#so apparently I really needed to destroy something

[ghost-whump]

hello!! I saw requests are open and would be willing to write something with this prompt?

a character goes back in time and finds their enemy being tortured. now everything they knew that happens in the future makes sense and the situation provides some much needed context to fill in the gaps…the only thing is, after rescuing their future enemy from the torture, their enemy has now devoted their loyalty to their rescuer.

(@whumpwillow)

hi!! this ask was apparently sent last year, but it had not appeared in my ask box until now…

but i’ll try my best almost a year later! buckle up, it’s a long one.

Monster

Villain was a tough person. Angry at the world and at Hero, specifically. They’d been hell bent on destroying the planet (a bit clichéd, if you asked Hero, but fair) for so long and with such passion, that Hero had gotten curious.

As a government employee, they had access to the top secret time machine. One thing leads to another and then,

“Please! I’m begging you, please…”

Villain, albeit a much younger version, kneeled on the floor. They couldn’t have been much older than a teenager, lanky and pale. Dressed in dirtied and torn clothes that were clearly much too small, Villain clutched onto the legs of a woman that stood over them.

“I’m sorry, r-really, I am. I’ll be good and quiet and I won’t hurt anything ever again, I promise! Let me out, for just a minute, please, I-!”

They were cut off with a sharp slap. Hero held back a gasp. Though they stood in a dark corner, obscured from both of their views, they couldn’t help but feel too close to the scene. Like they were watching something they shouldn’t.

The woman kicked her foot, sending Villain onto the cement floor with cry.

“Don’t touch me, rat!” She held aloft a tin can, labeled as a vague mystery meat. The kind one would keep in apocalypse rations or a weird, evil boot camp. It didn’t look appetizing. As if she just stepped in a sticky puddle, the woman soured, “I’ve told you not to talk me like that. You know you don’t deserve my mercy. Not until you get better.”

Villain whimpered and held their cheek. “Sorry… I…” They scooted backwards into the wall.

The woman, stepping forward into the dim light of the room, placed the can on its side and lightly kicked it in Villain’s direction. It rolled until hit their shin, but they didn’t pick it up. Watery eyes stared at it, fingers twitching, but made no move to pick it up.

At first, Hero thought they might be afraid of it.

Villain looked up at the woman, then back at the can.

With a small grin, the woman said, “Good boy… Good restraint.” Then, silence. It dragged on for a minute, maybe more. “You can have it now.”

Villain lunged for the can, which had rolled away a little. They clutched it with shaking hands, pulling it close to their chest. Barely above a whisper, they mumbled, “Thank you, Mom.”

Spinning on her heel, the woman stormed off. “Don’t call me that. I’m not your mother,” She spat, “Not anymore.”

Her steps retreated as she ascended a flight of stairs, confirmed Hero’s theory that they were in a basement. Their attention was turned back to Villain at the sound of growling. Expecting a wild animal or beast, they were shocked to discover that it actually came from the teenager in the room. They had the can in their hands and teeth, trying to gnaw it open.

While Villain did… that… Hero’s eyes wandered the room. In the opposite corner was a worn and stained twin mattress, a thin blanket, and a pile of identical empty mystery meat cans. None have been opened the proper way, all are smashed, chewed, or other variously destroyed states.

Hero couldn’t help but think, as would anyone, “Poor Villain.”

They couldn’t just stand around and watch them struggle.

Cautiously, remembering that this Villain we’re talking about, Hero stepped out of the shadows. When the kid didn’t look up, they softly cleared their throat.

Villain’s eyes jumped up, scrambling back. They held the can, now slightly dented, like a weapon. “Who— Who are y-you? Get out of h-here!”

“It’s okay. My name is Hero, I’m here to help you.” They held their hands up, palms open. They’re no threat.

“N-no. You have to get away… You- You… I’ll hurt you! You can’t be here, i-it’s not allowed!” With a cry, they hurled the can at Hero, who reflexively caught it mid-flight.

Considering the can, rolling it over in their hand a few times, Hero appraised the damage. “Here, I’ll open this for you.”

Under Villain’s watchful glare, Hero reached into their pockets and pulled out a knife. They didn’t miss the whimper that came across the room at the sight. Stabbing the lid of the can, they jimmied it off with relative ease. Not a perfect cut, like they’d get with a can opener, but not bad.

Hero lowered to the floor, placing the can down. There was still a good ten-feet of distance between them, so they slid it across the floor. Villain snatched it and used their hands to shovel the mushy brown slop into their mouth. Between bites, they briefly looked back up at Hero. “Thanks,” They grunted.

“Yeah. It’s the least I could do.”

A minute passed in silence, occasionally broken by the horrible sounds of Villain devouring the meat like a wild animal.

“Do you want to talk to me now?” Hero asked, taking the smallest step closer.

Taking a pause from licking the inside of the can, “What?”

“Why are you here, I mean. Forgive me for saying this, but a dirty basement isn’t exactly the place to keep a teenager.”

Villain curled their knees to their chest, placing the can woefully beside them. “Why do you care? I don’t even — I don’t even know who you are.”

“I’m Hero. And you’re Villain. I know more about you than you think.”

“‘Hero’ is a stupid name.”

They grimaced. Charming as ever. “You’ll come around to it.”

Villain crawled over to their bed. They deposited the can with the others and flopped onto the mattress. It seemed to hurt them. “If you’re going to do something, would you just get it over with? I’m tired.”

“…”

“Well? Does a kid with an attitude not get your rocks off? Need something less mouthy?” They commented with a sneer.

“Why would I-” Hero cut themselves off, feeling even grosser than they did before. They steeled their face and pressed on. “Look, I’m just going to get you out of here. I don’t care about an attitude or why you’re down here, this isn’t right.”

Villain chuckled, “Good luck. I can’t leave here. It’s not allowed.”

“Why isn’t it allowed?” They questioned, taking another step closer. They were nearly at the foot of the bed.

“‘Cus I’m a monster,” Villain spat, grimacing at the word. “I hurt things, I just can’t stop myself. Animals, people, whatever. I’m not allowed outside because I’ll kill something, like I killed my sister.” Their voice got quieter as they spoke, less and less snarky with each passing moment. “Besides,” they sniffed, “I don’t even want to leave. I have everything I need here.”

Hero nodded along, contemplating. “Then why did you beg your mother to leave?”

Villain blanched. “That’s… That’s not…”

Without further prompting, Hero bent down and plucked Villain off the ground with surprising ease. The kid was light as a feather. The kid yelped but didn’t struggle. “Nope. You’re coming with me. No arguments.”

This was probably not the smartest decision Hero had ever made. Damned the consequences, the timeline, whatever. Hero took an oath to protect those in need and, well, Villain seemed pretty in need.

They pressed a few buttons on the time-machine on their wrist and in a flash of light, they were thrust forward in time.

The weight of Villain was gone from their arms, causing them to panic. They were supposed to be coming with them, but they just disappeared!? What happened, what —

“Welcome back, Hero!”

They stumbled, losing their balance from the jump. A hard grabbed their arm, keeping them steady. Hero looked up at this stranger. They didn’t have any assistants, there shouldn’t be anyone here, there can’t be…

It’s them, with shorter hair and rectangular glasses, they wore a lab coat and held a clipboard. But this was…

“Are you alright, Hero? It’s me, Villain.”

woof, that’s a long one. i wasn’t sure if i was going to finish it. once again, sorry it’s been like a year (unless it’s new and tumblr is wigging out on me) but i hope this is done to a good degree.

thanks for reading :]

General Tag: @morning-star-whump

[fulltimeviking]

"your secondary research, arguments and ideas were very original and impressive and showed very thorough demonstration. you should be incredibly proud of this work this is genuinely the best i've marked of yours in three years. also i know i told you that structure is subjective and there's no right way to structure an essay but you structured this wrong and your title is very wordy lol so here's a 66"

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[skyjynxart]

.

[runa-falls]

what a mess~

pairing: miguel o'hara x reader cw: smut, established relationship, superhuman stamina, overstimulation, cum EVERYWHERE, 'use a condom, it's too messy X(', 'bitch stfu i'll show you messy'..., so many sheets, reader is a pushover (bc I WOULD BE TOO) wc: 1k + a/n: i um... just take this and I'll go to a corner of a room and think ab what I've done.

---

Having a superhero boyfriend is great – he gets you discounts at your favorite restaurant, he easily carries you home after a long night out at the bar, he saves you from getting kidnapped by his arch-nemesis for the fourth time this month (though isn’t that his fault in the first place?....) – but there are aspects of the relationship that you didn’t consider before. 

Apparently, with great power comes great… stamina. 

To put it plainly, Miguel’s (sex) drive is unheard of. You better clear out your schedule for the whole day because he can go for hours. And most nights, you can barely sit up after he fucks you.

You like that – or you did when you could afford to be sore every other day. You like how enthusiastic he is – how much he wants you. It makes you feel desired and beautiful. But it’s not just the intense workout you risk every time you steal a kiss that turns into more – it’s the number of times he can…finish. 

Every time you think he’s finished, he’s still hard and thrusting into you, overstimulating you until black stars start to fill your vision. 

It’s a mess in the end. 

You lay on top of him, filled to the brim, dripping all over his lower stomach and onto the sheets under you, breathing so hard you’re sure you’d rupture a lung. You feel like you’re barely conscious on the bed as your heart beats harshly against your chest from how hard you came. Hair sticks graciously against your forehead as your eyes struggle to stay open to see Miguel, who gently pulls out and watches his mess spill out of you. 

He whispers sweetly of how well you took him, how pretty you look all fucked out, how much he loves that he can turn you into a blabbering – mindless whore. Being the possessive man he is, he attempts to shove it back in, using two of his thick fingers to gather and push his essence back into you, hoping that, against all odds, it’ll take, despite the fact you take your birth control religiously. 

Of course, when he sees how your thighs shake and squeeze around his hand from the overstimulation of him fucking his fingers into you after you just came, he immediately gets hard again. 

He gazes down at you with apologetic red eyes as he bites his lip under a sharp fang, “I can’t help it when I see how wrecked your pussy is for me…”

It’s nice – it’s hot – but you end up having to change the sheets 5 times a week. He’s insatiable… well ok, you’re just as thirsty as your boyfriend, but the amount of maintenance you need for each session is ridiculous. You basically gave up washing your sheets after every fuck, and instead ordered several identical sets of bedding to make the process easier. 

Many sheets have been destroyed beyond recognition. Okay, maybe you’re being a bit overdramatic, but the amount of cum-stained sheets in your linen closet is insane. How are you supposed to hide this if you were to have guests over?!

After staring at the layers of folded-up and stained sheets that you’ve accumulated over the past few months, you decided you were going to do something about it. 

You can still have fun without the mess.

…right?

—

Miguel has you on your back at the end of the bed with your legs resting on the crook of his arms. You have on a cute little nightgown – white to symbolize purity (though what you were about to do was far from pure) – with nothing underneath. It was one you bought just to get a reaction out of him – and now you got it. 

He holds you open for him, regarding you like he would a special gift – though there’s nothing to really celebrate (unless you count his raging erection). He breathes harshly against your neck as he paints your skin with kisses and nips. You’re nearly folded in half with how closely he’s pushed against you, but you can barely recognize the mere tinge of soreness in your legs with how fluidly pleasure seems to travel from his lips down to the apex of your thighs. 

Miguel O’Hara, the strong, independent Spider-Man, is truly a mess in front of you. His once neatly ironed tie now hangs loosely around his neck, his crisp white shirt unbuttoned halfway down, and his hair a tangle of unruly curls. His fingers, now caressing your body, are already dripping in your slick from when he forced a couple of orgasms out of you right when he got home. 

You find a sense of satisfaction in the disheveled state of his appearance, relishing how his once meticulously groomed demeanor has been disrupted – how his eyes transition from their usual chocolatey brown to a striking blood red, how his lips swell sweetly with lust. 

Miguel groans deeply as he grinds his clothed hardness against your wet center, “Mm…I want you so bad.” He unbuttons and unzips his pants, sighing as he releases himself from the tight fabric. No underwear? 

“Wait, Mig." he pauses his movements, waiting patiently – prepared to do whatever you want. “Get a condom.” …Except maybe…that. 

“Condom?” He could barely hold back his sneer, but you could faintly hear the growl vibrate from his chest. 

“Mhm, we’ve been too messy lately. We can’t just keep buying new sheets every week!”

“...We could…”

“Miguel!”

“I don’t see what the problem is… this is just how it is.”

“But it’s too messy.”

“I thought my baby likes to be filled up…”

“...I-I mean, I do sometimes, but –”

“Don’t you like it when I get you all messy?” He leans in close, distracting you from denying him. “Have you dripping with me for days?” He presses closer, and you can feel his hard cock slip against your wetness, dragging against your sensitive clit. 

“Miguel.” You whine.

It’s so hard to deny this man.

“How about we just try to be more careful, hm?” He presses against you gently, nearly entering you, but not quite. It feels so good, the tip of him barely stretching past your entrance. 

“Okay…j-just this once though…” You surrender with a whisper.

[txttletale]

I'm asking this genuinely, as a 19 yo with no education in economics and a pretty surface level understanding of socialism: can you explain the whole Bananas discourse in a way someone like me might understand? In my understanding it's just "This is just a product we can give up to create better worker conditions and that's fine" but apparently that's not the full picture?

alright so some pretty important background to all this is that we're all talking about the fact that bananas, grown in the global south, are available year-round at extremely low prices all around europe and the USA. it's not really about bananas per so--the banana in this discourse is a synechdoche for all the economic benefits of imperialism.

so how are cheap bananas a result of imperialism? first of all i want to tackle a common and v. silly counterargument: 'oh, these ridiculous communists think it's imperialist for produce to be shipped internationally'. nah. believing that this is the communist objection requires believing in a deeply naive view of international traide. this view goes something like 'well, if honduras has lots of bananas, and people in the usa want bananas and are willing to pay for them, surely everyone wins when the usa buys bananas!'.

there are of course two key errors here and they are both packed into 'honduras has lots of bananas'. for a start, although the bananas are grown in honduras, honduras doesn't really 'have' them, because the plantations are mostly owned by chiquita (formerly known as united fruit) dole, del monte, and other multinationals--when they're not, those multinationals will usually purchase the bananas from honduran growers and conduct the export themselves. and wouldn't you know it, it's those intervening middleman steps--export, import, and retail, where the vast majority of money is made off bananas! so in the process of a banana making its way from honduras to a 7/11, usamerican multinationals make money selling the bananas to usamerican importers who make money selling them to usamerican retailers who make money selling them to usamerican customers.

when chiquita sells a banana to be sold in walmart, a magic trick is being performed: a banana is disappearing from honduras, and yet somehow an american company is paying a second american company for it! this is economic imperialism, the usamerican multinational extracting resources from a nation while simultaneously pocketing the value of those resources.

why does the honduran government allow this? if selling bananas is such a bad deal for the nation, why do they continue to export millions of dollars of banans a year? well, obviously, there's the fact that if they didn't, they would face a coup. the united states is more than willing to intervene and cause mass death and war to protect the profits of its multinationals. but the second, more subtle thing keeping honduras bound to this ridiculously unbalanced relationship is the need for dollars. because the US dollar is the global reserve currency, and the de facto currency of international trade, exporting to the USA is a basic necessity for nations like honduras, guatemala, &c. why is the dollar the global reserve currency? because of usamerican military and economic hegemony, of course. imperialism built upon imperialism!

this is unequal exchange, the neoimperialist terms of international trade that make the 'global economy' a tool of siphoning value and resources from the global south to the imperial core. & this is the second flaw to unravel in 'honduras has a lot of bananas' -- honduras only 'has a lot of bananas' because this global economic hegemony has led to vast unsustainable monoculture banana plantations to dominate the agriculture of honduras. it's long-attested how monoculture growth is unsustainable because it destroys soil and leads to easily-wiped-out-by-infection plants.

so, bananas in the USA are cheap because:

the workers that grow them are barely paid, mistreated, prevented from unionizing, and sometimes murdered

the nations in which the bananas are grown accept brutally unfair trade and tariff terms with the USA because they desperately need a supply of US dollars and so have little position to negotiate

shipping is also much cheaper than it should be because sailors are chronically underpaid and often not paid at all or forced to pay to work (!)

bananas are cheap, in conclusion, because they're produced by underpaid and brutalized workers and then imported on extortionate and unfair terms.

so what, should we all give up bananas? no, and it's a sign of total lack of understanding of socialism as a global movement that all the pearl-clutching usamericans have latched onto the scary communists telling them to stop buying bananas. communism does not care about you as a consumer. individual consumptive choices are not a meaningful arena of political action. the socialist position is not "if there was a socialist reovlution in the usa, we would all stop eating bananas like good little boys", but rather, "if there's a socialist revolution in the countries where bananas are grown, then the availability of bananas in the usa is going to drop, and if you want to be an anti-imperialist in the imperial core you have to accept that".

(this is where the second argument i see about this, 'oh what are you catholic you want me to eat dirt like a monk?' reveals itself as a silly fucking solipsistic misunderstanding)

and again, let's note that the case of the banana can very easily be generalised out to coffee, chocolate, sugar, etc, and that it's not about individual consumptive habits, but about global economic systems. if you are donkey fucking kong and you eat 100 bananas a day i don't care and neither does anyone else. it's about trying to illustrate just one tiny mundane way in which economic imperialism makes the lives of people in the global north more convenient and simpler and so of course there is enormous pushback from people who attach moral value to this and therefore feel like the mean commies are personally calling them evil for eating a nutella or whatever which is frankly pretty tiring. Sad!

tldr: it is not imperialism when produce go on boat but it is imperialism when produce grown for dirt cheap by underpaid workers in a country with a devalued currency is then bought and exported and sold by usamerican companies creating huge amounts of economic value of which the nation in which the banana was grown, let alone the people who actually fucking grew it, don't see a cent -- and this is the engine behind the cheap, available-every-day-all-year-everywhere presence of bananas in the usa (and other places!)

[illusioncanthurtme--art]

A very self indulgent Billford playlist!

Self indulgent, because this music does not appeal to the masses at all; these songs are limited to the stuff I listen to. So I’m being VERY transparent about my embarrassing taste in music right now! Plus, NOBODY ASKED FOR THIS!!! But I hope some of these resonate with you. This is a little collection I’ve formed in my phone notes since I got into this ship a couple weeks ago.

Not a fancy spotify playlist, it’s just links to the music on youtube. 

I’ve got this divided into parts:

-The Billford Songs

-The In This Moment Billford Songs

SO MUCH of their music is enemies/lovers perfection. I’ve thought about so many *killing you but also making out with you* pairings to this shit, because these songs were like, DESIGNED to be recycled for any and all love hate relationships, and still hit insanely hard EVERY TIME. So now that you have these songs under your belt, you have them FOREVER. You’re welcome. I haven’t even listened to all their music, I’m sure there’s more songs for this category that I simply haven’t discovered.

-The…Maybe…Billford Songs

My standards were kinda high for making this list. But every song is about your ship when you’re insane, right??? So these are the maybe’s. One’s I’ve thought about billford to, but maybe the lyrics don’t totally align.

Playlist under the cut! I wasn’t gonna ramble about each song but WHOOPS I DID 🤷‍♀️

The Billford songs:

Monophobia - Deadmau5 (Extended version, cuz it’s the best.)

THE LYRICS… THE LYRICS!!!! Definitely bill pining in theraprism. 

Propane Nightmares - Pendulum

This one WAS gonna go in the maybe’s, but I convinced myself otherwise after listening to it eighty more times, and now it’s up here on top. And fuck it, this is the *self indulgent* billford playlist, so I do what I want. I go into a fucking trance when I listen to this song, so I can’t really explain 110% why this is a billford song to me, but I’ll try.  Apparently, this song is about the heavens gate cult. So not enemies/lovers angst. But looking at the lyrics, you could interpret it as giving yourself to something greater, and coming to the realization that what you pledged yourself to is actually a very bad thing which will ultimately destroy you. (also, you can’t deny that there was some cult like manipulation happening with Bill and Ford. Sense of purpose and friendship.) Definitely billford-y when you consider Fords commitment to bill. And I’ll admit, when I listen to it, there is some pov switching. Because the “trail of fire”,  “we will be as one”, and “bring it on home” is VERY reminiscent of bill executing weirdmageddon. So overall, my interpretation of this song is Ford feeling torn about bill, feeling regret, feeling scared, and Bill of course, just wanting to bring the dimensions together. “BRING IT ON HOME!!!!”  Or I just like the song. 

Rule 34 - Fish in a Birdcage

Bestie recommended this song to me. It needs no explanation.

Painkiller - The Queenstons

…NEEDS NO EXPLANATION DSKFDSKJHF It’s similar to the above, just more… scary imo. Violent. Definitely bill being a little psycho. I really love this song. It’s very recyclable too. You have it for any toxic ship now. 

9V - The Queenstons

One of my favorite Lapfox/Halley Labs songs… I’m gonna give you the lyrics, it’s a bit hard to understand without them. In my eyes, it’s about betraying Ford. Also these vocals (and other music by this artist) works so well for bill because of the synthesized voice. 

LoveBOMB - S3RL

This is a new S3RL song. This song sounds like a tantrum, and I really liked it when I first heard it, but it didn't fit anything I was into at the time. Luckily, bill suffered a horrible breakup, and now this song has it’s meaning. 

When I'm There - S3RL

Bill thinking about joining the third dimension with Ford. 

Click Bait - S3RL

I’ve listened to this one a LOT before this, and I surprised myself with how much it aligns with bill, specifically, him tricking Ford.

Space-Time - S3RL

Speaks for itself.

Sodom & Gomorrah - Dorian Electra

This one’s just funny :)

The In This Moment Billford Songs

Sick Like Me

Sexual Hallucination

This is one of those recyclable songs, but I was damn surprised at how well the lyrics suited them, because it alludes to being out of body, possession, etc.

Blood

Half God half devil

Roots

Whore

Damn it, I cant deny this one suits them.

Big Bad Wolf

DAMN IT I wasn’t gonna include this one, but I just checked the lyrics and fuck, it works. In this moment, how are you so wonderful

The…Maybe…Billford Songs

Illuminaughty - Infected Mushroom

I'm kind of grasping at straws with these lyrics, but with a title like that? Come on

The Pretender - Foo Fighters, Infected Mushroom, Turbo Remix

Three versions, for whichever suits your fancy.

Leopold - Infected Mushroom

This one has NO LYRICS, but it has this buildup that sounds really cool, and it has an abrupt decrescendo. Reminds me of their "friendship" and how it all came crashing down.

Idolize - Dorian Electra

Hmmmmm, I just like Dorian. But the idolization thing works for obvious reasons.

That’s it! Hope you enjoy. Maybe I'll do an expansion pack of sorts if I find enough songs for a part 2.

[space-snake]

Ghosts start appearing all over the world, particularly places like Gotham. They don’t seem overtly hostile though they are rather rowdy as they seem to be celebrating something.

Jason doesn’t understand why he can feel the ghosts elation or why he can apparently land a physical hit on them during what the ghost called a ‘friendly brawl’ when so far only magic users had any affect, limited as it was. (“You really need to your ass to Far Frozen man, you’re cores fucked” the ghost had said with a chuckle afterwards)

Shazam reports that the last King had been some kind of mad tyrant but can’t offer much else; he has limited knowledge of this universes Dead Realms, let alone the Infinite Realms that house them. He has no knowledge at all of the new King.

Constantine reports the last King was named Pariah Dark and nearly destroyed the Infinite Realms which would have caused reality itself to collapse. It took all of the Infinite Realms together to seal him away… and the crowning of a new King meant that he had been bested in single combat, which would make the new King even more powerful than Pariah had been.

Observation proved that the ghosts were violent and mischievous though rarely outright malicious. They liked to pull ‘pranks’ and have destructive fights. They were all eclectic individuals, though there was clearly a culture to them. And they all spoke willingly to any who would listen about the power of King Phantom, how fiercely he protected his Haunt, how often he would accept spars, how he calmed tensions between different ghost factions.

After three weeks of chaos, the ghosts suddenly disappeared. And then one more appeared on the Watchtower.

“Hello. I am High King Phantom. My apologies if my subjects have caused harm to you; they are many and the Realms are vast so it’s taking a bit to visit all the affected Living Realms and calm down celebrations. Please understand any who have broken the laws of the Infinite Realms are being dealt with. If you would like to discuss reparations, you can contact me with this; I may not answer immediately however”

The lanky teenager with white hair, a crown of burning ice, and a skull ring placed a piece of paper with a summoning circle on it on the table and promptly disappeared.

Silence.

“Anyone else expecting someone more… I dunno, kingly?”

[cutielando]

thinking about lando’s streams where he played fornite with angryginge and imagine the reading joining in and being better than everyone, and lando being proud n shit. can just imagine angryginge’s comments about it

fortnite | l.n.

a/n: i've never played Fortnite, so I don't really know how it works and i'm using the right terminology, but just bear with me

my masterlist

You had heard his booming laugh from the moment you entered your shared apartment. Lando was talking to someone and laughing his heart out in his gaming room, which led you to believe he was most probably streaming.

You had been out and about doing some grocery shopping, leaving Lando at home to work on some simulator runs.

That, apparently, had transformed into streaming with his friends.

You smiled and shook your head, starting to organize your groceries before changing into something more comfortable.

Settling down on the couch after you were finished with everything, you had just put your hand on the remote to put on a show when the door to Lando's gaming room suddenly opened, his eyes immediately landing on you.

"Hey baby" you greeted him, giving him a smile.

He grinned and hurried over to you, taking your face in his hands and kissing you.

"I thought I heard you come in" he mumbled against your lips, making you nod.

"I could hear your laughter before I even opened the door. You streaming?" you asked as you pulled away, fixing the curls that had fallen into his eyes.

He nodded, taking your hand and leading you back to his room with him.

You weren't a stranger to being in his streams. The fans often requested to have you on there with him because you were a much better games than he was and they enjoyed seeing you destroy him and his friends.

The moment you were in the frame, you saw AngryGinge on his screen, laughing and groaning once he saw you.

"Lando, you dirty bastard. Can't compete with me on your own so you have to bring your girlfriend to help ya" he joked, making you laugh at the unamused expression on Lando's face.

He settled in his chair and pulled you down to sit on his lap, letting you get in a comfortable position.

"I don't need Y/N to beat you at Fortnite" Lando argued, making you arch an eyebrow at that.

You and Ginge exchanged a look before you burst into a fit of giggles, something that did not impress your boyfriend.

"I can go if you want, let you prove to Ginge just how good you are without me here" you argued, making a move to get up, but Lando wasn't having it.

He quickly wrapped his arms around your waist to keep you in place, which made Ginge huff and you laugh.

The chat was flooding with comments about you two, warming your heart at how much his fans loved and accepted you being with him.

You had been very worried at the beginning about how his fans would take the news that Lando was in a relationship and actually kept it a secret for the first few months. But thankfully, they have been nothing short of supportive ever since you announced it on the internet and after you first interacted with them at the Silverstone Grand Prix.

You felt very thankful for their acceptance, knowing how important Lando’s fans were to him.

Coming back to reality, you watched as your boyfriend and Ginge played a round of Fortnite, cringing every time Lando would mess something up which would always make Ginge laugh.

At one particular point, Lando had got Ginge killed, prompting a rant which sent your boyfriend into a laughing fit, clutching his bell with one hand and your waist with the other.

"Lando, I swear to focking God, you're the worst player I've ever seen" Ginge groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose.

You laughed, which made Lando pinch your side.

"I'm not that bad, am I?" your boyfriend asked, looking at you expectantly.

You turned to face him and cringed, giving him a sheepish smile. Lando scoffed while Ginge's laughter got even louder. "Can't believe my own girlfriend doesn't believe in me" Lando grumbled under his breath.

Giggling, you wrapped your arms around his neck and gave him a loud kiss on the cheek, feeling the blush coming on under your lips.

"You're not bad, baby. You just sometimes lose sight of the big picture and lose focus" you explained, trying to make it sound like you didn't honestly think he sucked at Fortnite.

"Y/N, you play with me. Let's show Lando how it's really done" Ginge suggested, and you turned to look at Lando to see his reaction.

Even though he was partially mad because you and his friend insulted his gaming skills, he wanted to see you kicking Ginge's ass and show the ginger head how it's really done.

"Only if Lando wants me to play" you reasoned, smiling at your boyfriend.

"Oi, Y/N, leave the lad. His ego can take a little beating, that bastard" Ginge commented, making the fans in the chat comment on how funny the whole dynamic between the 3 of you was.

Lando huffed, straightening his back more determined than ever.

"Babe, show him how it's done" he solemnly said, making you nod.

You got more comfortable on your boyfriend's lap, cracking your knuckles as you prepared for the match to start.

Lando couldn't help but admire you as you skillfully dominated the game, looking so effortlessly hot that he felt pride blossom in his chest.

While watching you play with Ginge, his eyes kept shifting towards the chat where fans were literally screaming at how cute you guys were and how good Y/N actually was at the game.

"Y/N! That's not fair, you're cheating mate" Ginge shouted in frustration as he was, once again, beaten by you at his best game.

You giggled, clapping a little as you leaned back against Lando. "You're such a sore loser, Ginge. Just admit it that I'm better than you" you teased, eliciting a laugh from Lando.

Ginge was fuming while the two of you were laughing at his antics, the fans having an absolute field day with the three of you.

"What were you saying about my ego, mate? Seems like you're the one whose ego can't take a proper beating" Lando said, laughing once he saw Ginge flipping him off.

"I hate you guys" he mumbled, while you and Lando were in your own little bubble.

Oh, the sweet taste of victory.

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[honourablejester]

I’m realising as I browse around that I really love lore when it comes to ttrpgs, games and game worlds. And by that I don’t mean I like to obsessively learn lists of dates and wars, and the names of leaders of factions, I mean …

I like learning weird, juicy details about the worlds of games. I like finding little nuggets that say things about the set-up and culture and assumptions of the world. I like finding fragments of ideas to hang whole story and character concepts off.

I love that in D&D 5e’s Spelljammer, the Astral Sea is full of the corpses of dead gods that you can fully sail up to in your ship. Just. Floating out there. Waiting for you to rock up to them.

I love that in Sunless Sea, the king of the drowned is the way he is because he fell in love with an eldritch sea urchin from space, and successfully married it. His niece is an angry sentient floating mountain whose mother is a goddess-mountain and whose father is a face-stealing humanoid abomination. This is fine and normal.

I love that in Starfinder, there are mysterious bubble cities in the surface of the sun that the church of the sun goddess discovered and cheerfully occupied despite having no idea who the hell built them or for what purpose.

I love that in Dishonored, the entire industrial revolution that has built the empire we’re in the midst of saving or destroying was built on the properties of whale oil harvested from eldritch tentacled whales that live half in the oceans and half in an eldritch void personified in the form of a weird-ass black-eyed shit-stirrer of a deity who was formed from a murdered and sacrificed child. And this is largely a background detail.

I love in the Elder Scrolls that the dwarves up and fucking vanished, as a race, at some point in history and absolutely nobody has any clue what happened to them or where they went, but their technology is so insane that ideas like ‘they time-travelled’ or ‘they erased themselves from existence’ are absolutely on the table.

I love that in Numenera, so many incredibly advanced civilisations have risen and fallen on this world that it’s absolutely littered with bonkers science fiction artefacts that have caused the current medieval-esque society built over top of them to develop in bizarre ways, and also you can find a mysterious artefact that absolutely baffles and delights your character, but that you the player will fully recognise as a slightly-more-advanced thermos flask.

I love that in Fallout, an irradiated post-nuclear apolocalypic hellscape, there’s a cult that worships the god of radiation as they have come to understand it, and they are mysteriously immune to radiation with absolutely no explanation whatsoever. They’re not ghouls, the usual result of fatally irradiated humans with some resistance, they’re perfectly normal humans who can somehow just tank rads all damn day. It could be a mutation, but Lovecraftian gods apparently do also fully exist in this setting, so it’s also possible that maybe they were on to something with this Atom thing.

I love that in Heart The City Beneath, there’s a mass transit train system that they tried to hook up to the eldritch beating god-thing buried under the city so that they could metaphysically chain the stations together more easily, which went horrifically and metaphysically wrong in entirely predictable fashion, and now there’s a whole order of train-knights who have to keep people safe from the extradimensional weirdness magnet the network has become.

That, and all the fantastic little details you can stumble across. There’s a biotech augmentation in Starfinder called an angler’s light that gives you a little angler-fish bioluminescent antenna on your forehead, and it was developed by asteroid miners who needed light but also both hands free for work. In Dishonored there’s a festival that everyone pretends is outside of time so nothing you do during it can be held against you. There’s a god of snuffed candles mentioned in a single line from Heart The City Beneath who has pacifist cannibal priests, and that is literally all the information you get on him.

While things like the history and geography and timeline of a world do also fascinate me, I’m not really here to memorise stuff like that. I’m here to find weird little nuggets of information and worldbuilding and delight in them. Give me funerary customs and weird myths and oddly specific circumstances and baffling little objects and absolutely bonkers cosmological implications. Give me the corpses of dead gods, and aesthetic movements with highly specific backstories, and bureaucratic fuck-ups of titanic scale, and mysterious things that seem to break all other rules of your setting with absolutely no explanation because people in-universe have no fucking clue how they work either. Why are the Children of Atom immune to radiation without ghoulifying? Not a clue, but Confessor Cromwell has been cheerfully standing in that irradiated pond that kills the player character with about 10 minutes of exposure for the last year and he’s still absolutely fine.

I just. I really love lore. I like my settings to have some meat in them, some juicy details to dig into, some inexplicable elements to have fun trying to explain. Particularly that last bit. I feel like a lot of people when building worlds feel like the rules have to be absolute and everything has to have an explanation, but nah. Putting some weird shit in makes everything immediately feel bigger, more real, because we don’t have even half an idea of how our world truly works, there’s always something we just don’t fully understand yet, and you can put that in a fictional world too. Some mysteries, some contradictions, some randomness, some weirdness. There’s a line, obviously, this depends on execution, but a little bit of mystery really does help.

Lore is awesome. And weird lore is even more so. Heh.

[whencartoonsruletheworld]

so like. fnaf movie. after night five, all outside observers know is "this 30yo guy with severe anger issues + his 10yo mentally ill sister just walked out of his collapsing workplace with an unconscious, stabbed police officer, saying that someone inside the building tried to kill them but we can't get into the building to check. we went to their house and the aunt who was fighting for custody of the child is dead on the floor. the guy's career counselor is missing, as is his babysitter and her family and apparently they're all dead in the building we can't get into." and like. that all looks suspicious as FUCK however we know that in the few-weeks timeskip both mike and abby seem happy and fine so it's not like mike was arrested or anything. he seems to be more adjusted and is happily talking with her teacher so i doubt he's under stress of interrogation or anything

there's a lot of implications there that mike mighta pulled something but it's all circumstantial evidence at best. i'm sure in jane's autopsy and crime scene evidence they couldn't find any evidence of mike being the one to attack her, esp since it was probably just golden freddy bopping her in the head so they dont even have the weapon, and if she was strangled they'd be able to tell it wasn't by bare hands and they couldnt get prints or anyth. especially if golden freddy is a FULL ghost and thus left no trail.

mike would be smart enough to only tell the cops what they need to know without mentioning ghosts to sound crazy. abby might be more honest with the cops just bc of #autism but they'd be more likely to consider her talking about ghosts and imaginary friends as a child's way of coping, and they cant get anything out of her that would incriminate mike. ADD TO THAT that mike has wounds that are clearly defensive and is SUPER banged up and his wounds would likely match his story way better than evidence of him attacking anyone, AND that there's likely footage and witnesses of him being in the pharmacy and then driving to work (and thus not in the area to attack jane), AND if/when nessie wakes up she'll probably vouch for mike as well, and the cops dont have anything on him

though i DO wonder if they would have records of vanessa patching him up in the police outpost. if they do, that would also back up mike's story as it's 1) far away from the aunt jane crime scene, 2) confirms that he and vanessa were working together, so either she's complicit in Crime™ or his story is accurate and she was helping him save his sister. him going to defend her instead of calling backup is also consistent with his personality of getting triggered and jumping into action around child abduction, esp w/ his sibling in danger

considering what abby would probably say, AND the history of freddy's, it's likely that they would come to the conclusion of is "someone [likely the og kidnapper from the 80s] found out that the guy working at freddy's had a sister, kidnapped abby from her house while her aunt was babysitting and tried to recreate the crimes, his story of him and vanessa defending her and escaping vaguely checks out." whether or not mike would incriminate vanessa by mentioning her dad was the killer is up in the air, and there's obviously some huge holes that are left from nobody believing that there are ghosts in the building but that would probably be the eventual conclusion

but throwing that all away, it would be really, REALLY funny if the rest of the town, being really fuckin nosy and getting into the juiciest gossip they've had in decades, took one look at michael "big teddy bear falling asleep on himself" schmidt and said "there's no way. there's no way this guy murdered his aunt, stabbed an officer and then destroyed his own workplace, especially when he really needed that job and was on sleeping medication," and then turned around to look at abby "neurodivergent in the early 2000s (ableist af time period)" "vocally hates her aunt" "doesn't talk to anyone and claims that she can see ghosts" "vaguely possessive of her brother" "claims that she found the guy who hurt her friends and got him jumped by a cupcake(?)" schmidt and said "oh my god. it was her."

and nobody's gonna directly say anything but they've got cautious eyes on the situation and someone quietly slips mike a copy of the bad seed to see if he has a realization but instead he's just like "hey this book kinda reminds of that golden freddy kid lmao. wonder how he's doin" and then we smashcut to golden freddy kid poking springtrap with a stick

[thicctails]

I need more info on the get better children au, especially about when Bill shows up.

*rubs hands together* I finally got some extra time to draw up some new art for this AU, so let's give it some substance >:3 Long post below the read more with extra art :D

Before Euclydia was destroyed, Euclid and Scalene Cipher were some of its most powerful members. Bill saying that everyone loved him as a baby was true for a time; children aren't born very often, and the Ciphers are considered to almost be royalty. It wasn't until Bill's mutation became apparent that people began to shun him. If he had been born to any other family, he likely would have been abandoned.

Though neither Euclid nor Scalene could really comprehend the concept of something being "up", let alone what "stars" could possibly be, both of them used their status to try and find any scrap of forbidden information, hoping that they could find an answer, could find some confirmation that their son wasn't crazy, and didn't need to be blinded by his "medicine."

It was this research that eventually saved their lives. Having the knowledge that it was possible for things to, hypothetically, exist in a three dimensional plane allowed them to pool their powers and create 3D forms for themselves when Euclydia began to burn, pulling themselves off the 2D plane like a sticker being peeled off a page. It wasn't a smooth transition in the slightest, and the flames managed to damage parts of their bodies before they managed to fully free themselves. The rest of their power went into escaping their collapsing reality, and when all was said and done, they were left near catatonic and floating in the space between time and space for many, many years.

They don't really start to recover until a certain frilly guy upstairs nudges them into a new, stable dimension. This one is almost entirely 3D, and inhabited by creatures that look completely alien to the Euclydians. Creatures called humans.

They meet Dipper and Mabel not long after, and the two triangles attach themselves to the babies, doing their best to care for them in their weakened states when their young, unprepared parents fail to be adequate caretakers. Being 2D is far easier for them, so they stick to the walls like shadows and find ways to speak to the twins, slipping into videos and pictures, music and books, their forms changing slightly to match whatever media they slipped into. They teach Dipper and Mabel their colours, shapes, ABC's, ect, comfort them when they get sad or scared, and once they're old enough, how to do basic things like getting themselves food and water when they get left alone too long.

Neither Pines parent really notices their children making grabby hands and babbling at open air at first, though they do become a bit concerned when years pass and they still stare at walls and empty corners like there's something there.

Eventually, as we all know, the Pines twins get shipped off to a sleepy town in Oregon, and Euclid and Scalene are, of course, coming along to watch over their little stars. However, they become deeply uncomfortable when they start to see visages of their son carved into every room of the twin's temporary home.

It doesn't take long for the show's antics to start, but Grunkle Stan gets involved in the twins adventures far earlier because during The Inconveniecing, Euclid uses his ability to manipulate televisions to play one of those old PSA's on loop until he gets spooked enough to actually check on the twins, only to find them missing.

Eventually, through the help of Scalene using a radio to drag up an old advert for the Dusk 2 Dawn, he figures out where they are and arrives just in time to see the tail end of their ghostly encounter. Unable to deny his knowledge of Gravity Falls' weirdness, he and the twins have their Season 1 finale talk that night, and Dipper shows Stan Journal 3, which leads to all three of them searching for Journal 2 (Stan doesn't reveal the portal yet)

Bill gets summoned by Gideon like in Canon, but things veer wildly off course when, upon entering Stan's mind, Mabel asks him if he knows Euclid or Scalene. He freezes up upon hearing the names of his parents, and he immediately calls off the deal with Gideon, ripping himself out of Stan's Dreamscape. Before he can process what happened, he comes face to face with someone he's only seen in daymares for the past trillion years

Bill dips the fuck out once he realizes he's not hallucinating, disappearing to Axolotl knows where to do fun, productive things such as: scream, cry, break shit, sob on the floor, drink until the teeth in his eye ache, stare at the space between stars for days on end, and interrogate every single one of his henchmaniacs to see if they spiked his drink.

Mans has absolutely zero clue on how to navigate this situation, eventually settling on stalking the Pines because he genuinely cannot think of any possible way to approach his (apparently alive????) parents. How do you go about atoning for the extinction of your entire species?

Bill Cipher has never been one to do things for others for any other reason than to get something back, but he figures the best place to start is by protecting these fleshy human young that his parents seem so attached to.

Wait, would that make them siblings? Axolotl, he sure hopes not.

[redflagshipwriter]

Hot Ghouls in Your Area

Chapter 1

“A cult?” Jason blew out a bubble and enjoyed the disgusted face that Bruce made.

“Yes.” His voice was tight. Jason could tell that he wanted to turn back to the Batcomputer. “They’re operating in Park Row-”

“Crime Alley.”

Batman sighed and accepted the correction. “I would like to propose a joint operation.” He sounded so tired and not very optimistic.

Jason eyed up his on-again-off-again Father figure and popped his gum, thinking it over. Bruce clearly expected him to say no, fuck off, and take the information himself.

He could. There was nothing wrong with that.

“Sure, old man.” He clapped Bruce on the shoulder and finished screwing together the tool he’d brought in for maintenance. He’d had to fabricate a new part and the Red Hood didn’t exactly have the equipment for that in his two room apartment. “Thursday night alright?”

“They’ve a planned meeting on Wednesday, actually,” Bruce said, frowning slightly at him but looking soft around the eyes with confused hope. “Would that be possible? They seem to gather mid-week.”

Jason let out a sigh. “I can make it work. Ta, old man.” He made sure to toss off an especially insouciant salute as he sauntered away. Sure, he was willing to put a little effort into maintaining their relationship, but he couldn’t be too compliant. If you gave Bruce an hour of your time, he wrote you down on the schedule for an hour every day until one of you fuckin’ died in a warehouse explosion. Something like that.

He wasn’t that trusting, though. Jason took the information that Bruce emailed him and did his own legwork. He wasn’t stubborn enough to bother redoing digital work that Bruce had done or gotten from Babs. That would be a waste of his time, and he valued his time. But he scoped out the cult’s meeting place.

Of all the undignified things, it was a rented room in the community center. Jason found himself sheepishly breaking into the office to check on the reservation and poking around the room itself.

There was nothing special about it. It was a shitty room with shitty paneled walls and cheap, well-trodden grey carpet. It boasted a few too many tables, arranged in a U shape, and a whiteboard pushed up against the wall that hadn’t been cleaned off well enough to erase what he was pretty sure was a reference to their lord and savior, destroyed of worlds.

So. That was a point for Bruce’s cult thing.

He hadn’t really doubted it, if he was honest, given that this had originated in a tip from Zatanna. She had told him as a courtesy that some creep had moved their base of recruiting and operations into Gotham.

Apparently, recruitment was going pretty well. The room could seat like, twenty? Jason counted chairs and left.

He came back on Wednesday at 8pm with the Batman and an attempt at a good attitude. He probably wasn’t going to need any of the weapons on his person. They were going to check in so that this guy knew they had an eye on him and that he would be suspect number one if there was any hint of people or cats being sacrificed.

Bruce fucked off to peer in the windows, like the giant caped creep he was. Jason took the front door, nodded congenially at the old man in the office, and knocked at the room the cultists had reserved.

He could hear Bruce internally curse through the comm. It was silent, of course, but the quality of the silence changed. “Knock knock,” he called, since a literal knock hadn’t done it. He opened the door without waiting. “Just checking in, heard you’re new to town and that you tried to feed Zatanna’s shitty little cousin to the god of Death?”

The room stared at him. A whiteboard marker squeaked to a stop. He idly followed the sound to the board. A …. Huh. that looked like some kind of mystical bullshit.

“You’ve been touched by death,” said the fraud himself, a man in his fifties with a wildly pretentious robe that was wrinkled from the paper bag he’d clearly used to carry it in. He outstretched the hand that didn’t have a blue whiteboard marker in it. “You would be a perfect sacrifice to our Lord.”

“So will it be,” said about half the people there, at the same time a young woman said, “No shit?” in an impressed tone.

Jason rolled his eyes through the helmet, unintimidated by the room of weirdos standing up. The kind of people who gathered at a community center on a Wednesday night were not going to summon the God of Death. Light glinted off the window where Batman was clearly weighing the possibility of breaking glass and swinging in. Jason silently waved him off with a headshake. They weren’t to the point of property damage yet. He took a couple of steps into the room with deliberate swagger. “What a lucky guess,” he drawled. “The Red Hood has had brushes with death? No one but a legitimate prophet could possibly make such a statement.”

“I’m not a prophet,” said the man, and turned back to his white board. “I’m a devote.” He rubbed out a line with the meat of his hand and then hurriedly wrote in ‘The Red Hood’ in a tilted cursive. “The sacrifice!” he shouted, throwing his arms wide and accidentally making a big blue line through his evil little sigil or whatever it was. The elderly lady to Jason’s right opened up her bag, thrust her hand in, and came up with a fistful of -

“Salt?” Jason asked, confused and unimpressed as the silly twit threw her handful of salt at him. “Thanks, I’m better seasoned now,” he snarked. He pulled out a gun easily. “Alright, let’s get serious. I-”

The whiteboard was glowing. The blue letters were glowing green.

“What the fuck?” Jason said. The windows exploded with broken glass as Batman decided now was the time to make his entrance. He barely got to see it before something hooked unpleasantly on his body and soul and twisted it sideways.

The world was green now. Holy shit. Jason spun a circle on uneven ground and gaped. “...Egg on my face,” he said. “I’ve been sacrificed. Consider me embarrassed.” A quick check showed that his comm was useless. It was giving off a steady little eeee of static that kinda sounded like screams. Whimsical. Jason turned it off.

He wasn’t panicking yet. The void wasn’t that freaky. It was weird, sure, but there weren’t any demons or enemies. He flicked the safety off his favorite gun just in case and frowned into the darkness.

It was like he was standing under a spotlight with no light source. There was ambient lighting in all directions, but the world faded into darkness only a few dozen feet away. He took some experimental steps to determine that, yeah, the field of visibility traveled with him.

Well. Time to get moving. Jason walked. There was nothing for the first - hour, he was gonna call it an hour. He got antsy and started jogging. The green stretched on, placid and infinite in a way that was really starting to piss him off. “Hey!” Jason barked into the void. “Anyone there?”

There was an answering electronic whirr. He stopped in his tracks. Jason looked in every direction, including up, and only saw the fucking thing when it was basically on top of him.

The vehicle was probably most equivalent to a spaceship, he decided, as what was probably a 3-man craft at most parked. The top clicked. It opened from the top and someone bounded out. “Hey!” came an annoyed male voice. “What’s the deal, bud?” The stranger landed in front of Jason with crossed arms and a pissy expression. His white hair floated above his head as if he was the little fucking mermaid in the ocean.

Jason scowled, the back of his mind cataloging the other guy’s outfit as pristine and undamaged and his musculature as athletic. “What’s it to you?” he asked, defensive. He didn’t know if it was safe to give information to this guy. “I might be a little lost,” Jason conceded.

“A little lost,” the guy repeated, and then- okay, he flew in a weird little flippy circle, scowling all the while as Jason gaped. “A little lost.” He scoffed. Then he let out a sigh that made his whole body look smaller. He uncrossed his arms and ran a hand through his hair. “This is a weird question,” he said, making it sound more defensive than apologetic. “Did you uh.” He scowled, like the words were distasteful. “Look,” he tried again. “Are you delulu, or did you get caught up as the sacrificial bride? I told Frank to knock that shit off.”

Sacrificial bride. Jason felt his brain go offline for a moment. Say what now.

“Helloooo,” the… was this rando a god of death? He was impatient. He flew way up into Jason’s personal space and snapped his fingers. “Someone just smashed metal trash bins together at my grave to get my attention, basically. No, it’s more like one of those spam pop ups that says there’s hot girls in your area?” He made a gesture at Jason. “Only it’s loud. It’s ringing in my ears, and I had to come track you down. Do you think this is funny?”

“...Sacrificial bride?” Jason finally managed to croak out.

Weirdly, this made the other guy relax immediately. “Just found out, huh,” he said, sounding much more sympathetic. “Yeah, okay, we need to sort out a spiritual divorce immediately. And then you can go home and there will be no more hot girls in my area and I can get back to my ess- my work.”

Jason took a few moments of grief and confusion to accept his apparent status. “We’re married?” he said weakly.

The white haired man looked a little sheepish. “Marriage is probably not quite accurate,” he said, and Jason felt a little bit of relief before the guy continued, “It’s more like you’re my concubine?” He sounded mortified by this. “I didn’t want this!”

“No, no,” Jason said, meaning both that he believed it and that he needed this conversation to change directions immediately. “I- who are you?” He gestured at his– what the fuck was the other side of a concubine relationship? King was the associated word that came up, but that…

“I’m nobody, really,” said the white haired man weakly. “But I may technically be King of ghosts or whatever. The Infinite Realms.” He scratched at his face. “So… yeah.”

They stood in utterly mortified silence for a long moment before he seemed to remember something. “You can call me Danny,” he offered.

“...Call me Jason,” he said.

“Thanks, Jason,” Danny said genially. “So, uh, this is a mess, right?” He started floating away backwards. “I’m going to hunt down my mentor and advisor and get some uh- advice, I guess. Do you wanna come with? Or should I come back and check in once I’ve heard from him?”

Jason weighed up his situation, the conventional wisdom about getting in vehicles with strange men, and wondered how useless his gun was going to be in this situation. Danny had never reacted to it being pointed at him, so his guess was ‘utterly unhelpful’. He put it away. “I’d like a ride, thanks,” he said dryly.

They made some stilted conversation on the ride. Danny was clearly trying to hold back and give him no identifying information. That was fascinating, because it implied that there was something Jason could do from the human world to track Danny down. It was also reassuring because there was no reason to withhold information if he’d planned to keep Jason prisoner, so, ya know, that was a good sign.

Anyway, Jason got a lot of information from Danny.

Danny was a terrible liar and he misspoke like, all the time. Jason was pretty sure he was in the ghost equivalent of school, like college or something. He talked like someone in Jason’s age group would, so he’d probably died very recently. Maybe he had been a college student when he’d died and he just hadn’t given up on that degree yet, honestly. Jason managed to drag the conversation around to education. He got nowhere with asking about literature but he hit the jackpot with science. Danny was still babbling about a telescope when he landed the …ship outside of a wonky clocktower.

Jason took off his safety belt and froze in his tracks when Danny absently stopped him with a cool hand. Jason looked down at that hand.

“You had better stay here,” Danny said. He shook his head slightly. “Clocky doesn’t like everyone.”

He melted into the chair as if he had never wanted to get up. “Alright,” Jason said.

Danny was out of the spaceship by the time that Jason realized something was very wrong with that interaction.

He hadn’t decided to sit down. He hadn’t wanted to sit back down. Did- did he actually think it was reasonable to stay behind, or would he have argued and gone in normally?

‘...I think Danny did something.’ Suspicion swirled in his gut. Jason tried to take the safety belt off and stand up. He couldn’t. It was like his muscles wouldn’t respond to it.

Well, that was pretty fuckin’ evil. His pulse picked up in his throat. It… It was some kind of compulsion? He had to do what Danny told him to do? That was really fucked up. He was starting to feel really unsafe now. He wished he’d hung back with Bruce. He wanted someone to bring him home. And weirdly, he felt betrayed. He hardly trusted Danny, didn’t know the fucker well enough to, but he hadn’t gotten that impression off the guy–

‘It wasn’t him,’ Jason realized. ‘It was the binding ritual. Danny said it wasn’t like a marriage, it’s not equal. That’s why I did what Danny wanted me to do.’

Well. Well then. If Danny didn’t know that Jason had to follow his orders, Jason was most fucking certainly not going to spell it out for him. It was a grim calculation to make, but it seemed the safest. As it was, Danny seemed to want to get rid of him as fast as possible.

So that was it. He’d play along and get Danny to spit him back out into Gotham, a young hot divorcé free on the streets.

[ddiidi]

bf!Bangchan x gn!reader (ot8 mentioned)

Masterlist

When he calls you clingy, so you distance yourself

Previous Pt. 2

Pt. 3

Next Pt. 4

!Warnings: angst, angst and more angst, fake!texts, swearing (lmk if i missed anything)

Side-Note: Sorry but I really needed to do this, my heart desires this angst rn but dw y'all get ur happy ending (reader will throw chan off a building and gets married to jay why papi😍)✨

You were walking at a river, listening to a story one of your friends is telling, when you receive a message.

You groan and take out you phone to answer back as quickly as possible, but when you saw what the message was about, you were the one that nearly collapsed.

You didn't mean to be that mean, you really didn't but it just pissed you off so much. He hurt you and now he's expecting you to just come over and act like nothing ever happened?? You did care about him, a lot, but rightnow, you don't even know if you care about him since he's your boyfriend, or because he's a human being. Either way, you don't plan on forgiving him, not yet, not since it's been a week and there hasn't been even one message or apology.

"Y/n? Y/nnnnnnn everything okay????? You've been staring at your phone for minutes." Rin, one of your friends, asks you, as you were standing still, staring at your conversation with Felix.

"I'm...fine..just something..... unnecessary" you shove your phone back in your bag "Let's not mind it. How about we'll go shopping?" They all agreed on going shopping, but you honestly weren't in the mood for a fun day anymore, not when your mind keeps wandering to chan. Even if he was an asshole...you still love him.

xxxxxxxx

Later that evening, you drove over to the hospital chan was at, to "just drop off a bag" of fresh clothing for him tomorrow.

Earlier that day you asked Felix not to drop anything off and that you'll do it later, also asking him about Chan's state. Apparently he fainted due to stress, lack of sleep and also a sudden panic where his heartbeat wasn't quick enough to exchange the oxygen in his body fast enough, so it was in fact not your fault.

Well, not all at least.

You were just going to take a quick look at him, to make sure he's not dead. You love him after all... You can't just stop caring for him, you just wanted to see that he's okay...it's been a week and to be honest, you did miss him, somehow.

So here you sit, next to his bed, watching him sleep peacefully. The nurses let you in, when you said you'd quickly drop off his bag.

You just stared at his face for a while, before standing up and giving him a quick peck on his lips before walking towards the door, turning around when he mumbles out your name.

Oh this voice. His voice. How you missed hearing your name with that voice, from him. But instead of saying anything, you quickly and quietly get out of the room. You didn't wanna talk to him and you also don't want to give him the joy of knowing, that you still miss him after what he said.

xxxxxxxxxxx

The next morning you were awoken by messages blowing up your phone and were close to a heart attack when you didn't recognize your surroundings, when you realize that you moved in your new apartment early, so you wouldn't wake up to a half dead chan banging at your door.

Instead, that half dead oldie decided to blow up your phone.

You turn you phone off, lay it on the nightstand, cover yourself with your blanket and.... Cry.

What did you do? Why did you say that? And why did he keep giving you the fault? Questions over questions linger in your head as you cried. You didn't want all this to end, but what if he notices he's actually better of without you? What if you just....destroyed a 3 year long relationship just because of your stupid personality?...

No. He deserved if. He definitely did for being an asshole. But do you really have to suffer, because of his mistakes?

You eventually cried yourself to sleep, in hope that it was just a bad dream...

Sometimes it's heart to accept the truth, because the truth sometimes hurts.

‧͙⁺˚*･༓☾✧༺🖤༻✧✧༺🖤༻✧✧༺🖤༻✧☽༓･*˚⁺‧͙

@finnbbl @emilyywhyy @wolfs-howling @justastraymoa @loveyouamory @muraae @callmekda

[sophiethewitch1]

What We Want - Prologue

In Which A Romantic Breaks The Universe

(Yandere!batboys x f!reader) 18+ MDNI!

SUMMARY

Another lonely birthday, another empty year. You miss your family. You're late for your bills and rent, and even then, you got robbed last Tuesday.

Still, you buy yourself a cupcake, because you need it. I mean, hey. What's dessert for if not to get over cheating boyfriends and dead relatives?

As you blow out the candle, watching the clock switch from 11:59 pm to midnight of the next day, you make a wish.

And because the world doesn't like to make much sense, it comes true. Your life is suddenly flipped on a dime, and you're stuck trying to catch up with it. Fantasy becomes reality. You're a Wayne now, apparently. Or you used to be. You're loved, you're rich, you're talented and powerful.

Well, sort of. Careful what you wish for, right?

(TRIGGER WARNINGS AND MASTERLIST HERE)

PREV - NEXT

The cupcake is smashed. Pink icing and gaudy star-shaped sprinkles coat the interior of the box, and the pastry itself has devolved into crumbs. You just stare at it. It had cost you seventeen dollars. It was expensive, yeah. But you’d spent the last three months walking past it every morning and afternoon in the bougie cafe’s windows. You’d waited. You’d wanted.

And it was destroyed. Completely. The perfect swirl of the buttercream was no more. The single, delicate flower made of frosting had lost half it’s petals. You weren’t sure how you could eat it. The wrapping had been warped, but maybe a tea spoon would work?

You let your head fall into your hands, a sob wracking your shoulders. And then less than a second later you swallow down the feeling, and stride over to your shitty apartment’s tiny kitchen. You grab a lighter, a plastic wine glass and the bottle of white wine Molly had given you earlier today. You hadn’t told her what happened yet, but she could tell something had. She’d gave you the wine, a hug, and the promise to always be by your side.

Despite today’s circumstances, despite this week’s circumstances, despite this decade’s circumstances, you were going to have a good birthday getting black-out drunk.

You weren’t going to let yourself sink into one of your funks. Even if it was the worst day of the year by far. Even if it was the second worst birthday of your life.

You just don’t. It’s not allowed.

Your phone rings. Sliding it out of your pocket, you stare blankly at the name on the screen. Speak of the devil, and he shall appear.

Malcom. One of George’s friends. You reject the call, block the number, and slide your phone back in your pocket. See? Dealing with things like an adult. Not throwing a temper tantrum, not crying, not… well, destroying your life in an epic meltdown. You’d had a few of those. Still, despite your obvious erraticness, you hadn’t been fired this year. Yay!

You told yourself you were getting better, even as the universe seemingly conspired against your happiness. You were kind of convinced it was.

Turning, you play with the cap on the wine, walking over to your old ratty couch and falling into it. The beast groans at the contact, but you pay it no mind. The thing was probably older than you, and you were celebrating your twenty-first today.

You were an orphan in Gotham, it was not your first time drinking. Molly had dragged you to so many awful parties over the years. But this wine was probably the fanciest you’d ever been given. Scratch that, definitely was. You pour yourself a glass, stick the birthday candle half-hazardly into the largest chunk of cupcake, and grab the remote.

The only true comfort you can get on this day. A woman, a reporter. She speaks, but you can’t really hear what she’s saying. You chug down a glass of the wine, apologising in your head to Molly, and then pour yourself another.

It takes a few minutes, but your muscles relax, and her words tune into focus.

“Today’s memorial, is once again sponsored by the Wayne foundation.”

Yeah, because they’re the only charity organisation in the city. The family of billionaires were debatably the only good ones in existance. Debtable because you weren’t sure if they were good enough themselves. As an orphan who’d known the cruelty of the system yourself, you were a mix of bitter and grateful towards them. Sure, they’d been the only thing that kept you out of true poverty. You were still an awful bitch about it.

You always had been the jealous type. The other kids who got better backpacks or toys or whatever had you seething with fury. The multitude of orphans Bruce Wayne risen out of poverty were not safe from your envy. It didn’t matter if you were… Well, a little bit, just a teeny-tiny-tiddly-little bit… obsessed. Obsessed with them. Kind of manic about it, actually.

You were working on it. Today was a bad day, and you were a little too raw. So, like every little dumb animal on the planet, you went straight to your creature comforts. You pretended you were a roman eating and drinking on their chaise lounge, watching their magnificent entertainment.

Delusional. Your sofa was falling apart at the seems, your cupcake was debris and your entertainment was a memorial service. Wine was good, though.

Gotta focus on the good parts.

You watch the TV screen, the reporter’s voice drifting in and out of focus. There was a family photo of the Waynes and their family friends, all in perfect suits and dresses and pearls and fancy watches. You’d bet that those little accessories were worth more than a year of your rent.

And you lived in fucking Gotham, both the most expensive city to live in, and the worst at the same time. A miracle, truly.

Anyway, they were all stunningly beautiful, even some of the guys. God knows how much the internet went on about Richard Grayson’s long eyelashes. You’d always been enamored with Dick’s good looks. Even Damian Wayne who had only turned nineteen a few months ago and was three years younger than you was already being fawned over by the tabloids.

Gotham’s newest young rich bachelor. Bitterly envious, that was you. You didn’t like that emotion, though, so you turned your attention to others. Namely, delusion.

You let yourself get swept up in daydreams. Of having a rich family, of one so close knit as the Wayne’s. Of having a handsome, loving, kind partner. You don’t let yourself dream about your real family, of a George that was faithful.

You just don’t.

Maybe someone like Tim Drake. Loyal, everyone who knew him described him as loyal. His romances with Bernard Dowd and Stephanie Brown were famous. There were hundreds of papparazzi photos of him with big bundles of roses and a sweet look on his face. You thought someone like Tim Drake would probably be like one of the heroes in your romance novels. Something silly like a meet cute in an airport, or maybe a bookstore or a cafe. He was pretty famous in Gotham’s niche hipster coffee scene, right?

Yeah, you could see it now. Some dumb but cute scene where you get confused and accidentally take his order. You get the same drink, and bond over your shared love of caramel syrup. Like he didn’t live on the opposite side of the city from you, and you probably couldn’t afford whatever fancy shit he drunk. Italian coffee beans versus… well, you didn’t actually know what you bought. You knew it didn’t taste very good, but it was dirt cheap.

What were you doing? Ah, yes, silly daydreams about romance.

But even as you think of Tim, Dick Grayson was so pretty, and he’d had his fair share of partners too. Someone with such an angelic face had to have a personality to match, and the media agreed. Of course you didn’t really know what he was like, this was all just fantasy. Other than numerous tabloid interviews and television, which suggested he had a kind heart and a love for bad jokes you truly knew nothing about the guy. Still, he’d be the golden retriever trope, you think. Or the knight in shining armor, saving his heroine from one of the many disaster’s plaguing Gotham and confessing his love in one big final act. His meet cute would be the airplane one. The blue of his eyes, it makes you think of the sky. You’d take his seat, but he’d be super sweet about it. Like he didn’t have a private jet, and would never be caught on economy.

You think Damian Wayne could play a good romance lead as well. From what you’d seen, he seemed to have a terrible personality, which was perfect for any modern romance. A classic enemies to lovers, with some bickering. Maybe he’d have secretly loved her the entire time, and maybe there’d be a good grovel at the end. So, appreciating his character, he’d have to have a meet ugly. Probably get stuck in an elevator with him or something, and he’d get to display his keen intellect and argumentative nature.

You swirl your wine, nodding your head. Brilliant ideas today, you should talk to Molly more. She’d definitely appreciate your wisdom. She wanted to be a screen writer one day, and all this would be very helpful. She was going to college for it. You couldn’t afford college.

Maybe you were drunk. Maybe you were a genius. It was hard to tell, so you take another sip. That’ll help you figure things out.

“As always, the Wayne families’ faces are morose as they celebrate the late Jason Todd.”

And as always, you felt an odd connection with the dead man. Your lives had both technically ended the same day, in the same grand calamity. Sure, you were still technically alive. Kicking about. But everyone you loved dying in one fell swoop, right in front of your eyes? You felt more like a ghost these days.

Weren’t you supposed to be fighting those sorts of thoughts off? Whatever, it was too much effort anyway.

Your slight obsession with the Wayne family had been initially started by Jason Todd. You hadn’t been thinking about him as much recently with George in your life, but he swung right back into place as soon as George left your life. Like a magnet, or more likely, a compulsion.

But now you were brought right back to the morning after. Seeing the entire city grieving the day after you’d lost your family, your first thought had been ‘Good, I’m not the only one,’ and then you’d stopped being an idiot and realised the city was mourning Jason Todd, heir to the Wayne name. Sure, there’d been hundreds of others who’d died, but that was Gotham. Your family had gotten a plaque filled with tens of other forgotten names, Jason had gotten framed photos hung around the city.

Today, his photo was once again surrounded by thousands of bouquets. Peonies, roses, daffodils, lillies, a rainbow of petals that almost covered his memorial stone. It reminded you of your sad-ass cupcake. When the camera zoomed out, you could see your smaller set of poseys against one of the thirty towering monuments, the tiny names crammed into the rock. Your families name was on line fifty-two, near the bottom. You could only afford the flowers once a year, but you visited once a week at least.

There were other flowers. Other offerings. Other candles. Jason’s dwarfed them all.

You sometimes couldn’t tell if you hated the dead man or were hopelessly in love with him. Obviously it didn’t matter. Even when he was alive he was out of both your league and your tax bracket.

Still, you were absolutely certain of it, Jason Todd would beat up George Lancaster. So fucking bad. To a bloody pulp. He’d be eager to do it, as well. You could hum and haw about how you thought violence was bad but he’d see right to the core of you.

The part of you that wanted George Lancaster to suffer. And he’d do it with a kiss and a promise that he’d make it slow. He’d save you from all your monsters, and he’d do it eagerly. And that was the fantasy of it all, wasn’t it?

You lift your glass, in celebration of your dead parasocial imaginary boyfriend. You hoped he wouldn’t be jealous of your new living parasocial imaginary boyfriends. Hiccuping out a laugh, you swallow down another gulp.

And even then, of course you wanted Bruce Wayne as a father. As someone who has seen the worst of the world, and would protect you from it. As someone who would wipe away the tears, who would save you from your own self. And you wanted Cassandra as a sister, someone to groan over guys with and steal clothes off. You wanted the close relationships they shared with Barbara Gordon and Stephanie Brown, with Duke who’d only recently come into their fold. You even wanted their dog you’d seen in photos, the cat that Damian posted on his instagram, the fucking cow they kept for god knows reason inside the estate. You wanted everything, every part of their lives. You were a jealous person, but more than that, you were a greedy person.

You glance at the clock.

11:57.

You shakily open the candle packet, picking a green one out. That had been Sam’s last favourite colour, but he switched them so often it was hard to remember. You stab it into the pink frosting. Julie always chose pink for her cake. Chasey loved flowers, particularly poseys. The flowers had looked like posesys before they’d been crushed.

You light the candle. It’s tiny flame flickers in the dark room, the warm light overpowered by the cool from the television. You peek back over to the clock.

11:58.

And Mum always made her wish at midnight, because she believed that was when it was most likely to come true.

What would you wish for? You never did, because you never knew what you wanted to wish for. Everything you wanted, everything you could’ve wanted, was gone. It couldn’t come back, it was impossible.

11:59.

You look at the TV, at the blinding forms of the Wayne family. Of their graveyard, with the manor in the background. It’s as impossible as everything else. But that’s what they represent for you, isn’t it?

Something hopeful. Something impossible.

You wanted impossible.

12:00.

You lean over the messy cupcake, and blow the candle out. It disappears in one blow, and you sink back into the couch. You take a few crumbs from the cupcake and sneak them past your lips. In your drunkenness, you probably get more on the couch than in your mouth.

You let your eyes flutter shut, and because only you can, you give yourself the comfort of lies. You imagine loving embraces, whispered platitudes. You imagine that today was a good day, that you’d find yourself tomorrow happy. That you wouldn’t wake up with a hangover, that you wouldn’t have a shitty job, an evil ex, and mountains of debt.

That you’d have people who loved you, who could ease the pain.

And you don’t even care who they are.

MASTERLIST - NEXT

[hairmetal666]

It's a fluke that Eddie ends up a gymnast. Wayne only signs him up for summer classes at Hawkins's tumbling gym to burn off his excess six-year-old energy. Nobody, lest of all Eddie or Wayne, expects him to be talented at it.

And now, somehow, he's at his first ever elite gymnastics competition. His coaches all said he was good, but he hadn't really had a frame of reference for what that meant. Not until now. Not until he's in 3rd place after high bar, right behind Steve Harrington.

They tumbled together, as little kids. Steve a tiny boy with an absurd pompadour, monopolizing the mats for insane tumbling passes and lording his high-end competition shirts over the other kids (none of the rest even wore actual gymnastics gear; they were six and it was Hawkins).

Now, he's a swaggering fifteen year old with the same pompadour and bad attitude. They're not on the same rotation, but as Eddie moves on from his floor exercise, Steve makes a point to ram into him.

Eddie doesn't react and maybe that would've been the end of it, but he ends up placing, and Steve corners him in the locker room.

"Come to congratulate me?" Eddie smirks.

"You better watch your back, Munson." Steve shoves him into the lockers.

"I knew you were an asshole, Harrington, but I didn't realize you were a sore loser."

Steve leans close, heat melting into Eddie. "You better count yourself lucky you've gotten this far. Not really a sport for poor kids."

Eddie bristles at this. Yeah, sure, his gear is secondhand, and he and Wayne learned how to sew to mend his competition shirts, gymnastics pants, and warmups, but they work hard, together, for Eddie to do this. "Don't worry about how I afford to be here." Eddie checks him as he brushes past. "Just fix those wobbly flairs on pommel."

The rivalry is hot and fierce and mean, made even worse by the fact that Eddie has an enormous hate-boner for Harrington. It's not, Eddie reasons, his fault. He's gay and surrounded by guys whose bodies are honed for a sport based on strength, endurance, and agility, Steve the most beautiful of all. So he looks, and he longs, and he hates Harrington with every fiber of his being.

Eddie's sure this would continue for their competitive lives, but everything changes the summer before their junior years of high school. They're at a training camp, the kind for world champion, Olympic hopeful types. Steve is practicing ring dismounts when he loses himself in the air, lands hard off the mat, destroys something in his knee. He needs surgery, the recovery time 6-8 months, if he's lucky to be able to compete again.

Maybe a year ago, Eddie would be excited by this development, but now it's kind of devastating. He doesn't bother examining why.

--

Steve comes back and he's--different. His first competition, he comes up, asks, "Eddie, hey, can we talk?" And, well, they've never been on a first name basis before and Steve is so so pretty, so he agrees.

"I just want to say, I'm sorry how I treated you back before. I was a real piece of shit and you never deserved it."

Eddie truly doesn't know how to respond, never foresaw this day coming. "Thanks. Uh--yeah. Thanks."

They stare at each other for a few seconds longer before Steve taps him on the shoulder and walks away.

It's not the only thing that's changed about Steve. There's this big group of feral children that follow him around everywhere now. Apparently, Harrington told them Eddie plays dnd and now they follow him around too.

He also. Has a girlfriend now. She's pretty; delicate looking. Her name is Nancy. And she's nice, or whatever. Eddie definitely isn't jealous. It's just. He's been with Steve in locker rooms for years, and he thought--well, he'd seen the way Harrington's eyes sometimes lingered on a bicep, a well-cut thigh, the intrigue of a pelvic v, and he thought--not that it matters, but he thought--

Anyway, Steve has a girlfriend.

---

They're at the winter classic, when it happens.

Eddie is doing good. Like. Really good. Like his routines, they're not flawless, but he's hitting the big skills and sticking landings, and stays in 2nd throughout the majority of the rotations.

It's not a huge shock when he finishes his final rotation, vault, and winds up finishing in 2nd. What is a shock, though, is that, when the scores go up, Steve is wrapping his arms around Eddie's waist, hoisting him into the sky. And, even after he's back on solid ground, Harrington doesn't loosen his hold.

And it's, like. Nothing, right? It's nothing because he has a girlfriend and, sure, maybe he's bi, but that doesn't stop Nancy from existing.

He's not going to think about it, is the thing. He knows it doesn't mean anything, so he isn't going to dwell. It's definitely not all he thinks about during the podium ceremony, or after when he talks to media, or even later walking into the empty locker room.

Or. He thought it was empty. But Steve is there, smiling, saying "you were amazing out there."

They hug again, and Eddie tries not to enjoy the warmth of Harrington's body, the comforting strength of his toned biceps. Eddie pulls back and Steve is--he's so close, gazing at Eddie's lips and--

Steve's mouth is hot and sweet, like he's wearing cherry chapstick, and Eddie can't--he thinks of Nancy; she's nice, doesn't deserve this, they should stop--

But he's sucking on Steve's tongue and Steve is making the sweetest sounds, hard against Eddie's thigh, and nothing else matters.

---

It goes on for months.

Eddie knows he needs to end it, vows to as soon as they're apart.

It all goes out the window as soon as they're together again. He can't get enough. It's Steve. How is he supposed to resist?

(He needs to. It's horrifying, what they're doing to Nancy)

---

The children who follow Steve around invite him to dinner after the first day of the USA gymnastics championships.

Nancy is there.

It's the worst three hours of his life. He can't look at Steve, can barely speak to him.

Nancy is beautiful and smart and kind and strong. She doesn't deserve any of this.

And when Steve drops by his hotel room hours later, Eddie greets him by saying, "I can't do this anymore."

Steve's shoulders drop, eyes squeezing shut. "Right. Yeah, I--Yeah."

"I like you, Steve. A lot. But I can't--you have a girlfriend. And I can't keep being whatever this is for you."

Steve nods, won't meet his eyes. "You're right. It's not fair to either of you. I--My parents expect--And I--I'm sorry," he whispers the last part.

Eddie smiles, heart aching. "Sweetheart. I get it. But. Figure out your shit, yeah? Maybe then we can talk?"

The smile Steve flashes him is a broken thing. "Maybe. Sure."

And that's it.

Eddie cries himself to sleep that night.

The next day, he wins first in the all-around.

---

He and Steve stop speaking.

Somewhere around, ohh, the very first time they hooked up, he caught feelings. So sue him if it kills him, seeing Steve at every competition.

They don't speak again until the Olympic trials. And isn't that ridiculous? Eddie at the Olympic trials. It's such an insane pipe dream, being an Olympian, that he doesn't actually have any expectations whatsoever.

So knock him over with a feather when he fucking makes it on the team.

And so does Steve.

The announcement rings out, and Steve is there, out of nowhere, pulling Eddie into his arms. And Eddie's so hyped, so excited, that he just shouts and hugs Steve right back.

He pretends the proximity, the musk of Steve's cologne, the tangy saltiness of his sweat, doesn't bother him, doesn't transport him immediately back to Steve's bed.

They're teammates now; he can keep it casual.

Right before they leave for the games, news breaks that Steve and Nancy have broken up.

---

The Team competition at the fucking Olympics is going well. They've had good routines, with no huge errors, stay consistently within the top 5 scores. But then they're on the last rotation, parallel bars, and he's the very last competitor to go. They'll win bronze if he can score above 14.933.

But

He's inconsistent on parallel bars, always has been, something deep and psychological he can't quite let go of, and now their medal chances are all on him.

He salutes the judges, jumps into his starting position--and his mind goes quiet. Muscle memory, skill, years of training take over--he's flawless.

Eddie sticks his dismount, and the place erupts. He doesn't have a score yet, doesn't know if he's done it, but the rest of the team screams like he has.

They pull him into their arms, but Steve is closest, his grip the tightest. Their eyes keep catching, holding, and Eddie can't really breathe but he doesn't think it's the anxiety or the excitement.

The score goes up.

Not only is it high enough for bronze, it puts them in silver.

Eddie has barely a second to process before he's being hoisted into the air, Steve's arms bracing him up. The crowd's going crazy, his teammates screaming and hugging him, each other, but all he sees is Steve beaming up at him.

He's slowly lowered to the ground, Steve's arms still around him. "You were perfect, baby," Steve whispers. "Never seen anyone like you."

He wishes he could stay right there, Steve beaming at him, but they won the silver--they won the silver at the goddamn Olympics--and they have to get medals, do interviews.

They don't have a chance to be alone together until they're back at the Village, where Steve is just waiting in Eddie's room when he gets back.

"Is this okay?" Steve asks. "I wanted to talk to you and Jason let me in, but I can--I'll leave."

"Please don't." Eddie swallows. "Stay."

Steve smiles, a little. "I needed to tell you that I'm sorry for what I did to you and Nancy. It was unfair to both of you. I love her, you know? But she's not who--I'm not in love with her."

"No?"

"No. I thought it would make my parents happy, settling down with a nice girl. But it turned out it didn't actually make a difference to them, who I dated. And she isn't who I wanted to be with."

"I'm proud of you for figuring out what you really wanted. It's brave."

"I wish I could've been brave earlier." He gives a little laugh. "Before I hurt you."

Eddie doesn't know what to say to that. He wishes the same thing.

"Um, which is also why I'm here." Steve plucks at the waistband of his Team USA Nike joggers. "I wanted to see if maybe we could try again? Officially this time?"

Eddie can't keep his smile from taking over his entire face. "Sweetheart, I would love to."

"Yeah?"

And Eddie just--after all this time, he just--pulls Steve into his arms and kisses him. The silver medals, still around both of their necks, clink together with the force, but neither of them really care.

Steve sighs, nuzzles his nose to Eddie's. "Missed you so bad," he whispers. "I'm so sorry."

"Me too," Eddie smiles. "But kiss me a while."

Eventually, they fall back onto Eddie's bed, which makes a horrible noise as their combined weight topples onto it, and they break apart to laugh. Steve smooths back his hair, wrapping a few fingers through his curls to keep Eddie close, even though he's not about to go anywhere.

"Can't believe we made it all the way here." Steve's looking at him like he hung the moon

"Cause we're taking medals home?"

"Honey," he laughs. "Because I'm taking you home."