#technically its not two days yet but im calling it anyway

[wortsandall]

day 2 (again) of a weed break. maybe ill actually hit day 3 this time lmao

[l0viez]

Back again with another dumbass "imagine sagau fics"

Im going crazy either way its fine. Anyways imagine having MEGAN in a Sagau fanfic lmao, (if you havent watched the movie yet , i 97% recommend!)

SAGAU ;

Imagine having MEGAN as a gift or just a comfort "toy" to have gifted by someone and ever since that day you guys became like twins , technically glued to eachother☠️

Being in a SAGAU with MEGAN is like having a bulletproof bodyguard

Devoted Followers, Vessels, Personal Bodygaurd, Worshipper Who??? I only know MEGAN

Whenever theres someone trying to attack you aka their "grace" , MEGAN will slice their throat in half in like 0.1 faster than xiao teleporting to traveller whenever they call his name/hj

Your "followers" in teyvat WILL glare at MEGAN and if you tell them to leave MEGAN alone MEGAN will smirk at them like "I win btch" but if you just brush it off or like laugh it off MEGAN will death glare at them back

MEGAN has the "grace's right hand" privileges, Shes like your co-worker or vice-president or sum LMAO

The non humans (yk like Archons,, Venti, Zhongli, Ei, Xiao, Ganyu, and etc) would be like salty or envy over the fact you hang out with MEGAN and has more trust on MEGAN than them, like they has been worshipping you for what?? 99999+ years, centuries?? what did that "doll" do to gain your attention like that??😦

I feel like the ones that would accept MEGAN whole heartedly and would love her /p is the childrens or the teens,, if that makes sense😭 ! (Klee, Diona, Qiqi, Sayu, YaoYao, Dori, Xiangling, Noelle, Collei, Fischl, Bennet and more)

Since MEGAN has that fighting skills noelle would probably ask MEGAN for some advice so she can be apart of the KOF (as usual) ! and MEGAN would use her "robotic skills" and just give out noelle the whole description on how to fight and stuff it probs took like 3-6hours for MEGAN to finish bc noelle wants to know alot😭

It would be more cooler if like MEGAN plays genshin or like knows all the lore and characters (the power she holds☠️)

Whenever you sneak out, go on a meeting, went out to buy some stuff , went to travel you bet your ass MEGAN will be beside u 24/7 even if the mobs dont attack you MEGAN would still be on gaurd to make sure nothing harms you

MEGAN would play some songs back in your world if you feel stressed out by the work and responsibilities

MEGAN would make a deal with the fatui or the abyss to secretly spy on you where ever or whenever you go (its not like you will leave without her🫣!!!)

MEGAN gives me that platonic yandere vibes so if you ever have "secret admirers" , MEGAN would scan that letter properly and find your admirers house and "talk" to them nicely to stop bothering you

MEGAN would have that resting bitch face on 24/7 but whenever you talk to her she would look so bubbly and nice, but whenever your not around shes so close on choking the people that has been "eyeing" you whenever you breathe, theyre lucky that you told MEGAN to not harm anyone

MEGAN wouldnt give a damn fck about visions, like she would think its useless but the fatui would give her a delusion either way😭👆🏻 (you requested it)

MEGAN would find a way to either destory teyvat or make a portal to make you both go back home cause she doesnt plan on sharing you with anyone any time soon shes only having thin patience around these mfs , but she has to play nice for now😄‼️

IMPOSTER AU! SAGAU ;

you both somehow got teleported in genshin, idk how maybe MEGAN like heard you say you wanted to go to teyvat and MEGAN is like "im a robot i can do technology i can do portal shit lets go"

so now here you both are, eating soup in a small little camp and some fruit giving by some monsters you two met along the way! isnt that nice:')))

You had abit of wound, you were thinking you would have more wound than the wounds you got but suprise suprise MEGAN protected your sorry ass

looks like MEGAN has to train harder but good thing she still have some tricks on her sleeves

MEGAN doesnt mind threatening off a few "side characters" so you two would survive

MEGAN would send death threats to the "creator//the real imposter" and she would have it in like some of the archon's handwriting without signing (bc in the movie she managed to make a masterpiece of a drawing like zamn😭)

MEGAN would give out fake informations and will say its from the "creator//the real imposter" so they would believe it but it will take like a 1-2 year from them to realized that someone has been spreading fake informations

MEGAN would sneak in the academy and do some chaos in any technology plans they have just to make distractions and give you time to get like items you both might need

If the fatuis know your the real creator and take you both in, MEGAN would only help out the fatuis by giving out personal informations of other characters that they call themselves "devoted worshippers"

MEGAN would probably be great friends with Sandrone & scaramouche

MEGAN would be "friendly friendly" with dottore just to get more technology uses😭

MEGAN has thoughts on just beating the shit out of childe (and probably dottore) but she choose not because she doesnt have time to play around with "childe-rens" and has to be by your side 24/7

but If the abyss finds you both first

ofc they would take you both in and MEGAN would also share some tips or advice to defeat those vision users

The abyss sibling would ask your permission to take MEGAN with them from time to time to set out their plan on destorying teyvet and the people who wronged you

MEGAN was abit hesitant at first cause like,, leaving you alone with the abyss? Naur..

But then you insisted that MEGAN should go with aether (also so you can go explore the abyss abit without MEGAN breathing behind your neck😭)

MEGAN would be a trump card for the abyss like if the traveller sees their abyss sibiling with MEGAN, MEGAN would glare at them, if glaring can kill people traveller would have been dead already

and if traveler shares what he saw when he saw his sibiling to like,, someone they would probably go like "yo wait isnt that the kid with the imposter?!"

If people in teyvat finally get to their senses that the "creator" in the throne is the real imposter

they would hunt you and MEGAN down (again) but with "good intentions"

you and MEGAN would troll these bitches

MEGAN would sing creepy songs while theyre haunting at the dark

you and MEGAN will only go out at night but if theres a squad looking for you both

MEGAN would be hella overprotective and going infront of you with her weapon out while glaring at them

"Your grace!"

"Tsk. little bugs like you shouldn't show yourself infront of your "grace""

MEGAN wouldn't HESITATE too ROAST them.

and you would be laughing inside bc of it too

if ever you get recrowned as the "creator" and the real imposter gets jailed up

MEGAN will TOTURE that bitch whenever your sleeping

those "devoted followers" of yours would look at MEGAN and be like

"damn i wish i was her"

MEGAN will be your loyal bodyguard and right hand

why would you need those people when you have MEGAN who sticked with you even when you were still so young?

like you would have the largest trust issues with stuff like imagine

"(maid/bulter's name), please call zhongli."

"yes your grace!"

"yes your grace, you called?"

"please call MEGAN."

"a-"

like 😭😭😭YOU DONT WANT ANYTHING FROM THE PPL IN TEYVAT

and even if the real imposter comes back and claims their the real creator , MEGAN would know their bullshitting bc she has that scanner stuff😭‼️

MEGAN will always protect you from any harm and if something even touch you without your permission, their hand is getting cutted off

"MEGAN.. Was that really necessary..?"

"Of course, Its also my duty to make you comfortable at any time _____"

"Right,, but you didn—"

"Shush now, silly _____! I was only protecting you after all we're best friends aren't we?"

Que that person whos trynna touch you screaming in pain in the background🤭‼️

Have this shitty azz drawing❤️Goodbye xoxo

[squipdop]

HIIIII CAN I ASK ABOUT THE SIX YEARS LATER AU???

Howd they bring up the junior scouts idea to max??? Was he like Whatever sure or super tsundere or surprisingly emotional that they wanted him back after he aged out?? Did anyone else come back or do special day-long visits like how schools bring in visitors? What does max think of the new kids? They all look so cool i love Max's hair!!!!

HI HI HELLO YES OFC!!! :33

Okay so. I call it the '6 years later' AU but technically i have Stuff Planned for all the time that passed between now and then too, so this'll be a bit longer, sorry!!

Max joining the counselor team was actually kind of a natural/gradual development?? Basically, since I can't make CC content that isn't found family Max has a shit home life, and, even if he hates to admit it at first, the three months of summer camp become his bright spot each year. David and Gwen catch on to that, but there isn't much they can do to help outside of camp - until one day Max (age 13/14ish) shows up on Gwen's doorstep because he ran away from home, 'since his parents won't care either way'. While he does return home after hiding out at Gwen's place for a weekend, this kind of kicks off a pattern of Max running away sporadically, to Gwen's, later David's, or his friends places. I could go into more detail here but. this is already long. oop.

ANYWAYS. So with Max spending basically all the time he can away from home and the summers at camp, once he ages out there's. A Bit of panic starting in him once summer gets closer again, because his Safe Place seems inaccessible, and two of his OTHER options, especially for longer stays away from home, would also be unavailable. Gwen and David notice this (it manifests in Max staying over More but Angrier) and try to find a solution. Gwen proposes the Jr Counselor idea. They introduce the idea to Max by kinda implying that workload around camp is a lot, and it'd really hurt to miss one of their most experienced campers, but... maybe, if he worked there too (well, interned. basically unpaid. but! no camp tuition!) he could help them? so they basically give Max a way to say yes without admitting that he's the one who needs camp the most. He does insult the whole thing ofc, and says like he's just doing it because he knows camp would burn down without him there ("actually, most of the fires we had were started by you...?" "shut it, david") but secretly he's really really happy. He might even thank them later that evening. Quietly. Before complaining about it preemptively. <3

WAH THATS ALREADY SUCH A WALL OF TEXT ok ill hurry up w the rest:

While most of the other campers had some rotations over the years, I don't have conk rete plans for most of them - Nikki and Neil are still Max' gang, and returned for multiple summers, if not all. This year though, Neil is busy with college prep, and Nikki is spending the summer at home because of family crisis. They still video call a lot, they're still The Gang. I have sketched designs for them, but I'm not quite happy yet.

Max at first doesn't take his role seriously, because he's basically just Back For Another Summer, but pretty quickly realises Gwen and David DO have expectations, and DO give him responsibilities. He takes a while to come around on his new relationship to the younger kids, and especially one of the youngest kids takes a liking to him, a very anxious young girl, which annoys him at first, but... well. It's a whole ~character arc~ for Max waiting to happen tbh.

OK THANK YOU IF YOU MADE IT THIS FAR IM SORRY ITS SO LONG. i wasnt lying when i said i have So Many Thoughts about this. ANYWAYS as thank u for getting this far heres a doodle of Max putting up his hair. :3c

[klesek]

novem-bur day 25: amogus. fwiatc edition! me when the uh. when the impostor is sus haha anyways words r lyrics from "scapegoat" by ghost and pals and uhhh. dont ask why the guy from among us is like the angstiest bur in fwiatc but also im going to tell you anyways (under the cut !)

prompt list

fwiatc link

um. so this is imp (short for 'impostor') and [REDACTED] (he has a name but its not revealed yet because he. hasnt talked to anyone but imp in the fic yet unless you count when editor saw him which i absolutely dont. anyways) and theyre the burs from among us ! yes burs plural . bc imp is the Impostor and [REDACTED] is the Crewmate and i made among us worldbuilding bc i love science fiction a normal amount. so basically "impostors" (thats what humans call them), aka what imp is, are a 'hostile' alien species who 'possess' and kill other intelligent species, mostly on cargo ships ! the reason for this is. not yet revealed in fwiatc technically but one can kind of draw conclusions. but the main driving factor is what you see in the background of this art- a star getting sucked into a black hole. yes thats a black hole In my defense no one really knows what they look like ! anyways the 'impostors' are shape-shifting alien parasitoids who infect and take over a host in order to Do Their Job. and originally imp was supposed to be like a straight-up antagonist whos like rly bad and a murderer etcetc and he Is a murderer he kills [REDACTED] (different guy. spoilers lmao) but i made myself emotional over him and now hes just a silly little guy with a million identity crises because i said so!

uhh TLDR i made among us backstory, got attached to the murderer i made, and now imp and [REDACTED] are two of my favorite burs. i love them and i need to run them over with an 18-wheeler

[scalproie]

I'm not really like. Upset at the pure fact of Kuai being scorpion, more just that Hanzo might be gone. He really is a tragedy, and it was fun seeing his arc in both timelines. Mostly, besides when Raiden called him Q-C's slave and present Hanzo death. I liked that he became the face of mk but wasn't a chosen one or a altruistic hero or something like that, hell he wasn't even supposed to be popular, just a fun lil thing for the og cast cause his rivalry with Subz.

He just became the popular one cause hes just really fucking cool. He Is good, but unrelenting about what he wants, he's not above killing yet shows restraint for the special forces and Kuai in X. Everything he does is for a reason, maybe not a good one but one you can see the reasoning behind. He's not the most complex character to exist but he's a really fun character.

Plus, I miss the old man yaoi, more on the Old part. Everyone looks so young in 1. My wrinkly old farts are gone ✊️😔

yeah no hanzo being completely MIA so far is a valid concern. but I would like to trust that nrs are not completely clueless over why their characters are beloved in the first place and know that half the appeal of scorpion was hanzo's story and not just his general aesthetic, so I dare hold onto the hope that he's gonna make an appearance in the story, or at the very least, I would settle for a solid justification in-game over why he's missing.

Hard agree on your take on scorpion too, in the great mk universe he is at his core Just A Guy with a storyline thats compelling and could be standalone. Like for exemple, you cant take liu kang, raiden and shang stung (and goro) out of mortal kombat because they ARE mortal kombat, you could technically take sonya (and jax) and kano out of mk but in my personal opinion it wouldnt make for a super interesting story cause its like, standard military mumbo jumbo. Johnny is an outlier and should not be counted, his whole appeal is that he is an actor, adaptable, and is more than he seems. But I genuinely think the ninja storyline with scorpion AND sub zero could be divorced from mortal kombat and still be extremely compelling, even if it does lose a significant amount of meat bc of it.

Also yeah he wasnt meant to be the mascot but im glad he is (alongside subz kinda but he really takes the forefront since mkx) bc like i said before character favoritism is okay if i like said character. Which i do. Also since he really wasnt meant to be mk's face, its funny to imagine if another character got the spot, like imagine reptile on cover bc he was a secret boss back in the day and people (and ed boon) loved him so much he blew up in popularity, while sub zero was relegated to a jobber, and scorpion was dlc like ermac is nowadays (🥹👍)

(Anyway the lesson here is when two characters are so intricately linked in their storyline like scorpy and subz are, they lift each other to the top.)

Anyway back on scorpion, I really enjoyed his arc in the second timeline as well bc yeah, he isnt as shackled in his morality as other characters and I really love that they let him fuck up massively, like killing bi-han ib mk9 when he swore not to, and when he killed quan chi in mkx, its very accidentaly "scorpion and the frog" of him and I like that "he couldnt change his nature" :) he's a really really enjoyable character to watch partly bc hes been through a lot but also bc he genuinely is conceptually so cool. Also I will not be the first to say that his relationship with kuai liang/sub zero in the second timeline was the best written arc they did, that spawned over three whole games too.

SPEAKING OF Im gonna miss the old man yaoi sooo much too, its was about the "finding love again/for the first time in your forties" yknow? Esp with someone u had a complicated history with. Man.

And finally. Technically I understand every character going back to their 20s with the new timeline thingie, I even could understand our resident old man raiden not being old anymore with the whole divinity switch with liu kang but LIU KANG ISNT OLD TO COUNTERBALANCE. HE DOESNT EVEN HAVE HIS WHITE GOD HAIR ANYMORE. and take of depending temperature but Ive always enjoyed shang stung as an old evil man so much more than him young and him not even being old anymore is such a loss to me. So yeah Im mourning my fucking dilfs and senior citizens man😔

[marzowo]

I technically have been here for two years buuut i havent actually doen any kinda introductions,just said i was a twitter refugee amd left it buuut a intro would be nice so here i am :))

hi im marceline, just call me marz

Ive been on earth foor 16 years? and some months,ive got a fuckton of siblings and a crippling mentality

Im in a shittone of fandoms and i have a different fixation per day

Im easily distracted and me holding a relationship is like me holding warm butter so if u can handle distant anti socials

Hi :]]

I have a crippling Ao3 addiction and have short term memory (kinda)

I also read manhwa if ur into tht too (manhwa,manhua,manga,danmei(limited) u name it)

Unfortunately i dont really do anime anymore,like i know basic summaries but i dont watch the anime

i mostly read the manga

I am a Neptunic NB who goes be all pronouns +Star/Starself (if u couldnt tell i have a space hyperfix)

List of Fandoms im in

Percy Jackson

Welcom Home(current fixation #1)

My Mxtx Era(Mdzs[Mo dao Zu shi],Svsss[Scum Villain Savin System],tgcf[Ti/Tu guan ci fu..only srry iforgotifitstiortuguanlol)

uhhhĥhh Bungou Strsy Dogs 🐕

Spiderman (Specifically Tom Holland)

Spiderverze! (i still need to fisnih my spiderson smh)

Danny Phantom

Genshin Impact

Hannibal

YOI(Yuri [its actually yaoi smh] on ice)

Harry Potter

Very limited as im yet to read it buuut,Hunger Games

DBH(Detroit Become Human[Kara my beloved])

PJSK :D(Project Sekai)

Underworld Office (bcs Eugene)

DC(not DC comics lol,Detective Conan :))))

Assassination Classroom

Murder Drones(Fixation #3)

LMK(Lego monkie kid/king-fixation #2 lol)

Code geass(Lelouch has me by th shirt collar omfg)

Fullmetal Alchemist

Voltron(Me when they lowkey forced LancexAllura lmao)

SHE-RA(Unfortunately just the modern one,older she-rq looks badass af+he-man is a total himbo )

OrV(Omniscient Readers Viewpoint,Has me pulled away by the ankles atp. Fixation #4)

Wednesday (reluctantly atp,its probably the only series ive finsiged within the last 12 months/srs)

Hmmm maybe Demon Slayer/Kimetsu No Yaiba

Encanto,if it counts

BL(Blue lock ;])

Erased/boku dake gai inai dachi(i think thats right)

OHSHC(Ouran highschool host club)

Criminal minds ofc,but only till s3 or s5,i got too lazy to finsih it b4 it was taken off netflix

Showtunes/Musicals(Specifically the songs lol buut,Heathers,uhh Dear evan hansen,a lil Hamilton, etc...etc)

Enola Holmes

Saiki K

Umbrella Academy

SpyXFamily

Legacies

TBP(The black phone :/)

Legally Blonde 1 & 2

Oshi No Ko(my idol? i think. Manga Timeline only)

TNMNT(Specifically the 20 something one,2020?2022?

unOrdinary

Moriarty The Patriot(Its just Gay Sherlock and Jame Moriarty)

Carmen Sandiego ofc (shes a queen)

{coming to the end lol}

the Owl House

The Queens Gambit(Im gonna rewatch it agian :>)

Bridgerton(bcs dramatic Victorian ppl are really hot)

Avatar(The one from my childhood,Guess which)

Twilight (bcs i have an older sister)

TBHK(Toilet bound hanako kun)

And very reluctantly (i left 5 months ago) My..My dsmp phase

+More :D extensive list i know.

Theres more

But ill stop here bcs i dont think anyones gonna read allat

Anyway pls follow me everywhere bcs i shitpost constantly

Literally whatever is in my brain goes online

Uhh heres my alternative socials

Reditt/Reddit

Twitter

Ao3:I forgot

Special Mention:Spotify

Marz has invited you to join a Blend on Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/blend/taste-match/a0d45a403ea80217?si=V1jNTL7zR2CwVmMwXvnmgw&fallback=getapp

Also i kinda do art sometimes

[red-dyed-sarumane]

having been here from the very beginning i think my fave aru sekai series lore is that

• despite it very clearly being a series (it is. it IS i can prove it to u) hiiragi magnetite has never addressed it as such. the fan art tag on twitter is aru sekai bijutsuten However it was chosen via poll and was a listener created tag. hiiragima themself has yet to say anything about it being a series. if u ask them a question (for example when i asked if the charas have names) they wont correct u & know what ur talking about but nope. they dont talk about the content of the songs outside of the songs at all

• possibly not aru sekai but we'll see eventually- they decided to make a song thats one second for every like they got. theyre currently making a song thats 70,000 seconds long (like 19 &1/2 hours). they have the file name saved so that "seconds" is replaced with "illness" which sounds the same in jpn

• the content is so fucking specific every time i see other people try to translate it theyre like "this was so confusing". they are so right but also i promise u it gets 2% easier when u know the songs are related

• sena yuta does the art for the main aru sekai series songs. asa is the other illust. even tho asa tends to do art for nonseries songs (nadenna, uni, rasshaina) marshall maximizer & canon are absolutely part of the series & i cant believe i keep seeing people over look this. the motif is RIGHT THERE. canon says aru sekai de in THE FIRST LINE whats not clicking

• many songs have context as text flashed for a frame in the video background! as of right now aru sekai soushitsu, kyuuyaku hankagai, shuuen touhikou, unplanned apoptosis, marshall maximizer, canon (this ones in code) have text. oumen mokushiroku, kugutsu ashura, laboratory do not. (if u want to get technical oumen has the ou kanji to say its part of the aru sekai shoushitsu order but theres no new information in it)

• all of the songs except for kugutsu ashura & laboratory have the "nami no ne no yume wo miyou" melody from aru sekai shoushitsu worked in somewhere. if u dont believe me ill get u time stamps if u ask. those two songs dont have it but im telling u its thematic, they ARE part of the series, but i cant only really theorize on what it means until we get more songs & content

• hiiragima once said "if u dont know how to read the title of kugutsu ashura you can just call it ashura" this is especially funny bc they always put furigana for their titles in their descriptions.

• they actually do a good job of getting characterization across once u get past the technical language they use. some of them are a lot more obvious than others (unplanned apoptosis. i think this girls so funny bc its so different from everything else) but theres a lot u can get from the word choice/play once ur used to all the weird science (?) terms. sena yuta's art also does an AMAZING job of getting their characters down in a single drawing. u can tell so much from the art for real. this is a whole essay in itself im stopping here for now

• all the characters have names!!!!!! i would know i asked directly & they responded they said yes the characters have names but theyre waiting for the right moment to reveal them. every day this torments me both bc i would like to call her by name instead of saying tenshi everyday and also bc i know this means they have plot significance & im not ready to handle that

• so far all the charas in the songs are girls but if i remember correct the bg text in some songs (shoushitsu & maximzier i think? id have to double check) refers to there being at least one guy in there somewhere.

• this is just a personal note but none of these people have basic lab safety i mean look at their outfits. if the world wasnt ending they die anyway wearing that esp the laboratory chara but i digress

• in general the series is ur "the world is ending and we need to find a way to stop it from ending"typical story i guess. not only plays on destruction of the world but also destruction of the self. its not ur lighthearted easy to handle voca series if u want that may i suggest honeyworks or perhaps last notes mikagura school suite instead

• we dont have a timeline. i can tell u from context the songs arent being posted in chronological order. i have no idea what the order is ive made a guess before but its just a guess.

• theres a paragraph in shoushitsu about a swampman & hilarious as it sounds it actually describes exactly whats going on. both about how the world functions in that no two attempts are the same but also that people who lose their "self" are also The Same But Not. which is interesting to know its so thought out considering the time between songs & how hiiragima claims to just be doing whatever they want. its very cohesive. somehow.

• i have no idea why the english titles of the songs are like that on youtube. i dont know if they did that themself or not but i for one refuse to acknowledge that shuuen touhikou is called "blade" over there. girl what how did we get there u just lost soo much connotation doing that. i want to say the swords arent even a main part of the song but i dont think i can actually. anyway the "eng" titles on yt dont exist to me

• the theme used to be 5 kanji title songs were the main songs and katakana with the first repeating (ex MArshall MAximizer) were more like. sub or context songs. and then we have like canon & laboratory so idk if those are just another type of song along with the others or if they decided they didnt want to follow that anymore. i need more info but still something to note. the kanji songs also used to be sections of shoushitsu (kyuu, shuu, ou, fuu, mei, juu, mou, ei) but then, again, kugutsu ashura threw me off so [vague confused gesturing]

• rain. thats all i need to say really. very few songs that dont have rain or the color blue in it somewhere & that's absolutely intentional.

• i saw sena yuta say something about flower language in regards to the laboratory art but i never saw if they elaborated and my friend whos into flower language was having a time trying to pin point what flower it was so for now another mystery unsolved

[seijatachiis]

just another queer journey for pride month

so i figured since its pride month and its been basically a decade since i started my queer journey id just talk about it. especially bc theres been recent changes too!

my name is al and im nonbinary, they/them! mm well im asexual so i guess im technically panromantic? maybe demiromantic? ngl im still not sure but ill get to that. its also been about a year since i met my bf whos a transman and we often talk a lot about gender and sexuality.

like most people my journey started in high school. i had been reading BL fanfics for bands i liked around the end of elementary school and i think i was aware of transmen and transwomen. i really didnt know more than the basics, lesbian/gay/bi/transman/transwomen. someone i met in hs, an old friend, is the one who opened the door. at first obviously he didnt know me so he just told me to call him a very gender neutral sounding name and they/them. and that was the first time i had heard about someone using they/them pronouns. eventually he came out and said no im a trans so he/him? then he was basically like are YOU actually a woman?

obviously im paraphrasing bc honestly i dont remember much from how it started exactly or the exact conversation but i rememer looking into it a little and the next day i said i dont think im really a woman. i started using they/them pronouns and decided i was demigirl. i was kinda a tomboy when i was younger but it was more i just liked pokemon and the boys always had more interesting things but i liked "girly" things a little bit. i never really felt like i wanted or wished i was a man.

it might be because ive been using they/them for so long now but i got used to them quickly and they just felt so right. i didnt really focus too hard on what i identified as tho i was demigirl until uni. i remember this because i met a person who at the time was also demigirl. hes a transman now, which is great. im not sure but at some point in 2019 i think i realized i was nonbinary. i think it mightve happened when- im not out in real life. fear mostly but also bc i dont really care about other people, as long as those i care about know im nonbinary and use they/them i dotn care too much. anyways i remember being on break at work, my boss came in and was talking to my supervisor, just a "hey whats happening today" and was like "is she ready for her aquafit" and im like listening and im like oh whos doing aquafit.

it was me lol. he was talking about me. was so confused bc i dont usually hear people talking about me so i dont hear myself being referred to as she anymore. anyways its really not much to it. i did briefly try he/him in high school and the first time my friend used it i was like nope thats wrong nope.

i dont...think i really experienced gender dysphoria. or body dysphoria. i have issues with my body and an extreme disconnect to it but thats tied more to the general societal standards of beauty and less about my gender?

gender was never really the problem. my sexuality - more specifically if i was aromantic or not, has been the thing ive been struggling with and ive realized i never . solved it yet.

im p sure im panromantic/pansexual whatever, gender doesnt much matter to me bc ive always been more about if we get along. we gotta vibe yknow? the bf and i, our first date... the vibes were there. well i didnt feel the romantic vibes it was more just we definitely get along. im getting sidetracked and this is already super super long.

that same friend asked me if i was aroace. i didnt know what that meant, he explained it and i was like huh. maybe i am? i dont really recall ever having a crush on anyone or liking anyone. ive definitely not had sexual desire for anyone. but i just figured thats bc i havent liked anyone. so yeah i was aroace. a few years later i would rethink that.

because i forgot how insecure i am. and im thinking...there might have been two guys i had a crush on when i was younger but because i knew they'd never like me like that, i pushed the feelings so far down so maybe . maybe im not aro.

ill be honest, its been way too long now - i still dont know if i had a crush on them. but this is because i dont understand what that means. blah blah parental trauma but i had some stunted emotional growth and so im not great at emotions. i would flip flop between am i aro or have i just not met anyone i like yet? because i do have high walls. i dont let people in easily.

but i would daydream about having a partner. but it was never really about me liking them i just wanted them to like ME. i want people to like me. bc it was never the same person, generally whoever showed me a little extra attention that week but then id easily forget them. and i never. really wanted to date them. bc honestly i only ever pictured love confessions, never what itd be like after.

i met my bf on hinge. i fuck around on dating apps mostly bc im bored and wanna bother people, i rarely meet up with them i just spout some new random facts and im intentionally being weird. so i swiped on him first bc he had some nonsense in his profile i wanted to debate about. he said hey we're kinda hitting it off do you wanna go on a date? i said sure lets go to the thrift shop bc i was looking for a gift for my friend when i went to visit her in europe in a few weeks lol. i was really just using him for a ride to the thrift shop bc i dont own a car.

my god we hit it off and i remember thinking "id love to be friends with him hes so cool and fun to be around". i think it had to be a dating app. i dont think id ever have gotten a partner otherwise, because you kinda go into dating apps with the intention to find romance (unless you're me). he knows this but i didnt actually start to like him romantically till AFTER we started dating. i had to think very hard about it, im not entirely sure if this is what romantic feelings are supposed to feel like - i have to assume they are.

but we're happy and i had to do a lot of thinking to determine if i love him but i can say now for sure i love him. but idk if i can call that timeline long enough to really say im demi-romantic? idk if theres a specific time limit, maybe i am. it definitely took hm since we first met uh two months before i really started to like him romantically which honestly sounds normal to me.

so yeah thats not quite resolved but i dont care to find anyone else. but then. then comes the asexuality part. i originally way back in hs was like yeah im ace. whilst debating my aro problems i kinda always figured once i liked someone id probably be sexually attracted to them too. i get horny, surely that means im not ace.

yeah. i learned thats not the case. since sexuality is about being sexually attracted to a person, you can get Horny but not be sexually attracted to anyone. i put so much research into asexuality. a lot. it caused me more stress than anything i think bc now i had to tell him. that was . very anxiety inducing bc the first time i tried to tell him i nearly got a panic attack. this is knowing he'd be totally fine with it too, that he'd be accepting.

im just. not that interested in sex. i get horny but i dont really do much about it. i read smut bc its fun and bc its easier to deal with angsty fics when theres smth to distract you lol. CANT HURT ME IF THERES DICK TO FOCUS ON!!

i wont rule out that i might be demisexual. i might change my mind, i might not. i know my bf accepts me either way. but yeah thats my queer journey. its mostly me thinking. because i dont really have any experience with anything, im not a social person lol. but i also dont understand emotions and feelings all too well, so thinking only really got me so far. i always learned better by doing.

if you made it this far, thank you for reading! im always open to making new friends so i think my dms are open or whatever it is, but yeah :3

[raincamp]

7 - 29 - 23

i was too distracted by good omens 2 yesterday to write anything haha, a good thing though, because it meant that i was distracted from the emotions im experiencing in real life. i instead spent all of yesterday in mourning with crowley. i feel like he and i are going through similar issues right now, it was nice to feel like i had someone (fictional) who understood, and also had somewhere (fictional) to put all my feelings.

he is so BPD coded — i can't even begin to talk about it

anyway, today i spent most of my time with my best friend (M) who i think i have yet to mention here? she's kind of a FP— or she used to be— or, i honestly don't know at this point. since i figured out my therapist is a FP of mine, it feels like maybe M has become less of one? or maybe it just feels like that in comparison. its all so confusing sometimes to put labels on things. but i think whats important is that i have an attachment to her that is sometimes on the unhealthy side, but our relationship remains stable because we both put in the work to make it that way despite my unhealthy attachment.

we went to a cafe and i talked a lot about therapy, which was nice, she's a psychology major so she loves hearing about me and my disorder and my therapy, and she's also really insightful about relationships so she had a lot to add, it was kind of reassuring, but i did also accidentally trigger myself and started talking some very obvious BPD-cognitive-distortion-bullshit about my therapist which was kind of humiliating. she was understanding though— immediately called me out on it. and then suggested we do something else because she could tell it was distressing me.

i fear that i might start becoming emotionally dependent on her again now that my therapist has cut me off. i dont think it would be too bad, because of the stability of our relationship, however i do have feelings about that potential situation, because i dont particularly enjoy being dependent on anybody. it makes me feel guilty and ashamed of myself, and kind of frustrated because i can't seem to just be independent. the concept seems to be totally foreign to me.

i was going to try to hang out with another of my friends today too, but she didnt answer my 15 phone calls, and i kind of split on her too :') im having a rough time right now. idk why im getting so easily triggered all of a sudden.

maybe i just have more emotional vulnerability now? hm. its difficult figuring this kind of stuff out without her, my therapist, i miss her. i need her.

everything just feels kind of empty and hollow without my therapist in my life. like. i know im technically only missing seeing her for 2 days, but theres weeks in between those two days, and those weeks start to feel like years when it's somebody im so dependent on. so i feel like i've lost so much.

M was talking about how its possible my therapist withdrew partly because of how attached i was becoming, and i dont even want to consider that a possibility right now, but i cant stop thinking about it. i dont have control over how attached i become to people, and if thats whats causing her to be so cold towards me— which has been causing me SO much pain— then im gonna be,, idk i'm having a hard time identifying my feelings today. but its essentially telling me that i should be able to stop something i don't have control over in order to have the support that i need. I don't think thats fair.

thats the message im getting from this whole situation anyway though, since it all comes back to an addiction, which I don't have control over.

maybe i just dont deserve mental health support and treatment, i feel like thats just the overall message the universe is trying to convey to me right now. idk what i did to deserve it, but i obviously did something, so ig i should just accept the punishment. nothing i can do about it now.

if my therapist were here she'd call me out on blaming the universe like she always does. but shes not here so she can get fucked. ill stay being delusional if it makes me feel better.

im dissociated as fuck today

- andrew

[hinacu-arts]

SOME TIME LATER, STILL IN GOOD OLD NYC TRAFFIC. USAGI HAS HUNG UP AND THEY ARE FINALLY GETTING THE STORY ABOUT THE STEP-PARENTS

R! Leo: oh right. Where to start with that? So I don't ACTUALLY have step-parents. Big Mama is Dad's ex from back in his human days. Big Mama kidnapped him after that and held him prisoner for 10 years so their history goes way back. I guess the best way to put it is they're on-again-off-again? But they've been doing that for ages now so Big Mama has been in our lives since we were teenagers, so she's kind of our maternal-figure. She watched us grow up, she still comes to family events, you know the drill.

Then theres Draxum. I say he's our step-dad only because its the less confusing term but Mikey is of the mind that he's more of our absent dad who left when we were kids and came back into our lives later. He's the one who mutated us so technically he's our "creator" but Mikey equated that to "father" and dragged him kicking and screaming into this family. He also kidnapped my dad by the way. Stole him from Big Mama. Anyways he only recently tried to ACTUALLY parent us, which is hilarious because im 24.

He's got a couple of other "creations" he's got a relationship with. Sloppy Joesph is our step-brother? Half-brother? Draxum made him. He also made one of our sisters, but she grew up with the yokai family that adopted her so she's also fairly new to this family. And by extension the family she grew up with because of course if theyre her family theyre also our family now. They're great people. Her mom makes a mean curry. Ironically, she's been Big Mama's assistant for years so we actually all interacted tons of times before we knew. Her relationship with Draxum isn't the same as ours, because again, she's pretty new.

Piebald is our adopted sister who we accidently flushed down the toilet, but then she got mutated down in the sewers so she found her way back to us. She's Dad's favorite because she's his only daughter. He wont say it but we all know.

There's our best friend April who we've know since i was nine, and her parents. I guess you could call her our sister but she's more like a cousin. Like we grew up together but we still had different parents, you know? Gram-Gram formally adopted her into the clan about 10 years ago now. We absolutely should throw her a party if it's really been that long.

Then of course there's my brothers. You know me, and now Usagi. Him and his group are all extended family now. Usagi tries to get them to come to at least ONE of our family events a year. Usagi says they haven't figured out we see them as family yet and are just inviting them to be nice, which is complete BS. This family might be a hot mess but we don't let JUST ANYONE in. Well, Usagi would've been in either way from marrying me but i digress.

There's Raph. He's the oldest. I'll come back to him because "its complicated" doesnt begin to answer the question that is Junior.

There's Donnie. We're two months apart in age so we've kinda grown up as twins. He's absolutely unhinged and him and Draxum aren't allowed to be alone in any lab together. Despite being probably the two smartest people in this country they do not make smart decisions when it comes to mad-scientistry. Donnie patents a lot of things so he's actually loaded. He isn't seeing anyone but he IS a dad and his number of children continue to grow. They're all AIs but Donnie had to take parenting classes in order to keep up with them and he attends family therapy with a couple of them now so yes they are his children and he is a dad. Im the cool uncle, of course. His oldest, S.H.E.L.L.D.O.N., just got a girlfriend and im the one he told first!

Mikey is a professional chef! He works down in Hidden City. He's also a artist, which is how he met Spidey. They aren't dating but they should be. We have bets on when they'll actually confess. Spidey was a physics major and Mikey is the most emotionally attuned person in this whole family but damn they are SO STUPID when it comes to understanding whats a compliment and whats flirting. It just flies right over their heads.

And then we've got the Joneses. Casey and Raph are best friends. She hangs out with Dad almost as much as Raph. Casey has become as intertwined with our family as April has, honestly. She now toes the line between "family friend" and "unofficial family member". She's as batshit insane as she is smart. She's the CEO of a baked goods company she built when she was 16 and she's also the head of the Foot Clan, which she's rebuilding. Also don't leave her and Donnie together too long, they will commit world domination together and then violently fight over who gets to rule which half of the world. They have a twenty step plan. Ive seen it. This will be, like, her fifth world domination attempt in her entire life and she isn't even thirty yet.

There's Casey Junior. He's her son from the apocalyptic future we stopped from happening. He works for his mom right now down in deliveries and supplies. He's a sweet kid. Apparently other me raised him after Casey died, so that was a weird dynamic to work out but in this world im his Tio Leo. Casey fell right into parenting him, which was surprising because she does not seem like a woman with any maternal instincts. Raph's big brother skills transferred over the minute he found out he was Junior's assigned-father-figure back in his own timeline. So the three of them from a distance seem like friends all the same age but you guys are gonna see nuggets of the parent-child and co-parent relationship between the three of them.

Ahhhh did i miss anyone? I mentioned dad right? Giant mutated rat who used to be a human action movie star. Then Draxum kidnapped him to use his DNA to make us his supersoldiers but you guys know how well that went- Oh! Hugin and Munin. They were Draxum's lackeys back when he was evil. They're yokai that look like tiny gargoyles. Don't mistake them for pets. Mayhem on the other hand is also a yokai thats pet-shaped but he doesn't talk so April just tells people he's her weird feral chihuahua she rescued off the streets.

2012 turtles: wtf

another completely random crossover idea that popped in my head out of nowhere

2012 ends up in riseverse, itself set 10 or so years after canon events. The Usagi mentioned is implied to be Yuichi or a version of a rottmnt specific Usagi

2012 TURTLES AND R!LEO ARE IN THE TURTLE TANK. R!LEO IS DRIVING THE NEWLY PICKED UP 2012 TURTLES TO HIS HOME

Mikey: *touching things he shouldn't be*

Donnie: *absolutely enthralled by all the tech in the tank*

Raph: *staring at R!Leo*

Leo: *attention split between a conversation with R!Leo and making sure Mikey doesnt explode them all*

TANK SPEAKERS START RINGING WITH A PHONECALL

R! Leo, answering the call: hey babe, you'll never guess what happened

Raph: *mouthing "babe?" at Leo*

Leo: *just as confused*

Phonecall: ummm Donnie built a sentient ice cream machine?

Raph: *mouthing "thats a dude!" at Leo*

Leo: *shushes Raph*

R! Leo: no, but dont give him ideas!

Phonecall: what happened?

R! Leo: alternate versions of me and my brothers are in this universe. They're so short I love it.

Phonecall: please send a picture I have to see this

R! Leo: i already did!

Mikey: when did you take our picture?

Phonecall: ohmigosh they're adorable. What are they, 15?

Raph: we're 17!

Phonecall: same thing. Who was that?

R! Leo: that's little Raph!

Raph: "LITTLE"!

R! Leo: everyone say hi!

Leo: umm, hi. Who are we speaking to?

R! Leo: oh! This is Usagi, my ex-boy-

Usagi: i'm his ex-boyfriend

Someone on the other end of the phonecall: i hate when they call each other that!

R! Leo and Usagi: it's true!

R! Leo, to the turtles: i got a promotion *winks*

2012: *confused glances to each other*

Donnie: uh, what does that mean?

R! Leo: i'm his husband!

Usagi: on your world! We're still fiances on mine.

Someone on the other side of the phonecall: AND THEY STILL CALL EACH OTHER BY THEIR LAST NAMES! ITS DISGUSTING

R! Leo: hmm, you're right. I guess we better switch last names babe

Usagi: nah, i like calling you "Hamato"

Phonecall: SEE ITS DISGUSTING!

Usagi: DONT YOU HAVE SOMEWHERE ELSE TO BE!

Raph, mesmerized by R!Leo's laidback back-and-forth: youre married to a human?

R! Leo: oh no, Usagi is a-

Usagi: Leo's a furry

R! Leo: i hate that Donnie taught you that word

Usagi: speaking of Donnie, have you noticed Kendra is his type?

R! Leo: Kendra? What do you mean? They're archenemies or something

Usagi: i want you to picture Donnie's type

R! Leo: okay?

Usagi: now picture Kendra

R! Leo: holy shit

Mikey, with his arm slung around Donnie as he pokes his face: who's Kendra

R! Leo: oh calm down lil Mike. Kendra would eat your Donnie for breakfast and then spit him back up. And i could tell right from the get go she's not your Donnie's type. She's psychopathic. Like my Donnie.

Usagi: which is Donne's type. And your dad's actually

R! Leo: huh?

Usagi: have you seriously never noticed Donnie and your dad have the same taste in women?

R! Leo: name one example

Usagi: your step-mom is tiny and batshit insane. Donnie's type is short and mean. Its basically the same thing

R! Leo: *incoherent noises* why are you so right! Fuck you!

Usagi: no we arent double married yet

R! Leo: i want a divorce!

Usagi, teasing: good luck with that. You know how much those cost?

R! Leo, same teasing tone: yeah, those really cost an arm and a leg

Usagi and R!Leo: *laughing*

Leo: i dont know whats happening right now

[solsolace]

snowball

✧ synopsis: [fluff??? kind of also hurt/comfort?] headcanons and a fic where the reader challenges childe to a snowball fight. he messes up. ✧ ft. childe x gn!reader (+some of childe’s family!) ✧ warnings: description of a minor injury and blood, spoilers for childe’s real name. ✧ a/n: i got super sick and haven’t written in two weeks, so i maaaay be a lil rusty. this was originally going to be just a few headcanons as part of a holiday post, but then i got inspired midway hehe. (also! requests are open ^^)

»»————-　 ✦ 　————-««

✧ im sorry, you thought it was a good idea to challenge Tartaglia, the 11th Fatui Harbinger, to any sort of battle? ✧ okay, technically you challenged ajax, your boyfriend, to nothing more than a snowball fight. and you know that ajax doesn’t want to hurt you, regardless of what name he’s taking- he loves you! that all being said, though, you’re absolutely going down.

✧ his eyes lit up at your request, already throwing on his coat and pulling you out of his family home in excitement. he would have forgotten to put his shoes back on had his mother not yelled at lovingly reminded him. ✧ snezhnayan winters were... harsh. even on the calmest days, the icy breeze seemed to dig beneath your layers of clothing and bite into your skin. the snow never seemed to stop falling from a greyed out sky, drowning the land in fields of white. and yet, it was all too difficult to mind the frozen wasteland when your partner looks at you with so much unadulterated glee, his giddy chuckles spiraling into the foggy air. being home for the holidays has really brightened childe’s mood, and his contagious grin almost lets you forget that you’ve entered a warzone.

Until you feel snow pelt the side of  your face. You stumble backwards, quickly shaking your head as Childe’s laugh rings out around you.

“Aw, comrade, that was way too easy!” He’s tossing a snowball up in the air nonchalantly, eyeing you with faux disappointment. You wrinkle your nose at him- “comrade”, huh? How long has it been since he’s called you that?

“I wasn’t ready!” You defend, which only makes him huff out a laugh once more. He catches the snowball in both hands and groans dramatically, rolling his eyes.

“Fiiiine, if you really need to prepare, I’ll give you a thirty second head start. But after that, I won’t be showing you any mercy.” Childe’s smirk is borderline patronizing, and you want nothing more than to shove his beautiful, stupid ginger head in the ice. 

As you drop down to crunch some snow together, you begin to consider a battle plan. Neither of you have particularly great aim, but Childe is unfairly lithe, and he definitely has the advantage of knowing how to navigate Snezhnaya’s landscape better. Catching him off guard was next to impossible when he’s in such an energetic mood- not that there was any element of surprise when your coats stood out against the glistening snow, anyways. And there was no chance you could overwhelm him even if you fired ballistically. The man’s practically built for guerilla warfare. Honestly, your best bet would be to hold out for as long as possible, dodging when you can, and hoping your icy artillery hits it’s mark… and even then, he would surely outlast you. But, damn, the idea of beating him on his own terrain is tantalizing, even if it’s just in a playful competition.

“Time’s up, comrade!” Childe shouts, and you barely manage to jump out of the way as a snowball flies past you. Whatever, you decide, you can plan as you play. You shoot your “comrade” a challenging glare and ready your aim.

It could have been hours, or maybe even just ten minutes- time has lost its meaning amongst the mutual barrage of snow. Your entire body burns against the frigid air, sharp pangs of weariness making your muscles tense beneath shaking skin. Stubbornly, you try to avoid showing any sign of weakness, but your panting comes out in obvious clouds and you’re pretty sure your shivering alone could cause an avalanche. Your boyfriend on the other hand is positively glowing against the white background, undeterred and lively as ever. It does make you happy to see him having so much fun, but it’s become increasingly difficult to focus on anything other than the stinging numbness in your hands and face. 

You lean down as quickly as you can to scoop up some snow for more ammo, fingers straining to bend enough to make anything even resembling a ball, when Childe decides to deal his final strike.

You don’t even have time to look up before you’re knocked to the ground with a muffled cry. Your heart hammers in your chest as you land on your back. Shock renders you still, you don’t even try to sit up- you’re not sure you can. Warmth slides down your chin and you vaguely realize that the blow must have cut your lip.

“Hah, I think that means I won!” Childe cheers breathily. In his time away, he really had forgotten how draining the cold of Snezhnaya was- he honestly was planning on letting you win after this just so the two of you could head back inside and cuddle for warmth. He expects to have you retaliate, knowing all too well how persistent you can be in even the dumbest situations- a trait he truly loves about you- but you don’t even grumble in annoyance at him. His eyes fix on your motionless form. “Y/N?” Childe steps toward you cautiously, and panic sets in when he sees small drops of red tainting the white snow around you. If it were anyone else, the sight of blood staining such a pure background would thrill him. But it’s you. It’s your blood. And it’s his fault.

He’s at your side in an instant. Thankfully you’re conscious, and have somewhat regained your bearings, but there’s a palpable sense of dread on Childe’s face as he looks at you. Your nose and cheeks are flushed from the cold, frost has settled and stuck it’s way onto your eyelashes, and your mouth is tinted blue- save for the crimson stream dripping from the side. His throat tightens. Gentleness has never been his strong suit, but he is so careful as he slides his hands underneath you to help raise you up. You grab onto his arms to steady yourself, and he swallows hard. His mind is racing, he doesn’t feel like he deserves to even be near you right now, let alone be depended on by you, his entire body suffocating with the realization, I hurt them. But self-loathing isn’t going to help you, either. He knows that any second spent longer in the cold could only worsen your condition. He wraps his arm around your shoulders to guide you back inside.

“Childe…” Your voice is quiet, teeth chattering together. He can’t look at you.

“We’re almost home, Y/N.” He tries to reassure you, rubbing his hand against your arm, but the worry makes him ramble. “Tonia can help clean you up, and I’ll make you something warm to eat, and you can sit by the fire so-”

With your boyfriend distracted and some of your strength back, you swipe your leg behind his. Just as you did, Childe stumbles backward to the ground, his back colliding with the snow. The only difference is that he was now holding onto you, and you come tumbling down on top of him. He doesn’t even know how to react as you push yourself off of his chest, grinning down at him the best you can in spite of the biting numbness in your face and the split on your lip.

“I win.”

He blinks at you. The guilt that had been wracking through him soothed ever so slightly as he was reminded just how desperately he loves you. Oh god, he loves you so much. In a swift motion, Childe sits up and wraps his arms around you, pulling you into him and burying his head in your shoulder. He loves you, he loves you, he loves you.

“So, it’s really not that bad! The cold probably just chapped your lips, making them a bit sensitive. It’ll heal super fast.” Tonia chirps reassuringly as she dabs a salve on your mouth. “I have like, a ton of extra lip balm. I can give you one; you can even pick the flavor! If you guys are gonna stay in Snezhnaya for a while, you’ll definitely want some.”

“Thanks, Tonia.” You pull the blanket further over your shoulders and smile gently at Childe’s little sister, who returns the gesture with a very familiar toothy grin. Once she’s done applying the salve, she gives you a thumbs up and sets off to her room.

Childe, in the meantime, was being scolded harshly by his mother while she cooked dinner. It’s hard to believe the sweet woman who had welcomed you into their home with a warm hug could be so furious- she hardly paused to breathe in between her rants, throwing spices into the pot and stirring with vigor. You might’ve laughed at the way she was giving her son- your boyfriend, the harbinger- such an earful over you, but when your eyes landed on him, your amusement vanished. 

In all the time you’ve known him, you had never seen Childe look so... small. Tartaglia, Childe, Ajax- whatever name he had, whatever role played, he was always the same to you: ambitious, confident, brave- sure, he could be immature and a bit of an idiot at times, but he was your idiot, dammit! And your heart tugged at the way he stared down at his hands with glazed eyes, eyebrows furrowed and lips drawn in a tight line. He was hunched like he wanted to fold in on himself. 

When his mother released him from her frustrated griping, Childe made his way over to you, still keeping his head down. You reached out to pull him onto the couch with you, but he instead dropped to his knees, kneeling in front of you as if in prayer. 

“I’m sorry…” He starts quietly, his voice wavering. He’s not used to apologizing, doesn’t know what words could possibly begin to express how terrible he feels, but he needs you to know. Even if you hate him, Childe needs you to know that he would never, ever want to harm you. “Y/N, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for you to get hurt, I wouldn’t- I mean, I wasn’t thinking- I just… Y/N, I’m so, so sorry.”

A soft sigh escapes you. Regardless of how he stumbles over his words, it’s obvious to you that he really means it. You lean over to cradle his cheeks and lift his face, forcing him to look at you.

“Ajax. I forgive you, really- it’s not even that bad, see? Tonia said it’ll heal up quickly.” You offer him a small smile, your thumb gently tracing his freckles. “And now that I’m all warmed up, I’m feeling a lot better, okay? I mean, you of all people should know, It’s going to take a lot more than some snow to take me down!” 

Your chuckle seems to put him more at ease, but he averts his gaze, turning his head to mumble into your palm.

“I don’t deserve you.” 

You aren’t sure if you were meant to hear him, but like hell were you going to let your boyfriend think like that. You slide your hands to the top of his head, brushing his hair back, and lean further to kiss his forehead. Your lips are still a bit sticky from the salve, so when you let his hair drop, some ginger strands cling to his forehead. 

“Well, I love you. So you’re stuck with me, whether you think you deserve it or not.” You tell him as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. He stares at you with wide eyes for a moment, mouth parted to speak. A blush slowly spreads across his cheeks as he finally cracks a smile and exhales.

He makes his way onto the couch beside you, wrapping his arms around your waist in a tender embrace. “I love you, too.” So, so much, he thinks. You lean into his chest, and hum happily as he kisses the top of your head.

“Oh, and, Ajax?”

“Mm?”

“I totally won our snowball fight.”

The two of you laugh together at that, and he just nods his head against yours in agreement. For the first time in years-maybe in his entire life- he couldn't care less about winning or losing. In this moment, he is certain, there is no victory that could ever be as rewarding as achieving your love.

[citrinesparkles]

welcome home.

jason todd x gender neutral reader. 2,086 words. notes: requested by an incredibly flattering anon as part of my hundred followers celebration! thank you again for the feedback, and for enabling me :) also was subconsciously influenced by this piece. warnings: arguing, discussion of danger, reader gets accidentally threatened, patching up wounds, lots more swearing than my usual (but it's all mild language). angst and comfort, i think. super dialogue heavy. this is so long and a little (lot) messy just. prepare yourself

"man," a robotic voice echoed dangerously through the dark living room, sending chills through you. "did you pick the wrong apartment."

luckily, the voice was familiar. "um, the one i live in?"

he choked out your name, startled, and you flicked on the light switch to find him frozen in place with a gun in his hand.

"right." you said tensely, glancing at it- which made him jerk his hand down, shoving the gun into its holster as though it burned him- and looking back up at the eyes of his helmet. "so, uh, i'll turn a light on next time."

"you shouldn't be home yet," he said stiffly.

"i texted you like, three hours ago to let you know i'd be home a day early."

he swore quietly. "my phone's in the river."

"how did it- you know what, at least that explains the radio silence. you didn't think to have someone else- anyone else- let me know?"

"uh." he paused, tensing almost imperceptibly for a moment. "no. i was, uh, i was busy. i'm sorry."

"busy, huh?" something felt very wrong, and not just the fact that he had nearly shot you. "okay, i'll bite, busy with what?"

"nothing important."

the sinking feeling in your stomach intensified and your eyes narrowed dangerously. "important enough that you forgot to tell me you weren't dead in an alley somewhere, when you knew i'd be texting to check in anyway. leaving me worrying in a hotel room in another city."

"nothing out of the ordinary, nothing to worry about." you were really getting sick of the sound of his modulator, but he continued before you could say anything. "go back to what you were doing, babe."

"yeah... uh, no." you stepped forwards and he flinched back defensively, making you freeze. "seriously, what is up with you tonight?"

"noth-"

"jason, i promise if you say nothing one more time, i'm going to lose my mind."

he shifted his foot back slightly, and you took a deep breath.

"okay," you conceded, raising your hands up in surrender and moving backwards yourself. "respecting your space now. that wasn't my best decis-"

your voice cut out when something under his jacket caught your eye.

something red.

"holy crap, jason, what the hell?"

he winced quietly. "you weren't supposed to be home yet, okay?"

"take that stupid helmet off already, would you?" you snapped, already moving to get the first aid kit.

"i would've gone somewhere else if i'd known, okay?" his voice, now clear and crisp without the filter, followed you down the hall.

"that does not make this better!"

"can you please not yell at me right now?"

you dashed back into the room, shooting a vicious glare at him. "jacket."

he slid it off gingerly, dropping it on the couch next to his helmet.

"can you get the armor, or do i need to help?"

even despite the domino mask he was wearing, you could tell he was rolling his eyes. "if i couldn't do it on my own, why would i have come here if i didn't think you'd be home?"

"hm," you took the piece he handed you and carefully set it on the couch, "maybe because you're a stubborn jackass?"

he grunted, sliding his undershirt off and passing it to you. "i don't wanna stain the couch with that."

"your priorities suck."

"it's the nicest piece of furniture we own!"

"it's still a couch!"

"it was expensive!"

"oh for crying out loud-" you threw your hands up again, this time in frustration. "fine! fine. i'll go put this in the tub and get a soak going. you-" you shoved the kit towards him pointedly- "start washing that off."

"how come you're calling the shots?" he snapped back petulantly.

"because my torso's in one piece."

"i have way more experience with this, i should be making the decisions here."

"oh, of course, my apologies!" your voice was absolutely dripping in sarcasm. "what, pray tell, would you have us do?"

he scowled at you for a moment before reaching for the first aid kit and flicking the lid open. "whatever."

you turned on your heel, stomping into the bathroom.

the shirt got thrown into the tub and the tap got tossed all the way on, and as the water crashed into the gray fabric, you took the opportunity to squeeze your eyes shut and breathe deeply.

you opened your eyes a minute later, finding the water dyed a rusty almost-red from blood.

his blood.

you turned off the tap- gently pushed the handle, this time, the fire in your chest now largely extinguished- and made your way back to the living room to find him running a rag over the space below his ribs.

"may i?" you asked softly, stopping a few feet away and holding a hand out to him.

his jaw clenched and relaxed three times in quick succession, but he finally sighed and dropped his shoulders before holding the rag out. "yeah, c'mere."

you worked in silence, being as gentle as possible. jerking your hand back and mumbling apologies when he hissed.

"s'okay, comes with the territory."

you pressed the alcohol-soaked towel back against him, and he sighed.

"that was stupid, huh."

a small laugh escaped you. "it so was."

"can we..."

"try that again?"

"yeah."

you pulled back, standing up straight to meet his eyes. "only if i can take the dumb mask off of you."

"i thought you liked the mask," he teased, a small smirk tugging at his lips.

"jason."

he chuckled, wincing again when it jostled his wounds. "ouch. uh, yeah, mask. g'head."

you gently pulled it from his face, setting it neatly on his other gear before running your thumbs across the line of adhesive it left on his cheekbones. "hi there."

"hey." he leaned into your touch, vibrant eyes fluttering halfway shut. "so uh, welcome home."

"thanks. could've done without the gun, though."

a choking sound tore from his throat, his eyes flying back open. "holy shit, baby, i almost-" he jerked back from you, no regard for his side. "you almost- shit, shit, are you- i'm so sorry, i didn't-"

"okay, woah, hey-"

"i could have killed you."

it was a whisper, horrified and harsh, and while it was technically true, his tone teetered on the edge of a dark space you had seen before and really didn't want him falling back into.

"yeah."

you desperately searched for the right thing to say, rejecting variations of "but hey, you didn't actually", "maybe you should be more careful about waving a gun at people", and one particularly unhelpful "no shit, sherlock".

finally, you settled on a quiet, calm "but i'm still right here, okay?"

his hand flew up to cover his mouth, doing absolutely nothing to hide the near panic written on his features. "i could have killed you."

"okay, so, in the future, we'll... we'll uh, we'll come up with some kind of system for letting you know when i'm home, or something."

"oh, like a phone?" he asked harshly. "the one i was stupid and sloppy enough to dunk in the harbor?"

"that wasn't- i'm guessing that you had a lot on your plate." you waved the cold, bloody towel in your hand at his wounds. it made him curl in on himself slightly, stepping backwards again until his back hit the arm of the couch.

"no excuses. i could have killed you."

"i-"

"no, i almost shot without saying anything!" he exclaimed, brow furrowed and eyes stormy. "i thought someone had broken in, and i got so- i don't even know, damn territorial or some stupid shit- that i almost put a bullet between your eyes. i could have-"

"jason!"

he screwed his eyes shut and dropped his head, roughly tugging his fingers through his hair. "i almost-"

"but you didn't. okay?" every fiber of your being wanted to hold him, to tug him into you and put his hand against your ribs and show him you were okay and breathing, heart still pumping, but he looked enough like a cornered animal that you half expected him to bite you if you tried. "c'mon, jaybird. a life like yours, can you really afford almosts?"

"life like mine, i can't afford to let anyone close to me. apparently, if the goons and thugs don't kill you, i will."

"that's not-"

"what if i hadn't said something?" he snapped venomously. "what if i'd lost more blood and was loopy from it? what if i'd come home with a concussion- again- and didn't think past 'point and shoot'?"

"jason," you finally interjected. "you think i haven't thought about that?"

his eyes, grim and vicious and so full of emotion that you thought you could drown in them, dropped to the floor.

"because it's not a secret that your life is risky. you're risky. i know that. but you're worth every ounce of danger, okay? i'm choosing this, choosing you, knowing full well what i'm getting into, because you're worth all of it."

"i'm not worth any of it."

"that's not your call to make."

"it-"

"you think i need you to make my choices for me?"

"no, of course not."

"you think im stuck here?"

"do you feel like you are?"

"absolutely not." you inched forward again. "i'm here because i want to be."

"...i just... i don't..."

"don't want me to get hurt?"

he finally looked back up at you, eyes watery and jaw tense. "or worse."

"i know, baby. i know," you sighed. "but that's part of life, right? and if the hurt's inevitable, i want the rest of my time to be as nice as possible, and you make my life better. make me better."

"by putting you in danger?"

"it's gotham, handsome, i'm gonna be in danger either way. at least with you, i know i have someone looking out for me. right?"

"always," he said immediately.

"okay then." you took the last step between the two of you slowly, watching for any resistance. meeting none, you brushed your knuckles against his. "i can't think of anywhere i'd feel safer."

"you know that's crazy, right?"

you hummed quietly. "nah."

"i'm being serious."

"me too."

he studied your face silently. you smiled softly at him.

finally, a sigh escaped him and he scooted his hand forward, wrapping his index finger around your own and squeezing gently. "you're sure you want this? i can set you up with a place downtown for a bit. you'd never have to see me again, never have to worry about... all of this."

"i've never been more sure of anything." you said it firmly, confidently, letting the words hang in the air for a few moments before popping one eyebrow up playfully. "why, need to make room for a side piece?"

a startled choking sound escaped him. "excuse me?"

"i mean, when you were talking about being busy, it felt kinda suspicious."

"what is wrong with you?" he asked, exasperation and laughter coating his voice.

"listen, you were being evasive!" his head fell forwards, resting on your shoulder as he laughed.

"i didn't want you to know i was bleeding all over the place!"

"why, didn't want me to worry?"

"exactly!"

you reached your free hand up, gently resting it on the back of his head and playing with his hair. "then maybe, just maybe, you should have gotten someone to tell me your phone went for a swim."

"fair enough."

you stood quietly for a long time, running your fingers through his hair and enjoying the feeling of his breath against your collar.

"i..." he muttered, pulling back to look in your eyes. "i don't think- um. i don't think i'm..." he groaned, gaze darting to the ceiling. "i love you. but the minute you have enough of- of all of this-"

"i won't."

"but if you do, i'll... i'll understand, okay?"

you squeezed his finger gently. "okay." you inhaled deeply, dropping the bloody towel you were still clutching and slid your hand forward to hold his completely. "can we get a bandage on that and go to bed, now?"

"....yes please."

---

"wait!" you yelled, throwing the first aid kit haphazardly onto the bathroom counter and racing after him into the bedroom, where he whirled around with wide eyes. "i love you too! i never said it back- i love you too."

"don't yell like that- i thought something was wrong!"

"me not saying it back is urgently wrong, jason!"

[obsessive-ego]

Late night chats

Musical beetlejuice x reader

Beej chats with you when he knows you're not listening

Fluff, pining

It was a long rough week, you were absolutely exhausted, you could barely stand, your knees wobbled as you finally arrived home, everyday this week has been hell between work using you to cover everyone and do everything, and personal family drama you had to attend too, you were glad to finally be home, safe, quiet, where nothing was expected of you, you could finally recharge.

Kicking your shoes off and tossing your bag and jacket aside to deal with later.

As you shamble to your bedroom, eager to swap your work clothes to something less constricting, you tap away on your phone, ordering dinner, you were too tired to cook anyway.

In your bedroom, you were quick to ditch your uniform in replacement for an over sized shirt and a pair of pajama pants.

Removing your bra felt like a weight has been lifted, as you slip on your pajamas you felt 100 pounds lighter, you flop down on your bed, barely clinging to being awake, as you were about to doze off, your phone blares to life with its loud ringtone, you groan in frustration, you force your body to get up and dig for your phone in your pants pocket, you miss the call by a second, before you could check who it was it buzzes again, you nearly drop the phone, startled, you fumble with the gadget, quickly answering the call, assuming it was your incompetent coworkers needing a question asked.

"What are you wearing?~"

You frown, knowing that voice anywhere

"Beetlejuice-"

"Oh baby, you will be wearing me by the time I'm done with you~" he moans

You scowl at this joke, too tired to really deal with his sense of humor, yes the ghoul could easily make you laugh with their lewd jokes, but honestly you were so tired nothing else really mattered.

"What-"

"So we gonna hook up? Or are you standing me up?"

"What?"

"Y/n what day is it?"

You're silent for longer then youd like to admit, beetlejuice starts before you could respond

"Friday, movie night, so, let's hear that magic b word sweetheart~" he chimes in a sing song tone.

As tired as you were, I guess a chill movie night would be fine, if you doze off during you could survive the teasing, wouldnt be the first time.

"Hello? Sugar? I'm not hearing my name come from that pretty little mouth of yours~"

You snap back, guess you zoned out longer then you thought, you utter a quick sorry, and shuffle to the living room.

"Beetlejuice, beetlejuice, beetlejuice"

Your apartment goes dark, you sigh, the ghoul had a thing for making an entrance

"HONEY IM HOME" the ghoul shouts, within seconds you are hoisted up from behind in a tight bear hug, Beetlejuice's head resting on you shoulder "babes I missed ya, you're such a mean little thing forgetting about our movie night, or were you just playing hard to get~" he purrs that last part.

Clearly embarrassed you try your best to squirm out of your predicament, the demon only cackles at your actions

"Keep wiggling like that sugar and your gonna give me a-"

The ghoul was interrupted by a knocking at your door, his eyes light up, before you could get a word in, you are dragged along to the front door

"Its showtime"

...

It was amazing how you were still able to order take out with all the nonsense beetlejuice did to the delivery guys, but it just goes to show that it's all about money, and let's be honest, nobody is gonna believe them, yeah sure, a zombie looking guy took the pizza and then turned into a pile of snakes.

...

Movie night was the same as always, Beej successfully snuggling up close with an arm around your shoulder, ever since the change of seasons he found you no longer took the lead on getting up close and personal, meaning he had to take initiative, not that he minded, since regardless of the temperature, you didnt mind him cuddling up, which was nice, you were so warm to the touch, he adored it.

Movie night was always a blast with the demon, yes you've seen this horror films 100 times, but watching them with Beej always made them more lively, his enthusiasm was so contagious. But as much fun as the evening together was you were officially out of energy, you tired in vain to keep awake, last movie night you dozed off midway through you delt with merciless teasing for a week, but all your effort was for not as you felt yourself slip into dreamland.

"Alright Doll what's up next in our-" the demon finally noticed you were out, he frowns, yeah it was cute, and sexy when you fell asleep on him, but it was really becoming kind of a pain on how hard you worked and how much it drained you, breathers are delicate, and besides he wanted to spend some real legit alone time with you.

The demon snaps his fingers and the two of you reappear in your bedroom, you being tucked into your bed, beej floats up beside you in a lounging position.

The ghoul stares at you, watching you naturally settle into a deep sleep, once a few moments have past and beetlejuice was sure you were out cold, he leans back placing his hands behind his head and let's out a deep sigh.

"Ya know doll, the other week I was in the netherworld for business, bumped into an old pal, buddy was going on and on about this demon he was banging, and boy, the look on his face when I told him I was banging a hot little breather, man, fucker was jealous, I mean we arent technically banging, yet." He whispered

This was a habit of Bj's chatting to you when you were asleep, he didnt need to sleep, so this was a nice way to pass the time.

"I showed him that photo of us lyds took, ya know the one, you were sitting on the couch playing with you phone and I had my head on your lap? Yeah, I keep it in my wallet, hell, it's the only thing in there" he snickers

You mumble something unintelligible, Beej hums in response

"Of course not sugar, I dont keep condoms in there, i prefer to go raw, demons cant get breathers pregnant anyways, wink wink"

The ghoul sighs reclining back and putting his hands behind his head

"Ya know, while I was down there, I had to file some paperwork with my Mom, the bitch she is, was going on and on about how I need to stop screwing around with breathers, she just doesnt get me, you know how it is"

You grumble in response

"Oh, yeah I know I told ya a sandworm ate her, shes back, it's a long story" he huffs with a scowl.

"Yeah she was saying how theres no point of me tricking another breather for a green card to live again, and I should leave you alone, fuck her, ya know, I dont need to trick ya for a green card, i know you're head over heels for me babes, and once you finally admit you love me and we fuck around for a bit, then I'll pop the question." He trails off looking in your direction, your were laying on your side facing the demon, as if you were awake listening to his every word, the demon sighs, staring at you sleeping form, god slash satan  he had no idea what he did to deserve you, his sweet caring breather. He could always come back to you, you were all his, you just didnt know it yet, and that was fine, for now, soon he'll get you to confess your undying love.

"What would I do without our little chats" he sighs, his eyes fixated on you, a purple hue begins to creep into his hair, he sighs again

"The only time I can be honest with ya huh babes?"

You mumble in response

"Its not like I dont WANT to be honest with ya, its just, come on, you gonna believe me? A demon from hell falling head over heels for a sweet little breather? I can barely believe it" he stares at you, his hair now completely purple.

"You know I love ya right?" The confidence in his voice fading, the question sounding more desperate then anything, as if the ghoul needed you to know or hed die again.

"...beee" you sigh

Beetlejuice perks up at the sound of your voice "bee?" Were you dreaming of him? The ghoul could just melt at the thought

"...beetlejuice"

You were

The purple in the demon's hair began to mix with hints of pink, his little breather was dreaming of him, the ghoul leans into you, his face inches from yours, studying your face in hopes to crack the mystery of what kind of dream you were having

"...beetlejuice" Again you mumble his name in your sleep

"Do you dream about me often babes? Ya know I dream of you~" he chuckles

"Beetle-"

Before you could finish the b word the demon shakes you awake

"Fuck" you say with a start "beetlejuice what are you doing" you grumble less then thrilled to be woken like this

"You were about to say the b word 3 times babes, had to put a stop to it" he chuckles sheepishly "you were babbling my name away in your sleep, guess you missed me huh?" His nervousness turned into a more confident jab

"I was? I-" you babble

"If you REALLY miss me baby cakes I could slip into bed with ya? Keep ya company" he leans in inches from your face, a moment passes and beetlejuice can see the hesitation in your face, yes he's snuck into bed with you multiple times, but he always left before you noticed.

"I wont do anything creepy" he begs grasping your hand as if to reassure you

"....okay" you whisper

The ghoul's eyes light up at your response in a flash he sheds his suit, leaving only a pair of boxers and slides under the covers next to you, the ghoul is over come by the warmth beneath the covers, and quickly latches on to your even warmer body.

"Good night Bee" you sigh "I'll try not to say your name 3 times"

"Night sugar♡" he cuddles into your chest making you the bigger spoon, though you were the smaller out of the two of you.

As you drift back into a deep sleep beetlejuice begins talking to you again

"You really know how to spoil a guy huh sugar, I guess I can wait a little longer till you say the 3 little words, as long as ya keep treating me like this♡ good night y/n, I love you"

[dantelionwishes]

life is full of ups and downs downs downs downs dow

loredump under the cut. not kidding when I say its gonna be long!

oh shit you actually clicked keep reading thank you for your interest 😭😭😭

YOU KNOW THE DRILL tw // suggestive dont read ahead if youre uncomfortable with the topic of aphrodisiacs! 

MIDDLE SCHOOL 

before anything, I gotta explain he was born to parents who had an infatuation quirk (makes them hardcore fall in love with you) and an infection quirk (transmits a virus via saliva)  

developed his quirk late, since they usually get it by the time kids are four 

most people knew him as quirkless before the first incident 

in middle school, his class was preparing for a school play, he and his classmate got cast as the main lead prince and princess 

coincidentally, they both had a crush on each other and had a scene where they kissed

technically they weren’t supposed to, since its just a play, but one time they were practicing in private and wanted to try kissing “for real”

so they shared a super giggly cute middle school first kiss but well UNFORTUNATELY FOR HIM HIS QUIRK HAD WELL DEVELOPED– 

BADABING BADABOOM YOU HAVE AN IMAGINATION USE IT

the only way for the quirk’s effects to go away is to come at least once or pleasuring yourself until it goes away

I DO NOT WANT TO IMAGINE IT BUT. IMAGINE BEING A TEACHER AND FINDING A MIDDLE SCHOOLER WHO DOES NOT KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING TO HER AND AN ADULT IS FORCED TO TELL HER HOW TO MAKE IT GO AWAY LLLLIKE–

rip now that I’m thinking abt it, I don’t even think anybody would even kNOW HOW TO MAKE IT GO AWAY so lets imagine she painfully stays that way until they figure out how to make it stop :^(

there’s a big fight that happens between the teachers, principal, and parents of both parties 

of course the crush’s parents got mad and called their kid a fuckin uhhhhh sexual predator or some shit despite also beING THE SAME AGE AND NOT EVEN KNOWING ABT HIS OWN QUIRK LIKE HELLLO

obviously an incident like this is going to spread like wildfire but the principal does not want something like this to leak, especially since it was not on purpose and was a total accident 

the other kid’s parents and some teachers did not feel comfortable however, and sato was forced to drop out

but not wanting to spread the gossip about their son’s quirk and the incident, they leave the town and move someplace else

thankfully, the principal gives the sato family his good grades and a recommendation to a decent highschool for the trouble

they’re originally from osaka, but moved to tokyo 

this is where they start taking precautions with sato, basically teaching him to be careful with his saliva 

it was easily taught and learned esp since the mom was already like that around him and others everyday anyway!! she has to take care of her saliva-based infection quirk, after all 

HIGH SCHOOL

he got enrolled into a regular highschool in tokyo

no hero course, no support course, no business, just a regular ol’ school

if before, he loved surrounding himself with people, this was where he was forced to develop a lonely disposition to protect himself and others

at least his parents were very protective and supportive of him and they were generally a happy family!

but in school, pretending to be quirkless was just as difficult, getting bullied or pitied for having no special abilities 

his excuse for wearing a mask all the time was because his mother had a virus-related quirk, and had to be careful 

one day his dad was suddenly got really, really sick

the more he had an excuse to wear a mask because he didnt want to get whatever disease his father started to develop 

sato started thinking it could be his mother (but why?) the results didn’t say anything about an unknown virus killing him (which is his mom’s quirk), and that his father really did contract a strong yet very normal disease 

while on his second year in highschool, his father, yozo sato, died 

apparently, without him knowing anything about his parents, his mother, oba sato, was actually under the dad’s infatuation quirk this whole time

she realised she wasn’t really in love with him when oba had accidentally allowed a drop of her saliva to fall into the meal she was making him, making him sick, and therefore making him weak enough to deactivate his quirk on her 

oba, back in her college years, wanted to marry someone else but yozo, who had a crush on her wanted her to himself, used his quirk to make him fall in love with her 

so in revenge for making her put up with him all these years to the point of marriage and having a kid, she continued to do this to his food 

her quirk doesn’t make anybody sick enough to die, but it made her husband’s immune system weak enough to the point that it contracted a real, serious disease which he ended up dying from instead 

sato only finds out the real story when he graduates from highschool, days right after his graduation the mom confesses it all 

she does say she truly loves him, but can’t stay around him knowing he was technically “unconsensual love”

sato gets reminded of what his quirk does, and true enough, that’s what him and his quirk turned out to be (a sick combination of his mom and his dad) 

they cant bear to be around each other after that revelation and decide to just not see each other again 

COLLEGE YEARS

he enrolls into an education course, inspired by the kind principal who helped him finish his middleschool-highschool education when it all started going downhill 

sato struggles paying for his college fees esp since he doesn’t exactly have his parents supporting him anymore, nor any contact with immediate family 

he has a lot of part time jobs that go all around the clock, he continues pretending to be quirkless so he gets bullied, and has to deal with all that emotional baggage plus being alone so…….clearly my man is TIRED as hell 

his side job hustles include: convenience store cashier, bookstore attendant, bar bouncer, and rookie gym trainer (he went to the local gym long enough for him to get recommended a job as a trainer)

college was that point where he starts developing a hardcore yearning for a companion because oh my god hes so lonELY (but cant)

ANYWAY SO

there’s this bully guy who always picks on him in college (for being “quirkless” and a loner and overall a fuckin weirdo with a mask)

tbh sato doesnt really give a shit he’s so used to it but he doesnt have his mother as an excuse to wear the mask anymore, this is where he starts forming the “I have bad breath” excuse 

“口臭い” (kuchi kusai) translates to “bad breath” or “stinky mouth” so sato unlovingly gets nicknamed “kusato”

one day he’s walking around the campus at night and finds the bully with his gang cornering another quirkless student, with plans of assaulting her 

sato was never the hero type, and was about to ignore the commotion as to not get involved, but something in him moved on its own and he found himself face to face with the gang 

he confronts them, but the bully mocks both him and the girl for not having powers to stop them anyway 

SIKE BITCH sato’s able to easily strike the other two guys, knock them off their feet enough to be able to tug the to-be victim aside, telling her to report them, before asking her to run away as fast as she can

none of the guys want that (they’re all students) so they have a full on brawl (and this isnt hero academy, its a totally normal university so I wouldn’t assume these guys had very impressive quirks)

except the main bully actually has a pretty decent quirk (he’s like a kinda half human half dragon with sharp claws, scales, and dragon eyes) and gets to injure sato with his sharp claws, seriously injuring his face

a part of his ear is also sort of sliced off, which is how his mask gets accidentally removed in the process 

the dragon bully grabs him by the collar and starts angrily shouting at him for ruining his night, being able to do all this shit without a quirk and all and all other derogatory speech 

“Well? what do you have to say for yourself?!“ 

Sato stays silent before spitting right into the bully’s mouth 

The bully drops him immediately, about to angrily fuck him up for doing something super fucking gross but WHOOP WHOOP YOU KNOW WHATS BOUTTA HAPPEN the quirk works immediately and the bully is a TOTAL MESS on the ground 

Im going to TLDR this part cos its…obviously nsfw but like: sato fully embarrasses him in public (beside the bully’s two colleges nonetheless) 

sato stays in the hospital for some time to heal from his wounds 

fortunately, afterwards, the bullies all get expelled 

unfortunately for sato, he also gets expelled for engaging in bad behaviour, and the bully did say what happened to him (and the college principal did not want his…dangerous quirk on campus) so as to lower any incident, all four were expelled 

at least without having to pay for college fees anymore, he could fully focus on paying for food, shelter, and clothes 

minus of course the hospital bills needed to pay plus he got a sick ass scar from it anyway HAHAHAHA BSDJHJRHDHF

ADULT LIFE

he had a lot of jobs here and there, but was more or less doing best as a trainer at a local gym where people weren’t allowed to use their quirks and strengthen their body regularly 

a few years went by and he eventually shrugged off everything that happened in his final college years but one day someone familiar walked into the gym! It was the fellow college student he saved!!!

she became a policewoman who wanted to get stronger in this quirkless friendly gym and hadn’t given up on her dreams of being a “hero,” inspired by how sato saved her that day

sato never really saw himself as some hero, he was left many nights alone thinking about how easily he could become a villain with his quirk, so hearing that really made him happy 

he trains her as her gym coach and she eventually asks him to join her patrol this small part of the city from a gang that was currently going around doing crimes since he’s good at it anyway, saying she could use some extra hands hehe

so yeah!! he does this side gig with her where he patrols alongside her looking for gang crimes and such c:

AND ONE DAY. [WISTFUL SIGH] ONE DAY. HE FINDS SOMEBODY GETTING MUGGED BY A GANG MEMBER AND SAVES………A CERTAIN MAN–

thank you for reading all the way here!!!

feel free to ask for questions or for any clarifications 😭😭😭!!!!!!

[jangofctts]

Bloodsport (din djarin x fem!reader) (part one) 

rated: 18+

word count: 5.4k

warnings: smut, knife kink (no blood is drawn and consent is clearly given), blowjobs, vaginal fingering, din is sorta a virg duDE, alcohol, mentions of violence (reader punches someone in the face kwejrkejh), some gambling (sabaac) also please let me know if I missed anything!

a/n: oOf this is the first fic in sO LONG IM SO SORRY YALL KEHJRKEJH BUT ANYWAYS I HOPE YOU ENJOY

It’s been a couple months since Din’s stepped foot on the sandy nightmare of a planet. Went through hell and back and kriff—it feels like a lifetime ago. But the landscape before him hasn’t changed an inch, Mos Eisley same as always—busy with all sorts of scum and villainy he turns a blind eye to. 

Din hopes it’s not the only thing that’s stayed the same—selfish as it is. Someone as volatile as you is bound to catalyze and shift, so is the nature of life. A lot can happen in a month or two and it’s ridiculous to think that you would ever push your life to the side and wait for him to return.    

Turns out, you are here, still working as the resident mechanic. Though in the same elated breath of hearing that tidbit of news, it’s equally dissatisfying when he somehow misses you completely. You’re off planet, looking for power converters and electrical wiring—back in few days Peli promises. Maybe by the time his wild goose chase is over, back from the butt fuck middle of nowhere, he’ll get to see you— 

Nothing goes as planned—naturally. All Din finds is a man playing dress up, an oversized lizard, planetary drama he’s forced to resolve and—to top it all off—an attempted stickup. Maker—he’s not even worried about anything save for the kid and your speeder. The very same one now scattered over the sand in miserable heaps.           

At least some of it is salvageable…

By the time Din reaches the outskirts of Mos Eisley, the binary suns are smearing across the horizon like molten puddles of magma. Deep aches amass in his shoulders and back from the weight of the speeder parts, his gear, and the second pair of armor. Maker—it feels like his arms are going to be ripped off.

The baby babbles something incomprehensible. 

“Almost there, kid,” Din responds, sparing a quick glance down the baby. “How does soup sound?”

Instead of trudging back to the hangar, Din wanders to the cantina. Call it a hunch or just you and your aunt’s tendency to lurk around the premises, he’s certain he’s going to find one of you here. 

Din is right.

The moment he steps inside, he spots your mess of hair, the low solar lights illuminating the rich colors with a soft orange. The baby coos and blinks up at Din, his tiny clawed finger gesturing in your direction. 

Din hums. “Good job—you found her.” 

The child’s little teeth peek out, pleased with his discovery. Din steps into the doorway, down the carven stairs and over to your table. A older man—a ship rigger by the looks of his uniform—sits across from you, a game of Sabaac spread across the table between you. You’re winning. 

“Hello, Shiny.” You greet, dipping your chin in his direction. “Your armor is looking a tad ripe.” 

It’s true. The layer of slime coating his armor had baked and crusted under the suns—probably doesn’t smell too good either… 

“I killed a Krayt dragon.” Din states it with a twinge of smug satisfaction despite knowing how little something like that would mean to you. He could conquer three dozen planets and shower you in all the precious metals in the world and you’d still turn your nose up at everything.  

“And I curb stomped a centipede today—you aren’t special.” Your eyes never leave the set of worn cards you hold between your fingers, acutely ignoring him like you would an overly enthusiastic puppy. You inhale and scrape your right thumbnail along the edge of the hexagonal cardstock—it’s a subtle tell, one Din would more than likely miss if he were the unlucky bastard brave enough to sit at the other end of the table.  

“You playin’ or what?” Your opponent gripes. He scratches his unkempt salt and pepper stubble and quirks a furry brow. 

You lift your chin in scorned defiance and lay your hand down—full Sabaac. The man hisses through his crooked, clenched teeth and utters a curse as he shoves his winnings towards your end of the table.  

“Peli promised me information.” Din pushes, hearing the kid coo in curiosity as you begin shuffling the cards with practiced flare. “About others like me.”

“Do I look like my aunt to you?” You grumble. It’s the first time your eyes leave the perimeter of the game to look at him. They settle on the kid first with a guarded version of compassion, then leap to the faded green armor clipped to the heavy luggage, and then his visor. Your lip twitches at the green slime still coating the beskar. “I’m assuming my speeder didn’t make it.”

“A technical difficulty.”

You roll your eyes and snort, dealing out the cards then setting the stack in the middle. “Right…”

The background ambiance of the bar and the quiet rasp of cards fill the brief lull in conversation. Any other rational person would take the blaring hint to leave, but Din is just as stubborn as you are. 

“I don’t remember where the hangar is,” Din lies, cocking his head to the side in mock innocence, “could you show me?” 

The tip of your tongue peaks out of the corner of your mouth. The unconscious tic is not one of irritation—not yet. Though before you’re able to respond, your opponent beats you to it. 

“Yeah—I know where it is. It’s between fuck off and take a hike.”  

Din turns his head, the cool, even tone of his words sharper than shrapnel as he address the man. “I was speaking to her.”        

This is funny to you Din realizes—one of the tiny mysteries of your entirety clicking into the place of the puzzle map he’s conjured for you. 

“Well, I don’t have the time of day for cowards who wear shiny buckets over their head.” The man gripes into his drink, dark eyes flicking over to Din as he sizes him up. “What’s a Mandalorian doing out here anyway? Thought your planet exploded or something.”

The man’s ignorance irks him—sure. How could it not? But with years of harsh words and jabs at the foundation of Din’s very being, he’s learned to adapt. It’ll always sting no matter how many layers of beskar he wears but you on the other hand…

Your eyes spark, molten and bright like the last solar flare on the surface of a decaying star. Each encounter Din’s had with you, he’s bared witness to the deep well of your anger that fuels your being like the auto-mechanical heart of a droid. He’s felt the bite of your rage firsthand, but this anger—this is the tragedy of the delicate mayfly wings trapped between the black teeth of misfortune—the story of the boy who rammed a spear into the flank of an ancient beast that bites before it barks and gnashes its yellowed teeth in warning.

Din’s hand inches towards his blaster. He’s not willing to weigh the safety of the kid against your rash decisions, despite it being on his behalf.   

Though, just as quick as it appears, it recedes like the cool drawback of a tumultuous ocean. Din’s arm relaxes at his side as you release a puff of air. 

Your scuffed up fingers, stained with years of engine grease, scars and dirt, curl around your half finished drink. You stand, lay your cards face down onto the table and flash the stranger a feral grin.

Without a word, you toss your drink directly into the man’s unsuspecting eyes. In another breath, the pointed edges of your knuckles fly forward and hook beneath the point of his chin with a meaty thunk. The man’s head whips backwards and connects with the gravely wall—

Out like a light.  

Jaw clenched tight, you shake out your bleeding knuckles and gather up the strewn credits over the table. You shove them into the pockets of your jacket and side eye Din. “Restitutions for damages,” you mutter. 

The other patrons keep their eyes to themselves as the three of you hurry out the door. Only an apathetic glance from the bar tender serves as proof that something did, in fact, occur. No one wants to dirty their nose sniffing about where they shouldn’t be when they have their own business to safeguard.

The crisp night air rustles the stray strands of hair that escape from your ponytail. Ghostly moonlight carves the shape of your cheeks into an almost ethereal sight—one of those deep space creatures with pointy teeth and hellfire for eyes. Stuff of legends you’d never think to look in a dingy bar for.     

But he knows—Din knows that cool mask is just a front from what you hide. It is a hungry ghost that hounds your thin stretched shadow—what ifs and the glories of war you never really escaped. You forget that you are flesh and blood and ghosts are only air and echoes, nothing more. 

Din is sharp edged steel. A stray fragment of a shattered mirror, the lacerated reflection of a nameless purpose and a faceless existence. He’s torn edges and cracked glass but his heart beats within his chest with the blood of a thousand suns. Two souls under the umbrella of the word damaged but entirely different in nature.     

“No one—“ you growl, your voice a steady and lethal timbre that terrifies a part of Din’s unconsciousness, “—speaks that way to my friends.” 

Touching. 

“Don’t look at me like that, Creature,” you huff, staring down at the child who gurgles in return. “He deserved it—“

The reunion certainly wasn’t the one Din imagined, though it’s a relief to find that there’s no roughened edge like sandpaper over skin wedged between you. Picked up right where you left off—no questions asked and no inglorious retelling of how Din nearly died on the floor of a shitty cantina. There’s not a doubt in his mind that you'd laugh at him for it—it is sorta funny…   

The rest of the evening is spent walking back to the hangar, arguing over the fact that yes Din should take the couch instead of that miserable little hovel he calls a bed, and spend the night. He’d have to find some other mechanic to work through the night if he wanted to leave in the morning, because you certainly did not want to volunteer for that. And so—Din reluctantly takes the couch and agrees to let you tackle the monstrosity of fixing up his ship for tomorrow. 

He has to admit…the couch is a bit smaller than the length of his body, but it’s comfortable…maybe he’d buy a better blanket while he was here. As a treat.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- 

You purse your lips and whistle. “I swear each time I see it, it gets worse. Y’know, I know a couple guys selling—“ 

“Can you fix it?”

You fold your arms over your chest and roll your eyes.“Yeah I can fix it, jeez—no need to get your undies in a twist.” 

You try not to take offense, because hey—you’re offering him the info on the good deals on new ships (and at this point anything would be better than this old rust bucket). But if Din doesn’t want anything to do with that, then whatever. His loss.   

When you wander onto the ship, toolbox in hand, the Mandalorian tags along. Unsure if he doesn’t trust you with his things or just wants to hang out, it blankets the space with an air of uncertainty. Turns out it was neither of those guesses. All he does is throw open his stash of weapons, collect his pile of vibroknives, and set them on a table to polish and sharpen. 

Makes sense, you suppose. Everything has to be as shiny as his armor. 

You drop to your knees near the closest wiring panel you find. You wrench open the paneling and frown at the disarray of sparking wires and tangled cords. You organized these perfectly last time he was here. “Who the fuck junked up my rigging?”

Mando sits at the little table tucked away in the corner, brooding over his cache of weapons. He shrugs. “Could’ve come loose when I landed.” 

You roll your eyes at his half assed excuse and mutter a foul string of curses under your breath that’d make even Peli wince. It’s fine. It’s cool—no biggie. You can sort through this in a couple hours, maybe three. 

But of course rarely anything goes as planned. As time ticks away, arms deep in wires older than the kriffing Clone Wars, the distractions begin. The scrape of metal on durasteel makes the hair rise into little pricks all up your arms—you shoot a glare over your shoulder. Din tilts his head, your kneeling self reflecting within the ever dark visor, features scrunched into an obvious tell of annoyance. Huffing, you bury your head back into your task at hand. 

The second distraction arrives in the form of a quiet hum of curiosity originating from the Mandalorian. Out of the corner of your eye you see him bring a vibroblade up to his visor, inspecting the notch in the blade that disrupts the electrical current that flows through the weapon. Din then rubs his thumb over the handle of the vibroblade in a slow, sensual circle. You lick your lips and tear your eyes away. That shouldn’t be hot.

You furrow your brows and tear apart another wire, but the metallic tap, tap, tap of Din bouncing the tip of a different blade over the table is bothersome. You swing your head to your left, mouth parting to snap at him, but his hand—sans glove—brings you to a halting stop. 

It’s alluring, the way his long, weathered fingers twirl the knife with practiced ease—like silk through water and followed by the low hum of electricity meant to slice through flesh. Din tosses it in the air, watching it spin three rotations then catches it by the handle. Your lips purse when his visor meets your eyes. He spins it between his fingers.  

“Am I bothering you?”

Fucker.   

You scowl. “It’s fine.” 

The soft rasp of his thumb sliding along the flat of the blade entices the eye and damnit—he’s doing this on purpose. 

“Doesn’t seem fine,” he hums. 

“Well, it is.” You retort hotly. You snatch up your pliers and imagine you’re pulling his teeth out in place of the crooked paneling. “I’m currently thriving in my element.”  

Din hums, the sound buzzing with grainy distortion. “Do you want a closer look?”

You chew your bottom lip. He’s playing with an open flame and you with volatile jet fuel. 

“I don’t know, seems kinda lame from here.” You scoff, busying yourself by pinching and twisting another set of frayed wires between your fingertips. “A toothpick if anything.”

Din snorts behind you. The deadly whisper of beskar against the durasteel tabletop makes the hair on the back of your neck prick into points. You tense as heavy boots shuffle along the floor, the near silent rustle of armor tinkling behind you as Din steps closer. You’re slow to stand, even though the presence of the Mandalorian is no less than overbearing. You wipe your grimy hands onto a spare rag, continuing to face the paneling. You then turn, a coy smile threatening to break across your face. 

Stars Din is broad—and close enough you swear you’re able to see the perspiration of your breath fog the beskar plating. Your eyes follow the seams of the cuirass, across the leather bandolier and up to his helmet that’s fixed in an impassive glare of tempered steel. Your back bumps into the wall as Din takes another step forward, boxing you in. To escape you’d need to duck under his arm and yet…you refuse to move.   

Your breath catches as he languidly lifts his hand and taps the flat side of the vibroblade over your collarbone. The sharpened point tickles up the column of your throat, a crackle of nerves and your pounding pulse following in its wake. Din turns the blade to flat edge and pushes into the space right below your jaw—you squirm when he chuckles, the sound low and deep. 

“You like this…”

Din grunts as your hand reaches between his legs, squeezing the growing hardness there. “So do you.” 

Din circles his hand around your wrist with his free palm. Moons above his hands are warm. He murmurs your name—you shiver. “Tell me you want this—want me.”

A blush, hotter than the surface of Tatooine in the midday sun, rushes up your neck and pools into the apples of your cheeks. Maker you want him. With a shuddering sigh you nod—braving the scathing shrapnel of vulnerability. “I need you, Din—please.”

A low chuckle rumbles through Din’s chest. “Don’t think I’ve ever heard you say please before.”

Din drops his hold on your wrist as you roll your eyes. “Shut up, Bucket Head.”

The Mandalorian snorts and dips his head—gesturing towards the blade still lightly pressed against the base of your throat. “This ok too, Skitter?”

You flash him a wolfish grin. “Gonna fuck me with it?”

Din swears under his breath, crowding his body closer to yours. You hear his strained sigh as he dips his head closer, the beskar a chilly whisper against your cheek. “You’re depraved…take off your pants.”

You smirk, tear off your belt and shimmy out of your pants and underwear, bottom half now bare. His visor dips, entranced.  

Your heart leaps into your throat, your pulse roaring in your ears as he settles one of his bare hands over the swell of your hip while the other trails the blunt edge of the handle from your clothes collarbone, and down your belly. From your mid thigh he skates the handle up your bare thigh and then rests it over the crack of your thigh. Heat flushes through your entire body, a stark contrast to the cool metal of the handle. A shiver races down each vertebrae when he drags it over the swell of your cunt and then carefully pressing it against your clit. You gasp and arch into the light touch, your thighs involuntarily jerking as he increases the pressure. It’s cold, rigid and filthy. Who knows where that knife has been—how many lives it’s taken or severed through muscle and skin. 

You don’t find it in you to care all that much.    

He trades his hold on your hip to slide his hand into your shirt, palming and kneading your breast through your bra as you roll and whine against his fingers. The tight circles he's drawing over your clit burns through your abdomen, drags you closer to the precipice that you’re all ready so close to. Fuck—it’s been so long since you’ve indulged in this sort of pleasure.You whine his name as wicked heat licking up your body and spreading to each limb. You arch into him, the handle of his knife slipping through your folds as arousal drips from your cunt.   

Your groan as you tilt your hips into the handle, craving any lick of pleasure he’ll give. Your breath hitches as Din pushes the hilt closer to your throwing entrance, murmuring praise as he sinks the first couple inches inside of you. It’s cold—the knobby feel of the handle not too much thicker than one or two of your fingers combines. You huff and grab at his cowl, the warmth of his hand grazing your pussy each time he rocks his wrist forward. 

“You’re so quiet,” Din goads, pulling the handle free from your aching center. “You usually have plenty to say.” 

You shoot Din a glare, tongue weighed down by arousal to come up with a god retort. You lean your head back against the wall of the Crest and with a chuckle, Din’s hand leaves your shirt to pull you against his chest, the vocoder rumbling against your ear. The blade clatters to the floor and instead brings his calloused fingertips to your cunt. He softly rolls your swollen clit between his forefinger and thumb, delighting in the way you shake. “Be a good little thing and cum for me.”

Shit, you didn’t think it’d be that easy. Your body seizes as white hot heat ripples through your core. Stars, brighter than a dying sun burst behind your eyes, a high pitched cry filtering past your lips as shake and fall apart in his arms, your cunt clenching tight around the thick fingers he slips inside of you. 

You whine as he pulls out, little aftershocks of pleasure wracking through your body in wake of your euphoric high. You groan as he lifts your head and pushes his digits, coated in your juices into your mouth. You lick them clean, tasting the tang of your own arousal and the salt on his skin. “Fuck—that was good.”

You can only imagine that Din rolls his eyes. He takes a step back but before he can escape—

You drop to your knees, a wicked smile curling over your lips. The muscles in his thighs jump as your palms smooth over the outsides of them, then up to his narrow hips, your thumbs lightly massaging the ligaments that protects the fragile joints. Din sucks in a sharp breath when your fingertips hook around his trousers. 

“What are you doing?” Din asks, brushing a thumb over your jaw. 

You pause and glance up at him. You quirk a brow. “Was gonna suck you off, but if you have something else in mind…“ He hisses and tips his head back, flashing the underside of his chin as your hand leaves his hip to cup the heavy bulge tenting in his trousers. 

“Maker—“ He looks off to the side, inhales a choppy breath and then snaps his head back. “You’d…you’d do that?”   

You nod and flash him an encouraging half grin. “Wouldn’t have offered if I didn’t want to.”

Din mumbles an incoherent string of words under his breath and shifts his weight onto his right leg. His fingers touch your cheek again then tuck a loose hair behind your ear. “But—“

Moons above this man is straight out of some kind of fucking fairytale—arguing about getting his dick sucked—or not. 

Whatever.       

“Din…” His breath hitches at the sound of his name. “I’m asking you kindly to fuck my mouth—it’s cool if you don’t wanna, but my knees already kriffing hurt and—“

He cuts you off with a hasty nod. “Yes—stars, please.”

Fuck yeah.

You smile and slide your eyes past Din’s legs to the cargo crate shoved up against the wall. “You should sit—easier that way.”

He nods and shuffles over, lightly perching himself on the edge and ready to flee at the barest hint of well—anything.

Din’s knee jumps when you place your palm over it. You assume his nerves are from the nature of his occupation—trouble always strikes when you least expect it—and what better time would that be when his pants are around his ankles. “Relax—I’m not gonna bite—maybe.”

He makes a wary sound low in his throat as your fingertips hook into the waistband of his trousers and pull. Din lifts up as you tug the fabric further down his legs, tan skin and solid muscle following in its wake. Fuck…

You swallow, mouth feeling quite dry when your eyes drift between his legs. Din is thick, a rosy brown color, flushed at the tip and curling towards his bellybutton. Beads of liquid shine at the tip, dribbling down the underside and pooling into the dark patch of curls at the base. Din’s fingers hook over the side of the crate, squirming under the weight of your stare. 

Yeah—that’s gonna leave your jaw aching.    

You hear his breath hitch, magnified by the crackle of the vocoder as your lips descend over a silvery scar on the inside of his right knee. You pepper a trail of wet kisses and light nips up his thighs, and by the time you reach the crease of his leg, his hips mindlessly rock with need. 

The second the wet warmth of your tongue brushes over the tip of his cock, his hips jolt off the crate, a load groan echoing through the empty ship. It’s like striking a match to an open line of kerosene—devouring and explosive that’ll leave your delicate skin singed. You’re not nervous playing with fire if this barest scrap of wild heat is anything like burning to a crisp. 

Emboldened by his initial reaction, you wrap your hand around the base, pulsing and achingly hard beneath the velvety flesh. You flatten your tongue over the tip, lapping up the sticky liquid the slip the head of him into your mouth. His hands fly to your hair, tightening into fists as he throws his head back. The beskar scrapes over the durasteel with a sharp squeal, but you don’t find it in you to care about the abrasive sound—eardrums be damned.  

“Fuck—kriffing hell—“ Din snarls, arching his hips to seek more of your warmth. “K-keep going.”  

Your own rekindled arousal blazes hot in your core hearing his stuttered pleas. You pull away to catch your breath, feeling almost guilty for doing so at Din’s low whine of protest. He picks his head up, watching as you languidly jerk him off—entranced with the way your hand rolls over the leaking tip, back down to the base, then up again. You could keep him like this—tease until he cracks under the pressure and begs you for whatever iota of pleasure you want to give but—

You’re not that mean.    

Wetting your lips with your tongue, you part your mouth and slide nearly half of his length into your mouth. Din mutters something garbled, his hips jolting as you hollow your cheeks and bob your head.

Din shifts, arching his back and stuttering out broken whispers of encouragement. Placing your hand over his thigh, you can feel his pulse thrumming beneath your fingertips, wild and alive—something real beneath all that heavy armor and unforgiving helmet. 

“You—you look…” He grunts as you hum around around his cock, swallowing him down further. “Shit—you look so p-perfect like this.”

You groan and squeeze your thighs together, attempting to ignore the gnawing hunger snapping at your insides. 

Rolling your tongue along the underside of his shaft, your fingers slide over what your mouth cant reach—squeezing and gently coaxing him towards his high. He seizes up tight—yet, just when you think you’ve got him skidding off that precarious edge—

His hand fists your hair at the base your neck and yanks you off his cock. He huffs, breathy little pants as he folds into himself like he’s been punched in the gut, his head rolling forward onto his shoulder. Din shivers as he scrambles for control, beginning to loose that slippery foothold he’s so intent on maintaining. His cock, flushed an angry red and still slick with your saliva, twitches and throbs for the release so cruelly wrenched away. 

You let him catch his breath. The fingers tangled in your hair go lax and drop away to rest at his sides. You swallow, his previous skittishness suddenly clicking into place. “Din, are you…?” A virgin. Your question tapers off, unsure if it’ll embarrass and scare him off. 

“No,” he answers—not in a sharp way like you’d hear with a bruised ego—just stating a fact. “Just not—not this. Never had someone—stars—“

Your teeth roll your bottom lip between them, forcing your face to remain neutral despite the stroke of pride blooming singing in your chest. You’re his first—lucky enough to make this the best goddamned oral he’ll ever have. Something he’ll remember for years.  

“Do you want me to stop?” You ask, praying to the Maker he’ll say no. 

He shakes his head, sucking in another calming breath and unfurling himself. His fingers clench into fists then relax, crackling with pent up energy and unsure nerves as to where he should put them. You solve it by threading your fingers through his and placing them around you head. 

Your lips quirk. “You’re allowed to cum in mouth—don’t worry about it.”

His cock twitches as a quiet moan fizzles through the modulator. “You su-sure?”

“Oh, yeah.”

With a smile you bring your mouth back to his cock, tongue swiping up the entire length of him. Din groans as the soft warmth of your mouth slips over the flushed tip of cock, his thick length twitching as you hollow out your cheeks and suck. You bob your head as you slowly work him in further because even like this, hardly halfway into your mouth, you feel your lips stretching a bit too much around him. You groan and part your mouth wider, letting him sink into the soft warmth of your throat.  Din inhales, the sound shaky and unsure as his hips twitch with a few tentative thrusts. 

You take it slow—lifting your mouth nearly all the up to the tip then back down to the base. Din rolls his hips, helping you ease into the gentle pace. Saliva drips down his cock and over your knuckles making an absolute mess you have zero intentions of cleaning up. It’s his ship after all. Din swears as his hips stutter, your hand squeeing around him, trying to push him off that edge he so deserves. Din gasps your name, the pitch of his words knocking up to a lighter, more airy tone, warmer than melted butter. 

“Ca-can’t believe, it—ah—it fits.” He groans with astonished reverence. You preen under his praise. 

You swallow around him and grunt at the abrupt jolt of his hips. There’s no distinctive rhythm you can follow as you let him rock his hips into your mouth—seeking out his pleasure without a coherent thought in sight. Just a cacophony of gasping breaths and rough moans. 

You can feel is cock twitching over you tongue—he’s close—and when your eyes roll up to meet the darkened visor, he’s gone. He shouts your name and knots his fists around your hair as he spirals of that edge. You nearly gag from the force of his release hitting the back of your throat—cock throbbing and jerking in your mouth like he’s been denying himself release for months. His moans, fragile and gasping, filling the quiet space as his hips grind his cock deeper down your throat, his hands threaded into your hair acting as an anchor—the sole tether he has to the waking world. 

Din’s grip relents as the last few catastrophic waves tear through his body. He doesn’t move his hands, just lets them rest over your skull  as his chest heaves for precious air, a harsh crackle through the vocoder. You pull his still twitching cock halfway out, dragging the tip of your tongue below the frenulum while one of your hands circles the base of his length. Maker—he’s still going—

Last little dribbles of his cum spurt onto your tongue and drip over your knuckles still securely wrapped around him. His legs and lower abdomen flex when your hand falls lower to carefully knead at his balls, milking out his pleasure for all its worth. You let his softening cock slip from your mouth when he swears and mumbles your name.      

When you rest your back against the wall, he slips himself back into his trousers and joins you. You take a risk and rest your head over the chilly beskar pauldron. You’d never call this love—the word is much too harsh for this delicate string of seconds. Love means giving pieces of yourself to others like martyrs give their hearts to the sky—or risk fragile skin against the rays of an unforgiving sun. Broken ribs and clenched fists, immensity beyond comprehension—

“You should come with us,” he says with a hesitant mumble. Love is formidable—but you know that somehow, here, pressed against Din’s side, that this is right. In a golden way, a honeyed way, a path that tastes of blood, freedom and blaster smoke that will leave your lungs stained with blackened soot. Cowardice has long made a home inside of your soul, and he’s offering you a chance to shake off the layer of frost clinging to your bones and step into the gentle merciful dawn.  

“Yeah—alright, Din. I will.”

tags (only tagging some moots for now bc i have no clue what’s going on in this fandom anymore dbdndn): @goldafterglow @jango-fettish @djxrxn @blsmjoon @spookoofins @krissology @steeeeeeeviebb @teaofpeach @comphersjost @gummiishark @delusionsxfgrandeur @pettyprocrastination @huliabitch

[philtstone]

For the touches meme: MCU ship of your choice with#8 :)

#8 -- shielding someone with their body

u can also read this on ao3 <3 to say "this prompt got away from me" would be an understatement and yet i still have the temerity to follow it up with "and there might be a part two!" lord. anyway, apologies to kaadhu because she doesn't go here at all but also she did give me the green light to be self-indulgent with this one, so.

the "Jonah Day" was inspired by a scene from Abraxas's phenomenal fic series "Just Two Guys" which was in turn quoting Anne of Green Gables. naturally i had to give it my own little spin. the fic concept itself was inspired by "Jazz Standards Vol 3" by sixes_and_sevens and "In the Woods Somewhere" by @rebellconquerer, both of whom are brilliant authors whose versions of these characters are inspiring in how much they are rich and full of feeling and complexity. i wanted to try my hand at the idea without there being an associated plot arc. hopefully i did it justice bc ive been working on this for a week and i have other Responsibilities so if i dont post it now and be at peace with its imperfections ill never get anything else done. this fic is part of this series and while technically a stand alone i guess the emotional beats of it are very much tied into their previous growing. i wanted to show that they have a process for working through things but that it's inevitably still evolving.

anyway. with that out of the way -- enjoy! (or if you're kaadhu, hopefully i can make it up to u with the star wars prompts im gonna work on next)

It’s one of those days. 

It’s like everyone woke on the wrong side of some bed, and the world has not thought to slow down and accommodate them, and the headaches Sarah has started getting every few weeks, which she refuses to call pre-migraines, have settled at the back of her skull. 

Also, it is raining. Badly.

Cassius used to call ‘em Jonah Days. Only person had it worse in the world, he’d say, was probably Jonah and his whale.

Sarah does not have a whale, but she does have that headache, and has spent all day tracking down a mistake on a license she ordered three weeks ago and trying to make up for the work she missed last week when AJ had the stomach flu and had to spend an afternoon at the hospital. It had just been her at home; Rhodes had called on Sam’s behalf, and Bucky had had to fly out on short notice, something half classified with a tension undercutting it that left Sarah’s tongue feeling dry. He got back in yesterday. Yesterday was not as much of a misery as today but still dragged itself out, and was prolonged enough that they only had time for a brief kiss hello and the curt acknowledgement that Sam was alright. Whatever had happened, Bucky was not happy about it. She’d noticed, of course. His face was drawn, and everything he said came out like the second half was being held as a careful package at the back of his throat. Sarah, distracted by life, had not thought about it too hard. On the rare occasion the rarer mission (getting rarer still) is genuinely awful, she has realized he’ll always find a way to call her. Sometimes, as a reassurance for her. Other times, for his own sanity. Once he called barely three hours after he left, like by some prescient intuition he knew she’d be sitting at the kitchen table on the verge of a panic (another one of those Days). Another time, in the middle of the dairy aisle at Wal-Mart, she picked up the phone to him crying. 

Nothing like that happened this time. He’d said I’m fine, quietly, into her temple, and Sarah had been too tired to try to coax anything else out of him, so she let it be. 

When she gets home, today – The Jonah Day – stomping into the kitchen with as much purpose as she can muster, Bucky is sitting at the kitchen table, something pale and unkempt about his face, and nursing an empty mug of tea. 

She knows it’s tea because of the glittery little tag that’s hanging from the edge of the mug. In truth this should be her first red flag: there’s only one kind of tea he drinks, and a rare handful of occasions he drinks it on. She’s never had a great love for honeybush, but the stuff Ayo’s wife Aneka sends is nice-smelling and strong enough to be medicinal. Sarah’s not in any mood to be catching flags today, red or otherwise. She shuffles in and wonders where they’ve put the ibuprofen and nearly steps on the cat, who scratches her foot in her yowly attempt to get away from Sarah’s sandal.

“Shit –” Her elbow slams into the cabinet as she startles – “Argh! Out of the kitchen, Alpine – Cass! What’d I tell you about getting these dishes done after school? Do I look like a dishwashing service to you?”

That had been the deal. There is an abstract part of her that knows Cass is working on a science project and an even more abstract part of her that knows that, in the regular routine that’s emerged, Bucky would have reminded him. 

Clearly he has not. Sarah is too tired to process why that might be. Maybe he forgot. She doesn’t think he got much sleep last night, which isn’t exactly uncommon. She remembers waking up to an empty bed and a rumpled sleeping bag on the bedroom floor. She’d nearly tripped over that, too.

Could be that’s what got the whole day going.

“Can you get Cass?” Sarah asks, only half-looking at Bucky. She walks through the remainder of the kitchen and peers into the coffee pot to see if there are any dregs left from the morning. The rainstorm outside seems to have turned into a thunderstorm; Sarah can hear its low rumblings. Are there leftovers in the fridge? No. And no one has bothered to think of dinner, either. She swallows back the urge to curse on her next prolonged inhale, the delay in reply rubbing her already edgy nerves wrong for no reason. “Bucky.”

“Hm? Oh.” In a side glance, she can see him shift his elbows on the table, rub at his eyes and nod. “Yeah, um. Yeah, I’ll get him. Let me put this in the sink.”

Another rumble. If the power goes out she thinks she might scream.

Speaking of the sink: she tosses the thermoses the boys left on the kitchen counter into it with a dull clang and wonders if she has time to take a shower. It doesn’t occur to her that maybe she will feel better if she takes a moment to breathe and perhaps ask Bucky for a hug – Sarah’s habits of self-reliance started well before her first marriage, even – but anyway, she feels disgusting. She smells like sweat and fish and she wants to sleep for ten years and cry at once. She’s worried if he gets too close she’ll cringe, or snap, or something foolish. Still. He has to enter her space to rinse the mug out. She tries not to look at him lest the crying overtake her and attempts to source a granola bar to maybe take the edge off her headache. 

Overloud footsteps thunder abruptly down the stairs. Suddenly, Cass is barreling in, an overdue apology loud on his tongue. This happens a half second before his hip knocks into one of the kitchen chairs, which drags, scrapes loudly, and pinches an unassuming Alpine’s tail between its leg and the table’s. 

Alpine shrieks.

“CASS!” Sarah yells, forgetting herself. 

“I’m sorry!” yelps Cass immediately, wide-eyed and penitent. 

“It was an accident,” Bucky says quickly. He’s straightened beside her, and his voice has something strained under the placating instinct, “it’ll be fine –” 

One free hand comes up in front of him in a gesture she knows very well. “For the love of God!” Sarah yells. “No, it was not! I have told you a million times, Cassius Wilson –” Bucky’s hand is too close to her. She grabs it, to bat it away, shove it back towards him. Alpine is still yowling holy vengeance. Cass is apologizing more loudly now, and she does not notice Bucky’s shoulders tensing, and her hand connects with his a split second before the rumbling beginnings of thunder turn into a full blown clap outside.

With the piercing pop of breaking ceramic the mug in his hand explodes, spraying its pieces all over the floor. Sarah’s mouth lets out a startled little cry and she does not realize why that is until she looks down, heart in her throat, and realizes his other hand has shot out and grabbed her wrist.

A reflex, probably. Her tendons are pinching but Sarah knows this kind of thing can spook anyone on a good day. And she’d been yelling so loudly, right in his ear.

“Sorry!” says Cass again, reedy with the fright he gave himself, the suddenness, the mundane violence of a cup breaking and the spring storm. His voice is thinned out with the upshooting squeak of pre-teen concern and in a moment Sarah’s anger fizzles. She can hear the rain lashing at the windows. 

“It’s alright,” she says, parroting Bucky’s earlier words, “it’s just a mug.” 

Bucky is still holding her wrist. The angle is awkward – Sarah is too close to him and too far away from him at once and her forearm is bent low, towards the kitchen counter. The metal pads of his fingers dig into her bones, pushing them together, and when she comes to gently tug away, she can’t move it an inch. “Ow,” comes out of her mouth, muttered and mostly surprised, before she can stop it.

“Alpine!” she hears Cass say. “No, you have to get on the table or your feet’ll get hurt –”

Poor Alpine has not had a moment of peace since Sarah entered the kitchen. She’s never loved thunderstorms and beyond her own pinched tail and trodden foot the tiny cat is tense and staring at Bucky and Sarah with wide, alert, too-knowing eyes. Sarah cannot process this. She is looking at Bucky’s face. Every line of his body is iron hewn, pupils large and dilated, lips too red and parted where he is breathing heavily. He’s staring at the floor, and the broken ceramic, but there suddenly isn’t a doubt in Sarah’s mind that he isn’t seeing jack shit.

“B,” she tries. “You okay?”

Nothing. His grip on her arm is so tight that she’s started to feel it in her elbow. She can see blood trickling down his right hand thumb where she realizes the broken ceramic cut into his palm; he didn’t startle and drop it, then.

“Mom?” Cass has noticed them. “Uncle Bucky?”

“James,” Sarah says, as steadily as she can. “Let go, please.” 

She bites her tongue just before the rest of the sentence comes out; she would not, in a million years, in any lifetime, say You’re hurting me when Cass is still in the room. 

“What’s wrong with him?” 

“We all just had a fright,” Sarah says, trying to subtly shift her shoulder. “Cass, put your running shoes on. Then go to the supply closet upstairs and grab the hand vacuum and dustpan.”

“But –” 

“Tell AJ not to come down ‘til we’ve cleaned the broke mug. We don’t get it clean soon Alpine might hurt herself.”

This is motivation enough to manage him. She thinks for Cass this must still be one of those momentary incursions of chaos into routine that are sprinkled throughout her own childhood. She watches her son nod rapidly out of the corner of her eye, and then he scrambles away and back up the stairs.

“James,” Sarah says, once he is out of earshot. “I need you to hear me. We’re in the kitchen. You broke a mug by accident. There’s a rainstorm outside. Please let go, you’re hurting my arm.”

He is not entirely frozen because she can see the minute trembles in his chest and chin and bloodied right hand. It’s not a lot, but it’s started dripping onto the floor. 

“James. Bucky!” 

The pressure on her wrist is starting to edge past uncomfortable and into a territory Sarah doesn’t want to think about. She doesn’t think he’s squeezing any harder, only the shock has started to fade, and she is really feeling it now. It might even bruise. Not badly – Sarah knows her own body well enough to guess – but enough that the idea makes her sick to her stomach. She can see the dull brown of the last drops of tea from the mug, splattered onto the pale grey of his indoor t-shirt. Those will stain for sure, she thinks. Her head pounds. Her brain feels like scrambled eggs. A tiny shard of ceramic bites into her pinky toe, between her sandal straps, and she can hear AJ’s inquiring voice from upstairs, asking loudly what happened. Knowing her children he will be down in a moment and heedless of any possible danger, broken mug related or otherwise. 

“Baby,” she says, “forgive me.”

She reaches forward with her free hand and fits her thumb and forefinger into the groove beneath where his rotator cuff should be. Sarah presses as hard as she can. Like a flipped switch the grip on her hand releases and Sarah has to bite back another curse when the frozen deadweight of the vibranium prosthetic freefalls and crashes directly onto the ground, just barely missing her shin. 

She is not in any place to understand what the effect must be outside of a shock, but immediately Bucky makes a strangled noise of surprise and slumps back against her cluttered kitchen counter with the imbalanced movements of some leggy baby animal. 

Only, for perhaps the first time, Sarah is acutely aware of how large he is, how ungainly and imposing all that muscle can be. 

“Be careful, the mug –!” she hears herself yell anyway, entirely instinct. 

“The mug,” Bucky repeats, slurred, blinking. His right hand reaches up to scrabble at the thin air to his left. She can see the fumbling movement of his wrist, the way his body leans. His eyes meet hers, wide and startled and questioning. He’s seeing her. She didn’t think it would make such a difference, but she nearly cries. The sound crawls up her esophagus but does not quite make it out.

“Sarah?” he asks, voice small.

Jesus Lord, Sarah thinks. The whole thing happened so fast – nothing long or drawn out about it. Hell, she could pretend it didn’t happen at all. He stares at her, and then the shattered mug on the floor, and then his arm, deadened and inert. Finally his eyes land on her wrist, which she has cradled instinctively in her other hand, and is rubbing. Dread floods into his expression. 

“It’s alright,” Sarah says, “It’s fine, you got spooked, we’ll just –”

She tries to reach for him, working both with and against her own instincts.  

“No,” he chokes. 

She can see him beginning to tremble.

“James –”

“No!” The sheer panic in his voice does not help her own at all, “Stay – wait, don’t, please –” He pulls away from her and his foot nudges one of the larger mug pieces with a loud scraping clink. Between this and his sudden movement Sarah flinches. 

For a long moment, Bucky gapes at her.

Then, slowly, he sinks down to the floor. The tremble in his body becomes more visible. His remaining arm comes up to wrap around the crown of his head, half-covering his face. His knees are pulled up to his chest, like he is trying to make himself as small as possible in front of her. You’re gonna get ceramic in your jeans, Sarah wants to say. The wreckage of the mug spreads out around him.

“Mom?” calls Cass’s voice from the stairs, followed by footsteps. “We got the vacuum! Should I –”

“Stay outside the kitchen, Cass.” It’s immediate – hoarse-voiced but louder and firmer than Sarah thought him capable of right now. His face is still covered. “Too many small pieces on the floor, I’ll clean it up myself. You too, AJ.”

Their footsteps stall. “Okay!” she hears. Sarah sways in place. 

“Sarah,” he says, into his single arm. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. Oh, God.”

It’s alright, Sarah wants to say. She managed it earlier, didn’t she? Her wrist is more or less fine now. Maybe a bit tender, but nothing that couldn’t have happened a million other ways.

The words don’t come out. Instead, to her horror, a small sound like a sob does. 

It’s alright, she urges herself. Just say it.

“I love you,” is what she says instead. She leaves the kitchen to fetch the dustpan. It’s only once she’s hit the laundry room and locked the door behind her that she lets herself begin to cry.

**

By bedtime, Sarah’s wrist is properly tender. The kitchen has long since been cleaned. In between her stint in the laundry and AJ’s innocent declaration that she needed a shower, Bucky went ahead and ordered them pizza for dinner, so that was one more thing she didn’t have to think about too. No one put the boys to bed properly but when she checked in they had managed alright themselves. When she enters the bedroom the storm outside has dulled to a simple drizzle and her chest floods with relief. He’s there. And not in the sleeping bag, either. He’s on their bed, curled up to face the wall, and his face is pale. 

Sarah ignores her bathroom routine and crawls onto the bed beside him. He hasn’t re-attached his arm. She saw it in the den, earlier, tucked away behind the cushions on the daybed he used to use.

She takes a deep breath. She’s spent most of the evening trying to detangle between her residual emotions from the Jonah Day and the very real thing that happened downstairs. She sat in the tub for twenty minutes thinking about what words she wanted to use. 

Bucky beats her to it.

“Has it,” he starts, sounding miserable. “Your -- your arm.”

Sarah doesn’t want to lie. “It’s ...”

“Jesus,” he whispers, this awful undertone of disgust weighing it down into the bed.

“I was going to say it probably won’t even bruise.”

Bucky doesn’t reply. She wonders if he hasn’t reached out to check the wrist himself because he’s scared of himself, or if he’s scared she will be.

“I’m sorry for not being more careful earlier,” Sarah says after a long moment, looking at her toes. They’re in desperate need of a pedicure. “For – yelling. Being rough. I should have been more aware of my surroundings.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” she hears, delivered into the bedspread. 

They have two spreads on this bed. One Sarah has had for always – it’s quilted, with small squares of yellow and blue, and small stitched flowers that Sarah’s grandmother said were meant to bring a sense of safety into a bedroom. The other is red – burgundy pattern bursts, even a bit of purple. The material is thicker-woven and heavier and very new, and bought after much careful consideration (and her own encouragement that he get something he liked) from one of Bucky’s favourite vendors a few months ago. She knows it is called a kitenge and loves that it is on her bed.

“B,” Sarah says finally. “If I’m an adult I’m responsible for how I behave when I know certain things about others. You have to –” she fists her hands into the sheets, searches for the right thing beneath the tension in her throat, “respect that. Respect me by acknowledging that.”

There’s a long moment of quiet. 

“Thank you for apologizing,” Bucky says softly. Then, after another long pause, “I’m sorry for not telling you how – how bad I was feeling. And for scaring you after. And for ... fuck. Sarah. I’m so sorry.”

Sarah swallows around her dry tongue.

“I know. You still feeling rough?”

“A little. My head got really loud and I couldn’t stop it.”

“Because of last week’s thing.”

Sarah doesn’t like calling them missions. Sam says she doesn’t want to give ‘em the dignity of a proper name lest they end up having power over her life.

“It wasn’t anyone’s fault.” 

“Did you call –”

She can’t see his face but she can perfectly imagine the way his eyes scrunch shut on a frown. “Didn’t realize it was bad until it was … bad. Thought I could work through it yesterday. With – routines.”

“The tea,” Sarah realizes. Simultaneously she feels heartbreak and a keen sense of frustration. She should have noticed, she thinks. Then again, the plain reality is that she will have her own bad days, and she is only human. Also, she very much knows the desire to prove you haven’t mistaken your newfound ability to control. Still, still, still – 

“Just, since then,” she starts.

“I called Dr. Naimi while you were in the shower,” he says quietly. 

It’s been about a month with her, so Sarah would have been ready to understand if he didn’t at all. Just barely, but ready. Sarah likes Dr. Naimi and Dr. Naimi likes Sarah. Trauma specialist is an added perk of her proximity to them, and Sarah’s cheerful memories of LSU.

Sarah lets out a long exhale through her mouth. She can see his right hand where it’s curled up by his stomach. He’s put bandaids over the cuts from the ceramic. She knows he doesn’t need them – those cuts would’ve self-sealed within fifteen minutes – so she is left wondering if the decision was made for the boys’ sake, or maybe hers, or even his own. Easy not to think about something if the evidence is covered up and away. Sarah rubs at her eyes, which are dry and gritty from her earlier cry.

In a sense she’s stalling the instinct to reach out to him because the back of her brain is still working through the newer, more temporary instinct that’s appeared. But she does need to change. Bucky is already in his sleep clothes, faded grey sweatpants that he’s wearing holes into and that garishly orange t-shirt memorializing Cass’s first grade Lion King play. Sarah leaves the bed. She brushes her teeth, wraps up her hair, wipes her face. She comes back into the bedroom and shimmies out of her jeans, then bypasses her usual tank top for the navy blue t-shirt folded neatly at the top of his drawer. The shoulders hit halfway down her biceps. She crawls back onto the bed, in front of him this time.

Bucky’s still wide awake.

“You gonna stay awake all night?” she asks.

“No.”

“Promise?”

She watches him touch his tongue to his bottom lip, which is looking raw, like he’s been doing that all night. He trembles on the inhale. “I’m better,” he repeats. “I’ll do some – um, those exercises before bed. Forgot to do ‘em last night, I was real tired I guess.”

This bedroom’s good for those – it’s got so much stuff in it, and sentimental stuff too, he can go through picking out things he can see and what they’re made of and how they feel to touch and lull himself to sleep like that. Sometimes he does it teasingly and lists what she is wearing while he takes it off. 

His eyes have cast down, a very deliberate avoidance of hers. Swallowing against her own mind she scootches forward and lies down in front of him. Then she pulls at his shoulder – firm, but with gentle hands. 

“Sarah,” muffled, into the pillow.

“Need you to hold me.”

“You don’t have to –”

“For me. For me, James.”

He relents, balancing on the ball of his empty shoulder, and smoothes his free hand over her arm and around her back to pull her towards him. His fingers, which are so familiar to her by now, splay open between her shoulder blades. They don't tremble, but they’re very careful. Sarah has to work hard not to notice. Still, he ends up half covering her. She lets her tender wrist lay gingerly against her collarbone in the hollow between their chests and breathes in and out in long steadying breaths. Where their bodies touch (at her hip, her cheek, where his shoulder digs into her breast) the pressure is just minutely too much but enough for Sarah’s purposes. She winds one arm around him, tangles their legs together, closes her eyes, and wills herself through her pounding heart to re-memorize the feeling: the deep-seated thing within herself that’s come to associate his body touching hers with safety and security. 

Sarah doesn’t newly believe herself a fool. Reality coexists with her convictions and they’ll just have to work their way through it. The blankets beneath them are contrasting in their fabrics and soft against the bare skin of Sarah’s neck. 

“I love you,” Bucky whispers. It’s said in the same way she said it earlier. Sarah nods, and holds him tighter.