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criticallyacclaimedstranger · 1 year ago

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The Artist and the Builder [a Joel x reader fic]

Read on Ao3

Sequel: All The Fear and the Fire of the End of the World

Fandom: The Last of Us

Ship: Joel Miller x you/artist!reader who is his age and has arthritis and allergies.

Tags/warnings: Bit of pining, Joel is sweet and settling in, reader has joint pain and allergies, kissing, pretty tame foreplay, a little fumbling, teasing, insertion of objects into vagina that probably shouldn't be there but it's the apocalypse there ain't no dildos, vaginal orgasm, Joel is Too Big and also has Bad Knees, piv sex, cuddling, artist stuff listen I don't know how to do this anymore.

Summary: Gruff contractor Joel Miller has been in Jackson for a while and up until now, you thought he didn't like you because you're an artist and who the hell needs art in the post-apocaypse? But you are wrong.

Words: 7,139

A/N: Listen I know absolutely nothing about being an artist, sorry about that. I also don't have allergies or arthritis (although I suspect I am going down that road but let's cross that bridge when we get there). I just want Joel to be soft with someone his age whose body is falling apart. Many many thanks to @pazizz and @rambling-in-purple who helped me with this one. It started as one thing but ended something else. I really appreciate the help along the way <3

My masterlist

The ache protrudes harshly into your dreams and tears you away from sleep way before it’s time to get up. It grows stronger as you come to, and you carefully try to open your hands. Each joint is like a rusty hinge that creaks and whines when moved, and you sigh deeply as you hide your hands in opposite armpits in an attempt to warm them up. Your mother had arthritis and would tell you in a bland voice that you’d probably get it, too. She had it, her mother had it, and so on. But that seemed so far away, you had your whole life ahead of you, and you had just settled down and started to live after your crazy twenties when the outbreak happened, and survival became your only goal. Despite it all, you managed to live for twenty more years, and then got slapped with the family curse.

Closing your hands around a mug of hot tea, you walk around the living-room of your small house and inspect your various half-finished projects: paper made of plants, clay paint, painted mugs. The whole house smells like a compost, so you open a window to let in a cool breeze. You immediately feel it in your aching hands but do your best to ignore it.

Sitting down at your drawing table, you pick up the charcoal and sketch a couple of lines to the profile you’re working on. It doesn’t feel right, however, so you put down the charcoal again. Restless, you sip some tea, your foot tapping against the floor.

Eventually, you have to go to the infirmary, where Robert, Jackson’s doctor, already is treating his first patient of the day.

You like Robert, like being of use, but being a nurse isn’t what you wanted. You trained to be one, yes, and worked as one for years because it felt like a good, honest profession, and your parents insisted. At nearly 30, however, you quit, and went back to school to pursue your true calling: art. You had almost finished your education when the world went to shit, and your passion no longer counted for anything. For the past twenty years, you’ve thrown yourself after art supplies like other people after food, but even paper is becoming harder to come by. Hence your experiments using plants.

“Your hands bothering you?” Robert asks around lunch, and you nod silently. You haven’t said anything, but he notices.

“Take the rest of the day off.”

“I’m good.”

“Just go, okay? I can’t give you anything for the pain, but I can give you the day off.”

You accept gratefully, and as you change into your normal clothes, you decide to go check at the latest construction site if there’s any sawdust to be had.

You hear the promising sound of a saw working its way through wood as you get closer to the latest house being erected, and when you reach it, Joel Miller looks up from the sawhorse and straightens his back. You think you see a grimace flash across his face, but then he carefully rearranges his features into the usual scowl.

Joel’s been in Jackson for a while now. You don’t really know much about him, except for what you’ve heard from others: that he walked across the country from Boston with the girl in search of his brother, and when the place where he was supposed to drop off the girl was destroyed, they both came back here. He seems to have settled well, and he’s handy, so he’s a welcome addition. He doesn’t really seem to understand your needs, though: when you first asked him if he could save some sawdust for your papermaking, he scoffed when he learned that you needed the paper for art. You bit back on an acid remark. Art wasn’t valued very highly in this world, but it’s what made you happy, and you didn’t care what someone like Joel fucking Miller thought.

“Hi,” you say, stopping in front of the sawhorse. “You got something for me?”

He wipes his forehead on his sleeve and nods towards the wall of the house he’s building. There are three buckets by it, and you see that two of them are filled with yellow sawdust, the third one with nettle leaves. Puzzled, you look over at him. You can’t really figure him out.

“What’s this?”

“Ellie said you were looking for nettles in the vegetable patches,” he mutters. “Passed by a bunch of them on patrol yesterday.”

You chew on your lower lip as you process the unexpected kindness.

“Thank you,” you eventually say. “I appreciate it.”

“No problem.” Joel picks up the saw again and goes back to working on shortening the board propped on the sawhorse. The woodsy scent of sawdust fills your nostrils, and you catch a whiff of sweat from Joel, despite the cool weather.

The buckets are proving difficult to pick up. Your fingers refuse to curl around the handles, and even if the weight is more than manageable, your hands are just not having it today. You swallow hard, embarrassed by your frailty, when Joel steps up behind you.

“I’ll take those.”

Big hands close around the handles of the sawdust buckets. You pick up the nettle bucket and start to walk towards your house. Joel walks alongside you, silent and avoiding looking at you just as you are stubbornly staring in any direction but his.

“I have arthritis,” you finally tell him, naming your disease with disgust dripping from your tongue. “My hands don’t work so well some days.”

“That’s rough,” he offers. “I used to have a neighbor who had that. Sorry.”

You finally venture a glance at him. His features offer nothing of what’s going on behind those dark brown eyes.

You arrive at your house, and Joel carries in the buckets for you. You see from how his nostrils flare that he wasn’t prepared for the earthy smell of your home.

“Just put them down there,” you ask him, gesturing to him. Joel does that and is left standing in the doorway to your living-room. He looks around at your various half-finished projects, the pictures on the walls, all your attempts at creating art with whatever materials you've been able to get your aching hands on.

You pretend to busy yourself with washing your hands, but you're really watching him. You've seen this before: people who don't care about art seeing art in a whole new way for the first time. They're always slammed in the face with it, and it's a very delicate moment that shouldn't be disturbed. So you busy yourself at the sink, rinse out your cup despite it being close to clean already, warm up your hands some more with water, open the cupboards and rearrange things. Joel disappears into the living-room, his heavy, unfamiliar boots causing the floorboards to complain about every step he takes. You hear him walk around slowly, and your curiosity gets the better of you. Quietly, you walk over to the doorway to sneak a peek at him.

He's standing by your desk, holding up a paper with a half-finished sketch. To your horror, the picture is of him, the one that you just can't get right because you can't figure him out, can't combine his threatening glower with the warm smile he reserves for his close ones.

You almost dash across the floor and snatch the paper from his hands before throwing it down on the desk, picture down.

"That's not finished, I mean, it's not... you weren't supposed to see it."

"It's good," Joel states simply. You glance at him as you mindlessly rearrange the sketches on your desk.

"Thanks."

His stare is piercing and hard to meet, so you cast down your eyes to a sketch of Ellie right in front of you. Joel follows your gaze and sees it.

"Can I see that?"

You bite your lower lip, pick up the sketch and hand it to him. You're happier with this one: Ellie's face is open, honest. She talks, questions, comments. You've barely heard ten words in all from Joel, and he's been around for months.

"You really captured her," he admires you. "Did she pose for this?"

"No," you shake your head, "but I've worked together with her occasionally. It's easier to draw someone when you know how they move and talk and such."

He hums in agreement as he studies the picture.

"Is that why you haven't finished my picture?" he eventually asks, catching you off guard. "Because you haven't spent time with me?"

"Probably," you shrug, and hold up your hand for him to relinquish the picture back to you. He does, and the line between his brows seems to melt away when he asks you if you'd want to finish his portrait.

"I can come by tonight after work."

You meet his soft gaze and nod.

"Yeah, okay."

///

You're in the middle of dipping your paper molds into a tub of pulp and putting them to dry when there's a knock on the door. You call out a "come in" as you wash your hands under water as hot as you can manage. Not good at staying passive, you've strained your hands all day continuing with your experiments.

Joel steps in, eyeing the room immediately before settling his nut-brown gaze on you.

"How are your hands?" he wants to know. You shrug.

"The same."

You reach for your jacket, and Joel grunts questioningly. You raise a brow at him.

"Are we going out?"

"I need fresh air."

"It does smell in here." A grin flashes by his face, almost shocking you. Was that a joke?

"Sorry," he immediately apologizes, taking your silence for chagrin. You smile wryly.

"Don't worry. It really is smelly, I just don't notice anymore."

You leave your house together and start walking slowly down the street. The evening is cold in a refreshing way, and you hide your gloved hands in your pockets, both to keep them warm and to keep them occupied. Keeping your eyes trained on some invisible spot in the distance, you try to figure out something to say. It doesn't feel like you and Joel have a lot in common, and all those old icebreakers of "where are you from" and "do you have a family" can be sensitive in this world. You opt for something you do know about him.

"Did you build houses before?"

He takes a second to answer, but finally tells you that he was indeed a contractor.

"Always good to know how to build things," you comment. Joel hums in agreement before clearing his throat.

"And you? You usually work in the infirmary."

"I was a nurse, but I didn't like it much," you tell him. "I went back to school to study art, but the breakout happened before I finished. And nobody needs art to survive. So I work as a nurse."

Joel doesn't say anything, but nods to a passer-by.

"Do you like being a contractor?" you ask. Once again, he takes a little time before presenting his answer.

"I do."

"Good, honest work, huh?"

"Something like that. And..." He hesitates, gaze flickering when you turn your head to look at him.

"It's nice to build something instead of destroying it," he finally mutters. You nod slowly.

"Yes. Yes, it is."

Without hurry, you walk around Jackson three times while talking. Joel is a man of few words, but the words he does utter are well chosen and sometimes heavy with information. He talks about his former construction work but doesn't utter one word about his personal life, possible family, likely loss. His voice is warm when he talks about Ellie, the teenager he delivered across the country, only to find that the people who were supposed to take care of her were already dead and buried. There is a momentary crack in his facade when he talks about his failed mission to bring Ellie to Salt Lake City, but he quickly gathers himself, and states that that's how both ended up in Jackson. He seems happy enough with those turns of events.

You tell him about your art education, about how you ever since you were a young child have seemed to notice how light falls on objects, faces, your surroundings, and the deep-seated urge to draw the light, paint it, trace is with a brush in futile attempts to replicate the magic. The light changes everything, how the world is viewed, and you're constantly trying to capture those moments when the light renders a common kitchen utensil magical, just because the first rays of morning sunshine catch the curves and angles of it. You're not sure he understands, but he does listen.

Eventually, you stop outside your house, facing each other. Darkness has fallen and you didn't leave the porch light on, so you struggle to see his face in what little light there is to be had from the moon, and the glow from the windows of the neighboring houses.

"It was nice talking to you," you say sincerely.

"You too."

You hide your hands in the opposite armpits in an attempt to keep them warm. The cold is getting to them, even with gloves.

"Will I see you tomorrow?"

Joel blinks.

"You're not going to draw me?"

"It's too dark."

"Ah." You hear from his tone that he just realized that you've been talking about light this whole time. His head shifts on top of that long, strong neck, his face turns a little to the side and you catch the profile of his aquiline nose against the faint light coming from the neighbor's house.

And you know you have to try to draw him like this, half cloaked in darkness, the bridge of his nose sharp against soft light, maybe from a fire, the shadows painting dark valleys on his face with his frown, the glint of grey in his beard, a lock of hair curling by his ear.

"Maybe not," you correct yourself and step past his towards your porch. "Come on in."

You load up the fireplace, your hands only trembling slightly from the weight of the wood. Joel kneels next to you by the fireplace and takes the matches from you. A protest rests on the tip of your tongue, but the brief touch of his warm, callused hand makes you swallow it. You stand up and watch him light the fire, breathe life into the kindling, and carefully place smaller twigs on the first, small flames before rocking back to watch the fire grow. You move your weight from one foot to the other, tuck your hands into your pockets. Joel glances up at your fidgeting.

"Your hands hurtin'?"

"It's the cold," you shrug. "But it's fine, it's not that bad."

You take a step back, towards the kitchen.

"Want a cup of tea?"

"Sure. Thanks."

When you return with two mugs of steaming tea, the fire is crackling merrily. Joel rises, joints popping, and accepts one mug from you with one hand, the other suddenly taking a gentle hold of your wrist. You twitch, the tea spills over a little, but you don't pull back your hand. Slowly, Joel covers it with his big, broad palm, so much warmer than yours, and you almost instantly feel the heat spread into your aching joints.

When you search his averted gaze, he releases your hand, and clears his throat.

"Thanks for the tea," he murmurs, and you nod quickly.

"You're welcome."

You busy yourself with emptying the run-down armchair from various knick-knacks and tools, and indicate the seat for him. Carefully, as if afraid to break it, Joel sits down. You pull up the desk chair and take a piece of charcoal and a paper, propping it on your lap with a sheet of cardboard under.

"You're not going to continue with the half-finished picture?" Joel asks, sipping his tea.

"No," you shake your head. "It's not how I want to draw you."

"Waste of paper."

"I'll use it to make more. It's okay."

He grunts, and you hide your smile without knowing why you're even smiling in the first place.

"Turn your head a little towards the fireplace," you instruct, and Joel squares his shoulders, as if he's unhappy about being told what to do. However, he does as he's asked, and follows the rest of your directions easily. When you're happy with his angles, you put coal to paper, and start to sketch.

For a long time, the only sound heard is that of the fire, and the soft scratch of the coal against the coarse paper. Your sharp eyes note every hair, pore, and line on Joel's face, but you're finding it hard to transfer them to paper. After a long day, your hands are hurting bad, and the pain keeps shifting your focus away from the task at hand. Finally, you sigh deeply and turn the paper upside down.

"I'm done."

"It's finished?" Joel asks, shifting like he's sitting back and leaning forward at the same time. One brow is quirked inquisitively, while his tight jawline lets you know that he doesn't really want to see the result - but he's curious.

"No," you specify as you get up, "it's not finished. I have to start over, but it's getting late."

Your fingers can barely let go of the coal when you set it down together with the paper. You hide your knuckle in the palm of your other hand and rub it discreetly.

"You won't show me?" Joel rises from the armchair and comes up to you, putting away the cup of tea. Standing right in front of you he seems almost impossibly broad.

"Your hands hurtin'?" he asks in a low voice that vibrates along your spine. You swallow quickly.

"Just need to warm them up, it's okay, I'm used to it."

Your breath gets caught in your throat when he takes both your hands and presses them to his chest. You feel his heart beat quickly against your palm and realize that some of his body heat actually comes from him being just as nervous as you are.

Feebly, you try to pull back your hands.

"I'm getting coal on your shirt..."

"Don't care."

You bite into your lower lip, speechless as if you were fourteen and standing in front of your crush, instead of a middle-aged woman talking to...

Who is Joel to you, anyway?

"Why are you doing this?" you ask hoarsely. Joel frowns, his hands slowly letting go of yours. You keep your palms on his chest for a second longer before letting go. Bereft of the warmth, your joints feel even worse.

He doesn't seem to have an answer to give you, but his lips move like he's trying to say something to break the silence. When nothing comes out, you get impatient.

"Joel?" you prompt.

"No one's ever looked at me like you look at me," he lets out, his dark gaze locking in on you. "It's like you're staring right through my clothes. It makes me nervous. I haven't been nervous in... a very long time."

"Nervous how?" you hear yourself ask, even if your armpits have grown damp, and your heart is beating so hard he surely must hear it.

"Nervous in that way." You hear exactly what he means, all the possibilities and threats and risks summarized in that. There's something so awkwardly boyish in it that you find yourself smiling. His frown deepens when he sees it, but his lips soften.

"Joel," you ask, softly touching your aching hand to his, "do you want to kiss me?"

He immediately grabs your wrist and touches his lips to yours in a kiss that doesn't really know what it's supposed to do but wants to do it anyway. He forgot to draw breath, and instead of inhaling against your skin, he pulls back quickly when he has to breathe.

"Fuck," he mutters, "that was a shitty kiss. I'm sorry."

Your cheeks flush violently when you pull at his hand.

"You can try again?"

The offer makes him smile, finally, and he displays that dimple that you found absolutely impossible to put to paper. His closes his hand around the back of your neck, and his lips press onto yours, and he remembers how it's done, and kisses you until you're not sure your legs will carry you anymore.

///

The picture of Joel becomes secondary to your meetings. Joel, you realize very soon, courts you, like some southern Gone With the Wind-type of gentleman. He brings you whatever materials he can find when he goes on patrol - you're excused from that task due to your horse allergy - and quietly offers you his thick gloves when you're out walking together, and your hands hurt. He continues to not talk much, but you start to recognize the little things: acts of service, the way he looks out for you, how his eyes light up when he sees you. His kisses when you part.

There is only kissing. He hasn't touched you in any other way, and you haven't taken initiative to anything further. There is only a rather chaste, yet warm, kiss when he leaves your house, where you usually meet up. He drinks tea and watches you draw, or paint when you're not asking him to pose for you. You know exactly how you want to capture him but so far, your hands haven't been skilled enough, and for every hour you spend with Joel, you lay another piece of the puzzle that is Joel, and you become unsure of how to draw him.

One evening, a couple of months after that first kiss, you're enjoying the warm fire in your living-room when there is a knock on the door. Joel stands on your porch, eyes scanning you quickly as soon as you open the door.

"You weren't at the movies," he says, referring to the event that nearly everyone in Jackson went to tonight. You hear the question in the statement: Are you okay?

"It's cold," you shrug. "Not my thing. Wanna come in?"

He enters your house, and you take his coat and hang it by the door.

"How are the hands?" he asks. You rub your palms together.

"Not bad today, actually. How's your knees?"

He grins a little, knowing that you saw him carry furniture up porch steps earlier.

"Creaky, but they still carry me."

"Tea?"

"I don't want to disturb, if you wanted to be alone."

You lead the way into the living-room, and move some things away from one armchair, pulling it closer to the fireplace, next to the one you were sitting in.

"You're not disturbing, do sit down. I could work some more on your portrait."

Busying yourself with picking at pieces of charcoal, you don't pay him any attention until his footsteps bring him right behind you. One warm hand touches your waist gently, startling you into turning around to meet his sheepish face.

"Sorry, didn't mean to scare you."

"It's okay." His warm body is so close to yours, and his smell of wood, sweat, and snow invades your nose. You inhale deeply, pretending to sigh just to get the opportunity to soak in this intoxicating, masculine smell of his.

"I got something for you." Joel holds up something wrapped in cloth, and it takes you a few moments to gather yourself.

"For me?" Carefully, you take the little package from him. "Whatever for?"

He shrugs. “Thought you might need it. It’s probably your birthday at some point, or Christmas, or whatever.”

You never were good at receiving gifts, and it's even harder now. When was the last time you even got one?

He shifts his weight; a show of nerves that doesn't match up with his calm, deep voice. You decide to put him out of his misery and unfold the cloth.

It's four paintbrushes, hand carved with thick, curved handles, and tidily shaped heads.

"Oh. Joel, these are... these are gorgeous."

You hear him exhale, like he had been holding his breath.

"You think they're any good?"

"I'm sure they are, the hairs look amazing. Where did you get these?"

"I made them."

Now you tear your eyes from the brushes. "You made them?"

"Carved them, they should be comfortable to hold, I asked the doc what's suitable for someone with arthritis... The hairs are horsehair, bound together with sheep hairs."

He has really listened to you talking about all the art supplies you miss, and your ideas of making your own.

"The hairs are washed, so hopefully they won't give you allergies," he adds quickly.

"Joel... thank you. I don't know what to say."

He chuckles a little. "Try them first. What I know about making paintbrushes can fit onto the head of a nail. You may wanna return them."

"Unlikely."

You lean forward, the brushes still in your hands between the two of you, and touch your lips to Joel's. His hands rise to gently cup your elbows as he accepts your kiss. Only when your lips grow more insistent, does his hold tighten as well, and all you can think of is him holding your tits in the same manner.

Your hands, still holding the brushes, come to his chest, and you start undoing the buttons of his flannel. Joel's lips leave yours, and when he looks at you with eyes steeped in hot molten lava, you know that it didn't come easily.

"What are you doin'?"

"What does it look like?" you smile a little shakily. Is this the beginning of a refusal? Have you misunderstood his interest in you altogether?

"I don't want you to do it just because I gave you somethin'."

"It's not because you gave me something, it's because you never took anything away."

He cups your cheek now, strokes his big thumb over your lips.

"You're beautiful. I haven't done this in a long time, and never with anyone as beautiful."

"How old do you think I am?" you laugh, amused and touched at the same time. His ever-present frown changes slightly, turning quizzical.

"I don't need to hear that I'm beautiful," you specify, hands still on his chest. "I don't care about that."

"Then what do you wanna hear?" His voice is impossibly low. Your pussy clenches, grows moist and hot.

"I want to hear you want me."

"Oh, darlin'..." he sighs, closing his eyes momentarily. "I want you like crazy. I have wanted you for a long time, but I wanted for you to decide when you'd have me."

You didn't know how much you had longed for someone who saw you as a sexual being, a woman with desires and a will of her own.

"Joel," you whisper, and he swallows the rest of your words when he crashes his lips to yours. The brushes fall from your hand when you throw your arms around his neck to bring him closer, and Joel's big arms go around your waist. He hums into your mouth when your entire front is pressed against him; a satisfied hum, like he's happy to have you here. You answer with a hum of your own and feel his lips curve in a smile.

Slowly, his hands begin to know your body, sliding over curves and dips, fingers dipping into flesh, palms caressing over your clothes. Your approach is more direct: you pull at his flannel, wanting it off him.

"There's no hurry," he admonishes you between kisses. "Unless you got somewhere you need t'be?"

You exhale in something in between a scoff and a chuckle.

"In your pants?"

"Bedroom, then?"

"It's warmer in here, where the fire is."

"Hold on."

He releases you, seemingly unwillingly, and disappears into your small bedroom, re-emerging momentarily later with your bedding. You move the armchairs away to allow for him to put everything down in front of the fireplace. Groaning, he lays down on the makeshift bed, taking your hand and pulling you down next to him. You giggle a little as you plop down, immediately receiving more kisses.

"This better?" he wants to know. Your skin knots over when his hand finds its way underneath your shirt.

"Much better."

He rolls half on top of you, hand finding your breast for a light squeeze as his knee pushes between your thighs to separate them. His cock is stiff against your hip, and you move against it, smiling into the kiss when he grunts and grabs your breast harder. You put your hand on his, pressing it down, feeling his hand disappear into your soft flesh almost painfully. Your moan gears him up, and he starts to pull your shirt upwards. Squirming out of it, you reach for his belt, huffing in annoyance when Joel sits up to take his own shirt off. You sit up as well for a better reach, and your forehead connects with his chin just as he dives back to you.

"Ouch!"

"Fuck!"

You smile sheepishly at each other, both of you more startled than hurt, and Joel gently pushes you back down.

"Maybe we should take it slow?"

"I need you, I'm done waiting."

"I know, sweetheart, but I don't want you to break my jaw."

You scoff, but his kisses make you docile. Your clothes come off, along with his, and when you're both finally naked, skin against skin, you discover that you're happy with going slow as well. In the light of the fire, you trace your hand along his strong muscles and soft flesh, kiss his scars from past struggles, and the newer bruises from recent altercations with logs or whatever he has attempted to lift on his own. You close your fingers around the girth of his cock - Jesus, 20-year-old you would've giggled like a maniac at the sight of it - and enjoy the sounds of surrender that you can conjure out of him.

"God, your hands feel good on me," he hisses as you slowly, while trying to remember how to do this, stroke him with both hands. You smile, suddenly struck with nerves, when you pass your thumb softly over the glistening head of his thick cock. The precum catches the flickering light from the fire, and you get lost in how light and shadow play over Joel's skin; the dark dip of his navel, the hills of his soft pecs and stomach illuminated, his cock rising proudly from a thicket of dark hairs towards the light, the fuzz of his thighs. The embossed skin of a scar reflecting the warm light. The way his skin rises in goosebumps at your touch...

"Darlin'?"

You blink, and meet his wry, amused smirk.

"You with me?"

"Yeah, sorry. I just... was looking at the light."

"How you'd paint it?" Joel seems to catch on immediately, having listened to you rambling on about The Light several evenings. Yod nod and run one finger along the length of his cock before continuing up his happy trail, swerving around his navel.

"There's so much to see on the human body, if one just knows how to look."

"Lemme try that."

Joel pulls you down and rolls you onto your back, propping himself up on one arm next to you. You blush a little as he inspects you, his hand following the dancing shadows on your chest and stomach.

"Yeah," he murmurs, "I can see it alright."

"Yeah?"

"M-hmm. Hold on."

He rolls to the other side, looking in the dusky room for something. When he returns to your side, he's holding one of the brushes he made. With a feathery touch, he touches the brush to your ribcage, right underneath one breast.

"Here's light," he mumbles, carefully tracing the brush along a rib. "Right next to the shadow of your breast."

You exhale in a soft moan as his knuckles brush up against your breast, knotting the nipple. Joel's tongue slips out to lick his lower lip before he goes on tracing the lines that only he can see on your skin.

"What are you painting, Picasso?" you ask hoarsely.

"Hush," Joel tells you curtly yet not unkindly. You smile and close your eyes, shifting a little so that you can drape your arm around his shoulder. His hot breath is on your breast, his whiskers tickle you before something warm and wet disturbing your nipple tells you he's licked it. A shiver runs through you, and you push your chest out, asking him wordlessly to do it again.

He latches on and suckles steadily, but your shout of surprised pleasure has barely died down before he releases you and continues down your stomach with the brush.

"Joel," you whine, blinking up at him, but the focus in his eyes is so intense that you don't say anything more. Instead, you watch him figure out the fundamentals of visual art: how the light changes everything, how to handle the brush, how to angle the hand. His brush may not have any paint on it, but he paints your pleasure with sounds from you: gasps, hums, a hiss when he passes over a ticklish spot. With the brush trailing through the thicket of your pubes, your legs fall open and your lower lip catches between your teeth. Your pelvis rises to meet the soft hairs, and you moan when Joel dips the brush through your slick folds. He moves the brush to your nipple, circles it to wetten it with your arousal, then ducks down to suck it into his mouth. Your back arches, your inner thighs are wet, your heartbeats echo in your pussy, and you need him to understand just how desperately you need him.

"Fuck me," you keen, "Joel, I need you to fuck me."

He hesitates, coming up to slot his mouth over yours and steal your breath away. You rub yourself against him, find his cock and tease it, make him moan just as needily as you.

"I take it you ain't a pregnancy risk?" You hear from his tight voice how close he is to snapping. Fuck, but that's hot.

"STDs are our only concern," you try to joke, but it's not funny. Before coming to Jackson, you spent years in a quarantine zone as a nurse, and the common sexually transmitted infections ran rampant. Without proper testing equipment, it was hard to tell the scale of it.

"I should be clean," he tells you, and you're too far gone to doubt him.

"Me too."

He kisses you again as he rolls on top of you, his width and weight blocking out everything else as he plunges his tongue into your mouth. Your hips rise to meet him when he leads his cock against your entrance, and you almost bite him when he starts to push into you. Your nails press into his shoulders, the fit is impossible, and Joel stops.

"Fuck," he mutters. "You okay?"

"It's big, it's been a while."

He growls and pulls out, cupping your cheek when you whine.

"Don't wanna hurt you."

"Just get me wet, Joel."

"You're plenty wet already."

"And you're hung like a goddamn moose, so get me wetter," you snap, and Joel chuckles.

"Relax, darlin'."

"I'm trying."

He kisses you again, hand between your legs, two fingers slipping through your folds and drawing out the slick to a slow circle around your clit. Sparks run up your spine and you bury your fingers in his thick, greying hair.

"You always try to cram it in before finding a girl's clit?" you mutter, but your smile shines through. Joel slips a finger inside you.

"I told you, it's been a while." He trails kisses down your neck and moves his finger inside you, seeking the right, spongy spot. You mewl and writhe, needing more but not getting it. One finger is not enough. An idea forms in your head.

"Take the brush," you ask him breathlessly. Joel stills, finger slipping out as he studies your face. You roll your eyes.

"It's not a commentary on your skills. Get over yourself."

"You were the one who were in such a such a hurry a minute ago," he teases before looking around for the brush. Finding it, he brings it to your tits, but you shake your head.

"No, use it on me."

His brow rises quizzically. You push his hand down.

"Fuck me with it, Joel."

You expect an objection, or at the very least surprise, but all you get is a strangled sound and a searing kiss. The handle, so smoothly polished, is thick and curved in a way that bears resemblance to a dildo - not that you've used one in twenty years, but the thought is there now and you have to try this out.

The handle slides in easily, filling you better than his finger but without the intensity of his cock.

"Fuck," you keen, directing your hand down to rub your clit as Joel slowly pulls out the handle before pushing it back in. "There, fuck, Joel, that's good..."

He's breathing audibly now but you don't look at him anymore, you close your eyes and let him help you find all those buttons and spots that you had almost forgotten that you had anymore. When your toes start to curl, and you moan "Faster, Joel, faster!" he complies, rough whiskers scratching the sensitive skin of your tits as he fucks you with the paintbrush that he carved with his own split-knuckle hands to spare you your aching ones.

You barely know what an orgasm feels like anymore, but there's no mistaking this one. The rise and the tightening of muscles, the holding of breath before releasing it in a choked moan, the loosening of limbs, the pounding heat of your pussy.

"Jesus, but that's beautiful," Joel sighs, gently sliding out the brush and putting it to the side before kissing your flushed forehead. "Darlin', you're killin' me."

You chuckle huskily and pass your hands over your face.

"I think it takes a lot more to kill you, Joel Miller."

"I wouldn't bet on it."

The bedding underneath you may keep the draft of the floor at bay, but offers no suspension, so when he edges into you a second time and bottoms out, it's like being split in two between a rock and a hard place. But you can take him, and you cling to his broad shoulders with breaths coming out as hissing.

"Relax," he murmurs, petting your hair as if you were a skittish animal while slowly moving in you. "Sweetheart, you can take it, you're doing it already, you're doing it so well, it feels so good..."

You keen as he spears you again, slowly but steadily, his muscles trembling from the effort of keeping himself from crushing you. Your legs wrap around his thighs, arms around his shoulders and you pull him down, you want to be crushed, you need him like this, steady like a train and sharp like a razor, his breathless kisses on your neck, the groans that may come from pleasure or discomfort from being on the floor, you have no idea, but you need him just like this.

"Come, Joel, come," you gasp into his ear, the good one, and he endures, unwavering in his effort as he digs into you, deep, thorough, devastating.

His climax is a relief and a sadness. You don't want it to end, but you also couldn't bear one more second of it.

Joel slumps to the side, gathering you into his arms as he draws a deep, shaky breath. In the faint light of the embers that are left in the fireplace, you trace the scar on his right cheek and watch his eyelids press shut more firmly before he turns his head to kiss your fingers.

The temperature in the room seems to drop as the heat dies down, and you carefully untangle yourself from Joel's firm hold to put another log on the embers. When it flares up, you return to Joel's side, now finding him watching you.

"You okay?" he asks when you pull a blanket over both of you. Making yourself comfortable, you nod with a little smile and a kiss to his lips.

"Perfect."

"That thing with the brush was... interesting."

You blush. "I don't know what happened."

"Glad it did."

"Joel, I... haven't had sex like that... at all... in decades," you blurt out. "And this was... perfect."

He hums, glances down, and to you it's glaringly obvious that he is conflicted. Your heart sinks just as he speaks up.

"It really was perfect."

"But?" You can't help yourself: there's a slight edge to your tone. Joel leans his head back a little to take a good look at you, the usual disapproving frown back on his face.

"But there was someone," he starts, "for years. And we never had this. Time and place wasn't right."

You exhale in relief. History and baggage are easy to deal with, rejection is not.

"I'm sorry."

He shrugs with a little sound, forehead smoothed out.

"Was she... Ellie's mom?" you dare. Joel shakes his head, and his hand slowly passes over your back, fingers strumming the bump of your spine.

"I didn't know Ellie until a few months ago. This was... someone else. A partner. She took Ellie on, really. I was against it. And she... didn't make it."

You don't want to say that you're sorry again, but don't know what else to say, either. So you kiss him, because you want to, because you think he needs it, because there are no words. Your hand is splayed open on his cheek, his lips and mouth are dry and so are yours, but the kiss is sweet and gentle, and the things you can't find words for are carefully passed on to him. He exhales in a soft sigh onto your cheek, then tilts his chin up to kiss your forehead before burrowing his nose against your hair. It's clear to you that he wants to sleep, but you're buzzing with unexpected energy. Carefully, you slide away from his arms, smiling at his frown, and get up to tip-toe to the desk, where you pick up paper and coal. A faint blush colors your cheekbones when you feel his cum seep out of you, and you hurry back to the makeshift bed, sitting down by Joel's feet.

"C'mere," he barks, but you shake your head.

"Just stay still."

He complies with that frown of his, and you settle down, putting the piece of coal to the paper.

You know how you want to draw him now.

#joel miller #joel miller x you #joel miller x reader #the last of us fanfic #my fic

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pilotduty · 4 months ago

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PILOT TALK TO ME ABOUT ZOMBIE SOULSUCKER PLS

HI LOVE OF MY LIFE i knew i could rely on u to be as Insane about this as me. putting it below the keep reading line because im about to unload the Directors Cut on you xo

SO a lot of people see soulsucker and starfucker to have a sort of angel/demon dynamic going on, and ive been eating that up because i looove the religious trauma angle this album is taking but then i was like What If st*r didn't align with typical religious imagery because... tbh that trope can get kind of bland.

him being brought back from the dead as a reference to clinging to the safety of the past and hesitance to accept/pursue change.. him being a character who is like the embodiment of everything awsten used to be and the parts of himself that havent changed even though the environment around him and the sound of his music have. st*r being dead makes him feel like he cant change no matter how badly he might want to. if he does something wrong, something that breaks the rules, he could literally physically fall apart. he doesnt know what's keeping him alive but he has to assume its some kind of godly power, because thats all he has as a frame of reference for life and death. but he's a creature that not even god can touch now. whether or not he realizes what that means for him, he knows that he can't go back to how he was, if he even knows what that would look like. he at the very least has the safety of already being dead- "if i'm already dead i can't be killed".

the important thing is that st*r is dead. or he should be. awsten can't figure out how to keep him dead, or re-kill him, or hide him away. no matter how badly he wants st*r gone, he doesn't seem to be going anywhere.

ok anyway heres design aspects that are Important To Me-

i gave him his scene-era haircut intentionally, i think it ads to his character representing his past self

upside down cross necklace because I Felt Like It

st*r's canon excessive layering is mostly to hide that he's dead and decaying

under his shirt his heart is exposed. im going to draw that next i think. theres a constant open wound over his heart- you can literally see directly into his heart :3

the places where his arms and fingers move a lot are the most prone to splitting- thats just a logistical design thing that i thought was cool it doesnt really Mean anything LOL

halo hair design. because of those rumors that he dyed his hair in a halo. unholy creature with holy traits etc etc

gave him that extremely hot and bad for me running/smudged eyeliner that has the little flecks of star glitter in them because It Looks Cool and theres Something there about having tiny stars under his eyes despite stars Not Being His Theme-Relevant Shape

the idea of him supergluing the edges of his gloves to his fingers to keep them from falling off while he performs popped into my head while i was drawing him and i thought you specifically would dig that concept. so.

soulsucker and st*r represent different ways awsten presents himself (i think- i kind of Dont Care about the lore that much ((i care So Much that was a lie)) and dont read other people's interpretations on it, but thats mine) so i think the idea of st*r trying desperately to hold himself together and fit the expectations/aesthetics of his job are kind of devastating from this angle, because he literally physically can't do it. whether its his own reluctance keeping him from doing it or some otherworldly/godly interference is up to interpretation methinks

more on its way i woke up like an hour ago and cant remember everything i wanted to say so sorry if none of this Matters or doesnt make any sense

#barking #thank u for asking im so excited about this idea #sorry for butchering the IP lore but also idc its Mine Now #edit i fixed it yay #also funniest part about me getting the names mixed up is that the file for the drawing on my computer is called strfckr #how did i do that LMAO #and the quote i snagged from a song is from the Right One so. idk!

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cryingalexanders · 1 year ago

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thoughts about pre-crisis Lex Luthor

now that I've read all of earth-one/pre-crisis lex's main canon appearances, I thought I'd list some things I noticed or found interesting.

It was consistent that pre-crisis Lex didn't care about money. Some stories went as far as to emphasise he could've been rich if he'd wanted to but he would actively scorn it!

By the time we get to the early 80s he's living a comfortable lifestyle, and had his own secret island base. But he still frets when Superman smashes millions of dollars worth of equipment

In the silver age he would buy abandoned places to use as bases under false names and keep them at the ready, presumably using money from bank robberies. They were usually on-theme too like museums, observatories, etc. I definitely think this is an element that should come back

The way he dresses. the coloured pants! his little ascots! they were such a thing for pre-crisis Lex

He also has this escape-artist thing going on, where he "enjoys the challenge" and there's a scene which hints at him being bored at having been out of prison for a while

I don't really mind this change and I think either way makes sense, but before Cary Bates and Marv Wolfman brought in elements influenced by the 78 movie in the early 80s... there was no indication that Lex ever mistreated his goons/lackeys. he would at least pay lip service to their wellbeing. it was his interactions with other villains that were much more hostile and laden with betrayal. (as well as cellmates when he had them)

Cary Bates had a great take on Lex, don’t get me wrong, he wrote some of his best pre-crisis stories, but he seemed to be taking a lot of cues from Donner/Hackman Lex going into the 80s, and I feel that kind of synergy lessened what was special about the comic counterpart.

There were writers, especially in the late silver age/early bronze age, who wrote Lex as more cold and overtly misanthropic. That's what I see in Waid's take on him. So it is drawing on the silver age, it's just specific stories rather than the general trends. e.g. Action Comics #363-365 is a very Waid-esque version of pre-crisis Lex.

Silver age Brainiac was actually pretty loyal to Lex and wouldn't leave him behind (Lex wasn't the same way back unfortunately). there was definitely subterfuge but they had a weirdly sweet relationship. it's sure different from modern stuff where they're always 2 seconds away from murdering each other whenever they interact (hell even the bronze age was like that because Brainiac became a darker character)

there's this one Superboy comic where it's established that Jonathan Kent and Lex hate each other because Jonathan denied him parole as a member of the reform school board. most of the time Jonathan seemed more indifferent to him though

on the other hand, silver age Martha felt sorry for Lex (and lowkey wanted to adopt him), even when he was trying to kill her son (if you don't know, pre-crisis Lex started trying to kill Superboy when they were teenagers in Smallville, but regardless of that goal he was generally considered a more lighthearted "menace")

I know that technically he had an older sister who was Nastalthia's mother but the actual flashbacks to his childhood treated him as the oldest sibling and it just being him and Lena, and that's the dynamic I prefer.

Lex as an uncle though. he’s so cute with Val (well, for the most part. it was complicated). his relationship with Nasty was bland though.

His relationship with Lena and by extension, Supergirl, was so interesting. Lex was usually so chill whenever he showed up in Supergirl, the way they had an understanding that he could be counted on to protect Lena, and I wish he and Kara would’ve interacted more during those times he had truces with Superman, considering she saw his protective/selfless side before Superman did.

#lex luthor #lexposting

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bindi-the-skunk · 2 years ago

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More rambling from me about Jekyll and Hyde

Part of the reason I think it is so easy to woobify Jekyll well the other literature classic monsters usually get a good amount of bashing is body count (don't get me wrong there are at least two examples of evil!Jekyll (Penny dreadful and Once upon a time) but no one really talks about Jekyll and Hyde from those series so ....and I thought both where pretty bland and did nothing for the characters but that is for a later date...)

Jekyll gets ONE murder victim, Carew and one girl (who was not named and was stated to have not been hurt, only frightened) And the fact Jekyll was under the influence of a drug when he did both crimes, not an excuse, but something to at least note ) these characters are just a means to an end in the story, we only care about them as far as their respective chapter, we only care as far as "murder is bad" and "walking on a child like their a WELCOME mat is bad"

They are faceless, Utterson cares about Jekyll, so we learn to care for him too, in the end Jekyll is a drug addict who kills himself, both are reasons to also feel sorry for him, we are given just enough about him to build him up in our mind, so when we find out he did bad things, it is ultimately in the back of our heads and the fact he did TRY and quit the potion cold turkey does prove he is not a complete monster and did want to at least try and quit before it all crashed around him.

Dorian Gray caused several young women to be ruined and caused an unnamed guard boy to kill himself (back of the mind atrocities sort of like Carew and the girl, we know it is bad, but we don't KNOW them)

But we do get to see Dorian's fall from grace, we see his mind twist, the book is mostly from HIS point of view, we see him think his picture should go back to being perfect just because he THOUGHT about being good, he sold his soul for something as meaningless as beauty.

We see poor Sybil vane kill herself because of him after being cruelly rejected by Dorian, we empathize with her brother, wanting to avenge his sister's death and knowing he was so close to it, we know Dorian cried tears of JOY hearing about his death, and we know he, in his right mind, no drugs or anything, murdered his best friend Basil who we have grown to love.

Frankenstein refused time and time again to take responsibility for his actions and it led to the death of at least four people, he left his newborn creation to die (already not scoring PO points ) then refused to speak up at Justine's trial leading to her being HUNG (a pretty nasty way to die mind you and the poor girl was SIXTEEN when she was hung, and this was old time shit so she most likely suffocated to death from the noose since she would have been light (which could take over twenty minutes of her kicking and struggling for air) over a broken neck ) when just saying he had a fight with a large man who vowed revenge would have done wonders for her ) his little brother William (death of a child pity points) Henry Clerval and finally Elizabeth, both of which we learn of and grow to look at affectionately

And throughout all this, all Victor can do is bellyache how bad HIS life is (and the fact he thought "I will be with you on your wedding night" meant the monster would come to kill HIM did not win him any intelligence points either...)

But what do you think? What makes Jekyll the go-to for the lovable but flawed scientist? What put him a cut above the rest as far as being loved by so many of us? He is the main character of no less than three webcomics I'm watching and a secondary character in another (and my friend plans on drawing her own comic one day as well) Why is making the others evil not much of a consequence, but Jekyll being evil always seems to fall flat?

#lxg #once upon a time #penny dreadful #dr henry jekyll #henry jekyll #jekyll #Hyde #edward #edward hyde #strange case of dr jekyll and mr hyde #the league of extraordinary gentlemen #victor frankenstein #frankenstein #picture of dorian gray #dorian gray #the picture of dorian gray

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dreamtydraw · 6 months ago

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Hi!

Where do you get ideas for your vn and characters?

What is your favorite and least favorite part of working on a vn?

Well that a complex questions simply because I don't have one specific example. Clem used to be an old mc for the game black tarot who got canceled ( same for Aurore that I used both as a black tarot AND roadkill mc ). It's just that Sometimes I like my mc so much I develop them a lot and they end up having enough contents to have their own focused story.

Why did Clem and Aurore got a game out of all the other characters is due to the fact that currently all my games revolve around one main story ( the paranormal club ) and Clem was a liked side character.

This is a bit similar to Achik who is a main character of the Paranormal club story. It just happens that I saw that there would be a queer vampire jam soon and I was like "Hey queer vampire, I could use that as an excuse to give Achik a little focus".

Before being visual novel characters they are my oc but that not the case with the apple bag trio or Alioth ( who's game is coming out soon ).

Tulipe and 21 questions are an adaptation of an oc story in the form of a visual novel. Sleeping under spells and apple bags are Visual novels from the start, I created this stories for visual novels and everything is created with the optic of the stories being made for a public. The characters are made for you the player, not me the creator.

Now on how I create those characters, I start with design and general ideas of what I want to happens to them + their personality. The first character I created in Apple bag was Aissata and her design + story is a result of hearing from fem black player / creators of romance about the lack of romanceable black girls in general but also the fact that dark skinned poc are facing an issue of always being seen as more masculine just because of their skin color.

Second created was Rowan and I had to rework small design choices on her that meant a lot for the narrative ( without spoiling why, the designs change was about her eyes and hair ). Character wise I wanted her to be the opposite of Aissata to offer two very diferent options of love interest since the two of them are the more involved in the mystery part of the storie + are fem presenting.

Leila ? Their design is currently being reworked simply because they lack of character in my opinion, their character design is a bit too bland and I'm changing that. First intention was to offer an afab non binary love interest since I have seen very little of those on all the majority of games I played and by doing so decided to offer a portrayal of non binary that leads in being comfortable in neutrality.

Alioth ? Literally doodled him one night and went "hey I like his design It would be cool to make a game about him" and then boom decided to make a game about him.... That it.

NOW-

This asks is getting long sorry about that but about my favorite and least favorite part of making visual novels :

-Designing and drawing the characters. If you open the files of my games you'll see that for one outfit change the character usualy have like... 60 expressions ? That because I really like having a lot of nuanced expressions and since i'm the artist suffering for it I can allow it to happens.

-Adding cats in my code... If it's a game of mine you'll find cats in the code.

Writting... You would say that kind of unfortunate since that one of the main point of a visual NOVEL- Thing is, I'm not a good writer and I struggle heavily in putting words in what I want to express which I find extremely infuriating. You guys needs to give more credit to the editors as they are the ones who are the reason the text don't sound like dog shit. I have ( not confirmed medically but heavily suggested by professionals ) dyslexia which also results in a LOT of typos in my text and i'll admit I try my best when I write text but I always feel very shameful when typos are found, even worse when I repeat them a lot.

coding Ui.... or coding anything complex. I have a very basic understanding of Renpy and anytime I have to work on something complex I usually end up struggling for a long time and crying on discord to more competent devs ( aka my amazing friends Naarel and Miyuly )

Thank you for the ask and for reading all of that, Hope you'll have a good day.

#dreamty's ramble #ask answer #anon ask #my games #apple bag

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glitteris-mean · 2 years ago

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Dannymay 2023, day 20, Nasty Burger lol

I tried. It's real short, tho, but I haven't read it over (I've never written smth on Tumblr, and I feel like I'm doing smth wrong)

Fresh water drips down the sides of Danny’s cup as he absently sips on his soda. He sits alone in the booth of Nasty Burger, his bright, blue eyes moving across the establishment. Danny watches the fast movements of the cooks behind the counter, all the teenagers lounging around sipping milkshakes with burgers and fries. Nasty Burger’s loud, filled with laughs, banter, the clattering of the kitchen, and rushed talking—it makes a smile slip its way onto Danny’s face as he watches everything.

Nostalgia bubbles up inside the fourteen year old, yet the taste of his soda grows bland as he watches some Casper High students sitting at a table together, chatting. It was Paulina, Dash, Kwan…and Valerie. He supposes he forgot that they used to hang out all the time together, that there was a time when Valerie was one of them—that time is now. Danny’s eyes trace along her face, all of their faces from across the fast-food restaurant.

They all change so much in the future. It will take some time for Danny to get used to them looking so baby-faced and harmless. Right now, they’re so oblivious. It’ll be so hard to take them seriously at school, whether it’s because he can’t get over how young they look or how much he wants to break down at the sight of them.

But that’s okay. Danny looks down at his drink in his hand, and he lifts one of his soaked hands to press down all the little buttons. He wipes his hands on his baggy jeans. Danny purses his lips as a big smile tries to overtake his face. He can try again. He can fix everything this time. Danny looks back up and sees so many people he knows, so many people who don’t know him, so many who will.

He makes eye contact with Valerie across the room, a Valerie who doesn’t really know him. She raises a perfect eyebrow at him and raises her chin up in disgust just the slightest. Danny sends a hesitant wave her way and lets a little bit of his smile through. He’s still hunching over his drink. Valerie’s demeanor softens a bit, the edges of her lips tugging up as she gives him a small wave. Glancing over to the rest of the A-Listers to make sure she wasn’t caught.

“Hey dude, there you are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere, man!” Danny’s best friend, Tucker, calls out.

“We. Tucker. Why didn’t you tell us you were here, Danny? We would’ve joined you—they have some vegan options here you all need to try!” Sam corrects him.

“‘Course. Sorry,” Danny rubs the back of his neck before waving them over.

“Mhm…surreee. If you were really sorry—” Sam hits Tucker on the back of the neck before sitting in the seat next to Danny.

“Shut up, Tucker.”

Danny mimics her, “Yeah, shut up, Tucker. Pft,”

He gets a smack on the back of the head for it too, “You too, Danny.”

Danny’s smile is big as he laughs with his friends, cherishing this new shot he’s got with them. He’ll do it well this time, and they’ll be safe, everyone. He’ll make sure of it. Danny makes eye contact with Valerie again, and he grins at her. This is about the only part of this redo he’ll have fun with. Everything else though…maybe he can just live at Nasty Burger.

And a (kinda) unrelated drawing!!

#dannymay2023 #danny fenton #danny phantom #art #nasty burger #day 20 #writing #if u didnt know he time travelled #no details for u

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kiisaes · 2 years ago

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Hey! So I read your post about my hero academia, the one where you talked about having a weird fatherly connections towards it and I wanted to ask you about what aspects you don’t like about the series? I share a lot of your sentiments but I do think it’s probably more than mid series? A lot of the details and writing I like and I think is considerable better than other shounen mangas. Anyways sorry for rambling. I just wanted to know what aspects you liked on the series and the ones you didn’t like.

Also complete side note: I absolutely love you’re art it’s so beautiful you’re and really skilled drawer!

sure! and thank u anon!

i want to preface this by saying that everything here is my opinion. media analysis is inherently subjective and something i think is bad might be something you think is good. considering how mha is not a shounen that's universally applauded for any or all of its writing choices, it's expected that you and i may perceive this content differently. doesn't mean i'm right and you're wrong and vice versa, it's just a different individual take on the source content.

also, even though i think mha is "mid to mid-good" (as quoted from my textpost) i don't use "mid" as either an insult or in a "it's so average it's bad" way. i know that word has been fucked over bc ppl automatically assume that something being mid means something is bad or bland or boring. it's a middle of the road series with a good share of flaws and strengths, and it doesn't particularly stand out as anything incredibly amazing or awful. just an average to decently good story, and its level of quality fluctuates throughout its run.

at the end of the day, i do like mha. despite what i think of it, it's a series i hold close to my heart and one i can enjoy even without a critical eye. if i didn't, i wouldn't have been making content for it for 2, almost 3 consistent years.

anyway, stuff i like + stuff i don't like under the cut: (warning: VERY LONG)

mha stuff i do like:

deku. he is my little boy

for the most part, horikoshi's character writing is one of his strongest abilities. characters like bakugou, shigaraki, and dabi (and honestly the todoroki family as a unit) are some of the most compelling characters in a story like this. they're allowed to be complex, dynamic and a blend of virtuous and damning traits. they match the overall themes of mha, which is that the sheer concept of "good vs evil" is surface level at best, and that placing people into strict boxes blocks them from everything else that they are. basically a complete "fuck you" to viewers who must condemn a morally grey hero/villain, for example. even less morally grey characters like ochako (imo) are still fun twists and explorations on their given character stereotypes. however i'm obligated to say "for the most part" because hori's superb character writing only matters when he gives those characters time to breathe and actually exist. i'll get into this more later

horikoshi's art is fantastic and undoubtedly his greatest attribute as a mangaka. i firmly believe that, as far as shounen art goes, there aren't any that can rival mha that are also at its global reach. there's never a single moment where i read a chapter and go "wow that art wasn't incredible" because that's not possible. he utilizes his art knowledge so effortlessly and brings out so much in every panel he makes. the manga art never feels dull. i'm so insanely jealous and in awe of him. i guess i could be biased when making this point but i find it hard to genuinely hate his art. it's so polished every time

this is a smaller point that adds to the last one but i do appreciate how he draws women. not when he's using them for uncomfortable gags, but just in general. there's like, actual meat on their bones. they have realistic body proportions (for his style). many of the women are "chubbier" than other shounen women, and a good amount of them are buff as FUCK. it feels like hori puts the same amount of effort into drawing his female characters as he does his male characters, even if he might not dignify that writing-wise

as a fellow comic artist, i absolutely love his understanding of comic language. it's small details like his onomatopoeia reminiscent of western superhero comics that really tie the presentation together. each panel is full of life, with characters and backgrounds working together in the most effective ways. i can't remember what tumblr textpost brought this up, but he also loves playing around with panel borders. he spices them up by using different subjects or objects to split up panels. and this was more of a strength earlier in the series imo, but his pacing was also pretty quick and resourceful. it shows to me that he truly loves creating manga and knows when it's the right time to visually deviate from the norm. again, i'm truly envious of how he can do this. i only hope to reach his level someday ...

this is definitely a biased point, but some of the series' arcs/storylines are some of my favorite ones in fiction. these include the tournament arc, the kamino rescue arc, the overhaul arc, twice's death, and anything relating to the todoroki family. obviously i'm only listing a handful of examples here because i think nearly every arc has its good moments that i can comment on. but when i think of good mha storylines, i think of these first

i also think that mha as a whole is a fun series that knows how to laugh at itself. there's nothing more awkward than a story that takes itself way too seriously, but the content itself is poorly written or not interesting. thankfully, horikoshi doesn't really fall into this issue

there are canon lgbt characters in this series. even if that's kind of a low bar atp (considering how only 1 out of the 3 play a consistently important role), a win is a win is a win. especially in mainstream shounen, beggars can't exactly be choosers.

mha is a story about systemic societal injustice, which is a lofty concept to tackle. thankfully the story is about powers being the norm so the whole "i'm born better than you because i have abilities" is less of a status quo rejection and more of a status quo enabler. as a story concept, it's a good basis, doesn't seem too hard to comprehend, and opens the door for nuanced storytelling and discussion. i think hori does this well at the start of the series. but as the story goes on... uhhh. i'll talk about it.

mha stuff i don't like:

man do these women have basically nothing interesting to do. i complimented how they're drawn earlier, but with the exception of a few notable ones, a lot of their characters pale in comparison to the men. it's even sadder considering that the amount of women in mha is significantly lesser than, so 5 important female characters is like, 1/4 of the female cast. 5 important male characters is like, 1/12 of the male cast. idk i didn't count the amount of characters in this series but it sincerely feels this way, especially if you remember that there are definitely more than 5 important male characters at any moment throughout this series. and when female characters do have their time to shine, there's a 50/50 chance that they die, get gravely injured, or lose limbs. which normally isn't an issue in a battle shounen like mha, but out of the important character deaths in this series, a fair amount of them are women. midnight, magne, and star and stripe have pretty anticlimactic deaths too, to add insult to injury. lady nagant talked her shit then exploded. she's still alive but like ... what? did these characters have to be treated this way? i can't really think of any important male characters who get introduced then axed from the story like this, except for maybe stain (though he's a far more important character narratively). the reason why i bring up this really lengthy point is not because i think horikoshi is actively misogynistic. i just think he falls into the trap that many shounen mangakas face, which is that male characters are more interesting to a male dominated audience. hence, female characters usually get thrown to the side. there are some important women in mha that stand toe to toe with male characters, like toga and ochako, and there are definitely certified girlbosses like mirko and yaoyorozu. but god do i wish i could add more women to this list without having to think really really hard.

and to add onto the previous, shallow, unimportant characters only gain backstories when the narrative demands for it. horikoshi used to write characters revealing their intentions and history in relatively natural ways, like with ochako and her goal to become a hero for money. it kind of came out of nowhere, but it's a valid conversation a teenager would have with other teenagers. in context, it was revealed normally. i'm not sure when these reveals turned forced, but i remember seeing kirishima's backstory and being like "well .. would this have ever been told to us if kirishima wasn't a main character in this arc?" this isn't against kirishima's character; i love the guy and i think his history was short but contextualized his personality really well. but with the recent shoji backstory reveal i could only think, "wow. horikoshi must be really glad he made a mutant character to project this theme onto, huh." it didn't feel like shoji was ever meant to have a backstory — not to mention a very depressing one — but he got one this late in the series run because it was convenient for the plot. perhaps i'm a cynic and this isn't an issue for others, idk. that being said, i think characters like shoji and even star and stripe and lady nagant could have benefited from more natural character developments, maybe with more time given so it doesn't feel like a weirdly convenient reveal.

i just really fucking wish mineta would die already. like get kicked into the sun or blown up with TNT or run over by a car or something. he's less of an openly creepy loser than he was in the beginning of the series, but i'm sure that's because he literally doesn't have the luxury to be creepy at the moment. he's one of the least appealing gag characters that never grows and changes as a person. and he got a backstory before kaminari. can you fucking believe this shit? why does horikoshi keep entertaining this bullshittery— oh yeah. i just remembered that the girls were perved on quite a bit in this series, which wasn't funny and moreso uncomfortable for a lot of readers. like, i know it's shounen, it's animanga, fanservice is kind of the unfortunate norm. but by god, do we need a series poster child for pervy, male-gaze behavior?

i commented earlier about mha's themes and that i think, at least at the start, hori had a good grasp of what he was writing. framing society's systemic flaws and failures in a wacky superheroes vs villains story is not only clever, but makes this actually serious topic accessible to those who might think social-cultural politics are too intimidating. he sets this up starting from deku and bakugou (oppressed and privileged), then adds onto it with stain (heroes who retain the status quo by seeking money and status are not true heroes, because they don't help those in need). shigaraki is thrown into the mix along the way (society fucks over the underprivileged, even those who want to do good, which breeds more villains and in the real world, more criminals) and his little league of villains all have their own stories (spinner: those who don't look like the masses are cast aside, harassed and villainized; dabi: if you don't live up to cruel expectations established by society and parroted by those in your life, you might as well be worthless; toga: any unconventional worldviews and actions are deemed scary and evil; magne: trying to conform to a rigid society as a queer person is fucking hard, man). there's also endeavor (even though you're in a position of power and respect, it doesn't automatically make you a good person). these are all GREAT, and are super compelling set-ups for mha's overall themes: that society should change somewhat, villains are a product of this flawed system, there aren't fully good people nor fully bad people, rehabilitation/growth is good, and true heroes aren't identified by title, but by actions.

these themes are quite apparent throughout mha's entire run. but i feel like the further it goes, the less horikoshi knows how to verbalize them. the latest mini arc dealt with spinner vs shoji in a strangely awkward clash of ideals. spinner is seen as a martyr who really just wants mutants to be accepted into society, and his status rallies up those who have also been hurt. shoji retaliates by... telling them to stop? by saying this isn't the right way? because he was fortunate enough to be in this position, he suddenly has the authority to tell those like him to find a better way to get their voices heard? what, should they all just become heroes? haven't we established that the society they all belong in is fucked up, and that drastic change must be made? i understand what horikoshi is trying to say but it's... off. like the point is there, but the execution is clumsy. shoji even says something like spinner's revolution setting them back 30 years, which is so fucking bizarre to say, and would certainly raise eyebrows in the real world. it sounds like villains can express their grievances with society but they can't dare revolutionize. otherwise, they'll be silenced/ignored again. it's the whole "violence breeds more violence" belief, but there's more to that that should be explored. man, i dunno.

i'm harping on this one story instance but recent mha is riddled with well-meaning but clumsy storytelling like this. and since the narrative relies on these complex, nuanced themes, it's jarring when the nuance falls through. if mha is about breaking harmful norms, why do they still dictate the execution? hori did it so right with deku and bakugou, their relationship being a definite high in the series. but i truly don't how he'll treat the villains at the end of this arc

ok tumblr's telling me to shut up anyway these are my thoughts. again, even though i've rambled so much about my dislikes, i think mha is still a fun and enjoyable series. it misses the point sometimes, but it doesn't detract from its successes. either way my opinions should not rule over how you consume the series. it's always important to form your own opinions!!!

#asks for becki #SORRY FOR THE LONG LONG LONG POST #long post #i love hearing the sound of my voice so much i end up saying nothing of value #hope ppl understand my pov. it's also ok if u don't. peace and love #bnha #mha #becki rambles about stuff

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spoks-illogical-art · 7 months ago

Note

Choose a few ocs and tell me how'd they react to their PC bluescreening mid-work and after updating the wallpaper is different.

Ttly didn't happen to me

what the something slightly similar happened to me too recently? lmaoo

bonus hcs for what would be their wallpapers normally

Vincent - work computer - solid color default wallpaper - if it changed he would not have much of a reaction lmao he would just silently change it back sorry majestic dolphins jumping out of water with god rays all around em its solid blue color city; home computer - a picture of him, Mattie, Lai, Drew and Chester - he knows where all his files are so he would just find it again and change it back no problem

Mattie - work computer - one of the default ones with a sunset or something, she would get slightly annoyed if it changed but maybe another default one would also be nice she can get used to em; home computer - a screenshot from The Y-Files, she would get annoyed fr cuz she would have no idea where did she get that wallpaper from but then she would just find it in a folder where it shouldn't be lol

Laionel - now I realized that I should actually curse him with the existence of the family computer concept but I won't do it I'm not that evil lol, he would have several wallpapers with his favorite animals like foxes and penguins and dinosaurs, If they changed he would have a small problem to find them all again and would get a little bit sad but he's smart he can figure it out ^^

Drew - probably some joke wallpaper maybe a meme collage I can't think of an exact example rn, he would curse the dreaded machine and scramble to find it back, probably accept defeat as he wouldn't be able to find it again, and choose another one he wanted to use anyway

Chester - a picture of a meadow behind his house at sunrise that he took, if it changed he would get really sad, would leave it as the new one for a week before trying to change it back, the picture would probably be in the first folder he would check

Tim and Ryland - both would have the same picture of them together, if it changed for any of them the other could just send it again or be like hey we should take a new one anyway haha

Howard (if he had a computer) - a crude drawing in ms paint of him shooting a laser at Beta8 that's exploding, if it changed he would just snap his fingers and bring it back into existence or actually make a new even more crude one with Tim on fire or sth

Nekor(he's actually at Chester's computer who doesn't know that he has two wallpapers) - a bad quality png of a kefir bottle. that's it. If it changed he would panic and wait for Chess to bring back his one, and then set the kefir one back again.

bonus 2 part of one of my wallpapers i made pierro genshin impact hold weed and theres tiny rhys blands on scaras head

ok but fr my laptop has trouble with connecting to wifi sometimes because avast is being stupid and i have to restart it to let avast update then and I had to do it recently and when it was booting up again instead of the default cave one on the screensaver there was a rhino??? and it was only then its back to the cave again now idk what was up with that lol

thank u sztefa u are my savior ^^

#spokpost #ask

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phoenixyfriend · 3 years ago

Text

The Family Tree is... a Disaster

Takes place in the TCW Leverage AU. It does contain a few deviations, namely that the narrative ended up shifting Plo's role in Ahsoka's life, and Ventress's role overall.

This is mostly just dialogue where I outline the fuckery that is the disaster lineage family tree, not actual fic. It stemmed from my incessant need to justify "25yo Obi-Wan somehow got custody of 9yo Anakin without Shmi dying."

Warnings for: canon character death (modernized), canon violence (modernized), and references to Nazis and white supremacists (Palpatine collects WWII weaponry as a parallel to his canon display of Sith artifacts in his office as chancellor, and Ahsoka thinks it's sketchy)

----

"Okay," Cody says, setting down a glass of whiskey as he drops into the seat across the table. "What the hell is your family tree like?"

Obi-Wan raises an eyebrow, and continues cleaning off the definitely-not-stolen crystal komodo dragon he'd won in today's job. "I beg your pardon?"

"You and Skywalker," Cody says, gesturing between Obi-Wan, who is just sitting there minding his own business, and Anakin, who is across the closed-for-tonight bar and doing something inadvisable on the pool table. "You've said he was your brother, and mentioned raising him, which, sure, I'm over twenty years older than my youngest brother, people take over parenting roles all the time. But you have different last names, have mentioned stepfamilies that the other doesn't have, reference things as 'your aunt, not mine,' and I am just getting... very confused. I figured it was personal and I could leave well enough alone, but considering your older brother almost shot us today--"

"Okay, Xanatos is not my brother," Obi-Wan immediately says. "Just. I just have to stop you right there. Xanatos was a student of my father's for a time, but I promise he's not family. Nobody except maybe Komari would consider him even close, and she doesn't count since she's in prison for life and the farthest thing from stable."

Cody gestures. "That, Obi-Wan. That's what I'm talking about. I don't even know who Komari is."

Obi-Wan purses his lips in a failed attempt to not smile. "Do you actually want the explanation? It's long and unnecessarily complicated."

"So's mine," Cody snorts. Obi-Wan waits, patient and pleasant, and is rewarded when Cody sighs. "Please."

"Of course, my dear. To answer your first question, though, Anakin is my half-brother." With a smile, Obi-Wan digs a piece of paper and a pen from his briefcase. "So, center of the chain: me, my father Qui-Gon, my grandfather Yan, and my great-grandfather Yoda. With me so far?"

"Easy enough. Do you have to go back that far?"

"Great-grandfather Yoda is still alive and regularly escaping the old folks' home to terrorize younger relatives, so yes," Obi-Wan says. "Given that you may just meet a tiny, meddling relative of mine when he's bored, we do in fact have to go back that far."

"...how old is he?"

"We don't know for sure. A hundred and eight-ish is the best guess." Obi-Wan shrugs. "It's not a huge deal, mostly he likes bothering Anakin these days. Anyway, grandfather. Yan Dooku. Inherited a minory duchy from his maternal grandfather decades back. Mostly hangs around there because he's on terrorist watchlists in the States."

"Oh, lovely."

Obi-Wan grins. "Trust me, it gets worse. Anyway, grandfather never actually married, but spent most of his time with his 'best friend' Sifo Dyas, who died about a decade back."

"Gay?"

"Well, we know that now, but they got together in the seventies, and this was back when they were both working government jobs, so, you know. It happens."

"Good to know," Cody says. "So, Yoda's kid is Yan, who inherited a title and land from a maternal relative, and had a life partner but never married. With you so far."

"All of Yan's kids were adopted," Obi-Wan continues, sketching out the first branch away from the Yan/Sifo partnership. "Rael was actually grandfather's cousin, maternally, and ended up in his custody after getting orphaned at five. These days, he does most of the stewardship duties at the Serenno Duchy. His daughter Nim is teaching military history at a university in Germany."

Cody nods. "Uncle number one is named Rael, technically your dad's cousin, has a daughter. Got it."

"About a decade after Rael, they adopted my father, Qui-Gon. He and grandfather fought, frequently, but they did care for each other. My father was a botanist, did bio-engineering. We'll get back to him later, because he's where things get complicated." Obi-Wan made sure to leave room around the name. "Just a few years older than me was--is--Komari Vosa. She is... serving a life sentence. I think she fought Jango once."

"She fought my father?"

"To the best of my knowledge, they both almost died, yes," Obi-Wan says. "She's in maximum security these days. She was an assassin. I'll get a call if she breaks out, and I'll let you know along with everyone else."

"Bad news auntie, got it."

"Last adoption, sort of, is Ventress," Obi-Wan finishes off. "A few years younger than me, is technically grandfather's personal assistant and does secretarial work and the like, but we all know he's planning to leave as much of the inheritance to her as he is to the rest of us. She's aggressive and unpleasant, but she takes care of him and hasn't actually threatened to kill any of us yet, so that's fine."

"How'd she join?" Cody asks.

"Ky Narec was a friend of Qui-Gon's; Ventress was his daughter. Ky died a few years after Qui-Gon did, and Ventress was a mess, after." Obi-Wan shrugs and scratches that connection into the little sketch of a family tree as well. "Grandfather offered her a job until she got herself back together, and then she just kind of... stuck around."

"Youngest aunt, more of a cousin." Cody summarizes. "Now we go back to your father?"

"Qui-Gon Jinn was a man of many skills," Obi-Wan says drily. "Adequate birth control was not one of them."

It's almost a pity that Cody wasn't drinking anything, because going by the way he chokes, Obi-Wan's pretty sure the spit take would have been spectacular.

"I'm sorry," Cody says. "Can you repeat that?"

"I was an accident," Obi-Wan says, not even bothering to hide his smile. "So was Anakin."

"So that sounds like... a story."

"It is," Obi-Wan confirms. "My biological mother has never been in the picture. They had a fling, she wasn't sure if she'd want to abort or give me up, just that she wasn't ready to be a parent, and Qui-Gon volunteered to take full custody so she could go back to her life after the birth. I've never met her, but I kept her family name. You can consider her irrelevant beyond that."

Cody nods.

"So, when I was about a year old, Qui-Gon reconnects with an old flame, they get married two years later. Step-mother number one is Tahl. Lovely woman, I absolutely adored her, and she had a daughter, my stepsister, Bant Eerin."

"I met her, right?" Cody asks.

"Yes, she was the doctor who patched up my bullet wound a few months ago," Obi-Wan says. "With the giant glasses that make her look a little fish-eyed."

"She was nice."

"She is," Obi-Wan agrees. "At any rate, that was our family for a while, and then Tahl died when I was fourteen. Bant wanted to go to a magnet school for medical studies, and Qui-Gon's grief was... not optimal for taking care of multiple teenagers, shall we say, so Bant moved in with her paternal uncle, Kit Fisto, and Kit's son Nahdar. He's a marine biologist, incredibly friendly, and has no idea of any of the rest of my side of the family's questionable activities. If you ever meet him, you will pretend that we are a legal firm with a team of security consultants."

Cody raises a brow. Obi-Wan despairs. "Best you could do?"

"We're not that likely to run into him." Obi-Wan draws out a new line. "So, Qui-Gon deals poorly with grief. This is also around the time that Xanatos came around to ruin our lives a little. He was a very rich and unpleasant man, but he's dead as of four hours ago, so you don't have to worry about him. Or his son."

"His son?"

"Anakin handled that," Obi-Wan says. "Thoroughly. Granta Omega is no longer an issue. He's not dead, but... well. Anakin has his ways. Er--I should probably mention Feemor; he was my father's assistant at the university for a long time. Anakin and I still call him our uncle."

"Also a person to avoid mentioning criminal activity to?" Cody prompts.

"Well... no, but only because I don't think he'd care. The man is, forgive me, more of a 'walking sweatervest' than I am. He's a very bland and unassuming man. He once described himself as the background character of the soap opera that is my family's existence."

"Sounds like a charmer."

"Oh, he's very kind and clever, and witty as well. I adore him, and he really is family. He's just also very, very normal. Not boring, but..." Obi-Wan trails off and shrugs helplessly. "He's an editor for an agricultural research journal. Also not someone I anticipate us running into."

"Noted."

"Right, so, Qui-Gon dealing poorly with his grief didn't involve much drinking, but there were a few months of him trying to... lose himself in the pleasures of the flesh?" Obi-Wan tries, and then deflates at the look on Cody's face. "He was slagging around. Shmi got pregnant with Anakin, who was born when I was sixteen. Shared custody at first, Qui-Gon got him weekends and every other holiday, that sort of thing, and then they got married because they actually did like each other well enough, and it was easier on the taxes."

"So Shmi is stepmother number two."

"Shmi is stepmother number two, yes." Obi-Wan sketches in Anakin and Shmi. "About nine and a half years after Anakin was born, Shmi and Qui-Gon were in a car accident with... well, it later turned out it wasn't an accident, there was a hitman called Maul involved, he's actually Ventress's second cousin or something, I don't know. Grandfather handled most of that problem. Qui-Gon died, Shmi was in intensive care, and I got custody of Anakin as his nearest adult relative. We weren't very close before that, because I was off at university by the time he was old enough to form memories, but that changed once he started living with me. I more or less raised him as a single parent from that point."

"This is why he jokes that you're like a father to him."

"Precisely," Obi-Wan says. "Shmi took about a year to recover enough to move again, and grandfather covered the costs. She still had to live with a dedicated carer and attend daily physical therapy. At that physical therapy, she met Cliegg Lars, whose son Owen was also a patient there. They hit it off, and three years later, they married. When Anakin refers to his stepfamily he's talking about the Lars out in Nevada."

"Nevada?"

"They have a farm. A very, very normal one. We don't drag them into our activities, unless we have an at-risk person who needs a safe house." Obi-Wan pauses, and then decides this really needs to be stressed. "This is important to me and Anakin, that we don't get them involved unless there's absolutely no other choice. Shmi's been through a lot, and the Lars are busy enough running the farm."

"Works for me," Cody says. "We've got enough safe houses that it shouldn't be an issue. I'm guessing this story doesn't end there, though."

Obi-Wan grimaces. "My own love life has been... a bit of a mess."

"I already know about Kryze, at least."

There's that. "I was temporarily engaged to a friend, Siri Tachi, shortly after high school. We were in a relationship, but this was mostly something done to appease a relative of hers that was getting overbearing to the point of absurdity, and she couldn't just cut them off. We broke off the engagement after the relative passed, and we're still friends."

He notes that down, then adds the other embarrassment of his early years. "First marriage was actually a drunken joke between myself and my best friend when we were in college. We got it annulled a few months later because we just didn't have time to drop by the courthouse before then, and he's actually engaged to Asajj now."

"Asajj?" Cody asks, watching in fascination as Obi-Wan tries to mark in both his own short marriage and the newer, long-term engagement without crossing any lines. He settles for just writing the name twice and including an asterisk with 'this is the same person.'

"Ventress," Obi-Wan clarifies. "Yeah, Quinlan's a fun guy. His little sister, Aayla, treats Anakin like a beloved younger cousin."

"Are they also off-limits for criminal activity?"

"No, Aayla's the one that taught Ahsoka how to vent-crawl," Obi-Wan says. "And I'm pretty sure Quinlan has contacts in every major government branch, criminal organization, and Fortune 500 company on the planet. I reach out to them regularly."

"Resources, then."

Obi-Wan nods. "Some time later, I married Satine. We had a son; you've met Korkie. We split due to incompatibility a year and change before Qui-Gon's death. Satine doesn't engage in criminal activity, but Bo-Katan is..."

"I've met Bo-Katan. I know what she's like, Obi. You don't have to explain."

"She works with Maul sometimes."

"...the man who killed your father?"

"Yes. It's all very stupid and convoluted." Obi-Wan still writes her in. "So, that's them. Korkie goes to boarding school, and I try not to involve him in anything. Anakin and Ahsoka like to teach him self-defense and the like, but Satine is adamant that he stay unaware of my less legal dealings until he's an adult."

Cody shrugs. "Makes sense. Is that every--wait, no, Skywalker's married."

Obi-Wan grins. "Yes, and Padme's got twins on the way."

"I was there when he told us," Cody says drily. "He was very loud about it. Okay, how does Ahsoka fit in?"

"Hold on, I forgot Beru," Obi-Wan mutters. "Owen's fiancee. Same rules as the Lars. Okay, you asked about Ahsoka. Right. So. Um."

He dithers. Cody waits for him, and then Obi-Wan just gives up. "Ahsoka, dear, would you like to explain how you joined the family, so to speak?"

Ahsoka looks up from whatever she and the boys are doing--there are multiple beer glasses and straws and duct tape involved, and Obi-Wan doesn't really want to know--and then flips off the table and over to Obi-Wan and Cody. She looks over the family tree chart, and then says, "Oooh, did you tell him about the cult?"

"You were in a cult?" Cody demands.

"No, Komari was. She was head priestess or something. I dunno, it's why she's in prison and stuff."

"I did not tell him about the cult," Obi-Wan mutters, already regretting this. "The Bando Gora aren't a problem anymore. I've already gotten to explaining how you and Anakin know each other."

Ahsoka rolls her eyes, steals his pen, and starts sketching in around Quinlan's name, over by Asajj since Obi-Wan's section is too crowded. "Okay, so, Quinlan's adopted. His dad is Tholme, and Tholme's dad is Plo Koon. Plo Koon is good friends with my Auntie, Shaak Ti, who raised me. They live next door to each other, out in the country, and I'd play in his yard a lot, because he had puppies, and he took me to visit his bees. Whenever Auntie needed a babysitter, she asked Quinlan or Aayla to do it since she knew and trusted them, and Aayla needed pocket money."

"This is so unnecessarily complicated," Cody mutters.

"It is!" Ahsoka chirps. Her grin is far too sharp. "So, this one time, Aayla was watching me when I was fourteen, and she was just helping me with my physics homework. BAM, the door slams open, and in stumbled Skyguy with his arm missing. I've never met him before, and my first introduction is him shortly after he's gotten an unplanned amputation."

Anakin, on the other side of the room, giggles. Obi-Wan just sighs. The Fett brothers appear to be in the land of 'horrified fascination.'

Ahsoka revels in it. "There's blood everywhere, I'm screaming, Aayla's panicking, Anakin's halfway to unconscious and insisting we can't call the hospital, and nobody can get Obi-Wan on the phone. Quinlan's in another country, and Auntie Shaak and Uncle Plo are at a movie, so they've both got their cellphones off. Tholme was faking his death at that point to get away from an incident with the Irish Mob, so we didn't even try him."

"What the actual fuck," Rex breathes.

Ahsoka continues with relish. "We get Bant to pick up, and she's there an hour later with Padme, because Padme knows how to drive the way Skyguy does, and the entire drive there is just Auntie Bant on speakerphone telling Aayla how to stop the bleeding and get him stabilized while Padme's screaming at traffic at the top of her lungs."

"I owe Aayla a fruit basket," Anakin muses aloud. "The anniversary of her saving my life is coming up, it's warranted."

"Five years, baby!" Ahsoka crows. She fist-pumps.

Obi-Wan just drops his head into his hands. "You're killing me, children."

Anakin shrugs, grinning. "You know, I think Fett Senior might have been involved in that fight."

"My shitty dad cut off your arm?" Rex demands.

"No, I think he was busy fighting the Interpol guy," Anakin says. "But he was definitely there. I think. Blood loss kinda got to me after a bit, but I'm pretty sure Jango Fett was there, and also Boba might've been hiding in the getaway car?"

"I need another glass," Cody mutters. He doesn't stand up, though.

"Wait," Rex says. "So who cut off your arm?"

Anakin shrugs with an unsure noise. "Someone tried to convince me it was Grandpa Yan, but he was in the middle of a court case in Italy for some kind of parole violation when it happened, so he had an alibi."

"...did he actually violate parole?" Cody asks, and Obi-Wan thinks he looks like he doesn't know if he actually wants an answer.

Ahsoka shrugs. So does Anakin. Obi-Wan carefully looks at a spot behind Cody, and doesn't explain anything about wine tastings used as covers for illicit arms deals.

"The arm?" Rex prompts, sounding a little desperate to get back to the question he likely thinks is the most important.

"I still say it was Skeevy Sheev," Ahsoka chimes in.

"It wasn't Palpatine," Anakin snaps.

"Your creepy older friend who took you to operas and gives you fancy gifts and knows way too much about swords who was conveniently there to talk to the police and cover for you so you didn't get arrested for getting in the middle of a gang war in the first place, yes," Ahsoka says, dropping into a chair and sighing dramatically. "The guy who definitely hasn't been trying to convince you for a year and change that your wife is cheating on you with your older brother."

"Ahsoka!"

"What? He is."

"Anakin," Rex says, "your life sounds like a trainwreck."

"I'm not going to assume a frail, elderly man cut my arm off!" Anakin protests. "Even if he wanted to, he doesn't exactly have the muscle for it!"

"Grandfather's older," Obi-Wan points out, even though he knows it won't help. "And he definitely still could."

"Ha!" Ahsoka shouts.

"He could have hired someone?" Cody suggests. "Doesn't need to do it himself, if he has enough money."

Obi-Wan has a sneaking suspicion that Cody is deliberately stirring the pot as revenge for Anakin sending him eighty-seven cat memes inside an hour during last night's dinner.

"You all suck," Anakin declares. "Also, what the hell do you mean 'knows way too much about swords,' Ahsoka? You know way too much about swords!"

"Yeah, but I'm like ninety-percent sure that his antiques are Prussian and mid-century German military officer dress uniform relics, and pairing that with the Nazi pistols he's got on display--"

"He's just a history buff! And his family's German, of course he prioritizes that region, it's not like he doesn't have Russian or French or English antiques in there too, it's all sides of the war and--"

"I'm just saying he's almost definitely sending me sketchy glances like he thinks I'm planning to steal the silver on the three occasions you've had me with you when you stop by, and I'm pretty sure it's got less to do with my criminal record and more to do with me being, you know, not white."

Anakin looks ready to blow, so Obi-Wan interrupts. "Ahsoka, you were explaining how Anakin passing out on Aayla and scaring us all half to death led to your friendship?"

Ahsoka blinks at him, and then sticks her tongue out at Anakin and turns back to the chart. "So basically, Skyguy had to recuperate in Uncle Plo's living room for a week or two, and I kept showing up to bother him because he was bored and nobody would give him a laptop for 'security reasons,' because he had to lay low and stuff. He made me help him sketch out designs for a prosthesis and do all the writing for the math he had to do for the 3D printer, and we got to chatting."

Ahsoka hops up and back onto a table, legs swinging below her. "I decided he was cool and started following him around while he was getting used to only having one hand, mostly because I was bored. He showed me how to hotwire a car, and explained the best places to put a bug if you were looking to make it sneaky, and he picked my pocket to show off so many times when he was walking around Uncle Plo's house that I made him teach me that, too. And, uh, then Aayla found out and they got into a shouting match about it and decided they both needed to teach me parkour so I could get out of any mess I got myself into, since I was obviously going to follow them into a life of crime."

"And you did," Anakin says, far too proudly. "You're the best thief in this half of the country."

"Only because Aayla moved out east."

Anakin rolls his eyes and pulls Ahsoka into his side, digging his knuckles into her skull. "Best thief! You are the best thief! Be proud of yourself!"

"Let go!"

"Never!"

Obi-Wan sighed heavily and rubbed at his forehead. "Children, please."

"You're not my dad," Ahsoka growls out at him. "Skyguy, I'm going to bite you!"

"Good luck, the only arm you can access is the one that's going to break your teeth."

Ahsoka shrieks in outrage and stomps on Anakin's instep.

It's almost funny, for all that Obi-Wan's seen it play out a million times before, but the really interesting part is seeing Rex's look of fond dismay.

Obi-Wan thinks he might be adding a branch out to the Fetts soon. He's not actually sure if Rex is interested in Anakin or Ahsoka, and he's smack dab between them in age, so that's not a help either, but... well. The expression is familiar enough.

"Please tell me you don't match-make," Cody mutters to him.

"No, I plan to let the pieces fall where they will," Obi-Wan responds, just as low, and far more amused. "I'm simply trying to predict where those landings are to be."

Cody looks at him, and then back at the roughhousing trio, and sighs heavily. "You know, I really didn't think that you technically being minor royalty was going to be the least convoluted thing in your story, Obi-Wan."

He laughs, because it's true. "I'm first in line to inherit the title, since Rael denounced his claim. Nim isn't interested, and Qui-Gon's dead, so... I'm next."

Cody makes a face. "Delightful. I'm guessing that's not a connection we can safely make use of."

"No more than the Kryze or Naberries, I'm afraid." Obi-Wan claps him on the shoulder. "Chin up, I've plenty others in the metaphorical rolodex, all far less legitimate and far more amenable to work with our little outfit."

"Rolodex, really?" Cody snorts. "You're not that old."

Obi-Wan smiles winningly. "You don't know how old I am, Cody. All my IDs are fake."

"Anakin's twenty-four, and you're sixteen years older than him, going by the story you just told me," Cody points out. "I do know how to do basic math, Obi-Wan."

"I had to try," Obi-Wan admits. "I threw a lot of information at you all at once; I'd hoped you missed some of the ages in there."

"I have eight brothers," Cody scoffs. "And literally dozens of cousins, plus niblings, uncles, aunts, and so on. I have experience on this."

"If I asked you to list of the age of every single relative you have, you'd be able to do it?"

"Do you want me to draw a chart? I can draw a chart."

Obi-Wan can't help but laugh. "I'd be delighted, my dear."

Cody rolls his eyes, but Obi-Wan thinks--it's hard to tell in the dimmed lights of the closed bar--that there's a hint of a blush on the man's face. Obi-Wan lets himself slouch to the side, drops his head to rest on one fist, indolent debauchery in every line of his body. Cody does his best to ignore him, but Obi-Wan knows how to smile lazily and blink slowly and draw a man in.

(The whole 'indolent debauchery in every line of his body' phrasing is Anakin's, from back when he was a teenager trying to read highbrow literature to impress a cute girl... and to come up with new insults for his older brother.)

"So," Cody says, with a cough meant to somehow distract Obi-Wan from whatever's showing on the man's face. "Why, uh, why is your grandfather on terrorist watchlists?"

"Well, he didn't initially do anything," Obi-Wan says. "He was just a gay man who didn't hide it quite well enough, and had too much money and too white a face for someone to just call the cops on a faulty report. The Red Scare was technically over by that point, I think, but if a few people made suggestions that he was more loyal to the country that gave him a noble title than to the United States... he received a few warnings, of course, and it could have all blown over..."

"But?"

"But my grandfather is not a man to do things by halves, and instead decided that if the government was to list him as a threat, then he would oblige and make himself a threat," Obi-Wan finishes. "Living up to their labels, rolling with the assumptions, whatever you'd like to call it. It all irked him, and so he made some incredibly questionable decisions to make the government's lives harder. Some weren't bad, like donating to anti-war foundations that were protesting the Gulf War and the interventions in Yugoslavia, that sort of thing, and some were... nobody really looks well on gunrunning, you know."

"For fuck's sake..."

"Indeed," Obi-Wan chuckles. "Ironically, he has minimal opinion on the optimal form of economics, for all that virulent xenophobia and the remnants of anti-communism were involved in the whole mess. He just wanted to create problems for the people that were causing him problems."

Cody shakes his head. "I want to judge that, but you've met my father."

"Jango Fett is, indeed, also not a man to do things by halves," Obi-Wan agrees, attempting to nod gravely but breaking into a smile at the end. "That man is absurd."

"At least he's not dragging Boba into it anymore," Cody mutters. He drags over the fresh sheet of paper and pen that Obi-Wan offers him. "Okay, right, let's start with Jaster..."

552 notes · View notes

palbabor-writes · 4 years ago

Text

Practicum

Pairing: Shigaraki Tomura x Fem!Reader

Warnings: SMUT/18+ only, unbalanced/unhealthy relationships, student/teacher sex, tw.dubcon, tw.sub/dom dynamics, brat taming, fingering, masturbation, a table is pretty roughed up in this, so pls hold a brief moment of silence for it

Words: 12,857

“So, you just want me to read from the book?”

“Yes.”

“And...answer questions?”

“That’s what I said,” Shigaraki smirks, already reaching toward his bookshelf, tugging the heavy Intro to Biology text out and shifting it into his large hands.

You bite at your lip again and pass your gaze from his amused expression to the bland cover of the textbook, debating your next move, trying to walk yourself through all the ups and downs. It’s too simple; too easy. It’s not like him. He’s got something else in mind, why else would he fucking look like that? It’s not a bad look. No, it’s a look that makes your stomach flip and head spin.

“Stop being so suspicious,” Shigaraki scolds, drawing your wandering attention back to him. “I don’t bite, that is, unless you want me to.”

Notes: the title was selected because it’s got the word cum in it. ahhh, the things that crack me up. anyhow.

this is part of the BNHA Degeneracy server’s 9 to 5 collaboration! i had a ton of fun participating in this and thank you guys for making this so freaking awesome! special shoutout & thanks to @albinoburrito & @kugutsuu for their beta edits! this was a departure from what i usually write about and i appreciate all of your notes and help!

Practicum prac·ti·cum /ˈpraktəkəm/ noun a practical section of a course of study

It’s your senior year, they said. Live a little, they advised. Stop and take a breather, you’re practically home free! Take some easier classes. Focus on what’s in front of you, it’ll be over before you know it! On and on and on.

Spring semester is almost here. You’ve applied for graduation, the cap and gown ordered, and you have a shiny class ring sitting on your pinky. It’s in the bag. Just breeze through four more classes and you’re out. Well, it would be an easy shot, if you hadn’t put off this one class.

It always popped up, so it’s not like you could plead ignorance. Your advisor warned you, each quarterly meeting, that you needed to get it out of the way. Take it seriously, he cautioned, clacking out his notes, typing down that you’d failed to heed his sage advice, again. If you wait too long, you’re not going to get the professor that you want.

That was the other problem. You’re a procrastination superstar. If there was some kinda award for putting off assignments, you’d have won it ten times over. You liked the heart pounding race to the deadline, the sleepy boasts that you’d tackled the project within hours of its due date.

It’s a stupid habit. Every semester you promise yourself that you’ll do better. You won’t wait, you’ll tackle things one assignment at a time and turn them before the hard cut off at 11:59 pm. Who the fuck did you think you were kidding? Certainly not your friends, or your advisor. He could read you like a book. Hell, he’d even sent warnings.

‘Don’t forget about the deadline for senior registration!’

‘You don’t want to be on a waitlist. You especially don’t want to take one of the harder professors. These are freshman level classes, they’re designed to flunk undergrads. Don’t forget (Y/N), chew them up and spit them out tactics are employed.’

But you had. You’d set an alarm on your phone, then neglected to give it a title, so you’d only chuckled and smacked the chirping into silence that morning, snoozing the all important deadline away.

Fuck.

Most of the classes for biology are wait-listed. No, scratch that, all the classes for Intro to Genetic Biology are wait-listed. You opt into the waitlist for all of them, just in case, and a week later your phone alerts you that one has an open seat. Actually, it has several open seats, too many open seats to be natural. However, you’re not going to look a gift horse in the mouth, so for now, you’re enrolled in BIO 1208: Principles of Cell and Organismal Physiology - For Non-Science majors.

Perfect.

Yeah, no. You’d looked up the professor, since the whole open seat thing was still giving you the heebie-jeebies, and your heart dropped. You’ve heard of him, most of the student body has. His classes are notoriously small. Not because the university limited them, or planned for smaller class sizes. No, his classes are tiny because he is infamous for failing students.

Most, when they realize they’re scheduled for his bio classes, frantically drop, taking the withdrawal and praying for better luck next semester. Others, brave souls who think they can come out unscathed, attempt to grit their teeth and push through. But, by midterms, they’re war torn and haggard, shaking their heads and praying for a ‘C’, at best. Fewer still, pass.

This pedagogy isn’t a sign of good teaching; quite the opposite, in fact. You don’t want your student body failing. Yet, year after year, Professor Tomura Shigaraki keeps teaching the same Intro to Bio class. It boggles the mind, but you’ve never had to worry about it. Well, until now.

When you’d received the notification that you’re enrolled in the B section and spied the name Shigaraki under the professor listing, you’d scarfed down your suddenly flavorless lunch and dashed up the steps to the student advising hall, praying there was some way you could wiggle your way out of this growing disaster.

“I’m pretty sure I told you to take it earlier and to take it in the fall when there are more freshman level classes available. I swear I said that to you. And, AND, I even sent you emails, several times if my sent inbox is to be believed, to NOT forget when senior registration ends.”

Your advisor is peeved. You don’t blame him. He’s right, this is your fault, but there’s gotta be some kinda loophole. Something, fuck, anything, that can pull you from this mess.

“I know, I know! I’m so sorry. You’re right. But, I mean, can’t I just hold off for another week? See if the waitlist clears?”

The man that you’ve known for four years, that’s seen you progress from freshman to senior, steeples his long fingers and purses his lips, likely debating on a tactful scolding, or a firm rebuttal. He takes a deep breath and you can’t help but sink into the soft cushioning of the chair, your nose wrinkled and brow furrowed, mentally preparing yourself for the worst.

“Do you know how many students we require to take BIO 1208?”

“No,” you gulp, nibbling on your lower lip nervously.

“Over 7,000. Do you want to hear the statistics that would need to shake out in your favor for you to miraculously avoid taking this specific class? Nothing is going to open for you, it is this class, or no class.”

You sigh, and your advisor nods, pushing his horn-rimmed glasses up his nose. “Well then, I suggest you brush up on your study skills. Find a classmate that you can compare notes with, join a study group, go to the student union and ask for a tutor. I would hate to see you back here for the summer semester. You’re scheduled to walk the stage this spring and you’ve worked hard for this, so don’t fuck it up, okay?”

You’ve attended this university for four years, but the first day of term always gives you the jitters. It doesn’t matter that you know your way around, or that you know ten professors by name, and bump into several friends on the way to your next building, you’re always buried in your phone, checking and double checking the next class’ room number.

Despite all that caution, you’re lost.

In your defense, it’s your first time stepping foot in the Graduate & Research building and the whole concrete block is a fucking maze. There must be a basement because the numbers don’t match up with the floors and they seem to jumble further every time you round a corner. Like what the hell? How can this next room be GR 3.03.05 when this is clearly only the second floor and GR 2.03.11 was right down that other hallway?

Exasperated, you lean against the nearest wall and tug your phone out again. Shit. Class started ten minutes ago.

Part of you wants to call it a day, end the search here and try again on Wednesday. Maybe take a few extra minutes to scout out the building next time and have some idea of where you’re going before the start of class.

Ugh, why is this so stressful?

It’s the first day of classes. Surely Professor Shigaraki won’t mind if you’re a few minutes late; besides, if you’re lost, others must be too.

You tuck your phone back into your pocket and resume the hunt. Two hallway turns later, you find your mark.

Your hand pauses beside the heavy wood, and you take a steadying breath. Again, why are you so nervous? Just go in and take a seat, it’s easy, stop freaking out over nothing.

The door groans open, hinges protesting the sharp push, and you stumble into a darkened room. The low glow of the projector doesn’t help your blurry vision. Ah, shit, it’s one of those older rooms, so it’s built like a bad movie theater. Oh well, better get to a seat before he spots you.

Swiftly, you make your way toward the raised steps of the aisle and the second row of chairs, plopping into the first one you reach that’s empty. You’re too busy fiddling with the zipper of your backpack to notice that the speaker has stopped his rasping preamble, but as you pull your laptop out the ominous weight of that heavy silence hits you and you toss a hooded stare toward the front of the lecture hall.

Immediately, your eyes land on the professor’s and you feel a low shiver shake up your spine.

He’s watching you.

The gleam of the overhead projector makes his red eyes flash, and he openly scowls at your gaping expression, his lips curling into a dark sneer.

“Well, thank you for joining us, Miss…?”

He’s waiting for your response and you squeak out your last name, mindlessly rubbing your moistening palms against your thin skirt.

“Ah, Ms. (L/N). Now that you’ve graced the class with your belated presence, may I continue?”

“Uh,” you gasp out, your mouth dry, tongue sticking to your teeth, “I’m sorry. I got–”

“I didn’t ask for an explanation, or in your case, an excuse. Or are you now attempting to disrupt this class purposefully?”

“Wha– I-I’m–” your words stumble to a halt, voice failing under the intense glare that he’s giving you. “No,” you finish lamely, ducking your head, nails digging into your sweaty palms.

“Thank you. Do me a favor, stay after class.” His voice is gravel, threatening and low. You don’t like the edge in his tone. It makes your skin prickle and your knees knock. He sounds like the kind of guy that you don’t want to run into in a dark alleyway, or a classroom, for that matter. Even so, it’s not your fault, and despite your feelings of unease, you can’t tamp down your need to protest his unreasonableness.

“But, professor, I didn’t mean to–”

“If I need to repeat my insistence for silence, I’ll make things easier on both of us and fail you now.”

Stunned and fuming, you bite your tongue and lean back into your chair, crossing your arms and blinking back mounting tears of frustration. Great, just great. It’s the first fucking day of class and it looks like you’re already on his shit list. And for what? For being late on fucking syllabus day! What an ass.

You look over at him as you defiantly finish setting up your computer, hoping each pull of a zipper or screen reboot will grate under his stuck up skin. He’s not inordinately tall, or old. In fact, he looks like he might only be in early 30s. He has long white hair that’s pulled back into a low ponytail and, from what you can make out in the dim lighting, some kinda skin condition on his forehead. That, or he’s prematurely wrinkled, and let’s be honest, if he’s gone through life with that big of a stick up his ass, he deserves each and every pull on that mottled skin of his.

You linger in your seat when class is over, lips pulled into a thin line and legs crossed. Finally, when the last student has left the room, professor Shigaraki flips a switch beside his elevated podium, filling the lecture hall with a sharp, fluorescent light. He pauses by his raised computer system and clicks off the overhead projector, blanketing the massive room in an uncomfortable silence.

“Since you missed the part of class where I go over the syllabus, I’ll give you a brief rundown. Under no circumstances will I tolerate tardiness. If you do it once more I’ll mark you absent and three absences knock you down a full letter grade.”

Glumly, you cross your arms and peer up at him, finally able to get a good look at his face. Your first observation was correct. His skin is sharper around his forehead, but his wavy white hair does a pretty decent job of covering up the imperfections. He has two scars: one nicks across his right eye and the other splits down his rough lips, parting the skin and granting him an even more foreboding appearance than his already gruff demeanor does. He’s dressed in a dark pair of jeans and he’s wearing a low slung v neck shirt. It’s a brilliant red and it brings out that otherworldly glint of his red eyes. Shit, you think bitterly, while he’s not conventionally handsome, he’s not exactly hard on the eyes either.

You shake your head against these unproductive musings and curtly snap out a clipped, ok.

“What was that?” Shigaraki scoffs, tilting his head at your sullen figure. “Speak up.”

“I said,” you bristle, eyes narrowing and chin lifting, “Okay, I apologize for interrupting your lecture, it won’t happen again. But, in my defense, if I’m allowed to do that in this class, I’ve never been in this building before, and it’s not like–”

“You’re a senior, right?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Then you’ve had four years to figure out the layout of this university. The excuse of ‘being lost,’ isn’t an option for you. You know the buildings and you’re fully capable of turning up early to sort out the rooms.”

You let out a long sigh and look away, mumbling vague protests. This guy is ridiculous. You’re not a science major and it’s not your job to know the ins and outs of each building. How fucking stupid. Who does he think he–

“Speak up. I won’t ask you again.”

You bite your lip and look back at him but he’s moved in that distracted moment, silently stepping down from his raised platform and is now leaning over the first row of chairs, looming over you. You can’t help your sudden flinch as you sink further into your chair, away from him.

“If you’re gonna complain, Ms. (L/N), I’d much rather hear it. Don’t you think It’s rude for you to mutter under your breath about me? You don’t see me doing that to you.”

“Fine,” you blurt out, turning away from his insistent, and all too close, gaze. “I was saying that I’m not a science major. I get that I’m a senior, but you can’t seriously expect me to know every nook and cranny of this campus.”

“No, but I can ask for you to be a little more thoughtful. I put time and effort into my lessons and I won’t have you undermining them by bouncing in here with those legs and that flouncy little skirt.”

You’re about to counter his little haughty speech on politeness when you finally process that final comment he’d breathed out. Flabbergasted, you raise your head back to his, but he’s already moving away, snatching up his shoulder bag and waving you a curt goodbye as he presses open the squeaky door. “Next class is at 10 am sharp, so be on time Ms. (L/N).”

You’re still slumped in your seat when the door glides shut again, your eyes wide and jaw no doubt comically unhinged.

Wait. Did…did he really just say that?

Obviously, for the next class, you’re early. You’re so early that you’re the first one in the lecture hall. You select a seat toward the back and fiddle with your computer, checking your messages, adjusting your brightness, replying to old emails, anything to keep your head down and attention occupied.

The door opens and, despite your best efforts, your head flies up, expectant and tense, ready to meet those red eyes of his head on, to show him you’re here and he better… oh. It’s not him. It’s two chattering freshmen. One of them gives you a quick smile, but they both quickly take their seats, a few rows over, and continue their soft conversation, leaving you to fall back onto your earlier distraction tactics. You twiddle with your phone and shoot off a few texts, change your wallpaper, accidentally close an app you meant to leave open, and then the lecture hall door reopens.

He steps in slowly, completely ignoring you and the other scattered students, opting to sort out a few papers and set up his login on the school computer. The minutes tick by and you can’t seem to jerk your eyes away from him, suddenly fascinated by his languid movements. He looks more relaxed than he did on Monday, looser and fluid, completely in his element. True to his word, at ten am on the dot he begins class.

Professor Shigaraki has an interesting voice. It’s low, calculated, bordering on a rasp. It’s one of those tones that makes you want to lean forward and listen up, even though he’s only discussing cellular biology. Which isn’t exactly the sexiest topic for that shockingly dulcet timbre of his.

Wait. Sexy?

Your pen falters against your notebook, and your eyes drift up to his frame. He’s switched the lights off again and the shine of the overhead projector is the only illumination in the hall. His white hair gleams in the dim lighting and his long hands animatedly illustrate his points, elegant fingers opening and closing, gesticulating about the intricate nature of the human genome. You’re so focused on watching his movements that your elbow partner has to push the slip of paper onto your collapsible desktop. You blink at the sheet, your pen nearly clattering from your hand, and you twist to peer at the unfamiliar student beside you.

“It’s the attendance sheet and, um, I think you’re the last one,” they whisper, careful to lean away after they finish their explanation, not wanting to draw professor Shigaraki’s ire. You maneuver the paper under your pen and scribble down your name, biting your lip and silently berating yourself for your poor selection in seating. Great, now you’ll have to take the paper down to him after class. What if he talks with you again? Shit.

At 11:25, class ends. You collect your things and plod down the steps, the attendance sheet clutched between your fingers. He’s just snapping the projector light off when you reach his podium.

“I, uhh, have the attendance. You want me to just leave it here, or…”

“I’ll take it,” his hand is extended toward you and those red eyes are fixed on you now. It’s not the same disgruntled stare he’d given you on Monday. No, this look is a little more curious. Again, you’re taken aback by your reaction to him. He’s not even saying anything, just patiently waiting for you to deposit the sheet into his open palm, but there’s something about him that’s making your heart race.

Maybe it’s those eyes of his.

They are an unusual color and they have a strange intensity to them. Right as they narrow, the vermillion shining under the sharp lights; you press the paper to him and he pulls it from you, studying the names that are listed.

You want to say something. Maybe toss him a quick, friendly, goodbye. Or apologize for the other day? Ugh. What can you even say? ‘Gosh, so glad I was on time today! All that fascinating information about the genetic code! So glad to be here!’ No, that sounds stupid and a little patronizing. Besides, why do you want to talk with him at all? He’s an ass, remember?

“Did you need something?”

His question snaps you out of your stupor and you numbly shake your head at him, already lowering your gaze, but his exhaled chuckle makes you pause, your fingers curling around your backpack straps.

“I know I upset you the other day, but I appreciate you taking the effort to correct your mistake.”

“Oh,” you breathe, your eyes finding their way back to his. “Yeah, well, like you said, I’m a senior. Gotta take responsibility for myself someday.”

“Ah,” he smirks, that long scar on his lip quirking upward. “Seems like you’ve got some determination after all. You might be more interesting than I gave you credit for.”

“God,” you scoff, popping out a hip and crossing your arms at the bemused leer on his face. “Just come right out and say you think I’m a bad student, why don’t you?”

“Don’t worry,” he amends, tucking the attendance sheet into his shoulder bag and snapping the clasps closed. “There’s plenty of time for you to end up right back at square one with me.”

He’s already halfway out the door by the time you right yourself from the shock of his last comment and you follow him, a string of low curses falling from your lips.

The spring semester always flies by, and before you realize it, a full month has bled away. You’ve kept that same seat in Shigaraki’s class and at the end of each session you head down to his little platform, attendance sheet outstretched. Each day of class has a different ebb and flow. Sometimes he chats with you and it’s gotten easier to talk with him, both of your eyes holding and lingering, lips raised into calculating smiles. Sometimes it almost feels like he’s flirting with you. Other days he only spares you a curt nod, his white hair curtaining his expression from your curious gaze. You’re not bothered by these silences, not when you’ve got your secret weapon.

The days that you like best, the ones that you plan, sorting through your closet until you’ve found the perfect choice, are the days when you wear one of your skirts. You’d even gone on some skirt shopping sprees as of late. On those days he doesn’t just make some sort of fleeting eye contact with you, no, on those days he stares.

At first, you’d tested out your theory, staggering your outfits, careful to not screw up your suspicions with a hasty miscalculation, but as they say, the third time’s the charm. How did he expect you not to notice? He never bothers to hide those sharp ogles and recently you’ve made a point of dramatically gathering your things when you wear these cute little ensembles, bopping down the steps so his eyes have to work to follow the line of your hips and the long paths of your bare legs. One rainy afternoon you’d worn over the knee stockings, that came to an abrupt halt over the plush skin of your upper thigh, under your mini skirt and he’d practically leapt over the podium to grab the sheet from you, his eyes hooded and dark, almost wild.

“Test, on Friday,” he warns, eyes finally rising to meet your bemused expression. “Don’t stay out too late tonight.”

“What makes you say that?” you ask, brushing at a rogue fold in your skirt, luring him back to your legs.

He scoffs at you, that jagged scar arching into a smirk. “Humph. You’re dressed up. Most of the students just wear the sweats, or pjs, and call it a day.”

“I like to put a little effort in all that I do,” you retort, grinning up at his vermillion stare.

“Yes, so I’ve noticed. You certainly look the part…and you’re keeping up with the workload of this course.”

“Ahhh,” you crow, clapping your hands excitedly. “Are you saying I might get an ‘A’ in this class? Be the first time someone’s done that in a while, from what I’ve heard around campus.”

Shigaraki sneers and tuts out an inaudible reply, leaning a little closer to you, making you inadvertently fall back a step. “Don’t push your luck.”

“Awe,” you pout, crossing your arms over your chest. “I’m doing ok on all the quizzes and the classwork.”

“So far,” he taunts, his pearlescent hair falling over his broad shoulder.

“Tch. Don’t be like that. I’ve been studying.”

“Sometimes it takes more than that.”

“Oh?” you smile, raising your chin. “What else should I be doing, professor?”

“We’ll know that after Friday, won’t we?”

God.

You’d felt so confident when you’d turned in your test and that stupid, horrible, sexy little quirk of his lip scar that he sends you, when you’d handed him your papers, carries you on some strange, half aroused cloud all weekend. Maybe, just maybe, this class won’t be so bad after all.

The tests are handed back the following Friday, passed from row to row so everyone can fish out their papers and marked Scantrons. Yours, since you still occupy that final seat on the back row, is the last. Biting back a grin, you flip it over, so ready to see that A, that grade that you worked so fucking hard for, that… wait.

The gross flash of red across the top of your paper leaves you reeling, your breath catching against the back of your throat. It’s not a terrible grade, well, it wouldn’t be, but there are only three tests in this class, so it’s going to plummet you down to a B. One more fuck up will leave you with a C, or worse, an automatic failing grade.

No. No, no, no, no.

You can’t afford a bad grade, you honestly can’t even let yourself slip to a B. Your fucking cap and gown have just come in and with them that cord that you can wear around your neck at graduation. The one that marks you as honors cum laude. Fuck. You’re already pulling one B, in one of your other classes, because you’ve been focusing so much time and effort on this one. Another B will strip that cord from you, leaving you barren, with a less than ideal GPA.

God fucking damn it.

You glare up at Shigaraki, who’s busy taking the rest of the class through a review of genetic mutations, but you can’t hear him anymore, too incensed, too overwhelmed to even care about what he’s saying. The test crumples under your fingertips, the paper shaking in your hands, and you seethe, your teeth biting your lower lip to pieces.

It’s not fair. You’d paid attention. You’ve taken all the notes. Read all the chapters. Drilled and studied till your eyes had drooped, heavy with exhaustion. You’ve done it all right. Plus, he’d been so fucking flirty, so open with you. You’ve never chatted with a professor this way, never gone out of your way to wear clothes they like, that make them watch you, their eyes hungry pinpricks as you walk to them, mindful of the luscious sway of your hips.

No. Fuck him. Fuck this class.

Before your elbow classmate can leave, you ask for them to hand in the attendance sheet. You barely hear their response, too busy slamming your laptop into your backpack. As you storm past the podium, you can feel his eyes on you. The distant sensation of his gaze makes your flesh prickle, but you ignore your involuntary reaction and shove your way out the door.

“(Y/N), you can’t switch classes this late. It’s almost midterms. Besides, I don’t think anything has opened up and if you’re going to drop it, you’ve gotta get the signature of the professor,” your advisor tells you, blinking at your stony expression over his thick glasses. “I don’t get it. Why do you want to drop it? Your grades are alright and it’s just one test. You can always try–”

“Gimme the paperwork.”

Shigaraki’s office is on the top floor of the research building, tucked away down another winding and weaving hallway that once again requires your careful inspection to navigate. When you finally hit the right set of doors, you slowly make your way forward, counting the numbers up as you pass. His door is wide open, a yawning cavern that’s filled with the distant light of a lamp. You brush a hand down your skirt, smoothing away any wrinkles and steadying your nerves.

You’d tossed on the skirt this morning, before you’d gotten the grade, and you hadn’t thought to go home and change, too consumed by that simmering rage bubbling within you. And now, like this fucking class, this skirt felt like a mistake, something stupid and vapid that you wished you had time to change out of. He’d told you he liked your attire, liked that you put effort into your outfits. At the time, you’d been so thrilled and excited that he’d complimented you, but now you wish you were confronting him in baggy jeans or lazy sweats, anything that would turn that avid gaze of his away from you.

Lost in thought, you waver beside his open door, nibbling on your lips and tugging at your clothes. It’s now or never. No point in putting it off. What’s the worst that can happen? What can he do now? Or, a darker side of you whispers, what do you want him to do to you? What? That’s a stupid thought, you scold yourself, lifting a hand to the wall and rapping against the beige paint, announcing your presence.

When the sound fades away, swallowed up by the empty and darkened hallway, you poke your head around the corner, searching for him. His head is tilted quizzically, and he blinks twice when he spots you, that all too familiar smirk lifting his lips.

“Ah, Ms. (L/N), what can I do for you?”

His voice is softer than usual and your name sounds like honey, his tone resting on the syllables and consonants for a beat, almost as if he’s savoring their lift, their sound. You can’t help but swallow heavily at his appraisal. Suddenly this may be a terrible idea.

Ugh. Get a grip (Y/N).

“I-I need you to sign this withdrawal paperwork,” you finally reply, digging in your bag and tugging out the thin leaflet, holding it out to him. He’s silent after your demand, meditatively threading his fingers and peering up at you, his red eyes bright.

“Step inside and shut the door behind you,” he instructs, his gaze never falling from yours. Despite the simplicity of his request, you can’t help but bristle at his imperious tone. Why does he always have to sound like that? Like he’s seconds away from taking control of the situation, or of you? He’s always one stupid step ahead, and no doubt he’s going to try and talk you down. Or, he’ll sign it and say that he always knew you were a screw up, someone who only did things halfway, who could never match up to his lofty expectations. Humph, the sooner you’re outta here and out of his class, the better. So, you obey, closing the door and petulantly flopping into the unsteady chair that sits in front of his low desk.

He maintains that uneasy quiet, his red eyes whisking over your disgruntled face, waiting, watching. Unable to take this strange standoff, you push the university paperwork toward him, sliding it as close as you dare to his bent elbows. “I would like to withdraw from your class,” you repeat, lips setting into a thin line.

“Why?” he asks, cocking his head so his loose white hair falls a little further down his rough brow.

“Something came up.”

“Hmm, I can try to work with a new schedule, if it’s your job, or home life,” he counters, eyes narrowing as he sharpens his observations of your brittle expression.

“It’s not that,” you smart, crossing your arms. Great, he’s going to make this difficult.

“Then I suggest you tell me what’s on your mind,” Shigaraki replies, mirroring your movements and leaning back in his chair.

“I don’t think this class is working out for me.”

He exhales a soft laugh at your lie, and you watch that tiny mole at the edge of his chin lift in his quiet mirth. “This is a freshman level course and you’re a senior. You’re in my class because it’s likely the last pre-rec that you need to take before you graduate.”

“Um, yeah. But–”

“And now, you’re wanting to drop it because of one poor grade.”

You grind your teeth and fix him with a stark glower. “I–”

“There will be two other tests. If you read your syllabus, you’d know this.”

“I read the syllabus. Your tests are worth a stupid amount of points and it only takes one of them to tank my grade.”

“Frankly, you did better than most of the class. You only need to work on practical application. I said that the written portion would be a major component of the exam. I also provided you with a review and a rubric. So I’m not sure–”

“Your grade drops me to a ‘B’, and that ‘B’ pulls me from the honors list. And… well… I thought that…”

“Oh? What did you think?” he presses, his voice suddenly dropping to that lower octave it had drifted into when he said your last name.

“I thought I’d get a better grade,” you spit out, turning your head and biting at your lip again.

“Why?” he counters simply. His obtuseness is making your blood boil.

“What do you mean, why?” It takes all of your will to not slip a ‘jackass’ into that question.

“It’s not a hard thing to answer. I graded you fairly and according to my rubric. Why exactly do you feel you merit a different grade than the one you earned?”

You fall into a frustrated silence. You can hear your heart pounding against your ribs and you want to scream at him, to leap over his desk and shake him until his teeth fucking rattle. Your shoulders are rising and lowering disjointedly and his vermillion eyes are honed in on your face, shifting over your pinched expression with a distant interest. You can feel tears pricking at your eyes and you hastily rub a fist over them, brushing away any rogue drops of moisture.

“How can you ask me that? You think I didn’t notice you staring at my legs? Or that you always had something to say to me when I was wearing a skirt? What was I supposed to think, huh? I fucking thought shit like that was gonna help, ok? God, I’m so stupid. I can’t… fuck.”

Shigaraki arches forward when you finish, a deep sigh leaching through his parted lips. His teeth snap together when you look up at him, your eyes gaining back some of that earlier defiance, and he gives you a quick grin, clearly pleased by your shift in attitude and pushes your paper aside, fixing you with a dark look. “Here’s a thought, since you feel you’re so different, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll give you a chance to make up the score.”

“I don’t care about the score anymore. I wanna drop your class,” you snap, but it’s a halfhearted barb. Something has changed in his demeanor. He’s dropped the concerned professor act and is leaning so close you can hear his steady intakes of air. He’s only a few inches away; if you want, you could touch him.

“I doubt you want to attend a class in the summer. Besides, they won’t let you walk if you haven’t finished your freshman level courses. And you can’t tell me you don’t want to graduate, to earn that cord that lets you into the honor cum laude. So stop pouting and hear me out. I think you’ll like what I have in mind.”

“I don’t think I’ll ever like anything about you,” your voice is sharper than you mean it to be, but the challenge makes Shigaraki smile. As it crosses his cracked lips, it pulls that scar up and it makes those eyes of his glow. He looks like the cat that’s got the cream and you’re not sure how to respond, so you cross your legs and wait for him to make the next move.

“You sure about that? Well, I’ll have to change your tune then, won’t I? But that can wait, lemme tell you what my requirements are. I’ve got a copy of the textbook in here. I’ll have you review some of the major concepts, you’ll read the passages aloud so I’m sure you’re on the right track, you’ll hand the book back to me, and then I’ll verbally quiz you over the material. If you answer them correctly, I’ll bump you to an ‘A’ on your test.”

You have to actively work to keep your mouth closed. “So, you just want me to read from the book?”

“Yes.”

“And… answer questions?”

“That’s what I said,” Shigaraki smirks, already reaching toward his bookshelf, tugging the heavy Intro to Biology text out and shifting it into his large hands.

“Stop being so suspicious,” Shigaraki scolds, drawing your wandering attention back to him. “I don’t bite, that is, unless you want me to.”

Your eyes boggle and you have to clench your thighs tighter, your stomach churning, you feel light-headed and you can feel your core fluttering with your sudden arousal. “Wh-what did you just say?”

“Stop gaping at me like that, you’ll make me blush. Now come on.”

Your jaw snaps closed and you shake your head, trying to clear your mind from your whirling emotions. He takes this reaction as a surrender and stands, stepping toward a marred table that rests a little ways away from his desk. He licks his thumb pad and flips through a few pages before finally settling on an appealing section. Once he places it on the table, he twists back to you and crooks a finger your way. “Come here,” he orders, his voice deep and languid. Obediently, you rise on unsteady feet, hands tugging at the length of your skirt, careful to keep it pressed down as you walk toward him.

He makes space for you to stand in front of the book and shifts back, one hand resting on the table, propping him close to your bent figure. You look up at him, but he only nods his head toward the table, a wicked smile curling the corners of his lips. Blink a few times but finally, the words clear and you can see the block of text that’s in front of you. It’s passages on DNA encodes and RNA proteins, hefty stuff, things that you had to make flash cards for. This isn’t going to be easy. If anything, he’s picked some of the harder concepts, the ones that take steady knowledge in the foundations. Flustered, you look back to him, but he’s moved. He’s leaning against the wide window beside the table, a dark mark against the glass.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, a laugh bubbling in his tone.

“There’s no way…” you stammer, shaking your head at him.

“Want me to throw a curve in?”

“I should ask what kinda curve, but knowing you, it’s likely gonna be something terrible.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” he rumbles, stepping away from the window and leaning close to your stiff form. “It just takes an open mind and some enthusiasm on your part.”

“Enthusiasm?” you question, trying your best to withstand his closeness. You can feel the heat radiating off of his broad shoulder and if you tilt a little nearer, you could graze against him, or feel his breath on your skin.

“You’re right,” he amends, his forearm contacting your side. You startle at the touch, a gasp falling from your lips, but you don’t pull away and you can’t stop staring up at him, your eyes wide. “Obedience is a better word. From here on out, whatever I tell you to do, I expect you to obey it, although it’s not exactly, ah, school approved.”

“You want me to suck you off or something?” you sneer, hoping to stumble him off his guard, even if it’s only for an instant. Too bad he’s always one step ahead.

“Don’t be vulgar. Think outside of the box, (Y/N). Do you think I’m going to go for something so short sighted when I could have you bending to my will? Obeying every little demand that I make? I’d much rather see if that skin of yours tastes as good as it looks, then simply have you on your knees. No, I want you to fucking scream for me while I stuff you full of my cock. But first, you need to put in some work. You should know that by now.”

Oxygen is suddenly very hard to come by and you can feel your mind hazing over as you stammer up at him, your mind flitting from word to word disjointedly. Shigaraki grants you a wolfish grin, and he dips his lips beside your ear, whispering over those tiny hairs that rest against your tender skin. “I’ll make this part easy. Nod and I’ll give you the first set of instructions.”

What did he say? Nod? What happens when you nod? Fuck, why are you letting him do this? Is your grade really worth it? Are you that desperate that… that…

Shigaraki is whispering other promises over you as you war with yourself, speaking his words gently, slowly, his breath hot as it fans over your neck. It’s like you’ve fallen under some kinda spell and before you realize it, your traitorous head is bobbing up and down, letting him know you want him to keep going.

“Perfect,” he sighs, his lips grazing over the shell of your ear, jerking a shiver from you. “Now, lean forward and put your hands against the table.”

You do as he says, but he’s not satisfied with your positioning, his fingers wrapping around your wrists and yanking you forward, jutting your ass out and pressing your chest down, maneuvering you until your nose is right above the pages of the textbook. “There we go,” he rasps, pulling away so he can admire your splayed form. “Hmm, your legs are too close together. Spread them.” Knees trembling, you obey, gasping when he runs a palm against the curve of your thighs.

“You’ve got such nice legs (Y/N), so let’s put them on display, shall we?” His fingers search against the top of your skirt and they still when he reaches his prize: the zipper. When he pulls it down, you let out a sharp squeak of protestation but he silences you with a swift pinch to your side.

“Now, now, don’t be like that. You nodded, remember? Besides, you could have left when I told you I’d give you a curve but you couldn’t help yourself could you? You want me to keep going and to do that, I need you to take this skirt off. No, don’t move. I’ll get rid of it for you. Why don’t you focus on the task at hand, hmm? Aren’t you supposed to be reading for me?”

You arch away from his fingers and he chuckles at your impudence, one large hand hooking under your chin and pulling you toward his face. His red eyes blaze as they find yours, the dark pupils threatening to swallow up that deep vermillion. “Let’s start with the second paragraph. If you do well, I might grant you a reprieve.”

Jerking your face from his grip, you twist back to the text, trying, and failing, to ignore his inquisitive fingers, unable to resist sighing as he works one up your inner thigh. He pauses when no words fall from your lips and you grumble out a few low curses before acquiescing to his silent demand.

“The flow of genetic information in cells from DNA to mRNA to protein is described by the Central Dogma, which states that genes specify the sequence of mRNAs, which specify the sequence of proteins. The decoding of one molecule… the… the… molecule… by spec-specific…”

He’s slipped your skirt down over the swell of your ass, but he’s taking his time, flexing out the front of the material and dipping his fingers over the bump of your lower stomach, kneading into the delicate flesh that’s stretched out for him. You can’t help the twitch of your spine and you involuntarily wiggle, palms slipping forward, dragging you further along the tabletop. Shigaraki chuckles above you, running his rough lips over the back of your neck.

“You’re so sensitive. I’ve barely touched you.”

He circles his hands back to your skirt and edges it along, lowering it sharply on one side and then giving the same treatment to the other. You’re doing your best to keep up with your stammering readings, but it’s difficult when he keeps sighing and running his long nails across your newly bared skin. Finally, he works the skirt down and it thumps against your bare ankles; the fabric tickling your skin.

Meanwhile, his other fingers skitter against the elastic band of your rapidly dampening panties. Once he hooks the lace under his hand, he yanks them along your legs, trailing them sinfully slowly, ensuring that they glide down the billow of your thighs. His teeth nip at your ear when you stumble to a halt in your recitation and your hands tense over the grains of wood beneath them, your nails pinching into your palms. “If you stop, I stop,” he warns, his head bumping against yours, his sharp nose pressing against your pulse.

“You’re not exactly making this easy,” you grumble, doing your best to ignore his renewed pets and strokes.

“Stop complaining,” he smirks, leaning away from your head to peer at your newly exposed flesh. “You better pay attention to what you’re reading or you’re not going to pass the questions I’ll be asking you.”

“Yeah, yeah, ow!” you squawk, whipping your head around to glare up at him. He fucking pinched you again! This time, he’d slipped his hand between your spread legs and tweaked your inner thigh, painfully.

“Read,” he repeats, running those guilty fingers upward, lingering beside the heat of your cunt, careful to not get too close. When you start on the next sentence, one of his hands tugs up the fabric of your shirt, snaking upward until he’s thumbing against the wire of your bra. Once again, you falter to a halt and exhale a wavering breath.

Goddamn it. This review is no review. You’ll be lucky if you can even recall what a cell is if he keeps this up. You hear his ominous intake of air and quickly resume your recitation, mumbling something about RNA and mRNA differences.

Wait. Didn’t you just…

“Looks like you’re having trouble listening to me. I told you to read aloud, not to repeat the same passages over and over.”

“Hey, at least I’ll have a firm grasp on those. You should ask me something about that s-section… ah–”

The hand that was resting under the cup of your bra has made its way underneath the lightly padded material, and his thumb and index fingers have trapped your peaked nipple between them. As soon as your snarky comment left your mouth, he’d twisted the bud, squeezing it until it throbbed.

“Pay attention,” he commands, shoving your bra upward, freeing the globes of your breasts and cupping both of his broad hands under them. Your abused nipple stings and the mixture of sharp pain and jarring arousal goes right through you, stoking that coil that pulsed within your core, and sending a tacky flush of your essence down your spread thighs.

The next few words are a struggle. The text keeps blurring and your breaths are coming in fast and heavy. Shigaraki is still feeling you up, keeping his lips close to your ears, rasping sharp commands to you and dealing out lightning fast rounds of pinches and squeezes each time you falter.

“I–I can’t… I don’t even know what I’m reading anymore,” you bemoan, your hips pressing against the edge of the table, legs trembling as you attempt to keep them apart. He’s deliberately ignoring your throbbing clit and a desperate edge is creeping into your voice.

“Are you always this whiny? Fine. I’ll give you a moment to read without any distractions.”

Thank God.

True to his word, he slips away from your back and you’re left shivering against his sudden absence. Despite your quaking, you’re determined to make the most of this chance and you quickly read out the paragraphs that are on the second page. As you ramble down to the last bit of text, you realize you can’t hear him anymore and when you finish the last sentence; you start to really wonder where he’s drifted off to. A tense silence follows your completion of the material and you arch up on the tips of your toes, jutting your ass out and stretching the stiffened muscles of your lower back.

“Didn’t say you could stop reading, and judging from all of your complaints, I don’t think you got some of those earlier concepts, so I’d suggest doing a quick review,” he taunts, the sudden rasp of his voice startling a low gasp from your lips.

He’s close; somewhere behind you and to the left from the sound of it. You try to twist around, your chest lifting from the table, and when he notices, his hands return, creating a rough pressure against your neck as he forces your body back down. His weight plasters you to the surface, scraping your partially exposed stomach and tender breasts over the nicked wood. Shigaraki is merciless in his swift correction, his breath puffing out angrily behind you. “Didn’t say you could move, either.”

Stunned, you freeze. Your arms are arched awkwardly, but he keeps his weight against you, flattening your breasts and forcing your back to arch into an awkward bend. Fuck, you think, how are you supposed to stay like this? Your legs are already aching and if he shifts away again, he’s likely going to expect you to maintain this absurd pose.

“Yes,” he groans, his voice catching against the word, “Good girl. Now, stay just like that.”

Damn it.

“Go on, read the first part again,” he instructs.

“The entire genetic content of a cell is known as its genome and the study of genomes is gen-genomics. In eukaryotic cells, but… but not in p-prokaryotes, DNA forms a complex with histone proteins… with histone proteins… sub-substance… of…”

His teeth have latched onto your neck, and he’s sucking bruises into your tender skin. He’s still pinning you to the table, but his hands are widening their explorations. He’s started dragging a fingernail across the puffy folds of your cunt, teasing against the dripping and swollen flesh, chuckling when you buck against his hold.

“You always seem to lose it when you get to cellular modulations.”

“I–I–It’s not… I can’t help that you keep…” you whimper, your fingers curling under your palms, head shaking back and forth. You can’t think. He’s not being fucking fair, and you can’t even string your goddamn words together. Shit. “Y-you’re not being fair,” you accuse, falling on the only thing that keeps running through your mind, your splayed feet shifting uncomfortably under you.

“Not fair? Not once did I say fairness would come into this arrangement,” he lifts himself off of your back and leans beside you, one arm planted beside your crooked elbow. His fingers trace over the curve of your ass, cupping at the thickest part of you and squeezing.

“But don’t worry, I’ll make sure you get a little satisfaction out of this arrangement. I bet you look good when you cum. And you’ve been working so hard to get my attention these last few months. So careful to do what I tell you. Looking at me with those big eyes of yours, all wide eyed every time I catch you looking at me. And don’t even get me started on your lips. You’re lucky I didn’t fucking bend you over after class, especially when you started wearing all of those cute little skirts for me. Ahhh, don’t moan like that, I won’t be able to help myself if you do. Let’s see how you’re doing, shall we?”

Without warning, he slips his longest digit into your cunt, groaning loudly when he’s sucked into your welcoming heat. Your pussy, hungry for any kind of scrap, ripples around his intrusion, clamping and pulling, desperate for more.

“Fuck,” he groans, his weight falling against your shoulder. “You’re soaking.” His elegant digit pushes deeper and you roll your hips under him, urging him closer, sighing when he sinks to the last knuckle. As he pulls his finger back, he adds another, swiftly v-ing the two before curving them together as they slip back out, dragging a steady line of pleasure from your quivering cunt. Shigaraki whispers another round of awed praise against your ear, his voice dark and breathless.

A third digit is added on another trip out, and it creates a ragged sensation within you. It’s close to what you like, but he’s stretching you too far and it’s starting to hurt. He either needs to speed up, or give you a little more pressure. If you can hump your clit against the edge of the table, maybe it’ll give you the friction that you need. When you mindlessly buck your hips, your thighs threatening to lose that spread, he stops, holding his fingers inside you, laughing as you agitatedly try to shift him back into his earlier rhythm.

“So eager. I’d say you’re ready for my questions.”

“W-what?” you gasp, wholly focused on making him restart the push and pull of his fingers inside you.

“I’ll start you off with something easy. What’s the cell membrane?”

“W-what? The cell… ah–”

“Answer me. Now,” he grunts, leaning forward, re-steadying you as his fingers pull outward, dragging against your sensitive folds and schlicking through your arousal lewdly, loudly. You moan and your eyes roll back, completely ignoring his demand as you fall into the haze of pleasure that comes after his movements.

His free hand travels up your neck and he tangles his fingers into the tendrils of your hair, yanking and jerking at the strands, demanding your attention.

“I said, answer me.”

“Shigaraki–I–fuck. I can’t even… ugh… think right now!”

“Do you want the grade, or not?” he questions, his voice tense. “Answer correctly and I’ll give you what you want.”

“I–I don’t think I can,” you whine, pressing your hips back as he thrusts his fingers forward again, curving them upward, searching for the spongy pad of nerves that rest against the front of your pelvis.

“Oh? What happened to wanting that A? What about your graduation? You gonna let me fuck up your entire college career? I can do it, you know. I’ve done it to so many simpering freshmen. I fail kids left and right and you’re no different, (Y/N).

The university lets me ahh–there it is! God, you’re so fucking wet.

Where was I? The university can’t say no to me; they let me do what I want. I bring in too much money, too many tempting grants, and that’s all they really care about. So what’s it gonna be? Let me see that you can answer this basic crap and I’ll pass you. Or would you like for me to tie you down and force it outta you another way?”

He’s picked up the pace of his fingers as he rambles over you and a swift press against that newly discovered spot inside you has you falling to pieces in his hands, popping up onto your tiptoes and rutting yourself against the surface of the table. “O-ok, God, ok! Just–fucking repeat the goddamn question,” you pant, head slumping forward, forcing his fingers to tighten against your hair to hold you upright.

“What is the cell membrane?”

You wince your eyes closed, trying to rack your brain to focus on something other than the heavy pressure of the three fingers that are teasing their way across your dribbling pussy. He’s moving his presses with a lackadaisical, inconsistent rhythm now and it’s hard to fucking think. You can’t tell if his next thrust will be hard, or soft, or so rough that it’s bordering on that bittersweet line of pain.

You shake your head, doing your best to ignore the mounting pressure that he’s building inside you and the ache of your neck and legs. Finally, after another sharp tap against that secret bunch of nerves at the front of your cunt, you latch onto a vague remembrance.

“It… it’s a double layer of–of phospholipids that make a boundary between the cell and t-the surrounding… ugh… it controls the passage of materials.”

“Very good. Elaborate on the cellular wall.”

He’s unrelenting in his domineering treatment, twisting and frigging his fingers each time your breath hitches, and your arousal is leaking down your legs, making your skin stick and pull. It’s too much, you can’t! How can he even ask this? Words are falling from your lips incoherently, and all too soon you’re gasping out his name rather than reciting the answer.

��Cellular–oh, fuck, Shi–Shigaraki–Please, keep–don’t stop! S-Shigaraki, God that… feels… ah–keep going!”

He ignores your request and pulls his fingers away, robbing you of that sweet pressure that he’s so carefully mounted within you.

“I’ll count that one as incorrect. Your ‘A’ is swiftly becoming an ‘A’ minus, (Y/N)” he snarls, his teeth gritted, hands falling to the swell of your hips, wet fingers digging into your soft skin.

“What? No! You didn’t give me enough… e-enough time! How can–can you expect me to answer that qui-quickly!”

“Let’s try another.”

It hurts. That ache that he’s drawn out of you is starting to sting and throb and he’s being such a dick about it! You twist and grind under him, and he traps your disobedient hips against the rough siding of the table.

“I don’t–” you protest weakly, your legs trembling and chest heaving under his weight.

“Do you want this? Wouldn’t you like to pass this class? To graduate with honors?” he growls, leaning closer, his hands braced against you, his fingers no doubt leaving bruises on the supple crest of your hips.

“You’re such an ass! Yes! Fuck, please! I–I want it so fucking bad!” you cry out, your voice drifting into a sob as you croak out the last plea.

“Then answer another question. What’s diffusion?”

“D-diffu-diffusion is the process by which molecules move from an a-area of… of… fuck- of high concentration, to low concentration. Shigaraki!”

“I should count that as another miss, but you got the major concept correct.” He removes his fingers from your waist and yanks your ass toward him, keeping your overeager hips away from the fleeting relief of the sturdy table. “Pop your legs together,” he commands, one hand wrapping around your arched throat, squeezing until you obey. His other hand drops to that thatch of curls that rest between your quivering thighs and he gathers up your gossamer strands, rubbing against your clit for one hazy instant, sending a flash of spots across your vision.

“Mmm, now that’s a pretty sight. Good girl, don’t move,” he reminds you and you want to scream at him. Right before you can spit some frustrated vitriol out, he’s releasing your neck, his hands dropping from your skin and letting you fall back to the uneven surface below. Just before your chin contacts the wood, his hand is back in your hair, tugging you upward, holding you a few inches above the table. The sharp pain makes your scalp tingle and you unconsciously rut against the tempting heat that’s now plastered to your ass. He’s hard. You can feel the stiff bulge of his cock straining against the front of his dark jeans, pressing into the cleft of your posterior.

“T-that’ can’t be comfortable,” you pant, twisting your head so you can look up at him from the curve of your shoulder.

“Oh? You worried about my cock?” he asks, his red eyes flashing down at you challengingly. You don’t bother giving him a verbal response, opting instead to grind your ass up, catching against the jut of his length, earning yourself a low groan. His lips curl when you repeat the motion and you realize you love watching that smug face of his drift into a look of tense pleasure. It makes his scar on his lip flush and those red eyes of his fall to a lazy half mast. He spies your arched brow and pleased grin and pushes himself off of you, leaving you alone and open on the table.

“Keep pushing your luck. I’m more than happy to drop you back to a B.”

“What?” you scoff, teeth clinking together as you clench your jaw. “I didn’t move!”

“No, but you’re trying to take control of this and we can’t have that can we?” Shigaraki sneers. “Now, how shall I punish you?”

“P-punish me?” you stammer, a chill racing down your spine.

“Ah, I know. This’ll really piss you off,” he twists from your strained gaze and walks back toward his desk. What? What the fuck does he mean? You can’t see him from this angle, not with the way your legs are stretched and back is lowered, but it doesn’t stop you from trying, your chin lifting upwards as you do your best to keep him in focus.

Ugh. It’s no use. He’s slipped past your field of vision.

Hearing is likely your best bet, so you shift your forehead back to the table and listen, straining your ears to pick up any morsel. Something opens and closes and you catch the sound of the wheels of his chair as they shift, squeaking across the floor, and the groaning of the springs when his weight is applied to the cheap leather.

Okay, so he’s in his chair. Is he just gonna look at you? That’s not… wait…

There’s a faint clicking sound.

It’s both familiar and unfamiliar to your ears, but once the teeth slide over the last pull, you realize. It’s a zipper.

Oh fuck. Is he going to jerk himself off? With a gasp, your head whips back around. He’s still positioned himself away from you, and you can only just make out the sounds that are accompanying the undoubted rise and fall of his fist. All you can see is a tiny sliver of his body, but you catch sight of the coiling muscles on his neck and you notice that his head is dipped forward, pearl white hair settling across the cut of his collarbone. The one red eye that meets yours is blazing and hungry, it makes every hair on the back of your neck stand up.

God, he’s staring at you, watching you, getting himself off as you’re half naked and bent over a desk in his office, fully subjugating yourself to his whims and fancies for the sake of your grade.

Damn it, (Y/N). This should not be a fucking turn on. You should be disgusted, but the flush of slick that drips down your thigh says otherwise.

He lets out a choked moan, picking up the pace of his hand, letting you hear the click and slip of his palm as it strokes up and down his cock. A shiver echoes up your spine and your hips seem to have a mind of their own, grinding your clenched thighs over the dip of the table, easing the clenching pulsations that your cunt is shuddering through you.

“Look at you, so desperate for my touch that you’re humping the fucking table. Such a dirty girl, and so disobedient. You’ve only answered a few of my questions correctly and yet your slutty little mouth and body keep pushing at me. Making me put you in your place. Let me ask you something, why should I go out of my way to fix your grade when you can’t even prove to me you understand the simplest concepts?

Ah, here’s a thought. What if I told you I’ll wave the other requirements; no more readings, no more quizzes, but I won’t let you cum? What if I just get myself off? You’re putting on a such a good show for me! Why should I bother with seeing that you’re satisfied when that table seems to do the job for you? Sound good? Or would you like for me to come back over there and make you cum?”

“I–I don’t… I don’t want…” You can’t get the words out, your tongue feels leaden between your lips and you can’t think of anything but the steady itch that’s spreading from your clit.

“Speak up,” Shigaraki demands, slowing his jerking fingers. The chair he’s sitting in groans as he leans forward, and his eyes wide as they take in the delicious sight that’s propped before him. “You don’t want to cum? Is that it? You’d like for me to get myself off and leave you there?”

“No!” you cry out, your fingers digging into the scuffed wood of the table. “I-I want you to make me cum.”

There’s a sharp clatter and you jump at the abrupt noise. It must be the chair you think, your heart pounding against your chest, waiting for Shigaraki’s next move. He only lets a few seconds drift by before he presses himself back to you. He leans his broad chest over your back, the front of his legs pushing against the back of yours. His exposed length is wedged firmly against the cleft of your ass and its tempting hardness makes you squirm under him, but he’s propelling you forward, pinning you against the rough wood, and you can only flail uselessly under his control. His lips skim over your neck and he bites into your skin, sucking and licking bruises as he inches closer to your pulse.

You say his name pitifully, wantonly, and he lets out a shaky gasp. Something about your tone has shifted something within him and you can feel his cock swelling, dripping a rope of wet pre-cum down your shaking leg.

He leans away, removing his sticky hardness from your ass. “Seems your priorities have shifted. You’re a little preoccupied right now, aren’t you?” he asks, his voice gravel scraping against your overwhelmed senses. You let out a weak moan and he snaps into action, his fingers pushing under your flattened stomach and tugging against the fabric that he finds. He yanks you upward, pulling your shirt up as he goes. His palms dip under your half lifted bra, and he cups at your breasts, massaging the rounded bulbs and plucking at your peaked nipples. Your head lolls back, and he sucks at your earlobe again, his breath warm and rasping as it passes by.

“Hold still,” he commands.

It’s not an easy position, this stretched upward arch that he’s forced you into, but it’s worth it when you feel his cock pushing between your tensed legs. He doesn’t thrust into you, opting to run his weeping tip against your slippery folds, pressing until his bulbous head is twitching against your pulsing clit.

Goddamn it, you think as he stills, his lips smacking open-mouthed kisses over your shoulder, it’s not enough. You wiggle your hips back and forth and he abruptly exerts a firm pressure against your windpipe, leaving you sputtering and gasping. “What’s wrong? Not happy with this? Do you think you deserve something more? Do you think you’ve earned that?” He shoves you back against the surface of the table, his broad chest following the plane of your back, trapping you under his heavy form.

You’d replied, you know you must have, but you can’t hear yourself anymore, your attention attuned to the warm length that’s pressed against your shuddering folds. You’d likely thrown in a please for good measure because Shigaraki rewards you with a quick peck to your shivering neck and his thumb, swirling it around your clit, creating a cresting ache that leaves you mumbling incoherently, a thin line of drool slipping from your parted lips. As he keeps that faint osculation up, your fingernails scrape over the wood of the table, your feet lifting you onto your toes, curving your back, and shoving your leaking pussy into his open palm.

“Greedy little thing, aren’t you?” Shigaraki says, a breathy desperation lingering around the edges of his rasping voice. “But it’s just not enough, right?”

You nod, licking up some of the excess saliva that’s built under your heavy tongue and crane your head back at him. His eyes are the first thing you see. They’re wild, ravenous and glinting with a roughness that makes you whisper out a soft whine. Fuck. It’s not supposed to be like this. You’re not supposed to want him this badly. Goddamn it. Now that he’s caught your gaze, he won’t let you look away, and he presses himself closer, his cock twitching and warm, the tip rubbing back and forth, keeping time with his circling thumb.

“You gonna fuck me, or not?” you finally ask, unsticking your lips and smirking up at his hardened face.

“Tch. Don’t rush me,” he grumbles, removing his hand and teasing cock from your cunt, watching as your body convulses under him, your pussy quivering against the excess stimulation that he’s wrought over you. Your thighs burn, aching to break free from his control, to rub against that throb, that tingling that keeps shuddering outward.

“One more question,” he tells you, lifting his dripping thumb to his lips and sucking off the traces of your arousal. The sight of him licking his pink tongue over his gleaming knuckles almost makes you lose your balance, your arms shaking precariously under you.

“A-another? Come on,” you pout, your eyes following the curve of his wicked lips, watching as his scar quirks upward, amused by your useless defiance.

“Make you a deal, answer it correctly and I’ll give you my cock. Sound fair?”

“Ugh, whatever, just hurry up,” you snap, so impatient and turned on that you can hardly think.

The tip of his cock presses against your sopping entrance, pushing forward just enough to part your dripping folds but stopping before he clears that first, tight ring of flesh. The promise of his dribbling tip makes you lose any semblance of self-control. You thrash under him, but he traps your disobedient hips against the rough siding of the table.

“No! Don’t stop! Come on Sh-Shigaraki–Don’t be such a fucking–ah–”

“Do you want this? Do you want my cock?” he growls, leaning over you, his fingers squeezing down, no doubt leaving bruises in the supple crest of your hips.

“Yes! Fuck, please! I–I want it so fucking bad!” you cry out, your voice drifting into a sob as you croak out the last plea.

“Then you better answer. What are cytosines?”

“They… they’re n-nitrogenous base… fuck… base that pair… that pair with guanine during D-DNA replication… I–please, please, Shigaraki! Fuck me! I want your cock! Fuck me, fuck me!”

Thankfully, he either takes pity on you, or can’t control himself anymore, his hips surging forward, gliding his thick length into your cunt and snarling at the mind numbing heat that waits for him. He keeps driving upward until he bottoms out, sharp hipbones grinding against the plushness of your ass.

He’s not gentle with you, no he’s animalistic and raw, his thrusts papping into you with a terrifying strength. You would have liked something slower, something that lets you enjoy each imperfection and dip that raced along his cock, but this, oh, this is an exception because this is perfect. It’s not what you want, but it is what you need.

The heavy fullness that he’s stuffing you with leaves you breathless, but you somehow manage to gasp out a string of nonsensical praises each time he drives back into you, overwrought by his roughness.

This coupling isn’t kind, isn’t right, and is not healthy, for either of you. No, not with the way he’s using your shivering body, distracted with slacking that euphoric thrum that’s making his cock pulse and swell inside you.

But fuck it feels good and you can’t help but tremble with delight. These intoxicating thrusts of his ram him up against something that’s buried deep inside you, and each time he hits it another star of bright pleasure races through you. The familiar coiling of release is steadily mounting with each rapid fire rut he gives you and if he could just, ah, there’s something that’s… no, fuck, it’s, it’s not going to work. It feels good, but it’s missing one vital ingredient, one thing that he’s neglected to pay attention to, to notice.

Your clit needs to be tweaked and rolled, and right now it’s pulsing away against the table, beating a sad tattoo into the grainy wood. Oh well, you think, head fuzzy, lost in the euphoria of his powerful cants, grinding your ass into his hips as he digs into another teeth chattering thrust. He’ll likely finish soon, and you’ll probably need to get yourself off later. It’s not something new, and it’s not like he’s going to care enough to focus on that, on you. This whole thing has been about control, so there’s likely no room for your own pleasure.

“What’s wrong,” he gasps out, his fingers lifting from your hips to curl beside your turned head.

“What? N-nothing–I–” you pant, eyes rolling back as he hits that spongy patch of nerves again.

“Tch. Hold on,” he interrupts, his voice rasping and breathy. He pulls himself out of you with a grunt and yanks you upward, hauling you onto the tabletop and flipping you on your back, bending your stiffened legs and bracing your knees against his lean forearms.

He holds you apart, spreading you open with his powerful hands. You can see him properly now, and the sight makes your breath catch against the back of your throat. Fuck, he looks good.

His long white hair is draped across his bare shoulders and his eyes are blazing pits of hunger, devouring the sight of you with those red irises. His jaw is clenched, and he glares down at you from his imperious height, his nostrils flaring as he drags in a quick intake of air. To your shock, he gives you a little time to acclimate to this new position, opting to languidly step forward, letting his slippery cock head press and tease at the dip of your opening. But right when you think he’ll move again, he stops, his eyes roving over the lines of your face.

His sudden stillness makes you peer quizzically up at him and you scoot closer, your feet lifting from the table. The movement snaps him out of his stupor and he grabs your ankles, roughly pinning you back down.

“Keep still,” he snarls through clenched teeth, that scar of his lifting.

You nod mutely and he rewards your unquestioning obedience with another powerful thrust, sinking his swollen cock back into your waiting cunt. He lets out a sharp groan and grabs at your hips, jerking you forward, already drifting back into that all-consuming rhythm he’d started earlier. His ruts are a little slower from this angle but, in no time at all, that familiar ache pools in your core, stoking and building at an alarming rate. The driving force of his hips soon has you blinking back spots and distant stars, and this time he adds the all important pressure of his thumb, circling the finger pad over your clit and dragging a broken moan from your quivering lips.

“So that’s what you needed. You close?” he grits out, his lips set in a curled scowl. He’s lost some of that early control, his hips stuttering as they connect with yours, his power lessening, cooling, as he looks for your release.

“I–I think–oh fuck, do that again. Yes! Just–ah!”

He angles your hips upward and gives your clit another quick oscillation, pressing down until you’re gasping. “There you go. That felt good. You’re getting tighter,” he laughs, looming over you, shoving your heaving chest downward as he jerks your hips into him, forcing your body to do most of the motion, making your shoulder blades scrape across the uneven wood. “Cum for me. Fucking cum on my cock, (Y/N). Cum and I’ll give you your A, I’ll give you whatever the fuck you want.”

Your spine arches as you break around him, your cunt greedily pulling him deeper, slipping him past the barrier of your tender cervix and earning you a weak shout of praise from Shigaraki. Seconds later, he’s pulsing and twitching against your walls, the warm pooling of his cum filling you up and spilling down your spread thighs.

His head drops to your shoulder and the rough skin of his forehead sticks to your sweat dampened flesh. For a long moment you’re both still, each of you struggling to catch your breath, luxuriating in the tingling sensation of release.

“I fucking hate you, you know,” you gasp out, your arms circling his back, fingertips etching vague patterns over his neck and shoulders.

“Ha,” he snorts, “I’ll have to remember that. Don’t worry (Y/N), I’ll pay you back for that little remark next time.”

“Oh? Next time?” you chuckle, moaning as he twists out of your hold and pulls his softening length out of you.

“I’ll fail you on every assignment if you try to keep away,” he threatens, his eyes falling to the gaping mess that he’s left behind. You cross your legs, denying him the satisfaction of leering at your dripping pussy.

“Fine. But next time, fuck me on something softer than a damn table.”

tags: @spicy-skull, @xwildskullx, @yixxes, @ghstmthr, @rekoii, @diaouranask, @bat-eclecticwolfbouquet-love, @libiraki <--- i’m coming for you. you’re gonna have to read for this, lady. so, uh, i’m officially noneconing you here.

notes: you made it! this thing is a monster & i’m so sorry i can never stfu

#shigaraki tomura #tomura shigaraki #reader insert #shigaraki x y/n #shigaraki x you #shigaraki x reader #bnha smut #9 to 5 collab #bnha degeneracy server #collaboration #tw: unhealthy relationship #tw: teacher/student #tw: dubcon #tw: bribery

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