🤨" ellie's whole face lights up and she grins, "i caught a 'possum!!!!"

jack's equally as shocked, turns to you and aaron for actual confirmation, and his jaw drops as aaron slowly nods his head. hehe when ellie begins rattling off the story of how she found it, caught it, etc.. you and aaron share a look from across the table 🥹 one that's - our daughter is crazy, but love her more than anything in the whole world 🥰🫶🏻💞

[bubbles-for-all-of-us]

I saw you write for Ghost, if you want could you do some fluff with him? No pressure🥰

Till last breath

a/n I had this story in my drafts for over year and it’s been deleted on multiple occasions but I guess we are bringing it back cause I always had a soft spot for it… idk

warning: injuries, blood, guns, shot wounds, hurt comfort our favorite. Our oc’s nickname is Sugar. Have fun.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

He hadn’t slept in the last 48 hours. Couldn’t both allow himself to and equally as much even if he tried Simon knew that his mind would not still enough for even a restless slumber. You spent exactly 43h 37min and 59s being held hostage. And still, he’s here running over every single second of when you were there. Cold cell. Waterboarding. Knives. Their hands on you. It’s as if it’s all now permanently engraved in Simon’s brain. A new scar to carry. New guilt to bear.

His head snaps to the side at the sound outside his room. There’s a commotion and he knows he should move but he can’t. Not until there’s a harsh knock on his door. A relentless one. Forcing him to pull the blanket off his body. “What do you bloody want?”, Ghost grunts the doors slightly agare as he stares at the person in front of him. “Moving base, cap said it’s not safe”, Soap says calmly, bags beneath his eyes. He too had been restless. Not leaving Ghost’s side the whole time the operation was in motion. “Now?”, Simon’s tone is a lot different now yet still sharp enough to not appear weak.

“No, I got dressed at 3 am because i love it”, Soap rolls his eyes before stepping back to make room for the running soldiers. “Fucking hell”, Ghost grunts, running a hand over his mask. “30 min”, Soap nods making Simon grunt as he shoves the door closed only to be met with his teammate's foot in between the door. “What now?”, Simon sighs but he knows the look on Soap’s face. Knows what he’s about to say. “Can’t get to Sugar’s room, she must have locked herself in”, he nods towards the door right next to Ghost’s. “She’s not in the medical?”, he frowns glancing over. “Despatched herself an hour after we got her there. Just double check…”, Soap rambles on but Simon can’t listen, won’t listen to it, “I will”, he nods sharply moving back. “With the number of sedatives”, Soap shakes his head and that’s it. That’s all it takes for Ghost to snap, “Soap. I. Fucking. Will.”, he practically growls before kicking the door shut.

His head rests against the wood for a moment as he lets himself breathe. Just for a moment before he springs into action. Crossing his room in no time. Showing things into a bag. “Hey”, he’s slowly reaching out. The clammy skin he is met with makes his insides turn. But he knows he has to. There’s no other way. A little groan fills the silence followed by a pained whimper. “I know, I'm sorry but we need to go, they are moving base. Someone must be on our ass”, Simon says quietly, listening to the uneven breathing.

“I should have tied you to the bed in med”, he says through gritted teeth as you slowly peel your eyes open. “Can you move at all?”, he knows that it’s the stupidest question ever with the injuries that you have. “Simon”, it’s barely a whisper but it’s enough to leave him defenseless. “Don’t speak just nod or blink”, he softly cups your face, “Let’s try to sit up, yeah”, he can sense the dread yet you nod, his arms moving across your shoulders as he slowly lifts you. The pain on your face makes him want to scream. And then your head lulls back. “Shit”, he winces himself before lowering you down. The bandages all soaked in blood screaming at him.

“That bad”, you whisper, eyes not leaving him. He doesn’t answer. His jaw is clenched so hard it hurts but he needs that pain now. Needs something else running through his head. “You’re hot”, his palm rests against your forehead. “Are you hitting on me lieutenant?”, you manage to pull a pained smile making Simon shake his head, “You’re a mad woman”, he grunts. “Mad for you”, you mutter watching his eyes snap at you. “Bloody hell”, he murmurs throwing his head back. “Now who’s hot and bothered?”, you try to chuckle but it only results in a pained expression. “If you weren’t bleeding out in my bed I would throw you over my shoulder”, Ghost threatens only making you smile, “Don’t threaten me with a good time”, just he’s not ready to joke and it shows.

“How bad?”, his voice is firm as he looks right at you. “It’s manageable”, you whisper but you can tell that he doesn’t buy it. “Y/n… We don’t keep shit from one another”, he leans forward, cupping your cheek. “Really bad”, you can feel tears prickling your eyes but you refuse to give in the panic. “It’s okay, you’ll be okay, I will make it better”, Simon kisses your cheek, before resting his forehead against yours for a heartbeat. “Come on, I will carry you”, he muses, pulling back. “But the walking order”, you protest, knowing the base rules like the back of your hand. “I will shoot them in the shins so they would have to crawl themselves”, Ghost states casually. Yanking the blanket from the bed wrapping it around your body. He knows it’s the fever that makes you shiver so badly but still, after hours in that cell…

The clammy burn of your skin against his neck makes his insides twist. He endured so much. Seen so much torture and pain. Yet none of it made Simon feel this bone-deep sickness of watching your already frail body go weaker. “Do you still want to get that pottery set when we get back?”, he knows that he’s pulling shit out of his ass now, trying to keep you awake. To keep you up. Until he can change your bandages in the truck. “You hate pottery”, you frown slightly. “I’ve been thinking about a design to paint on it” He hadn’t given it much thought. You had been testing his limits. But saying no to you was another thing Simon struggled with. And now looking at that slight smile on your lips it feels more than worth it. “Did you?”, you whispered, voice raspy as you clung to him.

“Yeah, maybe we could paint a mug for one another”, he suggests stepping past the chaos in the hallway with calculated ease. “You do like your tea”, you whimpered against his skin. I like you more, he screamed in his head. “Why is your heart beating so fast? Are you hurt?”, your palm moves over his heart. One that has been doing overtime ever since. “I am unharmed I’m just… worried”, he admits because what’s the point in lying. “Why”, the question makes Simon want to scream. “Fucking hell, Sugs, I feel your blood seeping through my shirt and fingers and you look like you’re one step from crossing the threshold”, he practically cries through gritted teeth.

Your fingers reach up to his neck, gently brushing the tight muscles before inching beneath the material of the mask. Ever so slightly. Skimming over his jaw. Feeling the stubble prickling the pads of your fingers. “Look at me”, you mutter, but his face doesn’t move. “Simon fucking Riley”, you grip his jaw, pulling his face down as he halts. “I will pull through”, you say firmly feeling the edges of your vision blur. “You fucking better because I would not make it out without you”, his words leave a pang in your heart but you manage to give him a slight smile, “Tell that to me one more time when I am not…”, and that’s it your head falls against his shoulder. Body going limp making Simon hold onto you even tighter. As he steps to the outside his worried gaze is quickly replaced by the iron steal one. Cold enough to kill the stupid ones who dare to meet his eyes.

“Over here”, Price doesn’t ask but Simon can read his cap without words after so many years together. So he simply shakes his head. “Nurse is already insane. Back seats are just for her”, Price claps him on the shoulder. Simon doesn’t speak. Can’t find it in him. He would crack and he can’t crack. His shoulders droop with ease when his eyes land on Price’s wife, medical bag already open. A drip hung from the roof of the car. “Our trouble maker”, she grunts spotting you two and instantly moving to make room for Ghost. “She got wounded…”, Simon starts but she simply places a hand on his palm gripping onto you, “I know, honey, Price told me everything”, Simon is about to thank her and plead with her to do what it takes as he carefully lowers you onto the back seat when a sharp voice rings out, “She can’t be here”.

“Pardon”, Ghost turns back, facing the chaos once more. “The rule.. she didn’t… you carried her and this is an emergency evacuation”, the first-year-old nearly trembles as Ghost fully stands up, towering over him. “Ghost, stand back”, Price places a warm hand on his back but Simon doesn’t move. “Who do you think you are?”, the lieutenant’s voice is full of malice as he sizes the soldier up and down. “She should be left behind she’s our weakness”, there’s no rational thinking as Ghost reaches for Price’s gun aiming it at the boy before firing it right into his thigh. The scream that rings out is enough to drown out the commotion.

“Crawl if you can”, Ghost grunts through clenched teeth. “That is out of line, I will…”, the soldier whimpers, tears staining his cheeks. Ghost aims the gun at his head. “Ghost, last warning”, Price claps a hand around the back of his neck, “Think about Sugar. She needs you. Push it down”. Your name seems to breathe a sense of sanity back into him. Pointing the gun to the sky Ghost fires at the air one last time. “Listen closely you fucking scums”, his whole troop is quivering. The pathetic look makes Simon’s blood boil. “That’s my fucking wife bleeding out in that car right now”, he growls, pointing the gun back at them, “If you have a bone to pick feel free to. But you will have to go through me to get to her”, he holds eye contact with them for a heartbeat before shoving the gun at Price’s chest and climbing into the truck.

“Move your piss bags”, Soap’s voice rings out, “Before I leave you running next to the trucks”, he’s shoving the soldiers by the uniform before glancing at the open back. At Ghost crotched down by you, the scared palm resting against your forehead. “Fucking wife”, he mutters glancing at Price. “Don’t look at me, I found out only because I know how to make my wife talk”, the captain shrugs before motioning for Soap to get in too.

[sethsclearwater]

okay hear me out - so i just learned on tiktok that apparently women get super easily attached to men (or women lol) who make them orgasm and i immediately thought of poly!paulxreaderxembry where paul is OBSESSED with making reader cum all the time and makes a random (unrelated) joke about her being super attached to him and embry is just rolling his eyes and telling him duh ofc she is - you're fucking with her hormones all the time by making her cum so often and paul is just DUMBFOUNDED at the fact that the main reason reader is so attached to him is because he literally just makes her cum multiple times a day.

embry is definitely one of the smarter ones of the group😭

...

"princess," paul started with a soft laugh, "you can come over here y'know," he teased when he saw your figure in the door frame of your shared apartment's living room.

your cheeks were immediately heating up to a bright red at his comment but you were nonetheless over the moon that he'd proactively offered to let you sit with him so you were quickly stepping over to sit down in his lap.

your other imprinter also let out a breathy laugh at the two of your's interaction. paul helped you sit situated so you were curled up in his lap but your legs could be outstretched enough for your feet to land in embry's lap, "so needy sometimes," paul teased, both boys laughing when you immediately buried your face in the crook of his neck in a weak attempt to hide your embarrassment over the whole ordeal.

"obviously she's needy," embry rolled his eyes despite the fact that you couldn't see it, a small smile on his face gave away he was just teasing you and paul, "have you seen how often you make her cum? you're fucking with her hormones doing that all the time," he added with a laugh.

you lifted your head from paul's shoulder at that, both you and paul wearing equally confused expressions as you looked at each other and then over to embry for some kind of additional explanation.

"every time you make her cum you release an insane amount of oxytocin and dopamine in her brain," embry explained, looking a little disturbed that neither you nor paul had any clue what the hell he was talking about. when embry saw that you two were still silently trying to process what he was explaining, he added, "those two make her feel attached to you which is why she wants to be around you all the time."

paul blinked twice, opening his mouth to respond to embry but nothing seemed to come out so he turned his attention over to you, "so what i'm hearing is embry needs to make you cum more often," he started, all three of you letting out loud laughs at paul's comment.

although paul definitely was a bit more obsessed with making you cum multiple times a day than his counterpart, embry was definitely not lacking in the releasing-your-feel-good-hormones department.

"i can't believe you didn't know that," embry said with a laugh, rolling his eyes as he gently rubbed your foot with one hand while reaching for the remote with his other so the three of you could get something on to watch before bed.

paul seemed content with his newfound realization, just settled for pressing his lips to the crown of your head, squeezing your hip playfully which had you giggling again as you got cuddled up with the two boys for a movie night.

[bulbabutt]

okay. lets bite the bullet and talk about 2012. lets talk about child abuse, familial abuse, generational abuse, toxic family units, whatever you wanna call it. lets talk about it and whether it exists in this show. i actually encourage you to read this no matter what your take is, just to hear it out. let me be FUCKING clear: i love this show, but i get scared to talk about it seriously. everyone on every side is defensive all the time but i love every turtles show to no end.

this post is going to go over so well and not controversially at all.

precursor: every splinter is some level of shitty dad. he always has been. the fucking bare bones of the character is that he raised his children to kill the man who killed his own father. thats inherently fucked up. every splinter has some level of fucked up about him. maybe hes inattentive, or neglectful, or strict, or secretive, maybe hes just not very good at dealing with his kids. splinter is supposed to be far from perfect. thats what makes him splinter. maybe he grows over the course of a series, maybe he doesnt. maybe hes supposed to be shitty his whole life, maybe hes not. thats just splinter. each is adapted differently depending on the story being told.

and 2012 has a very interesting tone to its story.

lets start at the beginning, back in japan. this is season 3, was this story what they intended when they started writing the show back in season 1? probably not, theres probably things they would have written differently had they known this was where splinter's story started. thats kind of the way tv works, you add the details later. but for our sake of analyzing the character of splinter as a whole, it seems best to start here as if its all intentional.

hamato yoshi is a member of the hamato clan. theyre a very traditional old ninja clan in the modern world, they have old feuds and theyre trying to keep their culture alive. they're literally the last of a clan of ninjas like this, having (supposedly) defeated the foot clan (their generational enemies) back when yoshi was a baby. hes set out to lead next, and its very important to him. and yet hes married to a woman who works in the city, a modern woman who doesnt live the life he does. she even moved to be with him. i feel the need to compare this to how men in the real world who want traditional wives never go for women who are willing to be their housewives, always try to break down the independent ones. splinter seems unconcerned with how his wife wants to live. with how she wants their daughter to be raised.

im not necessarily saying this is how this comes off in the show, but i find it interesting to think about. this is absolutely the most rounded version of tang shen as a character (thus far) it stops her being just a name on a page "hamato yoshi's love and the object of his enemies affections who died" and turns her into a woman who has a stake in the story. gives her more agency.

its very interesting that this show implies an actual relationship between tang shen and oroku saki, albeit a one-sided one that didnt work out, but they do seem to have parted on equal ground. the pair of them discuss yoshi's inattentive duties as a husband and father, that he's too obsessed with the tradition and lineage of his clan. honestly, if this woman just took her baby and left no one would blame her! he has his priorities set, and it leaves no room for her and their newborn baby. if she ran away with saki at this point, the story would make just as much sense.

but then disaster strikes, saki learns the truth about his family, that he was actually a child of the foot clan (honestly i wish we saw this play out instead of jumping ahead in the story but thats not what this post is about) and he kills he and yoshi's father. revenge for him having killed his. cycles of abuse and revenge that never end. the pair of them were raised in this society that values lineage like this, that would kill for it. its no wonder they both grew up this way.

anyway, tang shen is killed by a blow meant for yoshi, and saki takes their child and raises her. based on splinter's lack of desire to be a father so far in the story, its honestly not one you can blame him for. its fucked up, but it makes sense. saki does to miwa exactly what his father did to him. cycles of abuse and revenge.

yoshi loses everything, and moves to america. he's turned into splinter the mutant rat, and gains four turtle sons.

so as established, he's not exactly grown up with a stable family life. he obviously, while human, wasnt acting as a stable father for the child he intended to have. so how good is he at this?

ive talked before about how the 2003 show treats the turtles as kind of one whole unit. they don't have individual relationship arcs, they dont have overarching storylines where they grow apart or closer, they're always in each other's corner.

2012 makes this more dynamic. here we see that 15 years seeing no one but each other, growing under this splinter has come with its own quirks. these brothers dont understand each other that well. they get jealous of each others treatment, some are left out, some are misunderstood. raph resents leo, none of them appreciate what donnie does, mikey bothers everyone else for attention, etc. it creates a really good starting place for this show.

(the issue i have with this show is more that they never really open or close any of these beats, at least not in ways that last. but boy does it make for some good dramatic scenes)

we see over the course of this first season that splinter treats his children just as he was, as little ninjas more so than sons. he raises them to follow his traditions, the ones tang shen never cared for. but this is all he knows how to be! you cant really blame him.

most people bring up mikey as the quintessential example when they talk about this, i dont want to do that cuz i know you've all heard it. while i think his father does disrespect him and i think it is paid forward and his brothers do too, i'd rather talk about raph for a change.

in one episode, raph loses his temper. to teach him a lesson, splinter makes his brothers pelt him in training while insulting him any way they can, and tells him to just... not lose his temper. this is a terrible lesson in general. instead of trying to coax out why he might be angry, it just plays up that if he loses his temper bad things happen.

splinter in this episode basically encourages bullying. this comes up a lot when it comes to raph. to compare, in 2003 when raph loses his temper, hes told to blow off steam which he does. his brothers don't blame him for having emotional outbursts, they know thats just how he is so they know how he needs to cope with it. he's given the physical space to let it out.

im not saying this show needs to be like that show, im just saying thats a version of this story where the outcome is better for raph as a whole. since this outcome is not as good for him emotionally, you can tell why he's still got these emotional issues. splinter never helps him more than that. thats more why this raph differs from that one, if that makes sense. one has his family in his corner more than the other.

speaking of. raph has a pet turtle. this turtle is the only one he can talk to about how he feels. why might that be? it's the only thing hes kind and gentle to, and he refuses to let his brothers make him feel weak for being kind to it. where did he learn to be ashamed of being kind and gentle? thats a learned behaviour. in a house full of other men... yeah, that would happen. but whos values start that?

when this turtle gets some mutagen spilled on it, it tries to get revenge on his family. there is such a resentment going on here, its extremely juicy. the show chalks this up to "post mutation insanity", but its just as easy to think that everything raph has experienced has made him seem angry and resentful and perhaps scared to his pet, and that former pet wants raph to himself so they can be free. the frustrated venting of a child complaining about how no one understands him in such a big way turns slash into a vengeful monster, cuz thats all he's ever heard. it makes sense, he went from a little turtle to a fully cognizant adult aged being in an instant. emotionally no one would handle that well, and definitely not someone whos only ever heard the worst about people.

he comes around later. notably by being on his own, away from the hamatos.

again, im not saying the show is writing this intentionally, but i think tonally its in the zone where you could see this analysis as being canon. that these little pieces of narrative fit the worldview of a toxic family unit that isnt dealing with its problems in a healthy way.

there's other small aspects. leo slaps mikey early on, having seen it on his favourite show be used as a way of getting someone to calm down. mikey questions this behaviour, leo seems to feel bad about it when questioned. if we know that that behaviour was bad, what other things might he emulate in a similar way?

there's things like donnie's predatory behaviour towards april. in a world where all they ever knew was splinter's stories of the outside world (and perhaps television from decades earlier), hearing splinter's story of his love for tang shen, his rivalry with his own brother over her, you could actually see why he would behave the way he does, why he claims her the way he does. not as an excuse, but as a reason he learned the behaviour. and there's multiple opportunities for his father to tell him off. he never does. why would he? he knows no better.

this splinter, unlike every other, is not old or disabled. he doesnt require a cane (at the start, but also was never a good cane) and its interesting that despite being like... a 40 year old man in the peak of his life he does not accompany his sons on missions. he sits around doing nothing and disproves of his sons heroic actions. april literally calls him out for this at one point. the show is actually telling us some of this man's behaviour is wrong.

one of the more upsetting things that happens in this household is a lot of physical hitting. "theyre training" you might say. understandable. but when you see a lot of hitting come from the father in this show, played for a laugh, when you see splinter play the "drunk master" bit it makes you think. is that okay? isnt that a bit much?

the end of the muckman episode is a freeze frame of splinter (after having knocked out all of his sons to punish them for leaving while grounded) turning his anger on april and her running away. idk thats just not funny to me. this is a bit of the dating of the show, 2012 was a time where character's in shows were meaner, less affectionate, more bullying in nature. that was the sense of humour at the time. that isnt me making a judgment, it's just kind of the era. a pre steven universe world, if that makes sense. so many of the jokes that end in a hit aren't funny in 2024. especially not when they come from a parent.

when this splinter speaks about his kids to their brothers he often ends up insulting them. "you should be like mikey, he never overthinks because he doesn't think", this would be a big reason the boys speak about each other the way they do to their faces. puts forward a bit more of that bullying thing i mentioned earlier. if their own father talks about them like this, of course their brothers do too. so of course they join in and give payback.

again. splinter wasnt raised in a normal family. he was raised in a ninja commune with a bunch of murderers. he wasn't great with his wife and baby daughter. its not surprising that he's bad at this.

so, ive just said a bunch of things about what's wrong with this household as a whole. i think ive explained why the family unit behaves the way it does: generational teachings of feuds and traditional values. i dont think this makes the show bad! i, in fact, wish there was more of it. i think theres so much low hanging fruit that the show kind of wants to play with, but cant fully bring itself to.

specific example: during the space arc on a planet thats driving all the characters emotions against each other we get this amazing scene where raph screams at leo for being splinter's favourite. leo responds by hugging him. its really well done!

however its never brought up again, never actually getting into the nitty gritty of why raph feels like that is exactly what i think makes this show resonate with so many people

its dark! it pulls at your heart strings! it makes people feel seen! we go in mikey's head at one point and see such splintered (lol) personalities in his head. he has a huge anger problem (much like raph) in there. he retreats into imagination land when stressed. the show kind of toys with "these kids are fucked up!" but never lets those character moments go anywhere. i love how fucked up this family is. its so complex, it feels real. at least real to me. i wish it went that little step further and let the characters talk about these things a little more.

maybe you have a different experience, and thats fine! but i wouldnt brush off people like me who look at 2012 and say "these dynamics make me uncomfortable". to excuse it by saying "my family is like that and we're fine" sometimes i just wanna say... <:/ are you? have you talked about that? and if that's your read on it is that its fine, thats great. but some people notice patterns and those patterns can make them uncomfortable. i hope ive explained the patterns here.

i think thats why the fandom is as big as it is. this show would lead to the most amazing deep introspective fan-works youve ever seen, it lays the pieces out so perfectly for you to draw your own conclusions about why they are this way. you cant really blame people for talking about it as if its got a way higher rating than it does. it feels like it does.

i should say, i dont even know if i blame the show on its own for leaving those pieces laying there, it was on nickelodeon. i sense studio meddling in the tone. i mean, given that the show wanted to end with the big mutant apocalypse storyline, and yet the network wanted to end it with the big 87 crossover..... yeah i think its safe to say nick would rather they keep it light.

which is funny, because i think the most controversial thing i can say is i personally love the finale arc as the mutant apocalypse. it so encapsulates my favorite part of this show. to end this show in the darkest timeline and say "even though these characters are so far removed from who they used to be and even though the entire world is over they still have each other in the end" and i find that so perfect.

so. i understand that this is always a touchy topic. i know people want to brush it off as "people say the 12 brothers are abusive to mikey but mikey is fine", and i think thats a really skewed version of it from both sides. first of all. mikey is not fine, look in that boys head. look how he copes. he's not. but also, mikey is not the only victim. they all are. these turtles are victims of their upbringing, victims of generational war. of men who didnt know how to be good fathers in the first place. and thats good writing! it feels deep! it connects!

for more context: any fucked up way you can think of karai being raised by shredder? its probably the same way here. splinter and shredder were raised the same way.

i guess i think about this a lot, cuz i always see things like "oh, rise fans write crossovers where the rise boys love each other and have to teach the 12 boys how to be nice cuz they dont like 2012!" and i just think to myself:

guys. do you understand why a person might do that? why would someone (likely a teenager) want 2012 mikey to be treated nicely by a kinder more openly affectionate version of his own family? do i need to spell that out for you? why do we connect with media at all, why do we write our own stories about it?

if you genuinely dont. i mean, im glad for you. but sometimes you wanna imagine a world in which your own family is more openly affectionate with you. where they hug and tell you theyre proud and love you and you never have to question it, never have to look elsewhere for that kind of approval. its less that they're idolizing rise, and more that they're looking at the two families and saying "this one is emotionally mature and in touch with their feelings more than that one. how would that play out?"

doctor feelings ass response.

look, im not saying everyone understands 2012, that everyone likes or needs to like it. im just trying to say that i think these fucked up parts of 2012 are all around my favourite parts of the show. its an inspiring story about this fucked up little family that has no one but each other, and they're not great about it. they try, but they don't always get it right. i just wish the show would have talked about that part more. but i think that since it doesnt people get to fill in those blanks themselves, and they do it so beautifully. and i really wish people on the internet would be more kind to one another when they wanted to discuss these darker themes they find in it.

these are the reasons i love this show. i think its so very interesting that splinter dies this fucked up father figure who never really apologized for his behaviour. i like that raph needs to be held to stop punching his brothers. that leo doesnt have a good grip on what it is to be a leader, that he tries bad ways of doing it. i like that no one copes well! i like that their relationships are so complex! this show is messy! its good! i wish it was more messy!

and id love if we could be more honest about these things and how they make us feel instead of just brushing each other off as "likes the show" or "doesnt like the show". the things that make me uncomfortable are why i love this show and i'm pretty sure i'm not alone there.

[rainbow-femme]

Of all the companion pairings, I hadn’t expected Wyll/Karlach being my favorite but I just love the dynamic

Because obviously you’ve got the whole thing of him wanting to kill her because he thought she was evil and then realized she was also a victim and was willing to be turned into a demon because he wasn’t willing to sacrifice an innocent person for himself, and her then being willing to stand up to the devils who want her dead on his behalf

But I also feel like as far as a relationship dynamic they would be a Prince Charming/damsel thing except they both think they’re the Prince Charming and the other is the damsel

Wyll lamenting how his endlessly kind wife who only wants to live a simple life where she is treated equally kindly was tricked, sold, had her heart replaced with an infernal engine that keeps her trapped in basically hell, and was forced to be the first line of attack for the devil who did this to her. Meanwhile behind him Karlach is looking at a locked metal gate and just decides to open it by bending the bars with her bare hands, melting the iron as she does because she has flames inside of her body

Karlach talking about her poor husband Wyll who gave up a comfortable life as the son of a duke to be entered into a devil’s pact and made into a homeless hero who would always protect people but never really get to exist as his own person outside of his pact and his folk hero perception. Meanwhile Wyll is eldritch blasting a demon in the face behind her with an entirely casual and unbothered look on his face

They fix Karlach to the point where she can leave Avernus and Wyll goes to his family and friends to prepare them for meeting her, telling them that she can be very sensitive and has gone through some rough times and grew up on the streets so she’s going to be more rough around the edges than they’re used to and it would probably upset her to come back home only to be made fun of, so please be kind. And in walks his 7 foot tall wife who is as wide as the door with her big giant muscles, battle ax strapped to her back, slapping Duke Ravengard on the shoulder and asking “How the hell are ya?”

Karlach goes to her old Baldur’s Gate friends and says she wants them to meet her husband but he’s the son of nobility and spent a long time living in that more polished world so he talks very formal and polite and isn’t really used to how they talk and interact so please don’t make fun of him if you think he speaks funny. And in walks the Blade of the Frontiers with a suspicious amount of not quite dried blood on his pants

They both think they’re the “They said no pickles” part of the relationship but actually if they asked for no pickles and were given pickles they would make eye contact with the person who did it while using their biggest two handed weapon to scrape the pickles off onto the floor

[midnightstar-kpopsmut]

Chapter II, The Electric Sheep

- I should probably start by telling you who this guy is.” Said Jimmy. - His name is Cheongtae, and he is Korean. Handsome, like you, discrete, he owns a high quality hair saloon here in Gangnam.”

- Is Cheongtae your...” started the American.

- You want to ask if he is my friend, how do I know him, why did he told me all of this.” Jimmy was impatient. - But believe me, our relationship doesn’t really matter now. I trust him enough to know that the story is true in every detail. Let me tell it to you exactly how I’ve heard it from him. I will use English, since you don’t know Korean. Some nuances could be lost, please forgive me for my simple language.

This is how, according to Jimmy, Cheongtae recounted his pleasurable encounter with Karina to him.

- I was already a bit stressed when riding in her elevator. You know where she lives now, she moved in those apartments on the north river side, with the private park at the center of the towers... Her manager had texted me a couple of hours before. It was urgent, he said. Karina was supposed to make a comeback in three weeks. We already had multiple sessions scheduled at the saloon, for her and the other members. But they needed me to come at her place, right now, for a quick check-up.

Karina has a big mouth. She is not vulgar or anything, just a bit exigent. She knows what she wants. When I worked for her she kept pestering me endlessly, talking about how she had this idea for a detail of the hair style while on vacation, how she wasn’t sure if it was something I was used to do... All while I waited with scissors in hand. Once I started cutting she calmed down. She reminded me of one of those dogs that bark and fight until you finally put them on a leash. Then they behave.

That’s why I was a bit stressed on the elevator. Hair is serious in Kpop. It’s part of the reason why I like to work for idols. But if they needed me to go directly to her place it meant that the stakes were even higher. I was expecting a big meeting of some sort, probably requested by Karina herself. When I finally put my foot into the entrance I was surprised. I couldn’t hear anyone, just the calm sound of the end of an afternoon. Karina was alone.

She greets me firmly. - Oppa, finally. Come in. You really like to make women wait.” Oppa? I think. She knows I am married. Damn she is annoying. - Palli palli (- It means fast in Korean, added Jimmy: - Please learn this.), why are you moving in slow motion?” She wants to chit chat. And I am already out of it. Still, for the sake of business, I try to get into her mood: - You surely seem ready to go to a party.” She doesn’t like it. - A party? Dressed like this?” I look at her clothes, a pair of the most fluffy cargo pants, gray, and an expensive crop top, black. Nothing on her feet. She keeps going: - Please, please, please. Don’t stand there! I told you to come in.” I advance in the living room. I had never seen Karina outside of my shop, but still I had knew her for some time, I had no much interest. My focus shifted naturally on the style of the space. The living room is the only thing you can see when entering, you discover it in one striking blow. There are two, huge, sofas, that almost form a U shape. Light blue as the main color, very modern style. The floor takes a downward step to get to the sofas, it’s sophisticated. After this area you get to the windows, then a veranda. You could say that interior design is one my passions, but I see you don’t care so let’s keep going.

- Do you... like it?” Asks me Karina. - Sure, I like it. It’s good quality.” I don’t get to the veranda. I stop at the couches and turn to myself, an equally impressive open kitchen stands behind, hidden from the entrance. All the other rooms are out of sight, you get to them through corridors. By looking around I finally realize that something is missing. I can’t see Karina’s manager anywhere. I was already surprised of not seeing the whole team here, but the manager, I thought, was a given, since he was the one who wrote to me. - Where is your manager?” I ask.

- Oh, him. My manager...” Her tone floats. Her head is all over the place, I think. - He is not here.

- But how... I mean, he wrote to me, I thought it would be here. But he doesn’t have to, now that I think of it.

- Actually “I” wrote to you. I met him this morning, to discuss things, he forgot his phone here. It’s his working phone. I am going to give it back to him tomorrow.

- You wrote like if it was him. And you have my number. Why didn’t you write to me from your phone?

- I don’t know! How can I know? Maybe I thought it was more professional. Why are you asking me all these questions?! Can’t you see I am stressed already? If I manage to piss off Karina, I am cooked. - I am sorry.” I say. - It’s ok” she answers. - But really, you haven’t seen me in a while. Look at me. Can’t you see that I am stressed?” I look at her. She looks electric. It’s also because of the look. The crop top has that kind of fluffy texture that could come directly from the body of an electrical galactic sheep. I kind of like it, it is hot. Good choice on her. Not that I would expect any less, from one of the constantly ranking top 5 idols in popularity.

- What are you looking at?” She asks. - Your crop top. - Anything else?” And then I notice it. I could have done sooner, but I didn’t. Her breast had taken some sizes. Only her breast, not the rest of her body or her face. Two sizes, at least.

I nod to myself. What a reaction to have. Anyway.

- Exactly. That’s why I am stressed. Sit with me. I really need you today.

[mellowsadistic]

Alison sulked on her time-out stool, wondering how long she'd been sitting there. There were no clocks in her nursery, but it felt like hours since her husband had dragged her inside, changed her into one of her punishment diapers, and sat her in the corner with that stupid tiara on her head.

She squirmed a little on her seat and winced. Her bottom was still sore from the spanking she'd received earlier - her husband hadn't been at all pleased when he'd found out how much she'd spent on his credit card, and she'd had to endure almost twenty minutes kicking and crying over his lap before he'd let her up. It wasn't fair! She'd been on a shopping spree with her girlfriends! Was she just supposed to have tagged along, not buying anything? She was sure her friends had spent just as much money as she had... but she was equally sure that none of them were sitting on red bottoms right now, nor would they be wearing diapers, and not one of their houses would have a nursery in it just for them. No, they had husbands who treated them with respect, or who at least saw them as adults.

Alison felt herself going red as she imagined what her friends would say if they could see her now, being punished like a naughty toddler. She knew she ought to put her foot down and insist that she wouldn't let herself be treated like this, but it was just so hard to protest when her husband spoke to her in his authoritative voice, with that stern look in his eyes. For all her feminist ideals and principles, she never managed to do more than whimper when he told her off like a child and announced that she was getting a spanking and a stint in diapers to teach her a lesson. The little plastic tiara was the cherry on top. Her husband called it her "princess potty-pants" tiara, and she had to wear it whenever she wore her diapers. It made her feel like a stupid little girl playing dress-up, and no doubt that was exactly how he wanted her to feel.

Alison scowled around at her nursery with its stupid playmat and its mind-numbing baby toys and the dumb stuffed animals lying around everywhere. She particularly despised the oversized baby blocks sitting on the shelf that held her diapers. She did not love diapers. In fact, she hated them more than anything else in the whole world. She hated how they pushed her legs apart, she hated the way they crinkled with every movement, and most of all she hated what they were for. Alison squirmed again and pressed her thighs together as close as they would go, then let out a quite moan of distress. She needed to pee badly. She was no stranger to this kind of punishment, as the full diaper pail in the corner could attest, but somehow, no matter how many times she was forced to wet herself, it never got easier.

After another minute of increasingly desperate wiggling, she gave up. With a deep breath, Alison clenched her eyes shut and relaxed her bladder. The stream began at once. "Eww..." she whined under her breath, winkling her nose in disgust as she felt the thick padding between her legs start to swell up with pee. "Ew, ew, ewww!" Warmth spread from her crotch, but the knowledge of what she was doing rid the sensation of any pleasantness. She was peeing herself. She was wetting her diaper like an overgrown baby. Tears filled her eyes as her thick baby pants became soggier and soggier. The smell of urine reached her nose and she sobbed. She fell so small, so stupid.

Then came her husband's voice. "Alright, baby girl, time-out is over."

She looked up through her tear-filled eyes to see him walking into the room, looking highly satisfied at the sight of her desperate expression.

"Uh-oh," he said, a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth, "I think someone's had a little accident. Have you wet yourself, baby?"

Alison sobbed again and nodded. She lifted her fists to her eyes to wipe the tears from them, so she didn't notice her husband's hand until it was already sliding down the front of her diaper. She let out a squeal of protest, but it went ignored.

"Oh my, you're absolutely soaked!" he said, feeling the sodden padding in her diaper. "You really had to go, didn't you, princess potty-pants?" He withdrew his hand and tapped her on the nose. "I guess that tiara's not just for show, is it?" He straightened up. "You can stand up now, baby."

Alison got shakily to her feet, cringing as her diaper sagged heavily between her legs. It was so wet that she could feel the warm, swollen padding brushing against her thighs, and it was drooping down almost to her knees. A whine rose involuntarily in her throat, and she couldn't help flapping her hands in revulsion. It was so yucky!

"You don't like wearing wet diapers, do you, Alison?" her husband asked.

Alison bit back her retort. Of course she didn't! "No, Daddy," she said, unable to bring herself to look him in the eyes.

"And you don't like being spanked either, do you?"

There was a pause. "No, Daddy."

"Do you know why Daddy has to spank your little bottom and make you wear diapers?"

Alison clenched her fists. Now was the time. Now was the moment to tell him she wouldn't put up with this anymore.

"Because I'm a silly little girl," she said meekly, staring at the carpet, "and it's the only way I'll learn."

"Good girl. You can stay in that wet diaper for a few more hours to really drive the lesson home. I'll change you into a clean one at bedtime. Now take Daddy's hand, soggy-britches. Let's go and have a cuddle, okay?"

"Yes, Daddy!"

[em-ontv]

Back into the life.

Pairing: Sam Winchester x fem!hunter!reader

Summary: Escaping the hunter life and going to Stanford seemed pretty good until you showed back up into his life again, reeling him back in.

Content: mentions of y/n, Sam’s in Stanford, he used to have a crush on reader, reader is friends with the Winchesters, reader is kind of cocky, mentions of Jess, English is not my first language, pretty fast-paced, not proofread

A/N: few disclaimers here, I haven’t watched supernatural (yet) so Sam may be a bit ooc, I tried my best. There's no specific indication that Sam and the reader have any romantic relationships, you can interpret it however you want, but I definitely did not write this in means of breaking Sam up with Jess. Enjoy :)

Word count: 930

You were in some dive bar, waiting for your next hunt, when your phone buzzed. Dean's name flashed on the screen, and the second you answered, his voice came through, not even a "hello" first before he got straight to the point.

"I need your help."

Typical.

"Hello to you too, sunshine," you responded, leaning back in your chair, feet kicked up onto the table. "It's been—what? Three years? And this is the first thing I hear from you?"

"Cut the crap, y/n. It's Sam, I need him back." Dean said.

Your eyebrows shot up. "Why don't you go ask him yourself?"

"I did. Kid's stubborn. Won't leave that Stanford life of his, but I need him." his exhale came through the phone like he was one breath away from losing it.

There was a pause on your end. Because the thing is, you understood. You did. There was a time where you wanted to leave too—and have something different, a normal life. But hunting? The supernatural world? It never lets you go.

"You're the only one who can get him to listen." Dean's voice snapped you out of the thought.

"Uh-huh, and what makes you think that?" you let out a sound that was close to a scoff and a chuckle.

A beat of silence, and you could nearly hear the smirk on Dean's face through the phone. "Because, sweetheart, Sam's got it bad for you. Always did."

Oh, you knew alright. Sam had always been obvious. Big, doe-eyed stares when all of you were younger, awkward stammering when you caught him looking, and that whole puppy-dog vibe he never could shake. You’d flirt with him just to see him turn red. It was too easy. The boy had it bad, but then he went and ran off to college, leaving everything else behind.

"Please, that was kid's stuff. He's over it." you shrugged it off.

"He's not over it," Dean fired back. "Never was. So, I need you to... you know, use that to get him back."

You almost laughed out loud. "You want me to seduce Sam back into hunting? Seriously?"

"For crying out loud, y/n. And it's not seducing, it's gentle coaxing." Dean rolled his eyes, his tone sarcastic. "But whatever works, I guess."

Well, whatever works. You'd find out soon enough.

—————

The second you parked your car and stepped onto the campus, you could feel yourself being out of place. Students were laughing, lounging under trees, talking about midterms and parties.

Stanford was nice. Too nice.

You waited for the six-foot-four tree of a man that used to trip over his own feet whenever you smiled at him. And soon enough, Sam emerged from the lecture hall, backpack slung over his shoulder, hair a little longer, looking every bit the normal, happy college student. He hadn’t seen you yet. Oh, this was gonna be fun.

Before you could even call his name, Sam looked up. His entire body froze mid-step. The look on his face was priceless—equal parts shock and panic, with just a dash of "oh no, she’s here." He blinked, then blinked again, clearly trying to process that you, of all people, were standing in front of him.

"y/n? What—what are you doing here?" He stammered, looking like a deer caught in headlights.

You crossed your arms, that familiar cocky smile playing on your lips. “Oh, you know. Came to say hi, check in on you."

He fumbled with his backpack strap, eyes darting around like he was hoping this was some weird dream and he’d wake up soon. “Well, I've been doing well. Studying law."

"Law, huh?" your eyes glanced over to the backpack he was holding. "Sounds pretty boring for a guy who used to get his hands dirty killing vamps."

Sam's face fell, and you almost felt bad. Almost.

"Look," you said, getting to the point. "Dean needs you back."

His jaw clenched. "I told him no."

"Well, I'm telling you yes."

There was a pause as Sam looked at you, like he was trying to figure out if you were serious. "You're just like Dean, you know that?"

"Thank you."

"That wasn't a compliment."

You just smiled and shrugged, unfazed.

Sam sighed heavily. “y/n, I’ve got a life here. I’ve got—”

“A girlfriend, I know,” you cut in. “Dean mentioned her. Jessica, right?”

His eyes flickered.

“And she’s nice, I’m sure. Sweet. Normal. Everything you want.” you exhaled softly. “But let’s be real, Sam. You can’t outrun this life. It’s in your blood. You’re a hunter, always will be.”

Sam swallowed hard. He stared at you like he was still trying to wrap his head around why you'd come all this way to pull him back into a world he thought he left behind.

“I left for a reason,” he muttered, more to himself than to you.

"And I'm sure it's a good reason, Sam." your eyes softened at his words. "But sometimes, life drags you back."

"Dean needs you," you started.

"And I need you too."

Oh. That card.

Sam’s eyes widened slightly, and for a moment, he looked like a nervous teenager again, the way he always used to when you were around him.

Finally, he sighed, shoulders sagging in defeat. “Fine. I’ll come. But I’m doing it for Dean.”

“Uh-huh,” you raised your eyebrows, already spinning around to head to your car. “I know.”

As you walked away, Sam trailing behind you, you couldn’t help but grin. Dean had been right. And Sam?

Well… Sam never stood a chance against you.

[darkenedurge]

Edit / Update : Part 2 is now posted here.

.

𝐇𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐲.

“ 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐲, 𝐛𝐨𝐭𝐡 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐡𝐞 𝐤𝐧𝐞𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐞𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲. 𝐘𝐞𝐭, 𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐬𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰𝐥𝐞𝐝𝐠𝐞, 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐫𝐞𝐞 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐭𝐨𝐲. 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐬, 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐬 𝐦𝐮𝐜𝐡 𝐚𝐬 𝐡𝐞 𝐢𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬 – 𝐄𝐧𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐆𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐚𝐬𝐡. ”

.

CONTENT : P in V Sex | Implied Age Difference (Enver refers to Durge as “little one”) | Sloppy Make-Outs, Mark Making, all that good stuff | Referenced Switch! Durge | Dom! Enver Gortash | “Forgive me Father for I have sinned” (that’s.. basically the whole fic/plot) | Rough Sex | Spit as lube, fun !!

` Inspired by this post.

And also, this song;

.

˚ ✧.

“But, ma’am, you could have anyone you wanted–”

Your dagger was swiftly swung, landing just a mere fraction before it met the skin of the poor, fragile, meek, little butler. His eyes flit, from each corner of the room, to the door – as it remained open, only by a crack. If he ran, he surely couldn’t make it, and even if he did – that would certainly be the end for him. This was heresy, both you and he knew that equally. Yet, another shared knowledge, was that you would never free your favourite toy. You were bounded in his chains, just as much as he in yours – Enver Gortash.

It wasn’t a faux claim, to say that you could have anyone. Followers, worshippers, dedicants of Bhaal, were far too quick, eager to throw themselves at your feet – be bent at your will, trampled beneath your pretty foot. These were all trivial matters, and ones that you rarely indulged in for such reasons. Perhaps on occasion, for a quick fuck. Though, you were almost always unsatisfied – insatiable.

Always would you delve impatient, frustrated fingers into your begging cunt, bringing yourself to the edge with a flutter of your eyelashes. Pleasure, but not in its truth. No, that’s where Enver came in.

.

You weren’t sure how it had even occurred. He and you, had always had a lingering eye for once another – stealing glances and sparing the flick of your tongue across your lip, wetting the plush skin, as you allowed yourself only a second longer to indulge in his stature. Small, fleeting moments of tension had somehow, pinned you beneath him – his teeth assaulting your collarbones, marks of possession and brutality staining your skin. Even the simple, slight swirl of his tongue as his mouth enveloped your nipple, had you gasping – hand flying to his hair, fingers curling and taking a fistful of his shaggy, inky locks. His knee parts your legs, and you rut needily against him. To which, he chuckles – scoffs, and tuts, “Impatient little thing, aren’t you? Someone hasn’t been taking care of my favourite assassin in my absence.. I should’ve claimed you sooner.” Sweet, citrusy words. Words of praise that, pathetically, could’ve made you come right there and then.

“M’sorry..” You murmur, breath audibly hitching as Enver pinched a nipple between his teeth, “You just feel so good.”

He hums, and the sound reverberates through your chest – forcing a shiver to course throughout your body, riding up your spine. “We’ve barely started, little one,” His eyes greet yours, head raised as he speaks, “It’s not good quite yet.”

That’s when your lips connect, for the first time, and the entirety of your stomach coils into tight, pleading knots. Enver grunts, the noise muffled by your intertwined passion – drool seeping from the side of your mouth, sloppy, wet dances shared between your tongues.

You don’t see Enver naked, then. You wouldn’t for a while. For now, and hereafter, he’d simply shrug himself free of the confines that his clothes so needlessly, annoyingly provided. As lazily as he’d enabled himself, Enver only provided the same impatience for you – ushering your panties aside, in favour of wasting precious seconds tugging them down to rest at your ankles. In a strange acknowledgment of admiration, you favoured his methods. His comprehensive need to feel you swallow his cock, take him the way the Gods had so sinfully intended.

Enver wets his fingers, tongue resting upon his lower lip as he swiped the tips until they were adequately coated – lathering your entrance in his saliva, earning a subtle flinch on your behalf. No warning is offered, he pushes into you with force, heavenly in the way that it hurts – in the way he stretches you, as he bottoms out with a wavering groan.

Your walls flutter around him, your hands finding their place upon his shoulders as he begins to piston his hips at a relentless, pace – you squeak, squeal, your nails press into the supple flesh beneath them. Enver is not shy to make noise, in return, his mouth no prison to the grunts, groans and moans that follow – in tandem with his thrusts. Over and over, you feel him assault a spot you hadn’t even known existed – deep, deep inside of you, making you quiver and tighten rhythmically.

“Say my name, little one,” Enver pants out in demand, fucking you evermore, “Say my name.”

You could hardly deny the request of a man who was literally, fucking you senseless. Making your head spin, your cheeks flush and stomach churn. “Enver..” You whine, like a mewling kitten. No, not good enough.

Again, “Enver.” It’s louder this time, and your nails drag down his upper back.

“Enver!” Oh Gods, are you going to cum?

As your heart pounds mercilessly in your ears, you can distantly hear Enver release a small, huff of a laugh. You voice is almost hoarse, as a cry strangles from your throat, “Enver! Enver, I’m-!”

You came. It’s akin to that of a crashing wave, and a roaring fire, in beautiful unison. There’s a hot, swarming pool that follows – Enver, no doubt, laying his claim; cumming almost simultaneously, filling you to the brim. You’re trembling as he holds you, pulls you flush against his chest and peppers kisses to the nape of your neck.

.

He wouldn’t be staying long. Slinking off back, toward his duties without so much as a whisper. Still, such ignorance didn’t pain you. You knew he’d be back, this was the very birth of a whirlwind. One that was destructive, perhaps. But, destruction is your birthright. Your solemn purpose.

You sit, thighs sticky and skin glazed in sweat. “Father,” Your hand is clutched to your exposed chest, resting over the thrum of your heart, “Forgive me..please.”

[lovebugism]

hi hi hi!!! congratulations on one year!! you've accomplished so much and i'm so very happy for you! you deserve all the love and more 🫶🏻💞

as always, i have to leave a little dad!steve request, because who would i be if i didn't? lol. anyway, since you are celebrating your one year, i was hoping maybe we could get something like dad!steve and mom!reader celebrating their one year as parents, aka giving their lil girl her first birthday party? i can just imagine aunt robbie and uncle eddie spoiling steve's baby girl almost as much as he does 🥹

congrats again, bug! love you so so much 🫶🏻

- @honeysuckleharringtons 🍯💛

ty angel!! and ty for keeping dad!steve alive on this blog hahah — you and steve struggle to cope when your baby turns one year old (mom!reader, fluff, 1.7k)

bug's one year celebration ♡

Steve rises that morning before you do. He couldn’t say he woke up, really, ‘cause he didn’t sleep at all. Maybe an hour or more, but that’s being generous. Between decorating the house after you put the baby down (his soon-to-be one-year-old, that is) and stressing all night about tomorrow, tomorrow finally came. Tomorrow is now, and his baby’s a whole year older.

He worried and worried and worried, and the time passed anyway.

You rouse with a cat-like stretch. You look at the clock first, 7:26 a.m., and then over at the boy beside you. He’s already looking at you, the creep. His features are gently swollen from the weight of his middling slumber — pretty pink smile soft and slightly crooked. 

The attention makes you cower as your eyes squeeze shut again. No one should be looked at so fondly so early in the morning.

“Do you know what day it is?” Steve croons to you. 

He props his wild head on his fist and smooths a free hand up your stomach, bare from where your shirt had risen. Your skin is as warm and as soft as it ever was, and his chest stings because Nellie used to be in there. He agonized nine months over for her arrival, and now she’s here — in the bedroom down the hall — and one year old already.

You scoff a faint laugh, weighed down with exhaustion. Of course, you know what day it is, but you humor him anyway. “No, Steve. What day is it?”

“We’ve been parents for a whole entire year,” he whispers, voice faraway with disbelief. 

“Oh. How could I forget?” you joke, giggling into the kiss he gives you.

He pulls away with a gentle smack and smiles softly down at you. “Remember when we thought we wouldn’t make it?”

“That first night,” you answer with a sigh, heavy eyes fluttering shut again. “After we brought her home, and she just… wouldn’t stop crying…”

“Yeah, I know the one…” Steve hasn’t been able to forget it, really. He doesn’t think he ever will, or if he even wants to. It was the first day out of the hospital and the very first time he felt like a parent, when it was just him and you and a colicky baby. It felt like the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

The stress of the long-gone moment still stings.

“I thought the world was gonna end,” you confess.

Steve’s wide hand gives your bare side a reassuring squeeze. “And look at you now. A total pro.”

“Hush.”

“You are.”

“Only ‘cause I’m copying you,” you argue, equal parts sincere and deflecting. Your wild head tilts against the pillow, and you bring a heavy hand to his jaw. Your palm settles along his stubble with a playful roughness. “I’m glad I shacked up with the best dad ever and not some other schmuck.”

Steve’s grin widens until his honey eyes crinkle at the edges.

“I’m blushin’, baby,” he teases lowly, then leans down to kiss you again. 

It’s a mixture of subtle morning breath and the coffee he’d had an hour or more ago. It’s a chaste peck first, to gain your footing in the early morning, and then a more intentional second one. Then he kisses you a third time, a much more languid thing. His exhaled sigh brushes your cupid’s bow when he melts into you.

You pull back from him (as much as it hurts you) before he can give you a fourth.

“We need to start getting ready,” you tell him. “People will be here soon.”

His features scrunch together, just like Nellie’s does right before she cries. Steve buries his face into your shoulder with a whine that rivals your baby’s. “No— I don’t want people to be here soon.”

Your laugh matches the sunrise. “You planned the party, Steve.”

“Yeah, but when people come over, it means the party’s started,” he rambles, muffled into your neck. “And when the party’s started, it means Nellie’s officially a year old.”

Your hands smooth up and down the length of his pale, freckled back. “Well, technically, she won’t be a year old until later tonight, so… You’ve still got a couple hours with a baby.”

He sniffles, and you can’t tell if he’s joking or not.

“Steve, I’m just kidding,” you coo with a soft giggle. “She’s still a baby! She’s always gonna be our baby.”

“Yeah, except now she’s a baby that can walk,” he whines. “And eventually, she’ll be a baby that can talk— and then she’ll be in college, and then she’ll be married—”

“Well, at this rate, you should probably start preparing for her to move out,” you joke drily. He sniffles again. You cave. “Sorry…”’

—————

You languish in the grass a couple hours later, over an old quilt Steve pulled from the top of your closet. 

Energy seems to seep from your pores, ebbing with the setting sun. You’ve spent the better part of your day running after Nellie and tending to guests. Now, all you really want is some peace and quiet, a shower, and a good cry.

Steve sits just beside you, leaning back on his arms while you lay on your stomach. Both of you keep a vigilant eye on your baby girl — watching while she gets all the attention she deserves and smiling to yourselves because she’s the most loved baby in the universe.

“Whatcha thinkin’ about?” Steve asks after a few minutes of silence. Well, not silence, exactly. The radio’s playing distantly, and the chatter hasn’t stopped since Dustin arrived (first, of course, and a whole hour early).

“It’s stressing me out that there’s food on a blanket,” you murmur in response, chin bobbing against your folded arms.

Steve laughs through the chips in his mouth. “Well, that’s the point of a picnic, baby.”

“I know,” you sigh and get distracted again. “I can’t believe how popular our baby is.”

“Well, I mean, she is our daughter, so… It kinda checks out.”

“Shut up.”

“Look at Eddie— What an idiot.” Steve chuckles as he watches the wild-haired boy drive around the backyard in a bright pink Barbie Jeep. It was a present for Nellie, of course, but she can hardly walk, let alone drive the damn thing. 

Eddie cruises around in it for her, lanky limbs barely fitting inside. It whirs as he drives it back and forth over the patio.

Nellie’s having more fun watching him than she would be driving it herself, you think. She squeals with delight in Joyce’s arms, smiling a big, toothless smile and clapping (as best she can with chubby baby hands) every time Eddie reappears from behind her.

“How’s our baby so pretty?” you wonder quietly to yourself. “Like, how did we do that?”

Steve ponders the question with a deep huff. He turns to lie next to you on his back, then grimaces when the ground does little to cushion his aching spine. A harsh reminder that he’s not sixteen anymore.

“Well… Her mom is the most beautiful woman on the planet, and her dad’s pretty alright, so… One plus one equals two, I guess.”

You squint. “Don’t flirt with me, Harrington.”

“Can’t help it,” he shrugs with a boyish, lopsided grin. “You’re too pretty. I have to love on you, or I’ll die.”

You start to make a joke then — about how Little Eleanor definitely got all her dramatics from her father. But then Steve leans in to kiss you, and you lose it. You can taste the birthday cake and Coca-Cola on his breath as he nears you. You forget how to form words in your mouth.

“Wait,” you murmur, pulling back before he can kiss you. You raise a hand to swipe away the crumbs sticking to the corner of his mouth. “Okay. Now you can kiss me.”

You never need to tell him twice. His lips meet the very corner of yours until he can realign himself for a more direct, proper peck to your mouth.

“Hey, hey, hey!” you hear Hopper scold from ahead of you. 

The two of you pull away from each other with a soft smack and find the man walking towards you. He’s got crumbs in his mustache and a cheekful of the hotdog he holds in his hand. He’s got his work boots on, too, paired with a pink and green tropical button-up. The coolest shirt he owns, you figure, especially for Nellie.

His sharp features are screwed with disgust. “This is a kid’s party. Keep your hands to yourselves.”

You laugh because the only real kid here is Nellie. And she’s far too obsessed with Eddie to care about anything else.

“Sorry, Hop,” Steve mumbles even though he doesn’t really mean it. He’s just not in the business of smart-mouthing the chief.

You are, though. And it’s one of the million reasons why he loves you so damn much.

You peer up at Hopper, squinting one eye to shield your gaze from the golden sun. “You know we have a baby together, right?” you wonder in a monotone.

He takes another too big bit of the hotdog and shrugs. “Well, yeah. She’s, like, the best thing ever— Obviously, I know that.”

“So then you also know that we kinda made her by not keeping our hands to ourselves.”

Steve chokes back a laugh when Hopper gets so suddenly stern. His features harden as he points a firm finger your way. “Don’t,” he murmurs in a feeble warning, then decides to leave well enough alone. He walks back towards the bustling party, beelining for Joyce and Nellie because he’s in desperate need of a purer cleanse.

“Holy shit…” Steve sighs when his laughter dies down.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he hums to himself, a soft smile on his lips. “I just love you.”

Your nose scrunches. “Ew.”

“Like, I get to be in love with you forever. How cool is that?”

His boyish musing makes your chest sparkle. “I’m glad you’re coping well,” you tease with a sigh as you lean over to lay on him. Your head rests against his chest. You can hear his heartbeat there, slow and firm. You exhale again, with content this time. “‘Cause you’re stuck with me, Harrington. For life.”

You feel a chuckle rumble in his chest. “You make it sound like it’s prison.”

“It’s not?” you joke.

“No, baby. It’s heaven. It’s better than heaven,” he tells you, then gets immediately distracted. “Wait— Like that song— Ooh, baby do you know what that’s worth—”

“Steve!” you giggle at his offkey crooning. 

“—We’ll make heaven a place on earth!”

[universal-imagines]

Hi! I wanted to request a headcanon with Akashi, Murasakibara and Aomine (and another character if you want) about them having a female s/o who is not their original type? (Aka: elegant girls with dignity, Mura: tall girls, Ao: big breasts) Their s/o isn't really elegant lol, or has an average height etc. But they love and treasure her. They reasure their s/o, when she finds out their original type and she's insecure about it

❥ ﹝ insecurities ﹞

i. akashi seijuro

it'd been a couple of months since you'd started dating akashi, but you had yet to make it public

not that he or you were actively hiding it, the occasion just hadn't presented itself, but as time continued to pass by you began to wonder if he was ashamed of you

you'd been friends for a while and people knew the both of you were close, even when everyone else was terrified of him you were always there and he treated you like an equal so you didn't think people would be surprised if you ended up together

however, you didn't fit his type, the type everyone assumed he would eventually end up with, someone sophisticated and well-mannered, someone who oozed elegance and power...

you were just you, maybe a little loud and outspoken or maybe a little clumsy

but your insecurities were immediately dealt with when he took you by the hand and walked down the hall

it was a particularly busy day, you don't quite remember why because your mind was too preoccupied with his hand in yours, but it was probably due to festival preparations

"why did you do that?" you asked when you finally found your voice

"because i could tell something was troubling and i hadn't done anything wrong, so i figure it had to do with our relationship status"

you smiled, of course he could read you like a book

ii. murasakibara atsushi

to be honest you had expected a little more than "you're the perfect size" when you voiced your concerns about your height difference

before you guys started dating you had asked him about his type and he said he wanted someone tall so he didn't have to worry about bending down and stuff, so it had been weighing on you this whole time

you wanted some kind of reassurance that he didn't absolutely hate it, but he just shrugged and continued to eat his snacks

"well can you tell me how exactly i'm the perfect height?"

after taking a bite of a chip he titled his head, studying you for a few seconds

"when i'm tired i can rest my chin on your head and it fits perfectly, doesn't matter if i'm sitting or standing and when we're sitting down you fit perfectly against me. i can practically swallow you up with a hug and i think it's nice"

he ate a few more chips before smiling

"oh and i like the way my sweaters look on you"

iii. aomine daiki

you found the magazines he used to get bribed with by his teammates and felt your stomach drop

in all honesty, you weren't snooping or anything your foot just accidentally knocked into something under his bed and you pulled it out to make sure it wasn't damaged, you actually wished you hadn't stumbled upon his hidden stash of magazines

"what do you have there?" was his nonchalant reaction when he walked into the room

he could tell you were uncomfortable with what you'd found but he thought it was nothing more than shame or disgust that he'd keep something like that

it wasn't until a couple of days later when you brought the subject up that he realized why exactly you looked upset

"are you disappointed that i don't have a big chest like those girls... in the magazines?" you were trying to sound as casual as possible, but your body language told a whole different story

"what?" he frowned, but only got a shrug from you

"i'll admit that's the first thing i see in a girl. i'm a tits guy through and through but that's not all i care about. besides, yours are just the right size. if you had big tits i'd have to watch out for other guys..." he stopped, thinking about how that might have sounded "but that doesn't mean that's the only reason i'm dating you either. without you i wouldn't be able to function. i used to rely on momoi for everything, but now you're the person i look for, so get those stupid thoughts out of your head"

[dear-mrs-otome]

Here is Jude's drunken story with ZERO GUARANTEES MADE - this will not be entirely accurate, both by design and by accident. Enjoy my shitbrained version of a summary 💕

Jude and Ellis are assigned a mission to investigate/deal with rumors that a certain bar is engaging in human trafficking - getting women drunk and then selling them. Kate, being our do-gooder, asks if she can help of course, and Jude suggests she can go undercover as an employee if she wants to help. Kate is like, I'm sorry whut?? But Jude just smirks and challenges her - she said she wanted to help, is she gonna back out of it?

Kate declares she'll do it and thus finds herself employed at the bar, albeit more than a little nervous about flying solo on this. A fancy-looking fellow walks in and looks around before taking a seat at the bar, and the manager calls to Kate.

She bustles over and the fancy man says it looks like she's working hard - how about he buys her a drink as a reward?

She's handed a glass and recalls how the MO here is to get girls drunk and then sell them, so she hesitates. Sleazy Fancy Man says if she can't drink it he'll ‘help’ her, and she's spluttering for him to please stop as he begins forcing the glass to her mouth. The moment it touches her lips though she hears -

“The hell ya doin’?”

Shocked, Kate watches as Jude suddenly appears, grabs the glass, and downs the whole thing himself. Equally as shocked is Fancy Man, who immediately tries to scramble away before promptly being sent sprawling, tripping over Jude's foot. A smirking Jude says he seems to be pretty scared - what's he trying to hide? Oh right, can't just come out and say you're trying to buy a girl can you?

Ellis takes down the manager as he's trying to haul ass out of the bar too, and with a sadistic grin Jude kicks the dude in the side of the face and gleefully suggests they spill their guts.

After they've confessed and the bar has been shut down, Jude has Ellis take the two men away. He and Kate are walking back home, but she notices he's been uncharacteristically quiet. Usually he'd have been busy bitching her out by now, but tonight it's just crickets. And the moment she opens her mouth to say something, reaching out to him, his whole body sorta lurches.

Kate’s all JUDE! and she steadies him, noticing his breath is hella hot on her cheek as she does. She's like, holy crap are you sick??!

Jude calls her an idiot for even suggesting that, but he's standing there in kind of a daze, face red as he tells her - “There was something in the drink.”

Kate commences freaking out harder, all OMG WHUT ARE YOU OKAYYYY and earns Jude griping at her to quit her noisy-ass shouting. She tells him they gotta get him to Roger ASAP, and giving him her shoulder she hauls ass back to the mansion and Roger's basement.

Surprised to see them, Roger asks if Jude got hurt but Kate hurriedly explains the situation and Roger gives him an exam. He says there's nothing major going on, just that the drink had something in it that amplifies alcohol - makes you drunker faster. Nothing to worry about.

Kate's hella relieved, and Roger summarily boots them outta his lab, saying he doesn't have time to babysit drunk people AKA Jude is her problem now.

Since her room is closest, Kate drags Jude there. She's about to go grab him some water when he calls out an ‘Oi’

- and when she turns to ask what's up she suddenly finds herself flat on her back on the bed, Jude straddling her. He's like…JFC woman you seriously have zero concept of danger don't you?

His large hand caresses her stomach and works her blouse up, and Kate gasps out - what are you doing??? As she's sorta flailing, Jude grabs her and easily pins both wrists above her head with his other hand.

“...Why were you gonna drink it?” He asks, deapan. Kate sputters that she WASN'T going to, which only makes Jude scowl. “You had your mouth on it.”

“Why did you drink it?” Kate fires back.

His answer is to put his free hand back on her stomach, and Kate can't help the involuntary little squirm she makes at the feel of his warm fingers. Jude smirks and calls her dirty for getting all excited, which Kate vehemently denies…all the whole totally aware of how her embarrassment shows in her eyes.

Jude gets his patented sadistic look on his face as he asks if dat pussy she wants to be well and truly pounded...and when he lowers his mouth to lick her stomach, she can't stifle her cry.

Then, serious expression back, Jude tells her this'll be a good learning opportunity for such a hella perv - just before he bites down on her stomach, hard.

The sudden sensation has her whole body seizing up, her sight wavering, unable to tell what is pain and what is pleasure. Both all jumbled up.

“You really…” Jude starts to say something, but before he can finish, his whole body gives out and he flops down atop her. Kate panics, then realizes as he winds up holding her that he's passed the fuck out, peaceful expression and all. The complete mood change from moments earlier has her totally drained, unable to do much more than watch him sleep. Wrapped in his arms and the scent of tobacco and sandalwood she closes her own eyes too.

The next morning she wakes up, all uncomfortable, and realizes she's got a Jude blanket - his arms still around her and remembers he passed out like that, holding her. As she starts struggling to get free of his embrace, Jude wakes up and asks wtf she's doing.

FULL ON AWKWARD she's got Jude eye contact up close and personal as she manages a ‘good morning’ which he promptly scoffs at. And she tries not to think too hard about how sad she feels when he lets go of her…but as she watches him pour a glass of water something comes back to her.

“Why did you drink that drink yesterday?” She presses again.

Jude’s all, ehhhhh? Before brushing it off as the fact that if he'd dumped it out there'd have been no evidence so he'd taken it himself instead as proof basically. And he offers to get her some of the stuff if she wants it so badly and pour it down her throat.

Kate (who by now we're all aware can totally see through him) thinks how she KNOWS he most likely just did it to protect her.

Jude puts his coat back on and scowls. “You brought me all the way back here, and had that quack take a look at me…so we'll call things even between us.”

He stalks out of the room with that, leaving behind a stunned Kate. Sitting up tho she winces, and looks down to find a raw bite mark on her stomach. She traces it with her fingers, heat running through her as she does, then smashes her face into the pillow in a state of WHAT THE FUCK, ME?? mortified. Convinced she's not gonna even begin to forget about last night until those marks fade away.