#stressful to have to say this but it has been relevant before so I’m gonna be upfront like hey if this is an issue for you that’s fine

[cryptid-crawly]

hello there, it is i, cryptid

i am a little creature and my brain is a jar full of bees

hashtags are #cryptid stuff (personal tag), #cryptid tippity taps (writing tag), #cryptid sure does draw (art tag), and #cryptid's ocs (OC tag)

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my ask box is open (pls send asks pls send asks pls send asks) - including requests and such. love talking about my fic and my characters.

commissions are also open for stories about your OCs or silly little art i do

[potatocitytechnology]

The Black Cat - N.YT

Kinktober Day 3

Shibari: Shibari, which translates to "decorative tying," is a form of rope bondage that originated in Japan and dates back to the seventeenth-century Edo period. Shibari involves rope made from jute or hemp and is considered an aesthetically pleasing form of BDSM.

INTRO: For the first time in your life you found something that made you feel alive and beautiful. Then you and your boyfriend broke up. Little did you know meeting Yuta would be the best thing for you and your obsession.

GENRES: Smut

PAIRING: reader (afab) x softdom!yuta

WARNINGS: profanity/swearing, rope bondage/shibari, extensive use of ropes, temperature play, blindfolding, gagging, use of a vibrating toy, a little humiliation and degradation, oral (F), crying (F), slight suspension, mentions of full suspension, reader has a rope kink?, softdom!yuta, bdsm themes - overall explicit content - PLEASE, DO NOT INTERACT WITH THIS BLOG OR POST IF YOU ARE UNDERAGE. MINORS WILL BE BLOCKED!

WORD COUNT: 5.7k (shit.)

AUTHORS NOTE: Wow, this was not meant to be nearly 6k long... especially since i'm trying to keep all kintober works under 2k (˶ •́◡•̀ ˶) I ended up doing a decent amount of research into shibari and just couldn't keep it short (it needed a backstory!). i really wanting to write for it but i had absolutely no confidence in my ability to describe something so intricate and complicated. However, this is my interpretation of this kink with some other bdsm kinks thrown in to make it interesting. Anyways, enough of my rambling, enjoy! 𖦹 ̫ 𖦹

You met Yuta through a friend of a friend. To be honest you don’t know much about him, even after meeting up with him a few times to discuss your mutual… interests. You met up at normal places, coffee shops mostly, but this time was different. This time you were gonna do what you’d been planning all this time. 

The reason you heard of Yuta was because you were talking to your friend about why you keep going back to your ex. One of the main reasons was the sex. And trust, it wasn’t just sex. Your ex, Ethan, was into shibari. Something you never even knew about before you met him, but it quickly became your favourite obsession. 

There’s just something about the feeling you get when you're tied up, all pretty and captive. The dopamine that courses through your veins is pure addiction and the stress leaves your body immediately. Ethan made you depend on him even after you’re broken up, it being second nature to call him up when you needed your fix. You hate how much you need it. 

Yuta became relevant when your friend said she knew an old friend from Uni who was into shibari, too. She offered to get in contact with her again and ask if you and she could meet up. You were eager to say the least, not having met anyone else with the same kink aside from Ethan and you would do anything to not have to go to him anymore. 

Luckily, her friend agreed and that’s when you met up with her. Lucy is a very funny and warm hearted person. She was incredibly happy to help you learn more about rope bondage and introduce you to more people through parties and clubs. 

On one of those nights was when you first saw Yuta. However, you could say he saw you first judging by the way he stared at you for a good hour before you locked eyes with him from across the room. It was an instant attraction, your breath catching in your throat as you looked him up and down. 

He then walked over to where you and Lucy were talking with some of your new friends, an extra drink appearing in his left hand. His dark hair covered his forehead, dipping just past his brow bone. Eyes twinkling, lips full and plump as they turn into a smile. 

When he reaches you and your friends, his gaze linger on you as he introduces himself to everyone, leaving you for last. “Hi, I’m Yuta.” it’s simple the way he says it, but you can’t help but feel there’s something lying beneath it. You pay it no mind, however, introducing yourself to him. People around you start mumbling, even those caught up in… introductions, stop their activities to peer at your group. 

You can’t help but to feel shy, their unwanted attention making your eyes cast down as you try to become as unnoticeable as possible. Yuta leans in closer to you, “Don’t mind them.” And that’s when you knew he was the one you wanted to do it with. There was something about him that made you feel like he was safe and knew what he was doing. 

On the cab back to Lucy’s place she turns to you as soon as the doors shut. “Oh my god, y/n, you don’t know how big that just was.” her tone is one of disbelief and excitement but you’re absolutely confused. “What do you mean?” 

She grabs your wrist, “Yuta Nakamoto, the one who had his eyes glued to you?” you nod your head, unsure why she’s asking you a question about a guy you met two hours ago. How're you supposed to know who he is? Her eyes widened, “shit, I never told you about Yuta.” she sits back in thought and you begin to panic. Well that was ominous, what the fuck is it supposed to mean? Sure doesn’t sound good. 

She angles her face back, ready to explain while your mind reels thinking you’ve met someone who’s way past your level of expertise. “Yuta doesn’t take interest in a lot of people.” is all she says before pausing again. A frustrated look passes your face, “Lucy, what the hell is with this guy?” She nods her head. 

“Don’t worry, he can’t be bad for you.” She concludes and you give her a very unimpressed look. “What’s that supposed to mean?” She lifts her shoulders, as if in some sort of defeat. “Well, I’ll put it like this,” her eyes pierce yours with a slight look of worry passing through them. “Who better to teach you the art of Japanese rope bondage than Yuta Nakamoto?” 

After that you were cautious, how could you not be? But when Yuta, somehow, got ahold of your number and invited you out for coffee, you didn’t have it in you to say no. From there you learnt what his intentions were with you. He wanted you to be his next ‘muse’. Yuta said he only picks a select few people to teach and participate in his activities, and he wanted you. 

You were hesitant, but your need to be tied surpassed your fear of the unknown. When you were discussing your inexperience with Yuta and his with you, it came up. The fact that you would do almost anything to feel the weight of rope on your skin. Yuta’s reaction was a slow nod, but you saw the look that passed through his irises. It was lust, laced with approval and it made you feel proud. 

After these few meetups, you began to be much more confident around Yuta, unafraid to say the things you wanted and him the same with you. On your last meetup, Yuta asked the question you knew was coming; “Do you want to actually do it next time?” You gulp, a lump forming in your throat. “Of course.” You nod, your eyes reassuring him that you want to do this. Besides, you refused to see Ethan for over three weeks while you’ve been talking to Yuta, and you need this. He smiles, his approval making you happy. 

That brings you to the present moment. You stand outside the address Yuta gave you to meet at. It seems like some sort of club, you think as you observe the outside of the building. Big, bold letters read on the front, ‘The Black Cat”. Spooky, you think to yourself before double checking the address, pulling your coat closer to your shivering body. 

Confirming it is the place, you tame your wildly beating heart by taking in deep breaths as you walk up to the entrance. Your stilettos click on the pavement as you do, and you can’t help but feel overdressed and underdressed at the same time. Not to mention cold, the chilly Autumn air biting at your skin. 

You hear the thumping of slow and sensual RnB resonating from within the building as you get closer, eventually only a foot from the door. Thoughts of regret rush through your mind. What the hell are you doing here? This isn’t you.

Before you get the chance to turn and hurry back to your car, a throuple pushes through the doors, startling you, as they giggle and laugh. The two girls sloppily lie kisses on the guys neck and face as they disappear into the night and you’re envious. They look like they’re having pure, carefree fun. You want that too, and right now your key to that life is waiting for you inside this building. 

Holding your breath, you push through the doors into the warm and sensual atmosphere of the club. Your eyes are greeted with dark furniture and bodies moving together as everyone minds their own business with the people they’re with. You try not to show your shock, as you walk past couches and tables where people are kissing and groping, making your way to the bar at the far end of the room. 

You grasp the surface of the bar with both hands as you roll into it. The air feels heavy in your lungs as the bartender comes over to you. “Need anything, love?” He asks, a heavy English accent lacing his voice. You go to shake your head before someone calls from behind you, “A cosmopolitan for the lady, thanks.” 

You turn around, hoping to see Yuta but instead it’s some other guy. His shirt is off, which isn’t surprising, though it’s not the way you’d introduce yourself to someone. He takes a seat beside you as you prop yourself onto the bar stool. “What’re you doing here, pretty?” He asks, a slur in his voice indicating he’s had a lot to drink. 

“Waiting for someone.” you reply, a coldness lingering in your tone. He either doesn’t notice, or doesn’t care because he keeps talking. “You sure? Don’t see anyone running to claim you.” His voice is suggestive and you start to feel slimy while he eyes you up. You only hum in response, hoping he gets the hint to fuck off. 

“Pretty things that don’t get claimed around here, are taken by others.” He says, obviously thinking that you’ll jump into his arms if Yuta doesn’t show up. Luckily, you don’t have to reply as the bartender steps in, “Piss off, Tyler. She’s with Yuta.” his tone is low, like a warning and you begin to wonder just how much power Yuta has within these communities. 

“Like I give a fuck if she’s Yuta’s or not.” He laughs, swinging an arm around your shoulder and you grimace, the smell of sweat and alcohol radiating from him. “You should be.” The bartender replies, who’s name tag reads, Jordan.

The guy harassing you, Tyler laughs louder and more obnoxiously. “And where is big bad Yuta, right now, huh?” You scowl, as he shakes around you. You honestly feel like you could punch him at any second. 

Thankfully, you won’t have to, as an angry sounding voice emits from behind you and Tyler. “Get your hands off of her, Tyler, or I swear to god you’ll loose them.” It sends shivers up your spine and you smirk as it clearly scares the absolute shit out of Tyler. His arm quickly leaves your shoulders as he whips around, his arms in the air in mock surrender. 

“H-Hey man, I was just kidding. No hard feelings.” he stutters, every ounce of his confidence leaving his body as Yuta watches him with stalking eyes. “If you touch her again-” he begins to threaten, but catches the look of fear and uncertainty flash through your eyes and stops himself. He takes a deep breath, “You are never to be anywhere near her again, do you understand?” 

Tyler nods and disappears as fast as he appeared. Yuta gives an appreciative nod to Jordan, the bartender, before grabbing your hand. Tingles shoot up your fingertips as he gently tugs you behind him. “Let’s go somewhere quiet.” you nod in response, trailing after him as he leads you down a long, dark hallway beside the bar. 

You pass doors, each of which have names on them, like offices. Except you know they’re probably not offices. At least not in the traditional sense. He stops close to the end of the hallway when he pulls out a key. You’ve stopped in front of the door labelled, Yuta.N. He gestures with a smile for you to go in first as he cracks open the door. 

You walk in, one hesitant step after the other as he follows you quietly. You’re taking aback when your eyes adjust to the dark atmosphere of the room. The only light being some LED’s scattered around. A four poster bed acts as the centrepiece of the room, and god does it attract your eyes. What catches your attention the most are the hardpoints attached to the posts all around and above the bed, not to mention other odd ones in different corners of the room. 

“They’re for suspension.” Yuta says softly from behind you, patiently letting you take in everything you need to. You nod in reply, casting your eyes to the ones above the couch and the bed to the few that’re just in the middle of the room. It’s daunting you can’t lie. 

There’s a dark chest that is situated near the couch and you can only imagine what’s inside it. This is some fucking fifty shades of grey shit, you think to yourself, a laugh of disbelief almost leaving your mouth. 

“You okay?” He asks, his voice still timid. Truth be told, Yuta's nervous about how you’ll react to everything. He knows you’ve never really delved into more accurate BDSM, and he wants nothing more than for you to want this. He’s been itching to get you into this room, all of his favourite things are in here and now you are too. 

“Yeah. It’s just a lot.” You mutter and Yuta nods even though you can’t see him. You turn around and he takes a moment to watch your expressions. “Just remember we’re not doing that tonight,” he lifts a hand to rub a thumb over your cheek and you sigh. “unless you want to.” he adds. “Okay.” you agree.

“Alright then, why don’t we get to the part you’ve been craving then?” He questions, and you nod your head. “y/n I really want you to speak up and talk to me okay?” he asks and your eyes widen. “That might’ve been how you did it with your ex, but for this to work for us, we need to communicate.” 

He’s right, with Ethan communication wasn’t really a thought. Verbal conversation didn’t matter as long as he got what he wanted, and you obviously never picked up that that’s not how this is supposed to work. It’s refreshing to be doing this with someone who knows what he's doing and wants to make sure you’re okay with it every step of the way. 

Though, it does little to calm you on the fact that Yuta is much more experienced than you. The only person that you ever participated in rope bondage with was Ethan, and you never paired it with suspension. Despite the nerves you have to admit that the thought makes your pussy clench embarrassingly. 

“Yes, Yuta. I want you to tie me up.” you try to say with confidence, your eyes holding contact with him. He smiles, relief flooding you. “Perfect. Let’s begin then.” He clasps his hands together, guiding you by your elbow to the centre of the room. 

You’ve talked about how he would tie you up for the first time, but he still talks you through it as he begins by pulling a few bunches of hemp rope from the dark chest. He unravels the first bunch, laying it in his palms before gesturing to you. “Take off your clothes, y/n. Did you wear what I told you to?” Your breath hitches, as it actually dawns on you. You’re doing this, and by the look on Yuta’s face, you’re gonna love it. 

“Yes, I did.” you reply, surely removing your woollen trench coat. The material falls to the ground, you only being left in the black bondage harness and heels he sent to you. It seems that now you’re without the coat, you’re feeling hot but when it was the only thing covering you, you were cold. It’s strange how your body reacts to him, a practical stranger. 

“Good girl.” he purrs, looking you up and down. You shudder at the compliment, satisfied to have pleased him. He steps close to you, picking up the coat and gesturing for you to take of the heels. You do and he walkd to the corner of the room before placing them on the coat and shoe rack. Your eyes track him as he does and when he comes back to stand in front of you, you find yourself wanting to kiss him. Yet, it feels forbidden.

His breath falls on your lips as yours is held in your throat, not wanting to ruin the moment by breathing. “On your knees, now.” is all he says and you’re falling to the ground before the sentence is finished. When your knees meet the hardwood your eyes peer up at him through your lashes. He pulls the rope through his fist, your attention shifting to his hands. They’re large and veiny, and you want them on you but you sit quietly and wait for his request, eager to please. 

“We’re gonna start today with something simple and pretty.” he starts fighting the urge to coo at the way you look up at him. “Shibari is a form of decorative tying as you probably know, but it’s also used for pleasure. That’s what we’ll be doing too.” he explains and your head becomes light with the thought of the ropes wrapped around you, all pretty and confined. 

Now, my little rope bunny,” he says, a tinge of admiration following the pet name. “I’m going to first start by doing ‘shinju’, which is a traditional breast bondage technique.” he adds nonchalantly, and it sends more wetness to your pussy, a throbbing ache already burying itself deep in your abdomen and he hasn’t even touched you yet. 

You nod, a weak ‘uh huh’ leaving your lips. He grins, kneeling down to your level where he starts to gently glide the rope across your skin. An involuntary groan escapes you and Yuta freezes. “Jesus, never had anyone react that quick.” He mutters, more to himself than to you. You nod, deciding whether or not to just say what you want to, in the end you bite the bullet, wanting to see how he reacts. “Was wet before it even touched me.” You let out breathily. 

Your eyes close in bliss as he continues, making the first knot. You hear a curse slip from his lips and you internally smile in glee, glad you’re having an impact on him like he does on you. True to the name ‘shinju’ the rope goes around your waist, under your breasts before wrapping around your shoulder and beneath your armpit. Circling around your neck creating a halter. It then goes between your breasts before looping under the rope beneath them. Yuta takes his time with the rope, truly enjoying the art he’s making. Finally, the end of the rope is wrapped the whole way around both of your breasts, forcing them to bulge outwards. 

Your nipples perk towards him, his fingertips brushing them making you moan again. God, the feeling of the rope tight on your skin is alike to nothing else. The way you sense you’re constricted is blissful. Yuta watches the way you react like a hawk. No one he’s ever done this with has reacted like you do and it's fascinating.

Goosebumps follow every part of your skin he touches, the rope making you gasp and breathe heavier every time he places it across a bare area. When he ties each knot with careful precision, you can’t help the way you feel like a piece of art. 

When he finishes the ‘shinju’, he sits back on his heels, admiring his work. A smile graces his gorgeous face and you can’t help the way your face mirrors his. “How does that feel?” he asks, tugging at the knots to make sure they are all firm but not too constricting. 

“Feels good.” You reply, surprising you both as your voice is cracked and strained like you’re already wrecked. He nods, keeping an eye on you. “Do you want to try ‘koutou ushiro te shibari’? It’s just a hands behind the head tie.” You know you’ve hardly gone deep into what Yuta knows, really only skimming the easiest methods from his knowledge. It’s just the way he sounds so confident about these different ties. Ethan was never like that, always unsure of himself and constantly hurting you. 

You nod, a small noise of agreement leaving you. He strokes your cheek adoringly and you shift slightly on your knees, the rope around your breasts tightening eliciting a moan from between your lips. Yuta chuckles, “you really are enjoying this aren’t you, bunny?” The pet name causes you to only moan in response. 

He stands and walks behind you. “Hands above your head.” He instructs and you obey. He never has to ask twice with you and he loves it. Grabbing your wrists he wraps a new piece of rope around your left one a few times before pulling it tight and doing the same with the other wrist, effectively binding them together. 

You grunt as he pulls them firmly before looping around the connective piece of rope between your wrists. He then brings the ends down your spine till it reaches your waist. Wrapping his arms around you he curls it around your waist, making a pretty knot at the back that sits in the curve of your spine. 

“There.” he sighs, admiring the way your arms are now restricted, folded towards your neck. You whimper, the soft rope tight around your waist making you wiggle against the delicious pressure. “Ok bunny, how would you feel about being attached to that hardpoint there.” He points to the metal ring hanging above you and you nod, a sound of compliance coming from your chest. 

“Alright, stand up then.” He says watching to make sure you’re okay. Your knees wobble, weak from being on your knees for so long but you manage to stand in a stable position. Shibari is beautiful but all beautiful things take time. Yuta probably spent over 30 minutes tying these knots on you, each pretty piece of rope accentuating your body features. 

Yuta turns around, going back to the dark chest and pulling out a longer piece of rope. Reaching above you, he loops the rope through the ring. Pulling it down tight, he walks behind you and ties it to your arm tie. He laces it into the knots, focusing on making it museum worthy. 

This is part of the reason you love rope bondage. The attention to detail and goal of perfection makes you feel like a art piece to be worshipped, like the Mona Lisa. It’s also very intimate, the time you spend together, both parties enjoying their role. The last aspect you love is the build up to the intimate part. Sometimes it takes hours to tie someone how they want and it’s all so exhilarating. 

You gasp as Yuta pulls the rope tight, not quite suspending you but your feet are only just still on the ground. You whine in disappointment, wanting to be fully suspended. Yuta laughs, “there’s gonna be other times, bunny. We can work up to it.” he says, dragging a finger around your waist as he walks to your front. 

His fingers catch the rope around your waist, pulling you toward him, effectively lifting your toes from the ground. Your weight pulls down on your arms’ muscles, the burn delicious but not enough to sustain for more than a few seconds.  “See.” he whispers into your ear, sending a chill through your body. Yuta’s right, you need to get stronger to be able to hold your own weight comfortably.

“I’m not going to tie your legs today either, I don’t think you could handle it to be honest.” he smirks as your face twists. He turns to go somewhere behind you, not being able to see him you whine out loud. “Be patient, bunny.” he scoffs as you hear what you presume to be a fridge door open and shut. He rummages around with a few different things where you can’t see him before he comes into your vision again. 

On a small tray he has an assortment of objects. A dark blindfold sits neatly next to a ball gag and a small bowl of ice cubes. The last object on the tray is something you’ve never seen before, it's not large and sorta egg shaped. Seeing your confusion at the object, Yuta picks it up, showing you closer. “It’s a vibrating egg, this goes into your sweet little pussy.” 

You suck in a breath, an innocent ‘oh’ leaving your parted lips and it takes everything in him to not kiss you. That’s what the gag is for. He gets close to you, the ball gag in hand before he brings it to your lips. “Open.” he demands and of course, you comply. He places the ball part in your mouth, tying it behind your head. It’s a comfortable size, you note, especially since you have a rather small mouth. 

Next he picks up the blind fold, navigating around your body so he’e behind you again. Bringing it over your eyes, you groan into the gag. He makes sure you can’t see before securing it and you must admit you’ve never been gagged and blinded before. Ethan usually wanted you mouth free and eyes open so you could suck him off. You can tell with Yuta though, that this is more about pleasuring you for him. 

Without your sight, everything immediately becomes more sensual. The only thing you can really count on is the hearing, due to your loss of touch as well. You listen closely as he shuffles around you, when suddenly he’s pressed against your back. You can feel all of him on you like this and you can’t help the noise that emits from you, muffled around the gag. 

His fingertips dance around your waist, moving to the front of your body before he reaches between your closed legs. “Part them.” he mutters deeply into your ear and you groan, complying instantly. Brushing over your pubic bone you begin to pant around the gag. The increase in the rise and fall of your chest causes the ropes around your breasts to tighten and loosen periodically. 

He finally tickles your clit with his fingers, only ghosting over it in a teasing manner. You shiver in his hold, body vibrating and he makes a noise of approval. “Such a good little bunny. So responsive.” he murmurs in your ear, flicking your clit harshly. Almost painfully, but you couldn’t give a fuck, a strangled moan slipping around the gag. Your hips buck, looking for his fingers and the fact you can’t see them, makes you drip. 

“Okay, no more teasing. Just know I’m being extra nice since it’s your first time.” He confirms in your ear. Oh, you know he would tease you for hours and not get sick of it. But you’re happy he’s serving it to you on a silver platter this time. You moan out in response, it being the only noise that gets past the gag in your mouth as drool begins to dribble from the corners of your lips. 

He runs his fingers through your folds, another moan leaving from deep within your chest. “So wet.” He muses to himself and you begin to blush. “Oh, don’t be embarrassed, bunny.” He’s coos into your ear. “It’s so sexy that I barely have to touch you and you’re ready to go for me.” You’re always ready, is what you want to say, but the gag would make that near impossible. 

His fingers dip into your soaking pussy, beginning to slowly pump in and out of you. You can’t help the string of muffled curses that you grumble out, nearly choking on your saliva as you do. “Careful, bunny. As much as I’d love to see you choke, it won’t be on your own accord.” Your eyes roll back at his words, your pussy squeezing around his fingers as he chuckles at the reaction he gets from you. 

Suddenly he slips something inside of you and you’re guessing it’s the egg toy. It feels foreign. Smooth and round, snug deep in your pussy. His fingers leave you and you whine, the noise pitiful as he pats your hair soothingly. You hear the sound of sucking and your heart rate increases. “Mhm, you taste good, little bunny.” he moans into your ear as he licks his fingers and you wish more than anything right now, that you could see him. 

You wiggle against your ropes, groaning as they tighten on your skin. You hear him laugh at you as you embarrass yourself. It only turns you on more. “Right. Are you ready to see just exactly what this little toy can do?” He asks. You nod in response, thinking he wouldn’t expect you to answer verbally. You were wrong. 

He slaps your thigh. Not as hard as you’d like, but hard enough to hurt a little. It makes your back arch against the ropes as you throw your head back, a deep, primal sound emitting from deep within your chest. “Answer me.” he demands and you try your best to be good and answer. A barely understandable ‘yes’ is filtered from your mouth, drool now running down your chin like a stream. 

He doesn’t even think before he leans in close to you, using his tongue to lick up the mess you’ve made of yourself. You let out a high pitched moan as your mind races. He’s so fucking dirty and you love it. He gets to the corner of your lips, where he flicks his tongue into your mouth briefly, before pulling away. A noise of disagreement leaves you and he looks on, amused and intrigued by you. 

He grips the little remote in his hand, pressing the on button. You immediately react. Your body jolts as the little toy vibrates to life and so it starts. You officially can’t keep the noises in and Yuta only encourages you with his sweet and filthy words. 

The feeling of the toy vibrating deep in your pussy is ecstacy. With both your sight and will to string together a sentence evaporated, you are left to only focus on your impending orgasm. Wanting to participate Yuta picks up an almost melted ice cube, running it across your already hardened nipple. 

The sting of the cold makes you hiss, the feeling a painful pleasure. He creates a process of making your abused nipple freeze, before defrosting it in his mouth then switching to the other. The sensations make your head loll to the side and Yuta notes that next time he should tie you so that your neck gets more support. 

Your toes still on the ground begin to tingle as you feel an orgasm rise in you. Your chest rises and falls more rapidly and Yuta notices. Nipping and pinching at your sensitive nipples brings you to the edge quicker. A final bite to your chest pushing you into your orgasm. 

However, Yuta doesn’t turn the toy off. You try to argue your disagreement around the gag as a couple moments pass. When he still makes no move to turn the little buzzing toy off, you wiggle in your restraints. “Shush, bunny. It’s alright, do you trust me.” He mumbles against your chest. Luckily a nod is enough to satisfy him this time as he replies, “Good girl.”

Quickly you’re brought to another orgasm, but before you can cum, Yuta is on his knees sucking your clit between his lips. When the cold touches your sensitive nerves you all but scream into the gag, thrashing as he loops his arms around your thighs to stop you from moving. Definitely tying your legs next time, he thinks to himself. 

You cum hard, but he still doesn’t stop. Tears begin to fall down your cheeks as you sob into the gag. “Aww, is my little bunny ready to throw in the towel already?” He asks, a degrading tone in his voice. You shake your head, a muffled ‘no’ crying from your sobbing mouth. 

“Just one more for me, bunny. I promise.” You nod your head, only wanting to please him so bad. Even though he makes every nerve in your body burn, he’s a flame you’d gladly walk into every time. “Good girl.”, he praises stroking your thigh adoringly. You’re absolutely perfect for him. 

He pops an ice cube in his mouth, ghosting over your poor, swollen clit once again as you sob harder, feeling his breath on you. He attaches his lips around it, a broken moan turning into a weak scream as he places the ice cube directly on your clit. With the egg still vibrating inside you, his lips sucking your clit and the damned ice cube making it throb, you stand absolutely no chance. 

You cry out loud as you cum again. At this point a mix of your tears and drool stream down your face and neck, while cum dribbles down your thighs. Yuta wastes none of it, sucking your sticky thighs clean of the substance, caressing your skin as he does. 

After a few moments he’s quick to stand up. You hear him behind you before he loosens the rope holding you up, the slack causing your knees to collapse as you try to hold your own weight again. He catches you, arm securely wrapped around your waist as he guides you to the bed where he swiftly removes all the rope from your body.

When he removes your blindfold and gag, you begin to hiccup as your eyes adjust to the dim room before landing on him. He’s looking at you proudly with a hint of worry showing on his features. “You okay, y/n?” he asks softly. You nod, a quiet ‘yeah’ forming as your jaw adjusts to being closed again. 

Every muscle in your body burns, and this is the last part of rope bondage you love. The way you can always feel it long after you’re finished. He grabs a damp towel and begins to gently wipe the sweat, cum and drool from your body before you collapse into him. He hugs you close to him and you feel completely safe and satisfied. 

“That was amazing.” you sigh into him, and you swear you almost feel him deflate around you. “That’s good, I’m glad you did.” He mumbles into the top of your head. 

“Next time we should stretch first though.” you grumble and he laughs, his whole body vibrating and you can’t help but laugh lightly too. 

“Okay.” he replies, obeying you for the first time tonight.

[spiteless-xo]

May we see that soft Eren you were talking about? 👀

here is a lil snippet of what i've been working on oop it's a very unedited draft so apologies in advance if it's a disaster

im hoping to make it a multichapter series?? slow-burn enemies to lovers?? but don't hold your breath, idk when it'll be finished

“Hey, are you—” he looks down at his phone, brows pinching together and lips pursing as he reads out your name, butchering the pronunciation completely. You didn’t even know it was possible to say your name so wrong.

You correct him with a grimace, leaning away from your laptop as you cross your arms over your chest.

His gaze lifts from his phone back to you, smiling with just the corner of his mouth. “Right. Sorry.”

“You’re late.” You nod to the clock hanging at the far end of the library. The two of you had agreed to meet to work on this project at seven this morning—he’s almost forty-five minutes late.

His smile widens into a boyish grin, eyes wrinkling in the corners as he pulls out the chair next to you. He puts his bag onto the table and throws his weight into the chair as he sits down, drawing the attention of a few of the nearby students.

“I was hoping that if I was late enough, you’d just do the project without me,” he says, and you roll your eyes. “Did you?”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

What can you say to the professor to get you out of doing this project with him? It almost feels like some sort of cosmic joke that the two of you have been paired together for this. The professor said the pairings were randomly assigned, but there’s no way that’s true.

You are always fifteen minutes early to class with your iPad in hand. You colour-code all your notes and have a strict schedule for getting your assignments done well before the due date. You ask relevant questions during class and always volunteer an answer when the professor poses a question. You’re a model student—you always have been.

And ever since you were a kid, you’ve been punished for it by being forced to babysit problem students. Because you’re so smart and so quiet and so well-behaved, you always get stuck next to the annoying, smart-ass kids who show up late to class and who barely hand their assignments in on time. As if your good behaviour will somehow rub off on them.

It hasn’t worked before and you doubt it’ll work now, especially when you’re paired with Eren fucking Jaeger.

You lift your hands from your chest, tapping gently at your temples in a soothing gesture—something your counsellor taught you to help manage the stress of your workload. You take slow, calming breaths, and try to compose yourself before turning to look over at Eren, seated beside you.

He has one arm resting on his bag while the other palm lays sprawled across his thigh, his knee bouncing up and down impatiently as he stares at you. “I’m gonna take that as a no.”

“It’s not possible for me to do all this work by myself,” you say, lowering your hands and clasping them together on the desk. “This is the capstone project. Our report will determine if we pass or fail the class.”

“So…”

“So,” you say, voice tight as you feel your blood burning in your veins, “we need to work on this together.”

“Ok, fine. I was just joking, anyway, nerd.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“Sorry—another joke.” He crosses both arms across his backpack, leaning forward to rest his chin on his arms. “So… what are we supposed to be doing?”

You sigh in frustration, turning away from him and back to your laptop. You pull up the syllabus for Professor Hange’s class, scrolling down to the last page where it gives detailed instructions on the capstone project due at the end of the semester.

This project is supposed to help showcase everything you’ve learned from your year-long environmental sustainability course. Part one of the course is required for all students attending Paradis University, but part two and the capstone project are optional. Usually, only students in the environmental science program take both parts or students looking for something to pad their med school application.

Eren falls into the first camp—an environmental sciences student who needs this class to graduate. You’d think that kind of pressure would give him the motivation to show up to class on time. Or to pay attention. Or to be engaged, at all, with the capstone project. But it barely seems like he’s even paying attention as you summarize the requirements to him.

You fall into the second category—a biochem student looking for something to help you get accepted into your dream school. Which is why it’s all the more important that Eren Jaeger doesn’t fuck this up for you. 

“There’s a lot of different options we can take with this project. I’ve come up with a few ideas on my own already,” you explain. You turn your computer to face him, pulling up your Google Doc of ideas for the capstone project, highlighting your favourite idea—micro-sustainability initiatives for towns that don’t have local recycling programs—in bold. “Let me know if you see anything that interests you.”

He hums in thought, pushing back the long strands of dark hair out of his face as he leans forward to peer at your computer. “Your font size is so small. How can you even see anything?” Eren reaches out with both hands, grabbing your laptop and dragging it toward him as he squints at the screen.

“Maybe you need glasses,” you say, scrunching your nose as you see him leave greasy fingerprints on your computer.

“Yeah, probably. Hey, y’know… none of these are really speaking to me.”

Your brows shoot up into your hairline—the audacity of this man.

“Isn’t there something we can do that’s a little more local-focused?” He pushes the laptop back toward you, leaning back in his chair and balancing on the rear two legs. “I just feel like all the shit you wanna do isn’t realistic.”

“It’s not supposed to be realistic,” you say, pulling the sleeve of your hoodie over the heel of your hand to wipe away the smudges he left on your laptop.

“Shouldn’t it be?”

“No.”

He clicks his tongue and drums his fingers against the table. “I dunno… I just don’t really see how we can do any of this—” he lifts a hand to gesture vaguely at your computer, teetering on the legs of his chair precariously “—and actually promote any change, y’know? Like, these are just hypotheticals, there’s no feasible way we can follow through with any of this.”

“We don’t have to follow through with it,” you say. You turn back to your computer, flicking through your tabs until you find the syllabus again. “We just have to ‘demonstrate the ability to gather materials, review current literature, and to examine sufficient background material to inform the development of original work.’ It doesn’t say anything in here about actually putting our plan into place.”

“Yeah, sure… but wouldn’t it be cool if we did?”

He shoots you another one of his boyish smiles and if you were one of the other brainless girls at the school, maybe you’d start giggling and blushing and agreeing with him—but you’re not. You’re an aspiring heart surgeon and you don’t have time for this idiot’s attempts at derailing your project.

“Let’s just stick with one of my ideas, ok?” you clip your words, moving back to your screen of ideas and pointing at the highlighted line. “Let’s do this.”

“I don’t wanna do that one.”

“Well, I don’t see you coming up with any other great ideas and the project proposal is due at the end of next week. I can work on the Introduction tonight and send you a copy and as long as you’re able to get me the Goals and Process by the end of this week, I should be able to—”

“Didn’t you hear me? I said, I don’t want to do that one.”

You sigh and bring your hands up to tap at your temples as you count to three.

One. You shouldn’t dismiss him like this off the bat, that’s not like you. You should hear him out. Maybe—just maybe—he has a good idea.

Two. This is a partner project, so the two of you need to work on this together. Even if you tried to steamroll over him and do this project yourself—which you can’t—he will still have to fill out his peer evaluation forms, and depending on what he says, that might end up hurting your grade.

Three. He’s made it this far, hasn’t he? You might not need this class to graduate, but he definitely does. There’s no way he’s been coasting off his other classmates' work these past four years, so maybe he has some insight that could really elevate your project, being an environmental sciences student and all.

“Ok, Eren, what ideas do you have?” you ask, lowering your hands and clasping them in your lap before turning to face him.

“Hmm… I’m thinking… travel mugs.”

He… what?

“What do you mean by that?” you ask, trying to stay positive.

He sucks his teeth, eyes rolling up to the ceiling in thought as his chair lands on all four legs. “I dunno yet, I need to talk it out, still.”

“Well… reusable products often have a positive impact on the environment as opposed to single-use waste,” you suggest.

He nods, snapping his fingers. “Yeah, exactly!” he whispers. “I mean, just look at everyone here.” Eren leans toward you conspiratorially, gesturing to the other students seated at the tables nearby. You can smell the warm, vanilla scent of his cologne as he moves close and you turn your head away with a wrinkle of your nose. “How many single-use cups do you see? One, two, three…”

Eren counts them off out loud, pointing with his hand close to his chest as he does so. You follow his finger, counting alongside him in your head. Out of the six other occupied tables you can see, there are fifteen single-use coffee cups—including the one on your table beside your laptop with the logo of one of the student-run on-campus cafes emblazed on the side.

He clicks his tongue and shoots you a look from the corner of his eyes, his brows twitching and his lips curling up into a smile. “See? That’s a lot. And that’s only from tables we can see, on this floor. Imagine the study rooms, the other classrooms—hell, what about the entire school?”

You turn away from his glimmering, eager eyes and create space between your bodies to cross your arms over your chest. “Ok, yeah. That’s a lot of cups. How does this relate to our capstone project? Do you want the school to start selling travel mugs at the gift shop or something? They already do that.”

“No, no, no.” Eren shakes his head with a sigh, like you’re the idiot. “I’m thinking something more accessible.”

“More accessible than a reusable travel mug?” you say, unable to mask your tone of disbelief. Eren levels you with a stern look and you think it’s the first time you’ve seen him without a shit-eating grin. “I shouldn’t have to remind you, Eren, that this is an environmental sciences capstone project… this isn’t for a commerce class, we don’t need to invent a new product.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m not thinking product design, anyway. Just something a little more…” His fingers wiggle in the air, as if he’s physically searching the air for a word, snapping his fingers when he finds something. “Ok, so, you know how in Hizaru they have those little umbrella holders outside of all the shops?”

“I’ve never been to Hizaru.”

“Oh… uhh… well, they do. They have these little boxes outside so you don’t have to bring your dripping wet umbrella into the store with you.” He draws an imaginary box in the air with his two index fingers to help you visualize the concept. “Umbrellas can be pretty cheap and non-descript so the umbrella culture in Hizaru is pretty… mi kasa es su kasa.”

He chuckles at that, looking up from his imaginary umbrella holder to flash you another smile but you keep your face neutral and he returns to his explanation.

“Basically, if you don’t have an umbrella, you can borrow one if you need it, as long as you return it to another holder somewhere for someone else to use,” he finishes. “What if we recommended something like that to the cafeteria and all the cafes on campus so people have the option of using a reusable mug instead of creating single-use waste.”

That’s… actually not a bad idea.

You sit up a little taller in your seat, moving your hands from where they’re crossed over your chest to rest on the keyboard of your laptop, instead. “That’s an interesting idea… and it aligns with Paradis University’s goals of becoming more sustainable—especially if we can demonstrate the impact that it would have on waste.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” he grins. “We could do an assessment of the current waste created by single-use cups and try to extrapolate the impact our recommendation would have, assuming a—”

“Even a little as a one-percent buy-in would have a huge impact on waste on campus,” you say, clearing off your ideas document and filling it with notes on this new project, instead. “There’s seventy thousand students at Paradis, a one-percent buy-in over one semester could have an impact of approximately—” you type out numbers with the calculator on your phone “—ten thousand single-use cups!”

Eren smiles so wide that his eyes squint and he reaches forward, resting his hands on your shoulders to give you a firm squeeze. “See? That’s exactly the kind of thing that’s gonna drive Hange nuts. We���re all but guaranteed to ace the project—if we can pull it off.”

You swat his hands away, but there’s a lingering warmth on your skin from where his palms rested. “Ok, yeah. I’m open to doing this, as long as you pull your weight.”

“Why wouldn’t I pull my weight?”

“You’re always—” you gesture vaguely “—you’re always late for class or disruptive when Hange’s teaching.”

He opens his mouth to dispute you, but then closes it with a solemn nod.

“I’m really busy with my other classes, but why don’t we try to work on this independently and then meet up Monday mornings to go over the project? That way, we know what our objectives are each week and what we need to do together to get it done.”

Eren’s brows raise with interest. “Wow, this isn’t your first group project, huh? Sounds like you’re an expert.”

You scoff and roll your eyes. “Unfortunately, I’m used to babysitting.”

He clasps his hands together, resting them on the desk and leaning toward you with a smile. He’s always pushing himself into your personal bubble—you lean back with a frown.

“Don’t worry about having to babysit me, I’m more capable than you think,” he says. “And hey, how about, as a gesture of goodwill, I write the project proposal? You can review it before we submit it to Hange—of course—but since it’s my idea and all, I should be the one to do up the proposal, right?”

Eren Jaeger is a lot of things and you’ll soon find out whether capable can be added to the list.

He’s handsome—objectively speaking. He’s tall with long dark hair and piercing green eyes, like something right out of a fantasy novel, but it’s hard for you to swoon over his looks when he acts like such a mindless idiot all the time. His presence has always been disruptive in class—showing up late and breaking the flow of the professor’s lesson, whispering and laughing loudly with his friends at the back of the class, and high-fiving and yelling with all of his friends in the halls. He’s not really your type.

And you get the sense that Eren’s not used to hearing people say no to him.

You’re not used to relinquishing control like this. Because you’re always getting paired up with people that care about school less than a fraction than the amount that you do, even if it goes against your principles, you always end up taking charge of the project. You may hum and haw about how you don’t want the other group members to ride off your coattails, but at the end of the day, you want a good grade—so you’ll just suck it up and bare it and hope that you’ll never get stuck with them again.

It’s a bad habit, you know that, but it’s your survival strategy.

But maybe, just this once, you’ll let someone else take charge—it’s just the proposal, right?

 “Can you get it done by the end of this week?”

“I can certainly try,” he says, flashing you another grin. “It’ll definitely be ready before our next weekly meeting.”

You glance across the library to the large clock and seeing that your next class starts in fifteen minutes, you allow yourself to concede. “Fine, Eren,” you say as you begin to pack up your things, “but you need to get me your draft proposal by Sunday night, so I have time to look over it before our meeting on Monday.”

Eren watches you as you stand. “You got it, nerd.”

You ignore the flare of irritation that spikes from his words and instead, look down at him with a smile as you say, “See you next week, moron.”

[marley-manson]

I’m followng up an ask meme response I got from @pomegranate a while ago because I’ve since been reminded of one of the ways Joker is Wild is considered badly written by some people, which I strongly disagree with.

Basically I don’t think BJ is out of character at all in it, and I think ~the Trapper complex~ exists and makes perfect sense. Like I’m not gonna argue that BJ is canonically jealous of Trapper because he’s gay and in love with Hawkeye and Hawkeye and Trapper were fucking obviously lol, but yeah BJ is insecure about his friendship with Hawkeye and he projects that onto Hawkeye’s previous friendship with Trapper AND that makes perfect sense for BJ’s character and has been established prior to this episode.

When it comes to the characterization that supports it, we know BJ has canonical jealousy issues because he’s spent multiple episodes brooding over the mere shadow of a possibility that his wife is cheating on him, including building guys up in his head to be jealous of in the iconic instance of Carl the Handyman.

We also know BJ is canonically insecure and resentful with regards to his relationships because again, Peg, but also it’s why he brought Trapper up in Period of Adjustment, ie the episode about characters feeling insecure about replacing previous characters in their roles of clerk, CO, and Hawkeye’s BFF, and we see it plain and clear in other episodes like Heroes in which he’s resentful of Hawkeye for getting attention, and Stars and Stripes in which he lords the attention he gets over Hawkeye, both indicating insecurity about his own value. There’s also his paggro attitude in Wheelers and Dealers that spells this trait out too, in which he’s resentful of always being so “nice” to people with little to show for it.

And obviously we know BJ loves to torment people as stress relief and for his own amusement, see a multitude of episodes including Our Finest Hour in which he directly states that the pranks are him taking his feelings out on other people.

So we have precedent for BJ feeling jealous of others he perceives as potentially superior or more likeable, we have precedent for BJ feeling insecure and needing to prove himself, and we have precedent for BJ being upset and channeling those feelings into terrorizing others.

We also have precedent for BJ feeling these things about Trapper specifically in Period of Adjustment, in which he’s not only envious of Trapper being home too, but specifically brings up the fact that he built the still with Hawkeye, the still BJ had just, yk, angrily broken. It’s not a coincidence that he mentions the still lol, it’s the reason he broke it, as a direct parallel to Klinger’s resentment of Radar. And there’s also the minor scene in Depressing News where he seems put out when Hawkeye directly says the army drafted him to replace Trapper.

Honestly I wonder if some people who think the “Trapper complex” isn’t established enough to make sense in Joker is Wild are just not used to episodic television, because frankly it’s a miracle if any specific detail outside what’s on the character sheet (eg BJ is obsessed with wife and child, Hawkeye loves rebellion and Crabapple Cove, Klinger crossdresses and loves Toledo) gets established at all before it becomes relevant in tv pre 90s. Like the fact that there are one to two moments you can point to as justification for BJ’s resentment of Trapper specifically pre-season 11 is much more than you’d usually get for a plot like this in a 70s sitcom. There’s tons of characterization that supports it, as I’ve detailed above, and nothing about it contradicts BJ’s character, and that’s all you really need, you don’t even need a direct pre-established statement that BJ is resentful of Trapper. The fact that we do get one is only icing on the cake.

Like to me saying that it comes out of nowhere is like saying that Hawkeye should’ve mentioned Carlye before she suddenly appeared, or Billy before Bless You Hawkeye, or that Charles’ obsession with death should’ve been established before The Life You Save, etc. That’s just not really how things worked on tv back then. Rather, once we learn about certain things that are important to the characters for the one episode that revolves around them, we’re invited to fill in the blanks and imagine what we didn’t get to see, and potentially assume that these things could’ve come up off screen beforehand, or the characters kept them to themselves for whatever reason, depending on characterization and/or whether it’s implied to be a common thing or a one-time event.

After all, Hawkeye responds a little hesitantly and awkwardly when he admits that Trapper came up with the prank he proclaims was better than BJ’s - maybe you can take that as a sign that this isn’t the first second time BJ has lost some amount of shit about Trapper, intended or not. Or maybe you can assume that BJ keeps himself tightly under wraps until he explodes all at once, which is definitely firmly established characterization, and Joker is Wild was the last Trapper straw.

[theromanticscrooge]

Rambles About What Happened and What I’m Doing

I left YouTube back in late 2017. Then I slowly quit and pulled away from being “The Romance Scrooge” over 2018, too.

What originally happened was that my laptop died. I didn’t have backups of my videos, my Photoshop and Illustrator files, or any of the assets/footage I was actively using to make videos at the time. It was the topping of a shit cake. I was 2 years out of college with a fine arts degree, but I wasn’t selling art or working in an art studio like I’d hoped. There were no art studios close enough. I had no confidence in myself or my art. I was juggling 5 different part time merchandiser jobs in addition to picking up whatever gigs I could find on freelancer apps. I wanted to be in charge of my schedule, my life, my time, and every detail.

Instead, I was drowning. I had burned out from trying to do too much at once and refusing to acknowledge that I had anxiety and depression among other personal issues that I’m not getting into. Everything was slowly shoved onto the backburner because I was floundering so bad, getting more stressed out, and had no idea how to fix things let alone get help or start rebuilding my life. Then 2020 happened and honestly, it was a downhill slide until the past 6-8 months. I’ve made more progress figuring out who I am, what my limits are, what I want from life, and otherwise this year than in the past 4-5 years. There’s still a lot I want and need to do, but I decided that resurrecting Scrooge and giving things another go is part of that.

I’ve been working on weird, surreal art under the pen name Cosmimarshmello, too. I’m currently workshopping what to do with that, too, but I consider that a separate project from anything I’m doing with Scrooge.

Where to go From Here...

I’ve been fighting with pretty bad writer’s block for the last few years. Cobbling together a coherent thought or something worth posting happened once in a blue moon. It could be once a month or once every 5 months. There’s a few thoughts on here I’m considering about taking another crack at, like my post on April and Donnie between the 2003 TMNT to Rise of the TMNT. I’m leaning towards writing and making something new for now, though. I feel like the proverbial floodgates opened back up and I can work up to what I used to be able to do and eventually better.

For now, I’m not entirely sure what I’m going to do now or what my next video will be. I want to ease into things so it’ll be rambly blog posts and shorter thoughts/takes on various topics for awhile while I find my voice again. There’s gonna be more waffling like this since, honestly, stream of thought is a fantastic base for getting thoughts out period. It’s how I used to brainstorm, too. The process would be: dump several paragraphs on a specific idea here, then comb through and sew together what’s relevant, discard what isn’t, put irrelevant ideas in a different draft for later. Some sessions led to a few more video ideas than just the big one I originally had in mind. 

Part of it is that I feel like I don’t have anything interesting or meaningful enough to talk about. There’s so many more people in the niche I used to be part of. Every bigger topic has already been covered by three different people and there’s already established reviewers or creators that viewers immediately go to for particular topics or things. That’s before even tackling how beastly YouTube’s algorithm has become, among other potential spaces. The algorithm is exactly why I’m leaning towards starting back up here and branching out to spaces like Mastodon first. At least for the text-based stuff.

They aren’t dominated by an algorithm. People will actually see my posts; even if it’s weeks, months, or years later. That factor helps a lot with how disposable social media can make someone feel.

I still feel like someone with not a lot to say. But I’ve kept tabs on a few different YouTubers that started small or are consistent and getting better every day. Honestly, a big part of starting again now is to remind myself that some projects and journeys are worthwhile; not only will my writing and potential videos get better with time, but hopefully it helps with personal growth, too.

I’ve been especially inspired by someone going through a hard time and showing parts of how she’s working on herself and her life through YouTube. I’m wondering if I can do similar for someone else by chronicling the “behind the scenes” stuff like this.

[ranahan]

I'm working alone. I was gonna make my own extended dictionary, but realised fairly soon that it wasn’t going to be very good if I didn’t know what the roots and affixes are, what are the compounding patterns, and when and how the sounds change. So I needed to go back and do some linguistic analysis first.

This is entirely based on Canon Mando’a—it’s essentially an analysis of KT’s original word list and language notes + whatever other bits and pieces can be found in her books, articles and interviews. I’m including some commentary in footnotes where I’m aware of some others extending the language in a certain way. But this is half linguistic treatise and half cookbook for how to derive words in Mando’a; it’s not so much about extending the language as it’s about how to extend the language so that it’s internally consistent with canon.

I wasn’t originally planning to include much phonology, but can’t get away without it you know… That section is fairly new. I’m sure I’ve seen a couple of stress analyses and several phonetic transcriptions of the dictionary around (damned if I can remember all of them though). I’ll have to take another look before deciding if I should just build on something someone else has already done or do it again myself. Not sure anyone else has covered the same material I need for this project though, like phonotactics or all the bits that are related to constructing words rather than saying them.

Also… I’m not sure I’m even aware of all the relevant work other people have completed? Like, this just snagged my brain and I’ve been more or less happily crunching away at it because it’s a nice distraction? I’ll certainly appreciate any links anyone wants to throw in my direction, but fyi I’m terrible at replying to anything on social media and tend to go offline for months at a time with no warning.

Here’s what the write-up of my Mando’a morphology project is currently looking like (and yeah, you can tell the outline is pretty rough atm). It was supposed to be an easy-peasy Google Sheets to share; somehow it’s grown into this.

No, this is not my bookshelf, it’s my coffee table. Under there. Somewhere.

[phantomrose96]

Chrissy this is my prompt for u to write an essay about your grievances here. I love having my parade rained on, jokes on u

Haha, okay okay okay, so I guess it is list of grievances time.

I’m gonna put most of this under a Read More because like I said before, I’m not trying to make a spectacle out of complaining about people’s good time. So if you’re not looking for BNHA-salt this is easily skip-over-able.

I will start with one thing above the Read More—and I mean this with full compassion and sincerity—I think Horikoshi is burnt out. It feels like he doesn’t love the characters or the world anymore and he’s going through the motions to get this over with and I’m SURE the break-neck pace of the shonen manga industry holds a lot of blame. I’ve burnt out on my own stories over less. So I don’t fault Horikoshi for that part.

Okay, so salt time. It got pretty long.

I’m gonna start by elaborating on the first point, because its impact is extremely easy to feel on the story:

The love for the characters isn’t there anymore.

BNHA has always been a big-cast kinda show, and they managed this well in the early seasons. Even with 20 characters in Class 1-A, I can tell you specifics about pretty much everyone’s role during the Tournament Arc. They all felt distinct. They all had different motivations, tactics, attitudes hopes dreams everything. Iida’s “I’m actually going to go against you, Deku, because I can’t keep being the friend in your shadow” was so very distinct from Uraraka’s “I used my wit to concoct a plan against a brute-force blaster and nearly won, but the frustration is so hard to deal with” from Todoroki’s “I’m moving forward with cold and blind rage to defy my father” from Bakugou’s “I need an absolute first-place win or this is nothing” from Midoriya’s “I can’t use my quirk so I need to win with my tact” from Yaoyorozu’s “I buckled under pressure and the frustration is devastating” from even—fucking—Ojiro’s “I resign because I was possessed during this team win and I don’t honorably think I can continue.”

I could probably keep going for every student in Class 1-A but my point is how potently interesting and distinct each of them felt during this arc. Even ones who ended up with little screentime left their mark.

…And then I compare it to, say, the recent “Rescue Deku” arc and… it was just 20 people essentially in a line, one-by-one sounding off about what surface-deep reason they had for liking Deku and wanting him to come home while they all just trade off generic blows and… that’s that. Deku comes home and there’s no talk of it. No fanfare. No fallout. It happened and it’s done. We don’t care what the characters think. Onto the next.

And this was all following a LONG stint where the main characters hardly even appeared. Uraraka and Iida hardly exist anymore. Only Todoroki and Bakugou have managed to cling to relevance alongside Deku, and that’s probably a popularity poll thing. But EVEN then, Deku himself hardly appeared for a long time. And it felt painfully obvious how much Horikoshi was just tired of his cast, and desperately hopping to a new Favorite Character in a bid to keep his own interest alive.

For a while it was Hawks. Everything was Hawks. Then Endeavor for a while. Endeavor was Horikoshi’s new main character. Then Mirko. All things Mirko. Just hopping to brand new characters and tossing them aside when the flame died, all the while leaving the main cast to stagnate.

Now in the final arc we’ve got an ensemble of several-dozen characters haphazardly thrown around, here to say a few Epic Shonen Words and do an Epic Shonen Attack for 3 pages, fail, and then get tossed into the background again. They’re less characters and more just plot-moving-pieces. The lack of heart is palpable and an arc like Rogue Deku, which my angst-endeared ass should have been super easy to win over with, was extremely flat. Nothing more than a surface-deep exploration of what this means for Deku’s character, and I need to stress it was NOT like that at the beginning of the series! The beginning, up through at least the Kamino arc, had a LOT of love for all these characters. It made you root for them. It made you care. And those characters are all just shells of themselves now.

Which rolls into my next point: What character development?

Horikoshi was REALLY good at setting up both plot and character. The character introductions were strong. The early arcs were strong. You see Deku develop a lot in the very early chapters, going from easily cowed to holding his ground, going from quirkless, to a state of having a quirk but having to be smart and use it sparingly, to slowly getting control of it. And alongside the awe of larger-than-life All Might, it’s a development you really root for.

…And Horikoshi kind of flubs development after that.

I cannot tell you how current-arc Deku is that distinct from chapter-50 Deku. Same for most characters except maybe Bakugou, who’s had a decent character arc. But that should not be a stand-alone phenomenon.

If I think about something like Fullmetal Alchemist, the development Ed undergoes throughout the series is amazing. It happens slowly, but steadily. The lasting impacts of experiences change him. He matures. He learns. And Ed in the final episode is hardly recognizable as the pompous little shit from the beginning.

Deku has been… Deku. For a very long time now. All Might’s been shuffled off stage. Todoroki’s development I personally dislike for a reason I’ll get into later. The rest of Class 1-A has been tossed into the dumpster as previously stated.

And as for the PLOT…

God I’m so sorry, what plot? (And how you can’t have your cake and eat it too)

This one DEEPLY impacts my opinion of the series.

BNHA doesn’t know what its plot is.

BNHA had really good set up! A lot of opportunities of ways to push the plot along and explore a big and open world. There seemed to be a really good thread to focus on up through the Kamino arc, combining school concerns with real life threats, and then….. and then…….

It’s almost comical how BNHA sniffed at some fearsome, fascinating villains at the beginning of the series (Stain, particularly, comes to mind) only to settle on… a whiny brat with no goal, Shigaraki, as the main antagonist.

And this COULD have been done in a way I would have loved! If the framing of the story was just that—"hey yeah Shiggy is a whiny brat whose trauma made him violent, and he’s too dumb to realize he is PURELY being groomed by AFO to turn him into AFO’s new body.” If the framing had said “yes, Shigaraki is in fact stupid and has no point—(and that makes him sympathetic as a groomed victim of AFO’s who never knew any better!)”

But instead Horikoshi is trying SO hard to make it seem like the League of Villains has a point.

What is their point?

I shouldn’t ask that rhetorically, because that’s inviting fans to message me with their 18-paragraph, 95% fanon, “fixing canon while thinking they’re explaining canon” explanations about why all the LoV characters’ goals make perfect sense. And, look, I’m sorry, it’s not there. It’s just not.

Toga’s whole point is “I wish it was easier for me to kill people.” Shigaraki’s whole point is “I’m angry, I think killing All Might will make everything better.” Twice’s point is “I’m lonely.” Dabi’s the only one with a real point (but I’m ALSO quite angry about that, more on that later.)

And again! I feel like this was so CLOSE to being good—these are all random riffraff who came together as followers of Stain’s ideology. It makes a LOT of sense to end up with ragtag misfits, all with their own wildly different interpretations of a high-profile criminal’s ideaology, and if the LoV were JUST unsuspecting pawns in AFO’s game, I would have sympathy for them! Them and Shigaraki!

But instead, Horikoshi tries over and over again to be like “no the LoV TOTALLY have a point. They say Hero Society is corrupt and it totally is!”

…Except Horikoshi forgot the part where he was supposed to make Hero Society corrupt…

And look, if Horikoshi wanted a Bright and Shiny, All Heroes Are Good And Shining happy little comic world, I’d respect that. If he wanted to do a The Boys-style “Heroes are the corrupt underbelly of a society that worships them”, I’d respect that. But he tried to do both at the same time, in a floundering bid to grasp onto a plot, and it does not work.

You end up with this completely incoherent narrative where, when you look around, all the heroes are good and shiny. And then Horikoshi just says “oh um, no it’s corrupt.” And then throws in like, one random side character who goes “oh yeah I was a hero controlled by the Bad Hero Agency to do like, murders!” and then she goes away forever and we don’t talk about it anymore. And then Hawks kills a member of the LoV—a criminal organization with a massive body count—and they try the whole “SEE. Heroes are JUST AS BAD as the villains!” (Dabi is in the background incinerating people to death.)

Which speaking of, if Horikoshi wanted to show Hero Society is corrupt, heY YOU DO REMEMBER YOUR NUMBER 1 HERO IS A CHILD-ABUSER AND WIFE-BEATER. HORIKOSHI DO YOU REMEMBER? DO YOU? “Ah gee how will I show Hero Society is corrupt?” Endeavor is right there! “Guess I’ll invent a new character who shows up for one arc who was a corrupted hero or something” ENDEAVOR IS RIGHT THERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I’m normal again.

Alright on to my next point.

FUCKING ENDEAVOR.

This part is going to be more on the subjective side because it’s just an arc and character handling I deeply hate. You can disagree with me or whatever but Endeavor stans I do not care why you like him.

HEY REMEMBER HOW THE (at the time) NUMBER 2 HERO BEAT HIS SON BLOODY SINCE THE TIME HE WAS 5 YEARS OLD IN ORDER TO TRAIN HIM TO BE STRONG ENOUGH TO SURPASS ALL MIGHT.

REMEMBER WHEN ENDEAVOR BEAT HIS WIFE SO MUCH SHE HAD A MENTAL BREAKDOWN AND POURED BOILING WATER ON HER SON’S FACE AND WAS SENT AWAY LEAVING HER CHILDREN SOLELY IN THE CARE OF THE MAN WHO RAMPANTLY ABUSED THEM.

REMEMBER WHEN HORIKOSHI MADE A CHARACTER SO *CARTOONISHLY* EVIL I WOULD TAKE MOVING ENTIRE MOUNTAINS TO REDEEM HIM?

Well he went through a wittle man-pain and he’s so sowwy :3. Do you fowgive him?

He got to become the Number 1 Hero but (gasp) it wasn’t everything he thought it would be so `(*>﹏<*)′ could you maybe be a wittle bit nicer to him?

Oh yeah and Endeavor’s big redemption moment? It’s when he almost dies fighting a high-powered Nomu terrorizing the city, or, as it’s known in the hero industry, FUCKING TUESDAY.

THAT WAS ALWAYS THE POINT. ENDEAVOR’S DAY JOB HAS ALWAYS BEEN RISKING LIFE AND LIMB TO PROTECT CIVILIANS. FIGHTING A HIGH POWERED BAD GUY IS *NOTHING NEW*. THAT WAS ALWAYS THE POINT. THAT SUCH A HEINOUS MONSTER WAS ALSO SOCIETY’S PROTECTOR.

But he got a wittle banged up in the fight so now his family has to be a wittle nicer to him. He has a scar now (*/ω＼*)

And at that point, Endeavor was Horikoshi’s new favorite character so he just had to feel a little guilty and then it was all good. He’s good. We’re all good with him.

And it would be one thing if Shouto was joining his father’s agency JUST for the stepping stone opportunity. I liked that during the Tournament Arc! When he tells Endeavor he just, in the moment, completely forgot about him. I loved that!! Disown your father and just USE him for your own career escalation, YES, use him and give him none of your love attention or honor I liked that a lot!

But instead it’s turned into actual forgiveness. And this is lauded as good.

Now, THE DABI REVEAL ARC.

The start of this arc was great. I loved the dramatc reveal. I loved Dabi blasting Endeavor’s dirty domestic-abuse laundry over the airwaves to the entire public.

SURE WOULD HAVE LIKED FOR ANY OF THAT TO MATTER. AT ALL. EVEN A LITTLE.

NOPE. The ONLY thing this does is spur the entire Todoroki family to rally around Endeavor and tell him how much it’s all their own faults too that this happened.

Natsuo, who would have been fucking FIVE YEARS OLD, when the stuff with Touya went down, tells Endeavor that this is partially his own fault too because if only he (Natsuo) had fought back against his dad’s rages and made his dad talk things out with Touya, maybe none of this would have happened.

FUCKING WHAT.

(And again, the narrative is endorsing this. This is supposed to be a HEART-WARMING scene of a family coming together.)

Fuyumi and Rei go on to explain why they were also responsible for Endeavor’s abuse (I could a little bit understand Rei taking some responsibility, as their mother) but also Rei was married off to Endeavor in a quirk-wedding girl was basically trafficked. And this arc also decides to show “oh um actually their courship was good :3 Endeavor was good and caring, actually :3 he just got a wittle evil later on (are you mad at him?) <:3?”

Okay, okay okay I should stop I just canNOT be charitable about this arc.

At this point in the series, the Dabi=Touya confirmation and the resolution of the Todoroki family stuff was the only main thing I was still hanging around for. And the Endeavor redemption shattered my faith in the series so soundly I have only been idly following along since then without any of my heart in it.

In Conclusion

It’s a series that had so much heart and so much untapped potential at the beginning. And then Horikoshi reached the end of his thread of planning, and discovered he did not know how to actually follow through on character arcs or plot, and has pittered around aimlessly letting characters decay, plot threads unravel, and his best bet at this point has been to cling to a throughline which just does not make any sense.

Now we’re near the end and the characters are shells of their former selves and we’re going through the motions of every Big Shonen Wow tropey ending and, really, Deku can land the final ending punch on TomurAFO (or whatever we’re calling AFO!Shiggy) and I will feel just. Nothing about it. Because it won’t feel like any kind of conclusion for the characters I actually cared about at the beginning.

[seat-safety-switch]

Have you ever wondered just how much uncorked horsepower is all around you? We live in an era where cheap access to gross amounts of grunt is easily available. Even if you’re European, a quick perusal of the relevant periodicals reveals that the shittiest imaginable family hauler is making more horsepower than a full-ass sports car of the 1970s. And nobody uses it.

Sure, there’s the argument that we need all this pluck to keep our increasingly-heavy land barges moving in traffic. That doesn’t account for the fact that horsepower has been inflated much faster than even the ballooning curb weight of commuter cars. Nowadays, 300hp is table stakes for a pickup truck, and automakers are bolting on turbochargers to make up for the crippling weakness of having to reduce their four-bangers to sub-2L.

All of this only serves to infuriate me further. I’ll be stuck in traffic, trying to keep my 79-horsepower bullshit barge on the boil, and some nimrod in front of me with four hundred horsepower and an “M” badge on the back of their SUV is dragging the brakes through a corner. I need that momentum! And what’s worse: they won’t dollop out all those unused ponies. That poor engine must be so bored.

You may be asking yourself: wouldn’t I approve of a lowly-stressed engine? Exactly the opposite. Not only are today’s modern engines complicated, containing advanced engineering concepts like “important gaskets,” but they have a tendency to get all coked up when they’re not treated with the sharp backhand that they were designed for. As soon as I figure out how to bolt a modern engine into my car, and trick it into working by telling it sweet lies over the CAN-bus, I want to go fast. And if I do go fast, well, I’m gonna stretch those rods and rip that built-up carbon all across the cylinder walls. An Italian tuneup is only fun when the horse doesn’t immediately shit out its lungs and then slip in the blood.

All this is to say: got a car with more than 100hp? Do me a favour. Beat the shit out of it. Really whip it like you hate it. Slam your hand in the door a few times before you turn the key this morning (do they still have keys?) Hey, you never know. Maybe you’ll find out that you can make use of all that horsepower, and that weird smelly guy in the hairy-looking brown Volare will stop swearing at you. Maybe you’ll even get hooked, and become friends with him. He could use a good discount on engines.

[bigskydreaming]

Brain topic du jour is reflecting on the frankly weird as fuck pattern in Dick’s life where....he barely ever experiences losses one at a time. Most of the loss he’s experienced in his life is compounded by him losing multiple people and other elements of stability all at the exact same time.

1) When his parents died, in some continuities this is coupled with him losing his extended family of his aunt and cousin as well, with his uncle left comatose and on life support for years before he eventually died as well. Even in continuities without Richard, Karla and John, the loss of Dick’s parents is compounded by the additional loss of his circus family in the sense that he was taken away from them by the state and their constant reassuring presences in his life were no longer comforts he was able to rely on.

2) When Jason died, Dick didn’t just lose his brother, as the tragedy was compounded by Bruce’s reaction. I’ll never be able to gloss over the effects of NTT #55, personally, because I think its too key to Dick’s entire characterization and the specific direction his character took in the years that followed this, to like....disregard that Bruce however unintentionally, while lost in his own grief, added to Dick’s own sense of loss for Jason in probably the worst way possible. As by kicking Dick out and telling him to leave his keys, Dick - having no way to know or guess that they’d ever reconcile, just like he never actually went back to the circus being a regular presence for him - to Dick, this was in essence the equivalent of his childhood tragedy all over again. Losing not just one family member, but his whole family in one sweep, and all the comforts and stability offered by a home he was forced to leave. Even Dick’s contact with Alfred was minimal for awhile, because why would the guy who basically JUST saw history repeat itself and was like, well I know how THIS tends to play out.....why would he think that if Alfred felt forced to actually choose between his loyalties to Bruce and Dick respectively, that Alfred would pick Dick over the man he’d known and raised from childhood himself?

3) Titans Hunt. I know I harp on this one a lot, but you can’t deny that it fits the pattern. Dick didn’t just lose one friend and teammate.....he lost Joey, he lost a good four or five lesser known Titans who nevertheless were people he viewed as directly HIS responsibility to keep safe. With these tragedies compounded by the fact that though comics played out a lot more slowburn and extended stories over years back then, like.....the aftermath of Titans Hunt was still everpresent and directly died into Dick’s reactions and emotions during the Mirage storyline and everything that happened with the failed wedding and his breakup with Kory AND the fact that he was literally forced off the team he’d basically founded, by the government agency that took over the team and appointed Roy as its leader in his stead.

3) Graduation Day. The second time the Titans disbanded it was again not due to a singular loss, because Dick didn’t just lose Donna at this point, but also Lilith died in the exact same story and though Lilith is criminally underused, like, she’s also one of Dick’s oldest friends. She was literally the first Titan to join after the original five. This then led into the Outsiders era, where Dick was shown to still be reeling from the losses of this story for an extended period of time, and in a fun parallel to the Titans Hunt aftermath, Dick was also ousted from his leadership of THIS team by essentially a vote of no confidence by his teammates (and uh, Bruce too, literally).

4) The Blockbuster arc. Where Dick’s emotional state was due to a continued string of multiple losses. He lost his apartment building and almost every one of the neighbors he’d built a community out of, as we’d been shown him actively involving himself in their lives and vice versa for YEARS before this point. Then he lost his circus, his childhood home, burned to the ground and with dozens of deaths - both spectators and actual performers Dick had known and loved as a child. Then he lost his relationship with Barbara, his sense of self-security and autonomy to Tarantula, he lost another teen vigilante who died in his colors, the mantle HE’D created, when Stephanie was believed dead in War Games, and it all culminated in losing the city he’d invested himself in as his CHOSEN home, the place he dedicated himself to protecting, when Chemo blew it up.

Oh just for the record - my nonexistent passport to the magical kingdom of Narnia for a fic that raises the point when bringing up Tim’s losses in the Red Robin era, that like.....ALL of the above happened at literally the EXACT SAME TIME as all Tim’s referenced losses occurred. Obviously Steph meant more to Tim than Dick on a personal level, but I also included her largely as an anchor point to the timeline, to show how that death, and not long after that Jack Drake’s and then Superboy’s.... occurred right smack in the middle of one of the absolute WORST periods of Dick’s life. To be clear, I don’t intend this to suggest that no actually, Dick had it harder than Tim - nah. 

No thank you. Hard pass. I hate that sort of thing even in support of my own faves over other characters. No, instead the thing I’d love to see explored more is just in light of the SPECIFIC angle fics take here - that Dick’s actions while Bruce was lost in time showed an obliviousness to everything Tim had lost lately - for literally ANYONE to bring up or introduce into the timeline here an awareness of everything Dick had lost AT THE EXACT SAME TIME PERIOD. To establish that actually, Dick didn’t just ‘not understand what it was like’ - rather, its more accurate to say that nobody in universe around this time ever shows an awareness of Dick’s own losses and says oh wait, that doesn’t track then. 

Because obviously, with this stuff put in proper perspective, Dick understands VERY VERY WELL the exact thing we’re accusing him of not understanding by being oblivious to Tim’s losses that he’s not actually oblivious to because he tries to talk to Tim about them all the time, while meanwhile its everyone else who has absolutely mum to say about the fact that Dick’s emotional state is compromised to hell and back at this point, not JUST because of losing Bruce, but also because *gestures wildly* literally ALL OF THE ABOVE in the exact same time frame Tim’s extended losses happened in.

And okay I am going to indulge in slight tiny itty bitty pettiness and point out my ire that so many fics set during this time tend to recite listicles of Tim’s losses, with Steph, Kon and Jack Drake at the very top of said list....while paying no attention whatsoever to the fact that STEPH WAS LITERALLY BACK BY THE TIME THE RED ROBIN SERIES HAPPENED. She’s LITERALLY a person Dick sends to check up on Tim after Tim turns Dick away when he tries himself. How are you gonna stress the impact Steph’s loss has on Tim when you’re not even acknowledging STEPH’S RIGHT HERE IN THE EXACT SPECIFIC CANON STORY YOU’RE CITING??? I just. afhioskhflafhlafhklfahlfa. 

And not to put too fine a point on it, but you know who ELSE was also back at the same time? CONNOR. Superboy LITERALLY was already back to life by the time the Red Robin series even began. Like, the issue where a resurrected Kon and Cassie (Wonder Girl) have a heart to heart about the fact that Tim and Cassie ‘connected’ during his absence and Connor stresses that this doesn’t bother him or make him feel negatively towards either of them at all, because hello, he was literally dead at the time, why would he mind that two of the people he loves most in the world sought comfort in each other? Yeah, that issue? Literally came out BEFORE Tim even became Red Robin.

I MEAN. I’m just saying, when people constantly take shots at Dick’s choices during this period because of how much Tim had lost before Bruce already, in order to shift focus away from the fact that Dick lost Bruce every bit as much as Tim did......and you repeatedly emphasize the SAME three names as the focal point of Tim’s losses while paying no acknowledgment whatsoever to everything Dick lost at the exact same time Tim lost these three.....it quickly becomes kiiiiiiinda relevant in my opinion THAT TWO OF THE THREE NAMES CONSTANTLY MENTIONED AS BEING TIM’S LOSSES ARE NO LONGER EVEN LOST BY THE TIME THE SUBJECT COMES UP. Again, I’m just saying! Pettily, mind you! I am aware of the pettiness, I just beg awareness of like *again gesticulates wildly at all of the above* ALL THAT!

LOL.

But I digress.

5) When Bruce was believed dead while he was lost in the timestream. Again, Dick didn’t just lose the father who had been the only parent in his life for almost TWICE as long as his first parents......this was coupled with the loss of numerous other sources of stability in Dick’s life. There’s the matter of his personal sense of identity and self-expression....Dick FOUGHT against becoming Batman, trying to handle Gotham in Bruce’s absence as Nightwing for as long as he could, because he knew being Batman was very much NOT going to be good for him. He put so much of himself into building his identity as Nightwing, establishing himself in that role, that self-image, that yes, I maintain it was an actual LOSS for Dick, to feel like he had no choice but to give that up and everything it meant to him and his own life, in order to essentially live Bruce’s life for him in his absence. 

Because it wasn’t just being Batman that Dick was struggling with at this time....he also had to act as the patriarch to the Wayne family, essentially raise Bruce’s ten year old son, step into Bruce’s old role in Wayne Enterprises, all while getting no acknowledgment for any of this, for literally LIVING his father’s life instead of the life Dick had worked so hard to build for HIMSELF....because of course Dick’s actions and struggles couldn’t even be advertised beyond the family and close friends, because the whole point of him doing all this was so that nobody else even realized that Bruce wasn’t really there anymore. Dick didn’t just assume Bruce’s responsibilities. Dick assumed Bruce’s life, so thoroughly that most people didn’t even put together that Bruce was ‘dead,’ between Dick handling Bruce’s actual roles and responsibilities while Hush made public appearances as him. 

Like, when you’re living someone else’s life so completely that nobody can tell they’re even gone....how on earth does that leave any time or space for you to have ANY kind of life of your OWN, y’know? Not to mention the fact that like in so many times previously....all this meant that Dick couldn’t even afford to let his grief for his own losses show, because he wasn’t supposed to be grieving any losses in the first place, that was the whole point of the con!

Additionally, couple this with the fact that throughout this time period, Dick didn’t have Tim to lean on at all, because it was never that Dick kicked Tim out or neglected him or didn’t care....he’d actively stressed how much he needed Tim, because the partner Tim was convinced Dick chose ‘over’ him - Dick was the first one to admit back then that he DIDN’T trust Damian yet, couldn’t afford to, because he was all too aware that Damian didn’t give a fuck about him yet and couldn’t be guaranteed to step in to have Dick’s back - because that required mutual trust that Dick literally just hadn’t had time to build yet. And add to THAT the fact that during this time, Jason was actively antagonizing the family and Dick in particular at every turn, trying to bring them all down and basically write over what all of them saw as Bruce’s legacy with Jason’s own version of what he thought that should look like.

Also also, take into account that unlike how often we see fanon depict Dick as just too stubborn or proud to ask for help, there’s the fact that he actually had very few avenues TO ask for help! As already established, he DID ask Tim for help. Not like Jason was an option at this time, and Dick’s friends weren’t actually just sitting waiting in the wings and groaning about the fact that Dick was trying to do all of this solo....nah, they kinda had their own problems, which Dick was all too aware of?

Like the fact that in the wake of Final Crisis, it wasn’t just Bruce that was believed lost. Many other key Leaguers like Martian Manhunter were dead or lost, with others struggling to fill the gaps left in their absence. Cry For Justice happened right after Final Crisis too....that story where Lian was murdered? So it wasn’t like Dick was remotely going to try leaning on Roy when Roy had just lost his freaking DAUGHTER and very much wasn’t handling it well (and not to overshadow Roy’s loss at ALL, but please let’s not act like Dick - who had literally been the person to put a baby Lian in Roy’s arms for the first time and had known that girl for pretty much her entire life - like, it shouldn’t be used to detract from Roy’s loss at all, but it shouldn’t have to, to just acknowledge that Lian’s loss right at this exact time was painful as fuck to Dick, who’d loved his niece like crazy.)

The pattern of compounding, concurrent losses in Dick’s life. I’m just saying. Its there.

And it extends into the New 52 as well, where Forever Evil came right on the heels of Dick losing his circus in THIS continuity to the Joker, just as a way to hurt him in Death of A Family. And with the aftermath of Forever Evil and Dick’s own literal death, being like....the complete loss of Dick’s entire life, even though he was revived quickly. That didn’t mean he got to live HIS life though, since Dick Grayson was believed dead and he was told had to remain so, so its like fuck whatever he actually wanted to do as he went about on the Spyral mission aka something that pinched his own sense of morality and personal agenda at every turn and was kinda the last thing a therapist would recommend for a trauma recovery period, lol. And like, for all the focus that was paid to how Dick’s family were hurt because they believed they’d lost him when he was actually alive, let’s not forget that for all intents and purposes, Dick DID lose his family in the wake of his resurrection because he was flat out told over and over that due to what ‘he’d LET happen to him’ he was an ACTIVE danger to them, and thus wasn’t allowed by Bruce to contact any of them or lean on them to any degree, until Bruce got amnesia and stopped blocking Dick’s pleas to return home by just not being there to pick up the secret phone line at all. 

(And omg, the obliviousness that just EMANATES off the hot takes that Dick had a ‘choice’ in all this and he still CHOSE to do what Bruce told him....like. LOLOL, stop being pissy about me bringing up the term abuse apologism when its literal victim blaming to paint the guy who had to be beaten into ‘agreeing’ to the Spyral mission in the immediate wake of the trauma of DYING, all while his father vocally blamed him for his own suffering and the ‘threat’ he now posed to his family, keying directly into the guilt complex Bruce knows damn well is at the core of most of Dick’s motivations.....fucking please. There’s no choice in all that. That’s active emotional, mental and physical abuse aimed at directly manipulating Dick’s actions, delivered by the guy who knows Dick best in the world and whose approval - particularly when Dick is at absolute rock bottom aka Current Location - matters more to Dick than just about anything because his sense of self-worth has more in common with dog shit than actual dog shit does. Or something. Idk. That analogy got away from me. But like. You get it.)

BUT. I. DIE. GRESS. (I guess).

Aaaaaaanyway, so yeah! That repeating pattern throughout Dick’s life of ‘loss? What loss (singular)? My losses only come in groups, lolol, fuuuuuun’ - mmmm. Yeah. So that’s what’s on MY brain right now. Thoughts?

[storiesforallfandoms]

the wrong time to flirt ~ pete davidson

word count: 1266

request?: yes!

“Can you write a Pete Davidson fluff. A medical intern goes to SNL and Pete sees her right away and takes her one a date.”

description: with new restrictions in place due to an ongoing pandemic comes the need for medical assistance on set, including a pretty medical intern that catches his attention

pairing: pete davidson x female!reader

warnings: swearing, mentions of the current pandemic

masterlist

Pete was beyond excited to get back to work on SNL. Besides his Netflix special being released, the lockdown was the longest and most boring time of his life. He was itching to get back to work, and back to some semblance of normalcy.

Of course, with working during a pandemic came some new safety protocols. When not on set or filming, the actors were to keep a mask on, as were the crewmates at all times. If anyone had even one symptom they were forbidden from coming in, and everyone was made to take a test for the virus once a week.

It was a tiring process, and Pete had o admit that it was taking the fun out of going to work.

Luckily for him, on one particular day, he was paired with a new medical intern for his daily medical run through. She couldn’t be much older than him, if she was even close to his age at all, and she was absolutely gorgeous even with her mask on.

“Wow,” he blurted as he approached her. She raised an eyebrow at him and Pete could see her eyes crinkle from a smirk. “Sorry, I meant to say hello, I haven’t seen you before.

“Oh yeah, that sounds so close to what you actually said,” she teased. “I’m the new intern. Today is my first day going through the pandemic guidelines on my own.”

“Well, it’s my lucky day then.”

She looked up at him through her eyelashes before looking back down at the clipboard in her hands. “Name?”

Pete was shocked. “Seriously?”

She looked back up at him, expectantly. “Name?”

He sighed and responded, “Pete Davidson.”

“And your role on the show?”

“Seriously?!”

Pete could see her smile through her mask and her shoulders shake as she giggled. “Okay, okay. The usual questions then: have you been anywhere with an influx of cases? Have you been to any parties or large gatherings? Have you been in contact with anyone who has tested positive?”

“No, no, and I’d surely hope not.”

She made notes on her clipboard before placing it aside and standing from her chair. She motioned for Pete to sit. “Pull your mask down to uncover your nose and tilt your head back slightly.”

Pete mentally groaned. He had totally forgotten it was testing day.

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” he joked as he followed her instructions.

The intern raised an eyebrow at him as she pulled on a pair of gloves. “You really think now is a good time to flirt? When I’m about to shove a cotton swab so far up your nose it’s essentially tickling your brain?”

“Not my best idea,” Pete admitted out loud. “But I’ll say anything to relieve the stress I’m feeling right now.”

She took the testing swab in her hand and helped Pete to gently tilt his head back. Even with the glove on, Pete could tell her hands were soft and tender. A small thing, but it was enough to make him feel more comfortable with the situation.

He looked up at her and, for a brief moment, their eyes met. Her hand paused, the swab just inches away from his nose, before she looked back down at her hands again. “We probably shouldn’t be gazing into one another’s eyes when I’m trying to test you.”

Pete sighed and braced himself.

The testing took all of five seconds, but every time he had to do it it felt like years. He winced as she took the swab away and put it in a bag marked with his name on it.

“There you go,” she said, taking her gloves off and throwing them into a nearby garbage. “You are, potentially, virus free. For now anyways. We’ll see tomorrow what your test results say.”

“That’s reassuring,” Pete muttered as he stood from the chair. “Hey, you never told me your name by the way.”

“My name isn’t relevant,” she responded, focusing on sanitizing her hands and cleaning the her work station.

“Of course it is. Obviously I’ll be seeing you every time I come into work, we’ve basically gotten so close already, and I need to know your name if I’m gonna take you out on a date.”

The amused look on the intern’s face returned as she looked up at Pete. “You’re really trying with this, huh?”

“I’m nothing if not persistent.”

She sighed and reached up to adjust his mask so it was covering his nose and mouth again, then sanitized her hands again.

“There’s a few things wrong with your persistence right now, though. For one, you only just me. You barley know me, you don’t even know what I look like under this mask. What if I take this off and I’m absolutely hideous?”

“More of a reason for us to go out on a date. It’ll mean you’re not way out of my league then.”

She tried to hold back her chuckle at this, but also failed. “And two, we’re in a pandemic right now. Dating is not a good idea right now. It’s all sorts of risky, especially with someone who is in the medical field.”

“You say that as if doctors and nurses aren’t the safest people right now,” Pete pointed out. “I’m not going to actually be a bother about this. If you don’t want to, that’s okay. I understand your concerns. But if you ever do change your mind, you will be seeing me on a weekly basis. You can tell me at any time.”

Despite wanting to ask her once more, Pete knew it was best to leave her be. He went on to set to get ready for the night, but his mind constantly drifted towards the beautiful intern.

~~~~~~

The familiar applause and music at the end of the night was always a pleasant rush for Pete. A congratulations on a job well done, that used to lead to a massive after party that none of them would remember in the morning. But now, with the pandemic, it led to everyone putting their masks back on and going their separate ways.

While it was still okay to do so, Pete hugged some of his co-stars before putting his mask on to return to his dressing room. As he got there, he noticed a figure leaning against his dressing room door, and the closer he got he realized it was the intern. This time, surprisingly, without a mask.

“Great show,” she said as she approached. “They let me sit in the audience and watch.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed,” he told her. “Are you visiting everyone to congratulate them on a good show?”

“No,” she said. “My name is (Y/N), by the way.”

This also shocked Pete. “It’s nice to officially meet you, (Y/N). Is knowing your name a good sign for me?”

(Y/N) smiled. As he predicted, she was gorgeous even without the mask on.

“It is,” she confirmed. “Tomorrow I’ll be getting the results to your test and, should they come back negative...maybe we could attempt to have a stay at home date.”

Pete returned her bright smile. “Yeah. You know what? That’d be really nice.”

(Y/N) nodded, looking almost relieved at his response. “Okay...okay, great. I’ll call you the minute I get your results.”

“You better. I’ll be anxiously waiting.”

She smiled at him again before putting her mask back on and making her way down the hallway. Pete watched her go until he couldn’t see her anymore, then celebrated briefly to himself.

[writefightandflightclub]

Disarming (Santi x fem!reader)

Summary: you and Santi - good friends- are Best Man and Maid of Honour at Frankie’s wedding, and guess what? There’s only one bed!

What is this? This is 5/10 one-shots/blurbs for my “friends to lovers” event. The prompt is “We can share a room, right? It’s only for a weekend”, requested by @woakiees​. Another double trope extravaganza! Hadley, I’m so pleased you suggested Santi for this one, as he immediately came to mind when I was writing this prompt :D Thank you so much for requesting! <3

If you’d like to  read/keep track of the other fics, I’m keeping an up-to-date friends to lovers list in my pinned post.

Author’s note: Apparently I get carried away EVERY time I write Santi. WHY AM I LIKE THIS?! :-/

Word count: 7.5k. I’M SO SORRY. PLEASE FORGIVE ME.

Rating: 18+ ONLY (minors out, please, do not read or interact)

Warnings: it gets angsty in the middle. Reader has nightmare- comfort offered. Mentions of reader being “hurt” in the past but vague and unspecified. They have a fight. One or two alcohol mentions- no actual consumption. Food mention. Swearing. Steam leading into smut but not explicit- mentions of masturbation, erections, making-out, one brief allusion to choking kink. Let me know if I missed anything.

Tagging: @isvvc-pvscvl​ @casifer-is-king​ (loads of the tags aren’t working :-/)

GIF: @nathan-bateman​

From the first moment you met Santi, you had simply fallen into step with him. It was effortless, and so, as soon as you found yourself by his side, you stayed there. What’s more, that’s exactly where he wanted you to be.

Despite the man’s hard, no-nonsense edge -which you also appreciated- he was warm and charming. It was easy to connect with him, in a way it hadn’t often been for you. For him too - or so the boys told you - the way you surpassed his defences was a rare thing. It shouldn’t have worked, perhaps. Usually, he was slow to trust and you were quick to love, but on this occasion none of that seemed to apply, the two of you tumbling squarely into a fast-friendship; one deeper and more intense, perhaps, than its duration might suggest. Still, despite the boys’ inferences that you would quickly become an item, and Santi’s continual attempts to blur the lines between this and… something more, “friends” is what you have remained.

You had felt it immediately with him. Something different. You simply... flowed. You fit. It was immediately evident, even on that first night, in the way you orbited around one another, setting up an impromptu beer pong of all things. You moved together with a fluidity and a precision that seems almost tactical- as though you too had run countless manoeuvres in the field with him. You could read him and understand him as though you had drilled his habits and patterns and idiosyncrasies over and over; learning him. However, he was never that much effort - the two of you came naturally to each other, little learning required. You knew each other with your gut.

At that fateful party, when you each escaped to the back porch steps for some air at a serendipitous moment, the conversation had immediately flowed, and not only as a result of his natural, disarming charm. The silence even came easily rightaway – a comfortable thing, the space between you stuffed with contentment, rather than the feeling of a gaping vacuum, needlessly filled. It turned out his best friend was dating yours (the pair to be wed this very weekend) but that almost seemed like the cherry on top, rather than the thing bringing you to each other.

Safe to say, what was true then is true now. You get on so well. You find him fun and easy and generous and you love the man dearly.

…Most of the time.

Those other times, though? Santiago “Pope” Garcia can be a pain in your ass. But that’s another reason you love him, you guess. Keeps things interesting.

“Please don’t kill me,” Santi says sheepishly, and it’s obvious to you he’s laying on the charm - actively trying to be as disarming as possible as he saunters over from the reception desk. For a moment, despite all his training, he looks as though he believes you could pull it off, too.

Your annoyance is already prepped; locked and loaded, as he pads squarely towards the banquette where you are sat - amidst a sea of luggage. You’ve been observing his attempts to charm the desk clerk with interest (his efforts, you surmise, at least partially effectual), and judging from the slight level of desperation in his efforts, you can already tell he fucked up somehow.

“What did you do?” you say impatiently, even as a smile twitches at the corner of your lips.

“I booked all the rooms we needed, for all of the wedding guests, right? 13 rooms here, and all 10 at the hotel across town. 4 more in guesthouses,” he recaps. “Got Frankie and Mila a great deal too, remember?”

You remember. And yet, you fold your arms across your chest, looking up at him incredulously. Okay then. Rolling with your attitude, the man takes a different tack. He sits next to you. Smiles. Leans in. Pats your thigh. He’s trying to disarm you too, you realise. It’s going to take more than that - you’re not some flimsy desk clerk who will form a puddle and bat your eyes at the first sign of his charm.

“Well, funny story. I may have forgotten to book our rooms,” he blurts.

Oh? Oh, great. Yeah. This is a grand fuck-up. The whole damn town is booked-out. It’s a small town. No longer amused, your nostrils flare in annoyance as you tug in a slow breath, schooling your tone just a little before you speak. “You what?” Okay, you didn’t manage to school it all that much.

“Look, I already sort of fixed it,” he smooths. That explains the flirting with the clerk. Although, you think, glancing back at her. She’s pretty. That partially explains the flirting with the clerk, then, you mentally correct. “There’s just one, teeny-tiny issue.”

You raise your eyebrows and widen your eyes. Well?

“We’re gonna have to share a room.”

You blink at him a few times, in surprise. Well, it’s not ideal. For a number of reasons. But you can think of worse things, truth be told. And he’s not wrong. It is a solution. Still, on his reveal, a succession of emotions and micro-assessments are bounced back and forth between your eyes and his, until you land on resigned annoyance, exhaling a long sigh. That is, until Frankie appears in the lobby, swanning in like he’s walking on air. He probably is, given that he’s getting married this weekend. His face splits with a smile so wide you reckon it should be painful to maintain, and you stand to greet him as he heads over.

You’re glad he’s happy. It means that you and Santi, as Maid of Honour and Best man, respectively, are doing a fantastic job of deflecting all of the stress away from the happy couple. Indeed, that assessment certainly feels true – you do feel stressed. Still, the two of you immediately paint your faces with masking smiles; though, in fairness, it’s hard not to smile while looking at Frankie – his obvious joy is infectious.

Frankie wraps you both in a hug, then rubs his palms together like an excited kid. “I don’t have much time. Just gonna say a quick hello to my parents. Apparently, my mom’s already started crying? Can you two sort some extra tissues for the ceremony or something? Oh, and is everything okay with the rooms?”

“With this guy? Are you kidding?”, you say before you think, throwing your thumb towards Santi. Immediately, his eyes submit a powerful plea to you to keep schtum- it is written all over his face that he doesn’t want to let Frankie down. Not even in the smallest of ways.

Frankie would find his little error funny, probably. But he can find it funny after the ceremony. “Everything is A-OK! This guy? He has every single detail taken care of.”

Frankie grins, his eyes narrowing proudly at Santi as he slaps him on the back, laying profuse thanks on the two of you; then, he floats away again, as if on a cloud. Santi’s brown eyes are big with gratitude when you look at him again, and you can’t help but weaken. You’ll admit, it’s really not that bad of a fuck-up. Besides, you’re tired. Between the drive out here, the wedding rehearsal, and a never-ending list of errands, the day has been long. You just want to get to the room, and maybe even clock a snooze before the rehearsal dinner tonight.

“Fine,” you agree, albeit through gritted teeth. “We can share a damn room.”

Santi looks visibly relieved, and squeezes your shoulder in thanks. You’d even been nice enough not to bite his head off. “Yeah. We can share a room, right? It’s only for a weekend.” Suddenly, he doesn’t sound quite as certain.

“Sure. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?” you smile nervously.  

He returns your smile and swivels, heading back towards the desk.

“Oh, wait!” you call after him. “Is it a double or a twin?” you ask in horror. Sharing a room is one thing, but sharing a bed?

He turns, looking over his shoulder. “Doesn’t matter!”, he winks. “Whatever it is, we’re gonna have to take it.”

Oh. Oh dear.

You’re inclined to agree -you don’t have many options- but when you catch yourself stealing a glance at the man’s shapely butt as he walks back to the desk, you begin to chew your bottom-lip nervously.

Right. Ha.

What could possibly go wrong?

**********************

It turns out, sharing a room with Santi is resoundingly not bad at all. In fact, at first, it’s as easy as everything else is with him - even between your hurried preparations for the evening, unpacking, shuttling items to the relevant members of the wedding party, and calling down to reception several times to check the logistics for the rehearsal dinner. Even getting dressed, you find an easy flow as you each flit in and out of the bathroom, dancing around each other with ease and only a hint of friendly bickering.

Santi’s respectful too- always knocking and announcing himself before entering a space, and averting his gaze when he needs to, given that you’re rushing around and undressing. You even manage to ignore the fact there’s only one bed for the longest time, parking that specific panic for later. Even then, he has already made reception send up extra pillows and blankets, forming a barricade in the middle of the bed so you two can comfortably separate.

Thankfully, you are so busy that the idea of sharing a bed with Santi doesn’t even cross your mind until you’re finally ready, dressed in your finery. When you step out of the bathroom, Santi -sat on the edge of said bed- stands up, thrusting his hands into his suit trousers as he takes the sight of you in, pulling the material taut -in a rather pleasing way- across his hips and thighs. He ends up slightly slack-jawed for a moment as his eyes trail over you, brewing with a gentle, self-conscious heat. “Fuck,” he says softly, his voice gruff. “You look…” a little gulp trails down his throat as you give him a little twirl. “…hot”, he says, his eyebrow ticking up on the last beat.

“Wait until you see my bridesmaid dress,” you smile, and he returns it easily, those gorgeous creases appearing around his eyes.

Unconsciously, you lick your lips. You can’t help but wonder, vaguely, what it would be like to push him down on to the mattress. Maybe straddle him. Fuck, you should have known this would be a bad idea. A heat rising in your face at that thought of that, you distract yourself by lifting his suit jacket from the back of the chair, holding it out for him as he slips it on to his shoulders, and feeling the luxurious texture of it beneath your fingers.

It’s a grey suit, tailored, and it hugs him in all the right places. The cool colour is perfect against his warm-toned brown skin, and brings out the salt in his salt-and-pepper curls, and in the rough rasp of grey flecked through his stubble.

You try desperately not to notice how good he looks, but this may be your greatest challenge yet.

“Come on,” you encourage, nodding towards the door. “We better head down.”

“Yeah,” he agrees, half-heartedly. The way his eyes are subtly roving over you, though, he looks like he has something entirely different in mind for dinner.

“You’re probably going to spend all night being chased by the single bridesmaids,” you add casually as you collect your purse, and apply a final dab of lipstick in front of the mirror. You’ve already clocked a few members of the wedding party eyeing him up, and you don’t exactly blame them for being thirsty. Besides, Santi is a huge flirt; so perhaps he’ll be the one doing the chasing. You wouldn’t be surprised if he ended the night with his tongue thrust deep in someone’s throat, which -you assume- is typical Santi fashion.

“Isn’t it traditional, anyway,” he smirks cheekily, applying a splash of cologne, “for the Best Man to hook-up with one of the bridesmaids?”

Lord, does he have to smell so… edible.

“Got news for you, man. You fucked up. You can’t exactly bring a girl back to your room now, can you?!” you tease, nodding back towards your shared bed, a wall of pillows already arranged down the middle. You mean it to come out in good-humour, but you can’t scrub the hint of jealousy from your tone entirely.

You feel so silly for being jealous of whomever he may hook-up with. After all, Santi is always the one testing the boundaries of friendship with you. It’s not like he’s ever made a secret of the fact he’s attracted to you- and you are the one here will a firm line in the sand. A line you simply won’t cross with him. Can’t cross. You want to - of course you do, but after being hurt in the past, you have simply built-up far too many defences; or, more accurately, just the right amount of defences, you think, to protect you. So, no matter how disarming the man is, you simply have to keep your guard up; because if he breached your walls, you know everything else would come tumbling so easily down.

You had fallen so easily into friendship with him, and you are certain that you would fall just as recklessly in love with him.

You’re not ready for that.

You can’t take being hurt again. Besides; Santi? He’s an incredible friend. He’s tenaciously loyal and dedicated to his squad. But when it comes to love, and sex, you doubt whether serious is even his thing - and you’re too afraid to ask.

“You ready to do this?” he asks, with a wink.

“Yep,” you nod. “Let’s roll,” and with that, you turn, heading for the hallway.

“Princesa- that dress really highlights your ass,” he praises as he tags along behind you.

“Thank you, it’s true,” you smile devilishly, already beginning to let your guard down, just a little. He’s simply so disarming. “Speaking of, Garcia – did you get your trousers a size too small on purpose?”

“Oh, you noticed?” he retorts, smugly, guiding you through the door with a hand on the small of your back.

Okay. Sometimes you flirt back. After all – look at him.

Especially in that damn suit.

***********************************

The rehearsal dinner goes swell. Frankie and Mila are a picture-perfect, loved-up couple, and they grin their way through the evening as if they slept with coat hangers in their mouths. The speeches are well-received, including Will’s, thus setting a high bar for you and Santi tomorrow. (You may be biased, but Santi’s is ten times funnier, and it’s going to kill, in your opinion.) There are no dramas through the evening- logistical or familial, and thanks to you and Santi overseeing everything with a military precision, it looks as though -so far- it is shaping up to be the perfect wedding weekend.

Finally, once your duties are over for the night, you are able to let your hair down a little, so to speak, and enjoy the food and company on offer. Still, with a big day ahead tomorrow, things wind down relatively early, and -having lost track of Santi at some point- you find yourself back at the shared room a little while before him. You usually burn out more quickly than he does in social situations, but even taking that into consideration, you begin to fret about where he has gotten to. With the way he was flirting his way through the party, though, it doesn’t take a genius to guess what (or who) might be keeping him up.

You try to sleep but you can’t, your mind going to the worst places, so, by the time Santi does return -softly cracking the door, and padding in with his shoes in his hands so as not to wake you- you have stewed in your own thoughts long enough to have become a little cranky. A little… green-eyed.

“Hey,” he greets in surprise when he enters, immediately noticing the soft lamp glow, and seeing you still sitting up in the bed, mindlessly watching the flicker of the tv on mute.

“Hey,” you return, your voice noticeably strained. “Have a fun time?” You find yourself wishing you weren’t sharing a room, then you wouldn’t have to know what he got up to.

“Yeah,” he replies softly, slipping off his jacket and laying it over the back of a chair. “Did you? How come you’re still up? Thought for sure you’d be wiped out by now.”

So, he did think of you, then?

“Couldn’t sleep,” you reply neutrally, fixing your eyes dead ahead as he begins to slip out of his trousers and shirt too, until he’s dressed in only his tight black boxers. Next, he takes off his watch and sets it at the bedside, and you notice that he smells of perfume. A cloying, floral scent that makes you feel a little sick.

“Just gonna have a quick shower and then I’ll slip in with you, okay?” he says, his voice slow and deep and muted, matching the soft light.

You still don’t look at him. You can’t.

“Do what you want. You usually do,” you bite, the words tasting bitter as soon as they have left your lips, and tears of regret pooling as your anger dissolves.

You don’t blame him if he was with someone – you really don’t. You’re simply angry at yourself; because you wish you could be that person, and you can’t for the life of you seem to find a way.

“Okay. What was that for?” he bristles, reacting defensively, turning towards you. And perhaps it’s because it’s late and he’s tired, or because certain demons feel safer coming out under the cover of darkness, but he doesn’t stop there. Especially when all he gets from you is a stony, pointed silence. “You know what? Actually, no. You don’t get to do this”, he hisses, and it is the first time you’ve ever heard him direct any genuine anger at you.

It doesn’t half sting.

“Do what?” you ask, but you already know the answer.

“You don’t get to be mad when I give my attention to someone who actually wants it,” his voice is hushed, but his words rattle through you as if he had yelled them. “I don’t have to explain myself to you. Guess what, I’m not yours.”

“That’s not fair”, you snap back, and then things are quickly escalating.

“Isn’t it?” he asks, rasping a hand over his stubble in distress. “I mean, come on. Shit. You know that I want more but I…” he exhales a disgruntled laugh. “You shoot me down, which is your prerogative, honestly, but you can’t have it both ways. You can’t knock me back all the time and then be pissed off when I look elsewhere.”

You meet his face, the planes of it shadowed and angled harshly with anger, suddenly so unfamiliar to you, and it causes your eyes to bloom with tears. You two look the opposite of Frankie and Mila; of a picture-perfect couple. But you’re not even a couple at all, are you?

You see him try. To blunt the emotion which is bubbling up. To soften. But he has uncorked something he now can’t put back in. “Fuck, I just wish that….” he pinches his lips together and shakes his head, planting his hands on his hips and looking at the floor. “If you don’t want me, just put me out of my fucking misery. Just say it. Just fucking tell me.”

Your heart shatters into a thousand pieces at the thought you make him miserable. At the way his voice breaks. At the way he thinks you don’t want him. Maybe you were wrong, thinking that you could be friends at all. Thinking that could be enough for him.

Your lower lip trembles, and your fingers clutch the edge of the blanket. “I… I can’t tell you that. I can’t tell you that I don’t want you, Santi.”

You can’t because it isn’t true. It could not be further from the truth, in fact.

He puffs out air, an exasperated sound, his hand raising up to tangle in his grizzled curls. Raising his voice a little more. “Let me guess. You can’t tell me the other thing either?”

“I.. I..” You try, but no words will come. You simply shake your head, swallowing a sob, your eyes almost brimming over.

He nods. He nods, his mouth slanted down. “Great. Got it,” he huffs.

You hate this. You hate how much you’re hurting him.

“Santi,” you breathe weakly, but it is too weak to blunt the force of his emotion. To halt his trajectory, and so, resigned, he turns towards the bathroom, grabbing-up a fresh white towel from the counter. Before he closes the door, he turns to you once more, now speaking softly, his eyes as sad as yours. “You know,” he says, his index finger sawing back-and-forth over the stubble at his chin. “For the record, I wasn’t with anyone else. I can’t even fucking think about anyone else but you. I was late back to the room because I couldn’t face it.” His voice becomes small and pained. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to just curl up next to you and act like I don’t care.” His eyebrow ticks up, and he adds, with a final flourish. “Guess I should have taken a lesson from you.”

Oh, how it stings, pain flowering in your chest like a bruise, but you hold yourself together until he’s out of sight. Then, when he’s gone, you immediately cave in on yourself, falling on to your side and screwing your eyes shut, clamping your hand over your mouth so that he can’t hear you crying as wet tears spill onto your pillow.

When he comes back into the room, after a long shower, you simply screw your eyes shut and pretend to be asleep. You hear him sigh heavily, and mumble something to himself under his breath, before dragging a few pillows and a spare blanket down on to the floor.

A few more silent tears roll over the bridge of your nose.

You guess you wouldn’t be sharing a bed with him after all.

***********************

You wake panicked in the night, sitting bolt upright in the bed. A cold wash of sweat over your skin chills you, even though you feel like you’re burning-up.

Immediately, you reach for him, for Santi, calling his name even as your fear strangles the sound in your throat. Your heart is thudding, and your breaths are sawing in and out of you, but your grasping hands find nothing to your side but pillows and blanket.

Unfortunately, you are used to this occurrence, and you quickly realise it was “only” a nightmare. Still, the feelings and images it conjured linger in your body, and around you in the shifting, seemingly fluid shadows of the room.

With a release of tension, you whimper, leaning forward and cradling your head in your trembling hands, and you try to ground yourself. To steady your breath and your heartbeat, like you’ve practiced. As you do so, the shadows to your left shift and change, and, even in the pitch-black you can feel him, a safe and warm presence, instantly travelling to your side, his weight dipping the mattress. His soothing, sandy voice filtering through the shadows and cutting back the tendrils of your nightmare like a Disney prince hacking through cursed vines.

You vaguely remember that he’s mad at you - but you can’t help it. Can’t help asking. “Hold me?” you plead, desperately afraid that he won’t.

Still, without questions or hesitation, you feel the wall of remaining pillows coming down, the defences around you quite literally being dismantled – a figurative wall between you shifting away along with it. He shushes you, and you focus on his voice, until he is close enough that the scent of him wraps around you, before his arms follow closely after.

You reach for him in return. You reach for him in every way possible.

“It’s just a nightmare,” he soothes. “I’m here, baby. I’ve got you,” and there is pain in his voice on your behalf, as if he tries to bear the burden of it for you.

“Closer,” you plead, and before you know it, he is shifting you on to your side, slotting his sturdy yet soft body around you, not caring that you feel clammy and hot against his bare skin. He simply loops his arms and draws your back, closer to his chest, becoming your big spoon.  

He calms you, hands enveloping yours and bundling them against your chest, his nose nuzzling into your hair, and his deep steady breaths slowing your breathing as you let his calm and his rhythms overcome you. He holds you, until the feelings pass, not caring how long it takes – and with any anger from before apparently forgotten.

This pain is all too familiar to him, you know. It something that Santi understands. It is your own and it is not the same as his, true, but you know it is familiar enough that he will feel the ache of it echoing in his own chest. You know that he is accustomed enough to bearing his own pain, that when yours is too heavy to carry, he will help you hold it for a while. And so, he holds you, while you are a tender thing, bruised and afraid, and he keeps you safe; with all your walls down, all of your defences collapsed, he becomes your fortress.

You never thought that letting yourself be so vulnerable could allow you to feel quite as safe as this.

As you lie together, Santi continues to usher soft reassurances into your ear, his words like charms and incantations to ward off the ghosts which haunt you. And, after a series of slow, stretched moments, you become more settled, and Santi feels you relax against him.

After a few moments more, he eventually whispers a small question into your hair. In the dark, the question feels safe to come out, perhaps.

“Do you always call for me when you…?” he trails off, thinking better of it. “I’m sorry- forget it, you don’t have to answer that.”

You don’t. You know you don’t. You don’t even truthfully know the answer. It’s likely that you do call for him, though how would you know, when you’re usually alone? But, there is something else you can tell him, while it is safe to come out in the dark. Something you want to tell him, before you build your walls all the way back up.

“Santi,” you begin, timidly, and his fingers skim softly up and down your arms, encouraging you to go on. “I-I’ve been hurt before. And, I want to be with you. I want to let you in but… I’m. I’m not ready. I’m trying so hard but I… I can’t.”

There is a long beat, and you realise he has held in a breath only when he releases it all at once, fanning hot across the back of your neck.

You are afraid. Afraid of what he might say, in response – what he might feel, but you think, maybe, it might be something like relief? And, Santi squeezes you, just a little tighter. A little closer. “Don’t worry about that now, okay?” he soothes, his voice feather soft. “Just… know one thing, okay, Princesa? Whenever you are ready? I’m waiting.”

This time your heart fills with a different emotion, all the spaces in it flooded with contentment, Santi’s words followed by a perfect, happy silence.

A soft smile blooms on your face.

It was not a confession of waiting impatiently, you understand, but an invitation to take your time to arrive at him. He’s not trying to bring down your defences at all, is he? He’s waiting for you to open the door, and invite him in. He’s waiting until you are ready. He simply needed to know that you are on your way, even if your footsteps are getting you there slowly.

For now, though, the thought of it is too much. More than you’re ready for.

So, you simply let him hold you.

To disarm you further.

To walk yourself a little closer toward where you want to be. With him; by his side.

****************************************

In the morning, you wake up tangled around each other, Santi’s arm wrapped securely around your back and your head settled on his chest. He is still snoring lightly – cutely - when you awake, and so, as the night prior comes flooding back to you, you hastily try to extricate yourself from him; even if his bare skin feels so good against yours that you never want to move. You’re apparently not so subtle- or he’s a helluva light-sleeper – as, just when you pull away, Santi wakes up, quickly rushing to prove his innocence.

“You had a nightmare,” he croaks, still trying to peel his eyes open. “You asked me to- “.

“-I know. I remember,” you reassure, sitting up in bed, the blankets tugged to your chest. Santi shuffles, opting to assume the same position on his own side, mirroring you, rubbing his eyes.

You’re still not sure whether to apologise to him or thank him. Or maybe even to wait for an apology from him? Christ. Maybe all of those things or none of them, who even knows? You mentally spin a wheel and land on a casual “Uh. Thank you, for…. You know.”

“Anytime,” he says, turning his head to the side and looking at you earnestly. As if your bickering -your jealousy and his outburst- is all but forgotten. What’s more, you know that he means it.

Admiringly, your eyes wander over him, enjoying a side of him you’ve never quite seen before. Apparently, he’s even more handsome in the morning, with an even thicker, darkened brush of stubble, his grizzled curls dishevelled, and his swooping eyelids still heavy from sleep. Combined, it gives him a sultry, bedroom look. Feeling an involuntary rush of heat in the pit of you, your gaze drops to his corded neck, where, given the special occasion, he has substituted his dog tags for a silver chain, drawing your gaze down over his smooth, brown chest.

Your skin now cooling in the conditioned air of the room, you long for his body heat again, recalling how it felt to be held by him and wishing you had lingered a little longer while you could. Even with your interrupted sleep last night, you have somehow woken feeling refreshed, as though you had slept unreasonably deeply in his arms, reaching a whole new level of contentment - as though you just fit together, perhaps. As though it comes naturally for you to be held by him, and for him to hold you.

There is a silence and it isn’t awkward exactly; more… pregnant, with possibilities. Possibilities you see brewing with a gentle heat in his eyes. So, tearing yourself abruptly away from that line of thought, you lift your phone up from the nightstand, and note that there isn’t long before your alarms sound anyway.

Operation Wedding Day is go.

That should be enough of a distraction for you, shouldn’t it?

“You ready for this, Best Man?” you ask him, with a gentle quirk of your lips.

“Sure. Are you ready, Maid of Honour?”

Ready. Are you ready?

Thoughts of last night swirl in your head.

Well – as Santi flashes you a tentative, disarming smile, with hooded eyes, you certainly feel like you’re getting there. Like soon you could be ready.

“Sure. Let’s get this show on the road.”

“Atta girl,” he encourages, folding his arms behind his head as you jump out of bed.

You suddenly don’t care that you’re in nothing but your underwear, as you stretch out your body and track towards the bathroom. “I’ll shower first?”

“We’re sharing a bed,” he teases. “Sure you don’t want to share a shower too?”

You scoff, flashing a mischievous smile right back at him. You’ve always had a soft spot for his flirting, but you feel like -after all that transpired last night- you truly see if for what it is now. You realise why it has never felt like he’s pressuring you - not once. He’s simply reminding you, that as soon as you call for him, he’ll be there. That he’s waiting, when you’re ready.

Reminding you, that as soon as your walls drop, he’ll be your fortress.

“I don’t think you’re gonna get quite that lucky this morning, Garcia.”

You do linger in the doorway, just a little longer than necessary though, so that he can get a better look at you. He’d never look without permission – he proved that yesterday, when you were in various states of disarray- but this time, sensing your invitation, his eyes graze over you slowly, keenly. So, when he strategically moves his hands from behind his head to hide the tenting covers, you don’t mind at all.

You smile devilishly as you slip into the bathroom, closing the door behind you. You’re not sure if he will… take care of himself out in the room – how could you know? But, feeling inspired, you certainly do so in the shower, and it’s a pretty great wake-up call before you face the wedding day.

Maybe sharing a room isn’t so bad. Maybe you could even get used to it.

*********************************************

Frankie and Mila get hitched without a hitch.

Santi goes to the ends of the earth to make sure that Frankie has the best day possible- and at some points, he goes even further than that. His speech was moving and flawless, and pretty fucking funny; even if you are a little (or a lot) biased. Not a dry eye in the house, just as you predicted.

The man adores Frankie with his whole heart, and you could barely hold back the glow of admiration as you listened to him, feeling like it might burst from your chest like a beam of gold sunlight. You felt it especially strongly every time his eyes met yours during the course of the speech, and you couldn’t help but smile yourself stupid each time he did so. And, of course, you were overjoyed to see your best friend have the day of her dreams, with the man of her dreams. If you do say so yourself, you think your speech was pretty killer too.

Suffice to say, you ate until your belly was full, loved until your heart hurt, laughed until your sides ached, and danced until your feet ached.

Tonight, unlike last night, you and Santi retire to your shared room at the same time, your arm linked into his, and your shoes carried in your hand to spare your sore feet – there’s a reason you never normally wear shoes like this. Without your heels though, you keep tripping over the hem of your dress almost every few paces, causing you to giggle and Santi to steady you with a warm, rich chuckle, sometimes throwing you an extra hand to assist you.  

You look over at him, furtively, as he recounts some of the more choice moments from the day, immensely enjoying the simple pleasure of hearing him talk and smile and laugh. Seeing him happy. Of course, enjoying how he looks too, you have to admit - even more handsome than he did yesterday (somehow) in midnight blue dress pants, and a white, crisp shirt, now tieless. He’s only grown sexier as the evening drew on too, now with a wide open-collar and rolled up sleeves to accommodate all of the dancing; or, at least, as much dancing as his knees could handle, until he’d simply opted to sit to the side and watch you boogie, his eyes apparently transfixed on you and only you - the advances of the other bridesmaids be damned.

There is something that hits different about the way he looked at you today. His admiration shining deeper than usual. Less like a casual lust, and more like something… serious. You’re not sure why you doubted it before, exactly. Why you have been so inordinately afraid that he might hurt you. You broadly figured him for a smash and dash type of man, which is fine, but you have every reason to believe that he wants more with you.

After all, Santi can be deeply and tenaciously loyal. He has dedicated himself to things deeply and unwaveringly several times over in his life. To his country, to his missions, to his morals, to his squad. And there’s something about the way he looked at you today, you think, that suggests he might dedicate himself to you with the same tenacity. Something far deeper than appreciating how you look in this bridesmaid dress (and oh boy do you look hot). It’s more like the way he looks at Frankie. A little different to that, obviously. But you’re realising he looks at you like he’d never let you down. Not even in the smallest of ways. Like he’d rather go to the ends of the earth -or beyond- than do that.

At least… you think so.

You are sure about one thing though. The way he looks at you? It’s thoroughly disarming.

And so, you arrive at your shared room, utterly wiped out from the day (and night), yet still somehow buzzing with an energy. A gentle suffusing heat under your skin as you watch Santi walk inside and kick off his shoes at the end of the bed, before turning back towards you.

You have entered a few paces behind him, after nearly tripping on your gown all over again by the door, but now, you are quite steady on your feet - aside from that slight, nervous tremble in your quaking legs as he looks at you like that. As Santi looks you up and down, eyes skimming over the contours of your dress and hence everywhere it hugs your figure. Evidently, he likes what he sees.

“Wow,” he breathes, his brown eyes shining as if he’s looking at you for the first time that day, even if his gaze has barely left you all night. “I know it’s the bride’s day, but you look fuckin’ smokin’, sweetie.”

“You think so?” you ask humbly, suddenly feeling unreasonably shy. Flustered even.

“Yeah. I think so,” he nods, positively certain. “Shit, you’re so beautiful.”

You look at him. You look at him in a way which suggests an answer in your eyes instead of a question. A clear intention in your body, instead of uncertainty. But he doesn’t push you. He doesn’t assume. He doesn’t make a move. Instead, his mouth tugs up into a lopsided smile, offering you a lazy flash of teeth, and he shoves his thumbs into his belt loops.

“Well, we’re officially off the clock now, so I’m calling it. Well done, Maid of Honour. Think we nailed it? Made a pretty damn good team?”

A smile lights your face. You did. You flowed. You fit. It was easy.

Fuck. It feels so easy. Why had you ever thought this would be hard?

You nibble on your lip, eyeing him with intention, and a hard swallow trails down his throat in response.

“Off the clock, hmm?” you say breathily. “No more titles or duties? Huh. That’s a real shame.”

“How so?” he asks, his eyes devouring you alive, but his body fixed resolutely in place. Transfixed to the spot.

“Because it’s traditional for the Best Man to get with one of the bridesmaids, isn’t it?”

A slow, disbelieving smile inches over his face, and he looks at his feet, a little bashful. “Gross tradition. Kinda sexist,” he says, and your gaze fixates on his full, curving lips. On his hands, poised and broad at his belt.

“So, you don’t want to make out then?” you ask in your most sultry voice, mere breath.

The man huffs out a quick, broken exhale. “Fuck me. You know I do, sweetie. But only if you’re ready.”

Ready. Are you ready?

“Santiago,” you say, with conviction, your eyes dancing between his. “I’m ready.”

Santi searches your face one last time, just to be certain. He’s sure, of course – has been for a long time, but he needs to know that you truly want this. That you want this now. So, he looks at you, and he finds nothing but permission. Even so, after so long, he still can’t quite believe it. He would go to the ends of the earth to keep you safe – or beyond – and, so dammit, he will ask you again.

“C-can I..” he begins, and his voice already sounds choked; hollowed out with need. “Fuck, Princesa, can I kiss you?”

Too long. Too long without moving. Without touching. Too long.

If you were suddenly ready, his kiss becomes even more suddenly overdue.

“You’d better,” you encourage, feeling like vapour. “Unless you want me to do it first.”

With permission granted, you expect him to be on you, with a surge. All at once. But Santi has been patiently waiting for you long enough. He can wait just a little longer, and, when he subtly tips his chin up, ever so slightly, and when he near growls “come here then, honey,” somehow, it is perfect. Somehow, it is a thousand times hotter that he makes you come to him.

You lift the hem of your dress, and you pad delicately towards him, feeling like you are wading through molten honey to get to him, the air thick and sweet.

“That’s it. Come here, baby,” he encourages, with a curl of his index finger beckoning you to him, his voice curling in the pit of you, making you feel weak in the best way possible. Making you feel spent before he’s even done so much as brush you with his hand or his lips.  

You close the remaining distance with your steps, the anticipation too much, and your legs feeling so weak from the reckless lust and the light, liquid softness in his eyes. By this point, you are begging for his arms to reach out and clasp you- to hold you up; make you secure and safe in him. You are begging for his lips to sink down on to yours. But he makes you wait, through a few more slow, stretched moments. Makes you inch your mouth closer and closer until your lips are almost skimming his. He makes you wait until you are moaning his name into the air before he has even touched you.

“Santi.”

And, if there’s one thing you know for sure, it’s that when you call for him, he is always there to take care of you.

You know he will take care of you.  

With that, his name a plea, he swoops his broad, large hand up until he is holding you, his fingers closing around your jaw and your throat, trailing down your neck. His touch is painfully gentle, but in a way that makes you want him to squeeze, a little harder. In a way that makes you push yourself ever so subtly into his hand. A way that draws a silken moan from deep in your chest, and Santi is moved to dip the pad of his thumb into your mouth, where it meets your wet and willing warmth. When your tongue skims him, humming as you taste his saltiness, that seems to be the final straw, a wrecked groan sounding from his throat, and finally he surges on to your lips, leading with his tongue, thrusting into your open mouth and drinking down every sound and moan he can draw from you, his stubble rough against you. You don’t care if he leaves you raw.

It’s tender, and it’s gentle, but Santi knows all about control, and you can tell he’s holding back. His hands are lethal, and he knows just how to kill you softly; but, you are certain, that if you want more of his power, he’ll give it to you. That he’ll take care of you however you like.

So, he kisses you more deeply, harder, and you go near limp against him until one of his arms wraps at the back of your head and one at the small of your back, making you feel a feeble thing, waning in his arms as his large hands support you. Except; you’re not feeble though. You’re not by a long shot, and you know exactly what you want.

“Santi,” you suspire, letting him walk you back against the wall, pressing his bulging arousal into you as more wrangled sounds and little grunts slip from his parted lips.

“Yeah, baby?” he asks, already sounding wrecked for you.

“There’s only one shower. Wanna share?!”

Even as he releases an endlessly eager, disbelieving breath, his eyes keenly search your face, checking you are ready. He watches, enraptured, as your lips curl into a deliciously sinful smile.

“You know. We don’t have to rush this,” he insists, even as he shivers with need, closing his eyes and biting his lip when you angle your hips to brush the tenting bulge at his crotch, ever so fleetingly, his hips bucking into you immediately in pursuit of more pressure.

“I know,” you say coolly, your body an undercurrent of frenzy, but your mind calm and sure. You push him back, with your palms to his chest, making room for you to about-turn into the bathroom, shimmying off your dress as you go and letting it waft to the floor like a sigh. Looking at him over your shoulder, with lust-blown eyes, you leave Santi stood there, entirely dumbfounded, as you reveal all of yourself to him.

You retreat, but once the water is running you call out to him, wondering where he has got to. “Take a hint, Garcia. If you’re ready? I’m waiting.”

And, he doesn’t waste another second before joining you.

THE END

(BONUS: Outfit inspo, if you wanna imagine him in the suits a lil better 😉)

[nat-20s]

Part 5 of Wonderful! Au. *boyband voice* banter’s back alright!

Also on AO3

~*~

Jon: Hello everyone, and welcome back to our regular format. If my husband being horribly soppy-

Martin:-hey!-

Jon: -turned you off the how, this should be a refreshing return to formula, though I can’t guarantee there won’t be further horrible soppiness-

Martin, performatively under his breath: -most people thought it was charming-

Jon: -as that tends to happen when one is recording with the love of their life. If last week’s episode is the only one that you like, too bad, I’m back in full form, and should be at least through the rest of the season.

Martin: This show doesn’t have seasons? Due to the whole lack of a narrative thing?

Jon: I was referring to spring.

Martin: Oh, right.

[A beat passes.]

Martin, flatly: Oh. Great goof hon.

Jon, smug: Thank you.

Jon, sincere: Also, before we get properly started, I did want to actually thank everyone who sent well wishes.

M artin: Yes! We got positively inundated with lovely messages, it definitely brightened both of our days. I would even say it was wonderful.

[Jon groans.]

Jon: I am..not proud of the energy we’ve created for this episode so far, and we haven’t even hit the small wonders. Speaking of, do you have a small wonder this week?

Martin: Mine’s bad action movies.

Jon: Really? I had no idea you even liked them, let alone consider them wonderful.

Martin: Okay, so, saying I like them is a bit of a misnomer? It’s more that I like what they can do more than the movies themselves?

Jon: Elaborate?

Martin: It probably comes as a surprise to no one that I’ve tried my hand at a fair amount of mindfulness and mediation techniques. I’ve found poetry and journaling have been helpful for actually processing life events and whatnot, but when it comes to giving your brain a hard wipe and reset, nothing is half as quick and effective as a shitty shoot-em-up. Somethings about 2 hours of cartoonish, pg-13 violence held together with the absolute loosest of plots brings me to a state of mental blankness that would make a monk jealous.

Jon: How have I never witnessed you doing this? When are you sneaking off to go see Micheal Tarantino or who ever films?

M artin: That’s definitely not the right name.

Jon: Martin, dear, I don’t care. And you’re dodging the question.

Martin, fond: I’m not dodging anything. Since apparently we’re getting into it, you haven’t caught me cavorting with a movie involving more explosions than character development lately because I haven’t been. Haven’t needed it, in recent years. Turns out when you’re not crushingly lonely and working a literal nightmare of job, there’s less of a drive to try and escape your own thoughts. Shocker, I know. Still, to anyone out there that feels like their brain is on fire, go try watching a fast and furious. Any of ‘em, it doesn’t matter. Or even better, Chronicles of Riddick. I can’t remember a single goddamn detail of that movie, which makes it perfect for what I’m talking about.

Jon: I have the strong feeling that th is is a “mileage may vary” scenario.

Martin: Well, yeah, that’s this whole podcast. Plus, I imagine that movies like this would cause more stress to someone who cares about, say, world-building or rules consistency.

Jon: I wonder who you could possibly be referring to.

Martin: It’s a purely hypothetical person, love, don’t worry about it. Any small wonders?

Jon: Yes! Particularly relevant to the last week, my small wonder is stripping the sheets from your bed when it’s been too long between washes.

Martin: How very specific. M ost people would just say ‘clean sheets’.

Jon: Well, for one, I’m fairly certain that we’ve already covered clean sheets-

Martin: Shit, have we? Thank god other people keep track of this, otherwise this show would be unbearably repetitive.

Jon: Christ, yes. I typically check the website a good three times while prepping, and every about one out of those three times I find I’m trying to do an topic we did 30 episodes again. Anyway, um, it’s just nice, I think. When you’ve been too busy or sick or away for awhile, tossing the sheets in the wash makes a room instantly seem nicer. Of all the chores out there, this one, at least for me, has the highest reward to effort ratio.

Martin: Hard agree. Especially when the y have that slight funk of having been around to long, getting rid of that is such a relief. Speaking of, we need to change our sheets soon.

Jon: We can do it after the episode. Who goes first this week?

Martin: Considering last week was only me talking, I’m gonna say it’s you.

Jon: Alright, then. My first thing this week is Martin K. Blackwood.

Martin: Absolutely not!

Jon: Oh, you can do a whole episode on me, but I can’t do one little segment on my husband, whom I love very dearly?

Martin: Not while I’m sat here, no!

Jon: So you’re saying you don’t want me to tell the internet that your resolve to be kind even in the face of indescribable cruelty is one of the mot breathtaking things I’ve ever witnessed, or how I find it incredibly endearing when you get so emotional that your voice comes out as a squeak, or even that, on a more base level, you’re very physically attractive, and I could lose entire days thinking about your arms alone?

Martin, audibly blushing, voice the aforementioned squeak: Oh my god, Jon!

Jon, laughing: Then it’s probably for the best that my actual first thing is best friends.

Martin, peaking the audio levels: Oh you absolute bastard! Do you enjoy this? Do you get some sort of perverse sense of entertainment from riling me up?

Jon: Oh, don’t you start. As if you’re not as bad as I am. Maybe even worse.

Martin: That’s not…

Jon: Yes?

Martin: Okay. Maybe it’s slightly true. Really, what is romance for if not flustering your partner with compliments?

Jon, teasing: I certainly can’t think of anything.

Martin: Hush, you.

Jon: No, I don’t think I will.

Martin: Fine. I suppose you can tell our delightful audience about the power of friendship or whatever.

Jon: I would’ve assumed more enthusiasm, considering this segment is still, indirectly, about you.

Martin: In what way?

Jon: In the way that, to the shock of all, you’re my best friend.

Martin, pleased: Oh, is that what I am?

Jon, exasperated: Yes, dearest husband, I wouldn’t have married you otherwise. Though, upon reflection, I knew you were my best friend before I knew I held romantic feelings for you.

Martin: When was that?

Jon, letting out a breath that vibrates his lips: God it was...2016? I think it might’ve literally been the day after you told me about your CV.

Martin: That early? Huh. I wonder if that’s what people were picking up when they said they we were close.

Jon: What people?

Martin: I don’t know specifically, that’s just what Daisy told me.

Jon: Daisy? When the hell-?

Martin: It...was when she was interrogating me? And, because sometimes I have to be a parody of myself, pretty much my only take away from that interrogation was “people think me and Jon are close”.

Jon: Well then. It’s not like they were wrong.

Martin, smug: No, no they weren’t.

Martin, sincere: And you’re my best friend, too.

Jon: I was certainly hoping that you’re in this relationship for more than my good looks and incredible fortune, both in the monetary and luck sense.

Martin: You say that as if you aren’t good looking, which we all know is patently untrue.

Jon: You’re biased. You’d say I was good looking if I were nothing more than some primordial ooze with thoughts about its station.

Martin: I’m being completely objective. If you were primordial ooze with thoughts above its station, you’d be the cutest ooze of them all. That’s just scientific fact.

Jon: I’m starting to think we might be insufferable.

Martin: Starting to? Might be?

Jon:…

[Jon clears his throat]

Jon: What I find wonderful about the concept of best friends is, to me, they’re the closest thing real life has to soulmates. I don’t personally believe that there’s some..grand mystic force that drives people to be tied together in the manner that narrative typical soulmates are, and if there was I don’t think it would necessarily be the kind of emotional, heartfelt bond one would hope for, but I do believe that there’s individuals that get to know one another, and because of that knowledge, they chose to stick with one another. It doesn’t have to be a romantic, which is why I say best friend rather than specifically ‘spouse’, but I would argue that the basis of a strong romance like you and I have, is very much rooted in that connection. A true best friendship is an equal partnership, and there’s a sense of..matched sensibilities and understanding that can be utterly incandescent when it happens.

I also think that having one or more best friends makes living life on a day to day basis both better and just flat easier. The dark times aren’t as dark, and the bright times shine even more. I know from my own personal experience there are events that I..that I don’t know how I would’ve made it through without you. Hell, last week my..recovery period would’ve taken much longer if you hadn’t been there.

It’s an amazing thing to have someone to share things with, both triumphs and burdens. Um, also, according to Dictionary.com, the term best friends in English has been around since the 1200s. Something about that delights me, like, yes, we’ve had this casual way of referring to a Favorite Person for roughly 800 years. That makes it a hold-out from early Middle English. I dunno, it’s one of those things that make me feel overall very charmed by humanity.

Martin, audibly smiling: No, yeah, hard agree.

Jon: What’s that look for?

Martin: Nothing. Just. I love you a whole lot, you know that?

Jon, voice soft: I may have heard you say that once or twice. Per hour.

Martin: Only that often? I really need to be more diligent about that.

[There’s a bet of silence, presumably where they’re making doe eyes at each other.]

Jon: What’s your first thing?

Martin: Oh, um, right. Rats!

Jon: The expression or the animal?

Martin: Jon, have you ever once heard me say “rats” as an expression? Obviously I’m referring to the animal.

Jon: Ah. Should’ve known, considering that what, a third?, of all your segments have been on animals.

Martin: Yeah? And? You got a problem with critters? With creatures? With lil guys?

Jon, laughing: No, no, it’s very sweet. I’m just surprised you never became a vet.

Martin: Oh believe me, I wanted to. But then I learned that it was not, in fact, a job composed entirely of getting paid to play with other people’s pets.

Jon: You had that job, though, didn’t you? I thought I remembered you mentioning a month long stint at a doggie day care.

Martin, sighing dreamily: Best job I ever had. Too bad that place was shut down after it was revealed to be a money laundering front.

Jon: Good lord.

Jon: Martin did you...did you know it was a money laundering front at the time?

Martin:

Martin: Would it make you feel better if I said no?

Jon: Martin!

Martin: I figured it out like a week in, but, like, who cares? The pay was decent and the floor was super easy to clean, which is very much a plus for even a front of a doggie day care.

Jon: That’s...rather a lot. How about instead of getting into that any further, you tell me about rodents.

Martin: I would love to. But first, we have a shoutout!

Jon: Ooo, a shoutout. Does it specify who should read?

Martin: Let me check. It...does...not…..

...

Jon: Martin?

[A beat.]

Martin: Right! Sorry, um. This week’s shoutout is from Tim, to Danny. It says, “Danny! My favorite person who shares genetic material with me! I wanted to say thank you for your podcast obsession from 4 months ago, and specifically for telling me about these marrieds. They’ve gotten me through many a dull hour at the publishing house. Also, with this shoutout, I’ve officially gotten ahead on the Superior [Last Name Redacted] Brother scoreboard, so suck it. Love you lots, and looking forward to your visit next month, Tim.”

Jon: Oh.

Jon: Um. That’s very..sweet? I think? Mostly?

Martin: Yeah, I’d say so. Uh. We have to take a quick break because, uh, someone is..at our front door! Be back with you all in, from your side of things, just a moment.

[amjustagirl]

Chapters: one. ~ two. ~ three. ~ four. ~ five. ~ six. ~ seven. ~ eight.

Wordcount: 2.9k

Summary: Being with Miya Atsumu is like chasing a storm - equal parts exhilaration and danger. After all, it’s impossible to tame a storm

Masterlist link here 

AO3 link here 

Author’s Note: And we’re at the final chapter! Thank you so much for going on this wild ride with me, and I’m rly excited to hear what you guys think - so please, drop me an ask, a note, a comment, anything!!! 

It takes time and effort to rebuild a home wrecked by a storm, and reconstruction efforts aren’t necessarily smooth sailing, especially at the start - after all, he’s still the same Miya Atsumu, arrogant and brash and foulmouthed and hyper focused on volleyball, and they both have baggage from years of regret and pain to work through. But he has determination to spare, and she loves him too much for her own good, so they start from the very foundation and work their way up, step by step, one day at a time. 

‘I’ll kill ya if ya ever hurt her again’, Osamu threatens darkly when she and Atsumu break the news to him. 

‘Go find yer own girl and stop being sweet on my wife damn it! ’ Atsumu growls, but the kiss he presses to her forehead when she smacks the back of his head for being mean to his twin is achingly sweet. 

‘Ugh, soppy. Get yer shit outta my house!’ Osamu scrunches his face in mock disgust. 

Both brothers are surprised when she beats Atsumu at flipping Osamu off. 

Atsumu moves back home (he’s not even going to hide how happy the sound of that makes him), and they mark the occasion by slipping his wedding ring back on his finger and eating take-out pizza on the living room floor. 

Her burly brothers turn up on their doorstep with a glint in their eyes and too much teeth in their smiles, determined to drag Atsumu off for a couple of drinks and what she assumes will be a very unpleasant chat. She’d insisted on patting them down to make sure they’re not packing any knives - ‘what do you take us for, little sis’, they’d protested - but she’s not taking any chances, and begs Osamu to join them, ‘please ‘Samu, I don’t want to be a widow right after I decide not to divorce his ass’, and he agrees despite grumbling that he might as well be Atsumu’s glorified babysitter at this rate. 

She’d woken up in bed the next morning to find the space beside her empty, but the living room crammed full of those four silly men. Atsumu and Osamu share a single futon between them, snoring back to back. There are faint bruises on Atsumu’s cheekbone and telltale scrapes on her own brothers’ knuckles, but otherwise they all seem relatively unscathed. 

She bends over, tracing her thumb along the contour of Atsumu’s jaw, and he stirs, eyes half lidded with sleep. 

‘Hey darlin', I’ve come home’, he tells her, warmth flickering in his smile. 

‘Welcome home, 'Tsumu’, she says, tucking the blanket under his chin and he hums in contentment, falling back asleep. 

His nightmares of brown envelopes and harsh neon lights distorting her face slowly fade, and he dreams instead of weeknight dinners and weekend picnics at the park, relishing the quiet domesticity of grocery trips and laundry loads, and delighting in home games with her and Shino cheering him on.

Some piss poor excuse of a gossip hound corners him after a match to ask him about whether he regrets leaving for Milan since his season ended in injury - and he freezes when the reporter slyly adds ‘especially since we all knew it’s a move that required you to leave your wife and daughter behind ‘. His manager is about to intervene when she sneaks up on him to slide an arm around his waist, apologising to the reporter that ‘she’s just so excited to give her husband a congratulatory kiss!’ . 

Sakusa and Meian have to join forces to pull Atsumu back from punching the reporter when he grins shark-like, thinking he’s spotted easy prey and asks her whether she felt abandoned in Japan due to his move - ‘pardon me Miya-san for my unwieldy choice of words’. 

‘Not at all’, she says without missing a beat, and Atsumu wonders if he imagines the flash of a knife in her smile. ‘I’ve always supported my husband in all his endeavours. It was a joint decision that I should stay in Japan to ensure our daughter has some stability in her life.'

‘She’s good’, his manager tells him when the reporter slinks away with his tail between his legs. 

‘Yeah - I don’t deserve her’, he answers with a rueful smile. 

When he tries to thank her that night, she levels him with a look that could knock a grown man (i.e. him) off his feet, but her voice is gentle and her words are soft. 

‘Don’t thank me’, she says. ‘Just be a better husband and father, ok?’ 

He’s not ashamed to admit that he actually cries. 

He learns to tell her he loves her at least once a day. She starts to smile back cheekily and reply ‘of course’. 

The game is in between sets when the skin at the back of his neck crackles with nerves. From the corner of his eye, he catches a glimpse of Osamu sprinting right into the stands. Then his ears pick up on his little girl’s scream - ‘mama’  she cries, her shrill voice ringing above the confusion rippling through the crowd and his legs move of their own accord, leaping over the barrier into the audience, as he snarls and shoves his way to her usual spot. 

He thought he’s had his fill of nightmares to last him a lifetime. He’s evidently wrong. 

She lies crumpled on the ground, head resting on Osamu’s lap. Her lips are pale and her eyes are closed but thank god - thank whichever deity’s listening - her chest still moves with her breath. He’s not quite sure what happens next - he knows he dives to his knees and pulls her towards him but everything else is a blur until her eyes flutter open and she groans. 

‘Darlin’, can ya hear me? Can ya tell me where you are?’ he asks, forcing his voice to remain calm. 

‘Tsumu? Why are you here? Aren’t you in the middle of a game?’ she murmurs, confused. 

‘Fuck the game’, he snaps. ‘Are ya feelin' ok?’ 

‘Something hurts, Tsumu’, she rasps, eyes glazing over. He can feel the chill of ice seep into his spine. 

'Yer fine, yer fine, yer going to be fine' he mutters, over and over and over again, willing her to sit up and tell him she's fine, she's ok, she'll just shake it off - but light starts to shutter out of her eyes and frost creeps up his throat. 

‘I need a medic!’ he shouts, voice cracking on every word. ‘I need a medic, now!’

‘Tsumu’, he hears his brother interrupt urgently. ‘Tsumu, she’s bleedin’. 

He’s never been more grateful for Osamu when his twin turns to yell for an ambulance and yanks Shino away with him. The little girl is kicking and screaming for her mama but he knows she would kill him if he lets their little girl be traumatised from seeing her mama lying in a pool of blood on the floor. 

He can’t breathe - not even when the medics finally come and whisk her off to the hospital, his mind hardly able to process anything, terror still coursing through his veins when the doctors press brown envelopes full of forms into his bloodstained hands for him to sign so the relevant procedures can be carried out. 

‘Don’t!’ Osamu says sharply, when he drops his head into his hands and starts to whimper about how he’ll die if he loses her again and what the fuck is he gonna do, ‘Samu, if she doesn’t make it out alive – ‘she’s stronger than ya think, don’t ya dare give up on her like that’, and he promptly shuts up after that. Time in the waiting room passes agonizingly slow, seconds feeling like minutes, minutes stretching into hours, and he would have drowned from the weight of his despair if he weren’t anchored in place by his twin’s hand on his back.

His breath rushes back into his lungs when the doctors later tell him she’s fine,  they carried out the standard operation - but she doesn’t look fine, doesn’t seem fine, is very clearly not fine when they wheel her out, huddled into a ball with her head between her knees, like her world has just collapsed into itself. She doesn’t even look up when he sits beside her, the bed dipping under his weight. 

‘I’m sorry’, she eventually says, voice barely a whisper, and he fights the urge to break down into tears – because ‘Samu’s right, she’s so much stronger than he thinks. They'd been talking about trying for a sibling for Shino for some time now, since they've both grown up with brothers of their own and can't imagine life without them. But the doctors tell him that it’s just bad luck - the baby was never going to survive, and her collapse was probably exacerbated by stress, overwork, perhaps even fatigue from her skipping lunch for work and dinner to rush to his match.

‘Don’t be. It’s not yer fault at all’, he manages to pull himself together to reassure her, but she just stares blankly at the wall. 

His grandmother calls when they find out the baby they lost would have been a boy, and he fails her again when he’s too late to snatch the phone away before the old lady’s poison drips into her ears and traps her in a deadly fog. He’d cursed the old bitch out relentlessly, but the toxic words fester beneath her skin and she fades into a ghost before his eyes. He desperately tries to stop her spiral into frozen silence, but he’s away for games more than half the time, hands tied behind his back by the stranglehold of contracts and commitments he has no choice but to fulfil. 

He’s never been so thankful before when the season finally ends - but he is, at least this time, so he can talk her into taking two weeks off from work. They drop Shino off with her indulgent grandparents, and drift down the coast on the back of her bike. She doesn’t try breaking any speed limits - and he knows he should be happy about that, but there’s no spark in her eyes, no smile to answer the wind - there hasn’t been, not since she collapsed. 

(not since they lost their child)

He buys her mochi at every town, but she picks at it listlessly, just like she does these days when Osamu tries to tempt her with his latest creations. He insists they stay at  ryokans, traditional inns with onsens attached, hoping the heat from the water might chase the chill from her bones, but colour does not return to her cheeks. There are shadows beneath her eyes, and she seems to wilt under the vibrant red and gold of autumn leaves. 

They go for a walk after dinner one night, tracing a path along the shore. He’d been talking non-stop the entire trip to mask the gaps left by her silence, but tonight he falls quiet, allowing the hum of the waves to wash over them. Her hand is cold in his, so he wraps his jacket around her shoulders and hopes the warmth from his body bleeds into hers. 

She comes to a standstill, feet sinking in the sand, and tilts her head to face him. 

‘Tsumu?’, she breathes, a question in her eyes. 

‘I’m here’, he says, a prayer in his heart. 

There is a lighthouse on the cliff just a few miles ahead, illuminating the shadows of the waves. The faintest reflection of light pools in her eyes, and he stills as she lifts her gaze to meet his. 

‘I know’, she says, offering him the smallest of smiles. 

He interlaces their fingers together firmly, and tugs her towards shelter, as a storm brews over the horizon. 

That night she tucks her head under his chin, and he holds her until she falls asleep, cradled in his arms. He keeps slumber at bay by counting her breaths, and only falls asleep himself when the storm breaks. 

'Why did I wake up to a blonde octopus wrapped around me', she mumbles, voice heavy with sleep. 

'Nah. More like a seahorse, cos I'm not letting ya go, sweetheart', he replies, tightening his grip on her waist. 'Ya got a problem with that?' 

Her only response is to burrow herself deeper into his chest.

'Guess not', he chuckles fondly, nuzzling his nose into her hair, hope blossoming anew in his heart. 

Time turns their wounds into scars and they heal together, one breath at a time. 

She stays away from their first few matches when the season begins again. The press is coerced into passing over reports of her collapse by the dual forces of the MSBY press machine and their legal team, but they are forced to ride out the gossip generated in internet forums by a fringe group of deranged fans. His teammates treat her like she’s made of glass - even Bokuto dials himself down a notch, all save for Shoyo, who slips her his mother’s number, telling her gently that the six year gap between him and Natsu wasn’t deliberate, and that she would find a sympathetic ear in the older woman. 

He knew he was right to anoint Shoyo as his favourite wing spiker - not only does he fly high enough to answer the demand of every single one of his sets, but his sunniness drags her out of the fog into yoga classes and meditation practices, and slowly but surely he watches her bloom again. It’s a powerful combination - Shoyo-kun’s friendship and his mother’s gentle conversations, Osamu’s cooking and her love for Shino, capped with his determination to show her he loves her and prove that he’s here to stay.

‘It’s like Kintsugi’, she tells him, with a wide smile. ‘All of you poured gold into the cracks of my heart and made me whole again’. 

The years pass. 

Shino turns seven – a very respectable age for his very best girl, he tells her (I'm your only girl, Papa, Shino informs him archly), and obliges her demands of a bicycle in MSBY colours and volleyball lessons, forcing all his teammates to turn up for her birthday party, volleyball themed of course. The look of unadulterated joy on his princess’ face is worth every ounce of effort to put up with Sakusa’s complaints at having to turn up for a kiddie party full of loud noises and far too much candy, and the sweaty afternoons spent hand painting the bicycle black and gold. 

The day Atsumu discovers his first white hair makes her thank her lucky stars that she’s immune to his nonsense by now, because the wailing and gnashing of teeth she has to put up with makes ‘Samu offer her his couch as refuge. She slaps tape and salonpas on his aches and pains, and points to the deepening lines on her face when he complains about his age. 

‘Those lines aren’t wrinkles. If they’re caused by laughter, it doesn’t count’, he reasons laughingly. She’s left befuddled by his logic and shakes her head.

Meian Shugo retires, and Hinata throws a party to celebrate in his honour, cramming the entire MSBY team and assorted friends into his penthouse apartment on a rainy Saturday night. Osamu’s hired to cater the food but remains as a guest, shooting a smirk at him when Shoyo drags her off to dance during his favourite song, twin flames burning bright in the night. 

‘A hundred yen for your thoughts?’ she asks, when Shoyo returns with her breathless but wreathed with smiles. 

‘Was just wondering when you were gonna save a dance for this old man’, he teases. 

‘Oh?’ she says with a laugh. ‘Thought you said your back hurt, and you didn’t want to move?’

‘Meh - I was hoping you’d forget that’, he says airily, then frowns when he notices there’s no drink in her hand. 

‘Not drinking tonight, sweetheart?’, he asks, curling his fingers around her empty hand. 

‘The doctor warned me not too’, she answers, her smile growing impossibly wider. He blinks in confusion when she leans on to her toes to whisper into his ear - then oh. 

‘You’re pregnant?’ he repeats, unable to trust his ears, eyes filling with tears when she bites her lips and nods. 

‘Are you happy, ‘Tsumu?’, she asks, her face alight with hope. 

There is so much he wants to say to her, starting with thank you loving me enough to give me another chance all those years ago and ending with I love you, so ridiculously much – because he can never say it enough, she’s given him more than he deserves – her heart, Shino, a happy home and now the promise of another child. 

But there's salt and water welling up in his throat, and it’s all he can do to choke out a shaky ‘of course’, before gathering her in his arms, warmth pooling in his eyes, love overflowing in his heart. 

They stay that way for most of the night, entwined in each other’s arms, so drunk on happiness and love and warmth that they don’t even notice the storm clearing and the moon rising in the clear night sky. 

[extasiswings]

"Offer Me" for Buddie :D

Technically this prompt was about giving a gift, but you know how I like to get metaphorical. Also, I understand that it's TV and therefore that they can and will insist on introducing debilitating trauma and then pretending it doesn't exist until it becomes plot relevant again, but if these writers don't stop putting Eddie in hugely triggering situations for his PTSD and not addressing it at all they're gonna catch these hands. Post-4x11.

Eddie makes it through the end of the shift by sheer force of will. And then, when he gets home to a dark, empty house—Christopher wanted to spend some time with Isabel so he’s staying at her house for a few days—

He makes it as far as the kitchen before everything he’s been holding back slams into him at once and has him retching into the sink.

Fuck. Fuck.

It’s not that they never end up around guns on shifts. Sometimes things happen. Hell, Eddie can remember all too well holding a line while Buck talked down a woman hanging out on a freeway sign who had a gun. Things happen.

But that’s different from what happened earlier. They’re not cops. They’re firefighters. They’re medics. People aren’t usually shooting at them. Being pinned down in a shipping container by gunfire, surrounded by his team, trying to keep a patient alive—

Eddie spits into the sink again as he shudders, cold sweat breaking out across his forehead and the back of his neck. His hands grip the counter tight, the edge digging into the palms, giving him something solid to focus on.

"ETA six minutes."

"We don’t have six minutes."

"Diaz—"

Eddie forces himself to take deep breaths and lets his gaze flick over the kitchen, cataloguing everything that’s out in the open. He’s in his house in Los Angeles. He’s not in Afghanistan. He’s not fighting a war.

He’s not fighting for his life.

And it was fine. Earlier. No one was hurt. They got the girl to the hospital. The asshole who kidnapped her was arrested.

"Diaz—"

No one was shot.

He’s alive. He’s fine.

They got the girl to the hospital.

They got her to the hospital.

Eddie’s eyes burn as the panic slowly begins to recede. He releases the counter and drags a hand over his jaw, exhaling shakily. For a minute he just stands there—the echoes of gunshots slowly fade from his ears—but finally he flicks on the sink to rinse his mouth and splashes water on his face for good measure. He’s just shut it off again when his phone rings. The sound is abrupt and jarring in the silence of the house—he flinches at the suddenness and yanks it out of his pocket.

“Hello?” Eddie answers without looking at the id, wincing at how rough his voice sounds.

“Eddie.” Buck’s voice is a relieved sigh. “Hey.”

Eddie’s pulse is still too fast, albeit slower than it had been. He pads out of the kitchen and collapses on the living room couch, stretching out and closing his eyes.

“Did I hear Bobby right that you got arrested today?” He asks as exhaustion settles into his very bones. His hand rests on his chest, over his heart, so he can feel the steady thrum level out to normal—it beats a tattoo of alive, alive, alive against his skin.

“Okay, I wasn’t arrested, Athena just stuck me in an interrogation room for a couple hours to keep an eye on me. And I still helped solve the case!”

Eddie’s lips curve up despite himself. He hadn’t planned on talking to anyone tonight, had dodged Bobby’s concerned looks to avoid getting pulled into conversation before he left the station, clenching his hands so no one would see them shake. He hadn’t wanted to talk. But he hadn’t really been thinking clearly either about the reality of coming home to empty space. To silence. Left entirely alone with his own head.

“Yeah...that still sounds kind of like you were arrested to me. But you were probably having more fun than we were.”

Buck’s quiet for a moment before he clears his throat.

“Chim said you guys were shot at in the container yard.”

Eddie swallows hard. “Yeah. Yeah, for a couple minutes.”

“Are you okay?”

The way Eddie’s stomach twists at the question, at the softness in Buck’s voice, isn’t the same as the roiling nausea that gripped him before. It’s not entirely comfortable—but then it never is when he feels like this. Vulnerable. Exposed. Because he knows why Buck’s asking.

They lived together for months during the second wave of the pandemic. It was a stressful time, and god knows Eddie hadn’t always slept easily.

Buck hadn’t shied away. Not once. Hadn’t judged. Hadn’t demanded explanations—which is why Eddie gave him one anyway.

Buck just listened every time. Listened until Eddie couldn’t wrap his tongue around words anymore and then wrapped his arms around Eddie instead, listing off random facts about anxiety and skin pressure depressing the central nervous system, and maybe Eddie wouldn’t have let Buck hold him out of pity but if it was for science well—

So. He knows why Buck’s asking. What Buck’s thinking.

“Not really,” he admits after a long stretch of silence. “But I will be.”

Buck makes a quiet sound over the line.

"I should have been there—"

“No,” Eddie interrupts, because being trapped with everyone else had been bad enough, but the thought of being in that situation with Buck? Makes something in him recoil violently. “You’re allowed to take a day off, Buck. Don’t do that to yourself. Nobody got hurt and you being there wouldn’t have changed anything.”

Buck sighs, but accepts that.

"Christopher’s at Isabel’s, right?" He asks. "Do you want me to come over? Or—"

Buck seems to trip over his words for some reason Eddie can’t quite understand.

"—I guess you could call Ana—"

“No.” Another recoil. Buck is one thing. Buck is safe, Buck has seen all of his raw, dark, ugly places and Eddie has seen Buck’s. Ana—they’re nowhere close to being there. He would sooner go throw up again than let her in like that.

Eddie swallows again. Takes another deep breath. He hates asking for anything, but—

“Would you—would you just talk? You don’t have to come over, I’m pretty wiped anyway, but...you could talk for a little. I don’t really care what about.”

“Yeah,” Buck says quietly. “Yeah, I can do that.”

Eddie falls asleep on the couch with Buck’s voice in his ear. And he blessedly doesn’t dream.

[azucanela]

ack anon with the dress hcs here- tysvm for those!! my heart~ ok so another random idea i just needed to share but bakugou/deku/todoroki first frenchie kiss with their s.o. and neither of them have much experience 😖 lots of fluffy awkwardness y'know? idk. again go ahead and add on but don't stress yourself!

FRENCH KISSES WITH THEIR S/O [GN!HEADCANNONS]

[ft. bakugo katsuki, izuku midoriya, todoroki shouto]

SUMMARY: someone decides to bring of french kissing and as expected; its chaotic.

WORD COUNT: french kissing? nothing explicit, very mildly suggestive

WARNINGS: kissing, maybe second hand embarrassment but i doubt it, awkward situations

A/N: my search history is “how to french kiss now” which is the main reason i held off on doing this one ajkshdkjah also this is my first time writing for our boy deku so uhhhh be kind to me, also anon you are now dress anon also i tried something new because i couldn’t bring myself to write full scenarios also i can’t write for midoriya i TRIED BUT I THINK HIS IS BAD

BAKUGO KATSUKI

HEADCANNONS + MINI SCENARIO

lol this is funny

THIS

this is peak comedy right here

hes gonna be so embarrassed but hes gonna try to act like hes completely unaffected by everything that is going on

i feel like he knows what french kissing is and has definitely thought about french kisses with you but he would never bring it up because it embarrassing for him

he might just randomly try it and place you in a complete state of shock, like y’all are just making out and— whoops would you look at that somehow you two are now french kissing! wonder how that happened... 

if you ask him he will flat out deny you the first time around because he is embarrassed, but keep trying!! after a few attempts he’s gonna claim to be annoyed but it’s actually because he wants to

“Hey Katuski, you know what we should do—”

Bakugou slams the textbook that laid on his lap shut, a sound reverberating through the library the two had gone two, which earned him a strict glare from the librarian seated at the front desk. His eyes narrowed as they look to Y/N, “if you say French kissing, I swear I will break up with you right now.”

Despite his harsh words, Y/N can see the pink blush that dusts his cheeks as they lean forward on their arm, tilting their head at him innocently as they reply, “actually, I was thinking we could go see a movie later.” Their words only worsen the blush on Bakugou’s cheeks, causing him to snap his head away in an attempt to salvage some of his reputation, “but that works too.” 

“Shut up you damn nerd.” The boy grumbles, brows furrowing as he leans back in his seat, looking away as he says, “if it’ll get you to stop asking then I guess we can try it.” Y/N is about to open their mouth to reply but Bakugou quickly adds, “only once though! Damn nerd...”

A grin finds its way onto Y/N’s face and they nod slowly, “great.”

“I hate you.”

honestly i feel like he would lowkey be bad at it the first time around and bakugou is the type of person where if he tries something and isn’t good at it immediately he either avoids this activity entirely or tirelessly works to improve his skill

luckily for you this happens to be a skill that bakugou wants to improve, alot because for some reason you wanted to try this and if he’s not good at it then whats the point

regardless the first time around is like a solid 6.75/10 sorry bakugou oops, you tried, but i feel like he’s already a really like aggressive and like harsh kisser so this is just gonna make things a mess

he can be soft sometimes tho i swear

i feel like he would get good at it after some ~practice~ but even then its a rare occurrence to french kiss with bakugou, its really intimate and he saves it for special occasions or when hes bored lol

IZUKU MIDORIYA

HEADCANNONS + MINI SCENARIO

THIS ONE

OH YOU ARE GOING TO KILL HIM WHY DID YOU HAVE TO GO AND DO THIS like apologize, apologize rn for the stress you are about to cause him

if you try to initiate a french kiss with izuku here, you NEED to tell him ahead of time or else things will go south very very fast. he’s going to panic because this is new and he does not understand what is happened oh my-

give him a heads up whenever you want to try something new, so when you pull this while kissing him he’s going to pull away like what a r e you d o i n g 

once you tell him he’s gonna be like let’s do this tomorrow, and then will spend the rest of the day RESEARCHING how to french kiss properly, like he’s on wikihow and everything this boy wants to treat you right and is going to make sure you enjoy it

which is when when y’all finally french kiss he is going to be good at it okay, he’ll learn every strategy possible and then he will be a PRO like you’re probably going to be shocked for a hot minute because wait when did he have the time to get good at this—

you’re definitely his first partner and he had no experience prior to you but he trained himself because going into any anything blind and without a plan places him in a state of distress

this was a PLANNED EVENT it was like a date except without all the date stuff just french kissing, like he texts you “hey lets try that thing you wanted to try...” all shy and stuff like he literally took five minutes to actually send the text, and you are trying to figure out what that thing is because deku do you mean like the coffee shop ?? what ??

you make him specify and he nearly dies but its fine its fine, when he finally gets his point across you’re like okay! cool!

overall its a pretty nice experience, i feel like he would be really gentle with you per usual but it was also probably really awkward like homeboy fr sat you down on the bed and just stared at you with bright red cheeks for like

a really hot minute

Y/N brow raised as they stared at Izuku, who’s eyes had pierced into their head since they’d sat down. Oddly enough, Y/N found his meticulous planning of this to just make the situation more awkward, it had done nothing to relieve the burning sensation in their cheeks. But Y/N had a feeling that only one of them could flustered about this or else everything would fall apart rather quickly. It had also been their idea in the first place so, there was that factor too.

“Are you alright, Izuku—”

“FINE. I—I’m fine, I mean.” He cleared his throat as he sat across from them, his cheeks a bright red color as Y/N tilted their head at his antics.

A small laugh escaped them, “If you don’t want to do this Izuku, we don’t have to.” He’d always been easily flustered, so Y/N couldn’t say his reaction came as a shock, but he’d agreed to it nonetheless just yesterday.

This seemed to bring the boy back to reality as he shook his head, “no... I want to.” He straightened in his seat, looking away from Y/N as he tried to collect himself.

A grin spread across Y/N’s face as they leaned closer to Izuku, “fantastic.” Their words only served to fluster Izuku further, though Y/N could feel their cheeks warming as well. 

“Right.”

french kissing will not be a regular occurrence, izuku feels embarrassed whenever it happens, he gets shy, all around a very rare thing for him that will only occur if you initiate it, but PLEASE let him know ahead of time, he needs to mentally prepare himself

he enjoys it though 

hehe

TODOROKI SHOUTO

HEADCANNONS + MINI SCENARIO

why am i laughing rn

okay but like shouto probably discovers it online entirely by accident or like hears kaminari talking about it and decides he should educate himself because hes fluent in french and knows alot about the culture of france because of all the tutors his father hired so why doesn’t he know what this elusive french kissing his? 

shouto is also fluent in kissing he honestly just really enjoys kissing you, he doesn’t know why but its probably because hes touch starved and just likes intimacy like that but he never really knew how much he liked physical touch until he actually experience it [in a positive way] and also you are SOFT :D

regardless shouto is the one who brings it up and honestly you are gonna be shocked because how did this clueless bb find out about that??? sir??? who is teaching you these things?

“You want to do what?” 

Y/N couldn’t help the shock that flooded them as they stared at their boyfriend, Shouto Todoroki, who sat with his legs crossed before them on the bed as he replied, “French kissing.” The boy in question repeated, tilting his head at them as he watched her reaction.

Y/N shook their head in an attempt to clear their thoughts as they looked back up at him, meeting his eyes, “who taught you about that?” In the past, Y/N had been forced to explain... certain subjects to Shouto because of things he’d overheard in conversations or seen online. Sometimes it was entirely innocent and other times, well it wasn’t. This time around, it seemed Shouto had took it upon himself to learn, rather than asking Y/N. 

“I don’t see how that’s relevant.” Come his response, brows furrowing at her question, “however, if its not something you’re interested in then—”

“I didn’t say that!” And Y/N couldn’t help how their cheeks warmed at how quickly they cut him off, hands coming to their face in embarrassment.

the internet and unintentionally kaminari, or maybe intentionally 

he doesn’t do any research in fact, he might not even bring it up, next time he sees you in a private space, he’s just gonna start kissing you and you’re probably gonna be like aight bet thats chill this is normal

UNTIL he just grabs your thigh and in the shock your mouth gapes open and SHOUTO STRIKES

honestly i feel like he would be ridiculously good at french kissing for no reason, i don’t know why, i have no explanation, he’s just good at it 

its a talent

of all the boys he is the least embarrassed he has no shame, its just natural curiosity right? whatever happens happens. it is literally so annoying how UNFAZED HE IS

probably really liked it because hes a touchy kinda guy, so this will become a more frequent thing when you two are in private, he just enjoys it 

TAGLISTS[lmk if you wanna be added or removed via asks or replies]

[nitw]

Can you explain what you mean with misinterpreting Chara? I've always been confused about that character and you seem to have a pretty solid read you alluded to in that post about Snowgrave.

of course!!! as your local chara defender since the ripe age of 13 i hope you don't mind me doing a small essay on this. please bear with me tho because i sometimes can't articulate my thoughts well on stories that deal with philosophical themes ;;

UHHH SPOILERS FOR UNDERTALE AND DELTARUNE CHAPTER 2 BELOW

first let me make a few things clear so i don't have to repeat myself a bunch:

only tobias radiation fox himself has The Word of God privilege when it comes to things that haven't been explicitly confirmed in the games yet, EVEN if they're strongly hinted at. don't take anything i say about the plot as more than firm personal interpretation based on the info we have right now!

i cannot stress this one enough: undertale is a game that was never meant to be experienced from a singular perspective/mindset. the genocide route doesn't JUST exist for the sake of "enjoy your personalized edgy fuck-you run for being a serial killer in a video game", every one of the total 93 endings (look it up) in this game exists to reflect the player who achieved it in one way or another. the genocide route is really no different from any of the others, because in the end, no matter what, the player who decided to go through with the things they did will ALWAYS be rewarded for it. the question the player will have to ask THEMSELF afterwards is "is this what i wanted?"

OK MOVING ON-

let's think back to the little but vital amount of info we have on who chara actually was, like, as a person. we know pretty much all of this due to 1) the tapes in the royal lab 2) asriel's additional dialogue at the end of true pacifist.

while we'll never really know why frisk fell into the underground, asriel tells us explicitly about chara's hatred for humanity, and how they jumped from mt. ebott for "not a very happy reason"; supposedly a suicide attempt. chara "never talked about why", it's left intentionally vague because their reasoning isn't really what matters. what DOES matter is how this is relevant to the genocide run, ESPECIALLY with the new obvious parallels in deltarune's snowgrave route. i'll get to that.

when you finish the genocide route, chara will talk directly to the player in person. they talk about your (you AND chara's) success, despite "their plan (having) failed". this "plan" is one they secretly made with asriel when they were both still alive, as revealed from the tapes. chara got terminally poisoned from eating buttercups (whether this was fully intentional or not is still kiiinda up for debate), and while on their deathbed, asriel says that he doesn't like the plan anymore. yet despite his fear, he still fused his soul to chara's when they died.

the actual plan here was to become a monster powerful enough to slaughter humanity, specifically chara's home village by their own dying request - this all ties into their mysterious spite and hatred mentioned before. but due to asriel's resistance against chara, their fused body was killed by the humans - which eventually led to the creation of flowey, and asriel's inner demons after death.

but back to the genocide route. during chara's monologue to the player, they give us a LOT of important exposition. basically:

at the very start of the game, frisk's own determination is literally what brought chara's soul 'back to life'. we know how human and monster souls are different and how "determination" in this universe is something only humans possess, so it makes sense why it awakened them. i won't get into the whole narrator theory because i feel like it's not that relevant to my point (it's fun tho), but chara is always present from the moment frisk falls down, and stays regardless of the player's actions.

if you managed to finish undertale at all you'll already kinda know this (thanks sans), but the EXP and LV you (can) gain throughout your journey aren't just numbers on your screen - they're genuine in-universe manifestations of power that increase when you kill someone. and in genocide, chara explains how they were directly affected every time your stats rose. they could FEEL their spirit growing stronger for every life you decided to take (REMINDER THAT THE GENOCIDE ROUTE CAN BE PERMANENTLY STOPPED AT ANY POINT BEFORE SANS. YOU DID THIS.), so is it really that strange that they felt the desire to grow even stronger?

and once you do reach this point, there's no return. all that excessive time and effort you put into killing off a civilization OBVIOUSLY has some consequences. the consequences HERE being - if you paid attention to chara's life story - you took advantage of a traumatized child who was already at the breaking point and making irrational choices on their own, and you led them to believe that this was what they needed!

this is VERY MUCH SUPPORTED by the snowgrave/weird/pipis/whatever route of deltarune chapter 2 that was discovered about 2 days ago as i'm writing this. i'm gonna go ahead and assume you know what happens in it and i don't care to go into details if you don't, since this post is about chara, but surprise: THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED TO NOELLE, TOO! even in a completely normal run, noelle makes it clear multiple times that she wouldn't mind staying in the dark world; that in spite of how scary and dangerous it seems at times (something something horror movies), she started to feel at home. POSSIBLY even more so than her ACTUAL HOME, with her dying dad and negligent mom. like chara, noelle is a young person with low self esteem and her fair share of trauma, even if it's not as apparent. and like in the genocide run, the player's desire to ruthlessly kill in order to grow stronger affected her already-poor mental state.

someone else already pointed this out specifically, so don't credit me for it, but the main difference between chara and noelle is that noelle managed to break free in the end.

if you're like Most People Who Played The Genocide Route Back In Like 2016 and you played the genocide route with no further knowledge about it than "i have to follow these specific steps to get a harder fucked up version of the game", i don't blame you. you didn't actually know what you were doing in the end, did you? but did the outcome disappoint you, make sense to you, or did it just leave you with an empty/confused feeling? i love undertale because it WILL force you to think about things like that. i mean, if the result wasn't gonna affect you in SOME way, why would you go through all of that trouble in the first place? you had your reasons, as the player of any video game where you know your choices matter. would you have carried out the entire thing if you knew what was coming? the answer to that is only relevant to yourself.