#that feeling of grief in the middle of something so random

[tama-gucci]

My partner at the beginning of the episode, entirely unaware: wow the kids look like they’re dressed more for a funeral than a wedding

Me, also unaware: oh yeah huh weird

[teabringer-fics]

ocean of tears | aegon x f!reader

summary: modern au. alicent hightower calls you in the middle of the night to inform of you two things: viserys targaryen, her husband and the ceo of your company, is dead... and your employment is now contingent upon tracking down her oldest son, aegon, and dragging him back to hq before daybreak. later, a conversation in the dark turns into a possible lifeline for westeros's reluctant heir.

word count: 11k | read on ao3 (honestly recommended bc of the insane word count but you do you boo)

tags: corporate setting, angst, extended treasure hunt, grief, a bit of viserys bashing, oral (f receiving), fingering, unprotected p in v, a lot of plot, depiction of anxiety, boss/employee relationship, it's very long (i feel like i'm rattling off prescription medication side-effects when i do these)

a/n: i'm back on tumblr bitches! do all that good commenting jazz if you even make it to the end of this whopper pls 🫠🫶

This is gonna be torture/before it’s sublime…

You wake to the sound of a distant and yet insistent melody, distorted at first by the confusion of interrupted sleep. It takes your eyes a few moments to adjust to the pitch-dark, and by the time you’ve successfully fished your phone out from amongst the tangle of sheets the din has died, leaving you in a cold sweat, startled, imagining your parents in a fatal car crash, your sister, studying at Oldtown, gone missing in one of those bizarre, yet commonplace turns that lands her at the center of a true-crime podcast.

You tap the screen just to be blinded—”motherfuck” or something along those lines escaping your mouth—and are still squinting through the glare when it comes alive in your hand.

Alicent Hightower

Mobile

You slide to answer and raise the phone to your ear.

“M-Ms. Hightower?” Shaky and stupid even to your own ears. You glance briefly at the time display on the upper-left corner: 2:56 AM. At the other end, Ms. Hightower’s voice is posing a question which you fail to understand and, still reeling from the relief of knowing that this late-night, early-morning phone call has nothing to do with your family, you plug your other ear and ask, “Sorry, what?”

“Aegon! Where is Aegon?” Ms. Hightower demands. You tamp down the urge to repeat “what?”, although on the inside your thoughts are written in large capitals: WHAT??? The hour is ungodly, she’s scared you half to death, and how in seven hells are you supposed to know where her son is—you hold the phone in front of your face again, as if this will elucidate matters or else trigger your body into waking from its bizarre dream—at 2:58 on a random Tuesday?

Digging deep for whatever scraps of professionalism exist inside you at this time of night, you clear your throat and say, “Aegon? I’m sorry, Ms. Hightower, I have no idea. Has something happened?” The thought of Aegon Targaryen, uncontrollable playboy partier and heir to the largest fortune in Westeros, meeting a tragic end in a nightclub restroom, or wrapped around a traffic pole after five drinks too many, doesn't elicit the same panic response as thoughts of your sister’s hypothetical kidnapping. But you do register a sensation like a stone falling in the pit of your gut. It lingers at Ms. Hightower’s continued silence.

Is she crying? You strain your ears. There are no sniffles, no choked sobs that would indicate a mother’s frantic grief. Only a maddening stillness that makes your skin prickle and your heart beat, pounding, at the center of your throat.

Then it ends.

“Viserys is dead.”

You would think this three-word, straight-forward pronouncement would illuminate the perplexing state of affairs that led to Alicent Hightower calling you almost at the witching hour to ask about her son, but instead the silence widens in your head, an emptiness like a sudden fall replacing the weight of suspense, and it takes all your faculties to say, “Ma’am, I am so, so sorry for your loss. When did it happen?”

You might as well have not spoken at all.

“You are to tell no one, do you understand? Consider yourself bound by the NDA you signed upon your employment. No one is to know about this, not before we have a plan in place and certainly not before the markets open. This could be catastrophic if we don’t manage to get ahead of it.”

“I understand.”

“I am counting on your discretion.”

“Yes, ma’am,” you repeat.

You are buzzing with adrenaline, still sweat-damp and nervous but locked into Work Mode. Viserys is dead. So it finally happened. The man has been threatening to kick the bucket for years now—mostly in private, but of late hiding it had proven nigh on impossible. The papers speculated, blogs ran the gamut of gossip, and now the day has come, under cover of darkness, with his shrewd widow at the helm.

Her voice comes clear, urgent, utterly in command. “I know it’s late, but I need you to track down Aegon. He’s not answering any of our calls. I thought you might have better luck, being his personal assistant. I've sent Aemond and the Cargylls out to look, but so far no luck. This is important—probably the most important thing you have ever been asked to do. Aegon needs to show his face here before Rhaenyra does. His grandfather and I are doing our best to keep things afloat, but once news of this reaches—”

“Rhaenyra doesn’t know that her father has died?” you ask without thinking, your tone openly aghast.

Again, the silence.

“Rhaenyra,” Alicent replies, her accent sharp enough to cut glass, “will be informed in due course but this is about more than just her. The company cannot fall to ruin. I will not let my husband’s legacy be destroyed in a single night. For better or for worse, Aegon must claim his inheritance or we run the risk of hemorrhaging shareholders. Rhaenyra made her choice—she made it the moment she threw her lot in with Daemon. The time to act is now, before they make their return from Dragonstone.”

In the background, you hear the sound of a door being opened and closed, letting in muffled voices from a different room. Whoever the newcomer is, Ms. Hightower orders them to wait. “Listen,” she goes on, “I know it’s ugly, it’s bloody and it feels underhanded. But she’s left us no choice. Tell me now if you don’t have the stomach for it. If you refuse I’ll consider it your resignation effective immediately.”

Well, that’s no choice at all, is it? You like having a roof over your head, food on the table (not that you make it to your own table very often these days). Rent prices in King’s Landing are exorbitant. You need this job. You don't want to fail.

“I’ll find him, ma’am. I promise.”

“Good girl. I knew we could count on you. Bring him here when it’s done.”

The line goes dead, your phone dark.

Shit. Why did you promise? If Aegon’s own bodyguard can't find him, his own brother, there’s no telling where he might be. And to stake your whole livelihood on it? Seven hells…

“Shit, shit, shit,” you say aloud, taking five seconds for self-pity before flinging yourself out of bed and putting on the first thing you can find, probably your discarded work clothes from the day before. You yank your hair into a disheveled knot, propping your phone on the dresser so you can call Aegon on speaker, vibrating with anxiety as the dial tone rings once, twice, six times, before going straight to voicemail. Of course… of course it couldn’t be that simple. You try again, hunting for your car keys—damn the mess—and when he doesn’t answer, you yell at your phone, “Siri, call Aemond Targaryen!”

The call connects. Surely, Alicent’s most responsible, Type-A progeny will have the courtesy to make himself available to you in your hour of need.

“Come on, come on…” you mutter, letting out a triumphant “aha!” as your fingers close behind a keychain fallen between the cushions of your ratty old loveseat.

No dice. Once more, you are met with a canned voicemail prompt.

Beeeeep.

“Aemond, for fuck’s sake, answer my fucking call! I’ve spoken to your mother… Call me back as soon as you get this. Bye.” With that you swipe your purse from the minuscule kitchen counter and race out the door, pushing impatiently at the lift buttons, tapping your foot all the way down to garage level, racing to your car so fast that you knock the wind out of you when the door fails to unlock on the first try. You take a breath—pull it together—, point the fob at the driver’s side door, and wait as patiently as you can until the telltale double-beep of the mechanism letting you in.

The engine starts. You tear out of the underground car park and emerge onto a King’s Landing lit by artificial lights, active and just a little bit seedy. You pass shuttered coffee shops, bougie restaurants, convenience stores, residential buildings with spotless terraces and “For Lease” banners hanging out front, all as you white-knuckle the steering wheel. Viserys is dead… Viserys is dead… shareholders… market opens… Rhaenyra…

What a mess.

Your nerves are already frayed, which is why (understandably, you think) when the center console lights up and a ringtone blares from the too-loud car speakers, your foot slams down so hard on the brakes that it makes your head whip before a yellow light. “Mother save!” you curse—and then, seeing that Aemond has deigned to call you back: “Thank the Seven!”

“I can’t talk for long.” His smooth, chilling voice makes you shudder as it envelops you, and you reach to turn down the dial so that, at a more reasonable volume, he can ask, “Have you found him yet?”

What am I, a magician? You roll your eyes, trying very hard, and perhaps failing, to rein in the sarcasm when you say, “Um, no. I just wanted to touch base with you. Where have you looked?”

“His city flat. All his usual Flea Bottom haunts. The Street of Silk. I even talked to those worthless idiot-goons he calls friends.”

“Nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Okay, well… that’s strange.”

“No shit.”

The light changes. You drive forward, headlights pointed towards Flea Bottom anyway, because never in a million years would you think to find Aegon anywhere else.

You sigh. “Never mind, I guess I’ll figure something out. Where are you?”

“On my way back to HQ. If Aegon doesn't wish to be found, then Stranger take him. Someone has to steer the ship and be there for Mother.”

“Right. Well, d’you know if—”

“I have to go. Call me when you’ve found him.”

Call Ended

You blink at the screen. Did Aemond Targaryen just hang up on you? Seriously?

Cold bastard…

In the three years you’ve spent working for the company, your feelings for Aemond have never coalesced. Some days, you prefer his company to that of his elder brother, especially when deadlines are tight and Aegon is, predictably, nowhere to be found. But there’s no denying that he sets you on edge, his brilliance and ambition matched only by his ruthlessness. If anything, he reminds you of a pristine besuited robot you could never hope to understand. For all that he holds you in something like regard, puts up with you because of your usefulness and because Alicent, in her own strange, imperious way, likes you, and you suppose that not up-and-quitting when faced with Aegon’s shenanigans affords you a few points in his esteem, at the end of the day, you’re one of the staff. Ceremony is for family. Hence, the abrupt hangup.

Annoyed, you try calling your errant charge again. “Please leave a message after the…” “Aegon, you little shit, I am not getting fired because you decided to get shit-faced in some seedy hole in the wall as a toxic grief response—answer your fucking phone!” Never mind. Too strong. Wrong tone. You press the command to re-record, putting on your best phone voice, aiming for gentle, kindly, reassuring. “Aegon, it’s me again… It’s fine if you don't want to talk but at least shoot me a text so I know that you’re still, you know, alive. Your mother is worried sick and Aemond—” Basically told you to go to hell and fuck yourself sideways. “—has been trying to get in touch. Please, just… send me a smoke signal… telegram… note-via-carrier-pigeon?” You blow out a breath, press End on the steering wheel, and note the time: 3:37 AM.

The thought that Aegon may have done something irremediably stupid returns. It’s not like you’re friends, exactly—not even remotely. You’re his assistant, a job which, shortly after you acquired it, you realized nobody else wanted. It’s thankless, literally; irregular, at times demeaning, at others boring to the point of tears, chaotic, unpredictable… But you’ve gotten used to the routine. You know Aegon’s moods. You’re used to him, and you’d like to think that, by now, he’s used to you. It’s not an ideal job by any means, but you get by and if, say, he got hit by a taxi cab after stumbling drunkenly into the street, you think you might actually feel kind of awful about it.

You call him again.

Still nothing.

Up ahead a familiar building looms, brick-lined, discreet. You feel ridiculous sidling up to the door and knocking in a pattern of tap - taptap - tap - tap. The door opens a smidge and a voluptuous, curly-haired redhead peeks out, her big green eyes blinking out into the dark. “I need to speak to Sylvi,” you say without preamble. Her face folds into a scowl.

“Well, I need a million quid and a stud with half a brain and a massive cock, luv. Patrons only.”

“I’ve been sent by the Hightowers,” you quickly say, shoving your foot in the door to stop it closing. “Just tell her that I’m looking for Aegon.”

She rolls her eyes, clicks her tongue at your request. Though she shuts the door in your face and you hear her footsteps receding, you hope that the overt name-drop will make her cooperate. Impatiently, you tap your foot in the street, watching a few people pass you by on the footpath. Nothing to see here, folks… I’m standing in front of a brothel but not of my own free will.

The door opens. “He isn’t here,” Ruby declares, crossing her arms in front of her—quite frankly—perfect breasts. Whenever you’ve had to pick up Aegon from his latest bender with the ladies of the night, you’ve moved through the vestibule feeling like an absolute troll. Sylvi must be paying her girls their weight in gold if looks are anything to go by. Perhaps it’s time to consider a change in profession…

“Really? Did she tell you that?” you ask, crossing your arms skeptically in front of your own less endowed chest.

“I’m telling you he isn’t here,” Ruby huffs. Fleetingly, you wonder whether Aegon’s ever slept with her, if he likes them bold and Botticelli-like, or if his tastes run elsewhere.

Nope. You throw the mental image of Aegon fucking anyone out of your mind. You are a modern woman, damn it—you don’t get flustered at the thought of good honest sex work… or sex… or your random, uncontrollable boss having it with Venus-looking women with perfect tits.

You clear your throat. “You wouldn't by any chance be lying to me about that, would you?”

“His brother was already here—tall one… delicious… lot more intimidating than you.”

“Cheers, but also, how dare?” (Upon further reflection, Ruby might be exactly the kind of girl Aegon would favor. They’re both equally annoying.)

“Listen, I’ll tell you the same thing I told ‘im: your guy isn’t here. Maybe he’s at some other cathouse in the neighborhood but I hardly doubt it. The madam doesn’t like being stepped out on, if you know what I mean. She’d have the arse-hair off any establishment that tried poachin’ her clientele.” She leans back, seemingly proud of having strung this rebuttal together.

You sigh. Back to square one.

“Thanks for the help anyway.”

“Nuh-uh!” Ruby holds out her hand, the sash of her elegant robe loosening, revealing an expanse of gleaming rosy-pink skin and the curve of her left breast. You wish you’d bothered to at least run a brush through your hair. “What, d’you I work for charity? I’m paid for my time, luv.”

“Clearly, I’m not having a good one!” you protest.

Ruby just stands there, wagging her palm in your direction until you reach inside your jacket and pull out your purse. This had better count as a business expense, you think, pulling out a fifty- and then a hundred-stag note.

“Is that all?” Ruby asks.

“Gods, are you serious?”

“I get paid twenty-five moons for a basic experience.”

“What experience?” you demand. “Freezing your arse off in the cold for no reason? I don’t recall getting off!”

Her eyes narrow. “Want to make it a full dragon?”

You zip your mouth shut and part with the notes.

“Ta!” Ruby sings, waving at you with a girlish grin and once again shutting the door in your face.

Aegon, when I find you… Grumbling, you reenter your car and call him again, but you know better than to expect a reply. Making a U-turn, you take a side road and drive parallel to the Street of Silk, looking for the favored watering hole of Aegon’s “worthless idiot-goons,” as Aemond so colorfully put it. His cronies may have helped him hide from his brother until the danger of discovery had passed; if that’s the case, you think you might strangle them all on sight.

“Well, if it isn't my Girl Friday!” The Honourable Leon Estermont crows when he sees you coming. “Fancy a line?” Next to him, Martyn Reyne is wiping his nose and throwing back what’s left of a dangerously pink drink. All around you, the club is a flashing hub of darkness interrupted by neon lights, the music thumping.

You knew enough to head straight for the VIP section located on the upper floor, and from this platform—if you even bothered to look—you could see a mass of bodies writhing down below. The air smells of smoke, alcohol… sweat, even sex. The idiot-goons are reclined on a tufted leather sofa, which disturbs you—you don't want to know what kinds of activities have gone on up here. You’ve never been invited. The most you’ve experienced is hauling a stumbling Aegon into a waiting car driven by one of the Cargyll twins.

Once, but only once, he almost threw up on you.

You prefer the brothel, if you're being honest. At least there, transactions are straightforward, the workers plain. You don't know if these two would bother pissing on Aegon if he were on fire. The thought makes you angry. You shoot Leon the fakest of smiles.

“Not for me, thanks, I like my neurons just the way they are. Also, I am not remotely your anything. When was the last time you saw Aegon?”

“Aegs?” Leon pipes up, nearly shouting to be heard over the noise. “What, is he missing or something? Those freaky bearded twins came ‘round earlier, asking the same thing. Bores, the pair of them.”

The song shifts from a techno beat to something raunchy, with a lower bass. It makes your bones vibrate, your head pound. Leon bends over the chrome table to snort more of Father-knows-what, then leans his head back, moaning, eyeing you up and down in a way that makes you want to hose yourself down with disinfectant. “Come on, Friday, take a load off! You’re off the clock.”

“Actually, I’m not.”

He laughs. “Aren’t you? That’s the problem with you lot—you don't know how to loosen up. And instead of figuring it out, you like blaming the rest of us for knowing the right way to live.”

The rest of us. You lot. The haves and have-nots.

Incredulous, you blow out a breath. “There is so much wrong with that sentence, but something tells me it would be pointless to even start. Last—time—you saw—Aegon—when?” You snap your fingers in front of his face, all pretense at civility abandoned. You want to hit him over the head with an ashtray.

“Sheesh! I don’t know! Two days ago, maybe? A day ago? Yesterday?” On his left, Martyn’s legs are splayed, mouth half-open. He’s drooling onto his own chest, probably snoring beneath the sound of obnoxious music. Leon doesn't notice at all.

“Fucking useless…”

“Hey!”

You stomp down the spiral staircase, feeling like you've wasted—you take out your phone: 4:50 AM—more than an hour of your life in a pointless search. Your eyes prickle with frustration. Now is not the time to give in to the panic-driven water works.

Brusquely, you go to your recent calls and tap Aegon Targaryen (14). Fourteen… the number is insanity. The man’s father is dead, what could he possibly be doing?

“Aegon, seriously…” you grouse into the phone, wiping your nose, too tired to hide the edge in your voice, the exhaustion, the anger, the—fine, you’ll admit it—worry. “Now I'm starting to think you might actually be lying in a ditch somewhere. I’ve looked everywhere, no one has heard from you… listen, forget about your mum, forget about everything just… pick up my call, you absolute fucking twat—”

“I could have you fired for that.”

“Aegon!” His name is a gasp. You don’t know whether to laugh or get on your hands and knees, kiss the floor and thank the Seven. “Aegon—where… what’ve you—wait.” Your eyes narrow into resentful slits. “Were you screening my calls the entire time, you blockheaded douchebag! Tell me where you are!”

“Phone died.”

“Well, clearly it’s made a miraculous recovery!” you scoff. “Tell me where you are, I’ll come get you.”

“’m at yours.”

“Come again?”

“Yours.” Either his voice is slurred or the reception in the area is shit. “‘m at your flat.”

“You’re out in the hallway?”

“No, I’m inside your flat,” he responds, and has the audacity to sound impatient at being made to repeat himself. “Fucking tiny, by the way.”

You stop in your tracks, having handed the valet a tip you can’t afford after your stand-off with Ruby. “And how, pray tell, did you manage to get inside my fucking flat?”

Aegon either fails to notice or doesn’t care that your voice is pitched menacingly low. “You keep a spare under the mat. Fucking mental of you, by the way. Is getting potentially kidnapped a secret kink of yours?”

“YOU USED MY KEY?”

“No.” You picture the exact movement of his shoulders, that little uncaring shrug that has, on more than one occasion, made you picture him getting pecked at by an army of ravening birds. “I had a copy made ages ago.”

“You Targaryens have no sense of personal property! Gods!” you exclaim, ignoring the side-eye you got from the valet, reentering your car and buckling your seat belt. You start the engine, feeling like you’re going out of your mind. The phone is pressed between your ear and shoulder as you sputter, “That is so… so incredibly wrong! You do know that, right? You do know that’s what’s fucking mental? You can't just make a copy of my keys and keep them to use whenever you fucking please! Just—ugh! Just stay there, you weirdo, and don’t go anywhere! I’m five minutes away.” Lies. You’re more like twenty, but you don’t want him to think he has a wide enough window to make an escape.

After violating what probably amounts to a half-dozen traffic laws and speeding all the way back to your building, you feel marginally calmer, except for the residual stress and the thought that maybe, just maybe, you’ll enter your flat to find Aegon vanished once more into thin air, your job gone along with him. You retrace your steps, taking the lift to the sixth floor, holding your breath as you try the latch and find it unlocked—so much for the judgments he made about your inadequate sense of safety.

In your absence, he parted the drapes just enough to see by, and in the meager light coming in from public street lamps posted across the way, you make out a shape bent over the dining table, unnaturally hunched, its head almost hanging over the edge.

Though the door shuts with a metallic clang that sounds like a gunshot in the deep quiet, not even this makes him stir, and but for the steady rise and fall of his back you would think him unresponsive, passed out like his feckless friend Martyn back at that infernal club. You round the table. Aegon shifts just enough to look at you and you can tell that his eyes are heavy-lidded, bleary. But alert. Conscious.

You let out a breath and feel your shoulders sag in relief.

“You look like shit,” you say to him. “Are you wasted?”

“Unfortunately, not anymore.” He makes a rolling gesture with his free hand, one of his eyebrows quirking in typical Aegon fashion. “Stone-cold sober me… well, maybe not that first bit.”

“Mhm. I’ll make you a coffee.”

At the machine, you take a moment to close your eyes and listen to the water steam and bubble before it begins to drip into a generic white mug, one you hardly ever use, being rarely at home. You had thought that once you’d seen Aegon in person—made sure he was all right, your job not halfway over a cliff as Alicent had implied—you might feel better, like everything was resolved, or at the very least no longer your problem. But all you do is feel confronted with a wreckage you’re not sure you’re equipped to handle.

You’ve seen Aegon drunk out of his mind before, bloodshot-eyed, raving-mad, slurring his words, stumbling, laughing maniacally, starting brawls that one or both of the Cargylls had to finish. But this… Dejected, broken. How do you deal with this? And then, even though you’re trying to be understanding, you can’t help the surge of anger that makes you turn around and stomp over to his side of the table. How could he be so selfish? To leave his family in the lurch, add to their troubles, add to yours?

You brace your hands on your hips. “What on earth possessed you, by the way? You disappeared! Do you have any idea—? No… Where have you—? Wait. You do know your father is—?”

“Defunct? Departed? Without ghost?”

Had he reacted more violently, you might've been inclined to pick a fight. Instead, Aegon’s droll resignation makes you feel like a world-class prick who just picked on an orphan.

You deflate, arms falling immediately down to your sides. “I’m sorry.”

Aegon snorts. “I’m not. Just wish he'd had the fucking decency to leave a will.”

“There’s no will?”

“Why do you think everyone’s going out of their fucking minds? It’s Mum’s word against Nyra’s. I say let her have it. Whole thing’s cursed anyway.” He sits up with a groan, puts his elbows on the table, rubs his hands from his eyes all the way to the pale tangle of his hair—Viserys’s eyes, Viserys’s hair.

What sort of a billionaire doesn’t leave a written will? The man had two wives, a conniving brother, five adult children, not to mention an international conglomerate with hundreds of employees and scores of attorneys looking out for its wellbeing—he had to know that being ill-prepared would've caused this kind of clusterfuck.

Carefully, you lower yourself into the other chair, watching your boss like a skittish animal you’re afraid of scaring off. “Aegon… where were you tonight? Not even your friends seemed to know about your father or where you had run off to.” He keeps silent. The machine lets out three ill-timed beeps and you rush to the counter to take the mug by its handle and set it down in front of him. “Here, drink this. You need to sober up.”

“What for?”

“Your mum wants you back at HQ.”

He shakes his head, crosses his arms in front of his chest. “Forget it! I’m not fucking going.”

“Fine. Just drink your coffee.” Just drink your coffee, dear, you might have said, sounding, even to your own ears, like a child’s mother. He narrows his eyes.

“She sent you to manage me.”

“I’m your assistant, Aegon! What do you think I’ve been doing the last few years?”

“I don’t know, making copies?”

“Oh, go fuck yourself!” The profusion of air that leaves his nostrils can’t be called a real laugh, but it’s close enough given the circumstances. You smile.

You watch him blow over the rim of his cup before he takes a sip, the motion childlike, almost delicate. You sit down and track the subtle movements of his lips in the shadows, his throat working as he swallows. In that moment, nothing is as important to you as the simple repetition of him lifting the cup and setting it down, over and over, until you’re sure he’s had at least half of what you gave him.

He seems lucid, sits straighter than when you first walked through the door, and you’re thinking now might be a good time to coax him into your car when he breaks the silence.

“He even had to die in the most useless way.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Don’t tell me what I do and don't mean!” His fist pounds the table. One second he is glaring daggers at you, the next, he begins to cry—curled in on himself, shoulders heaving violently, his body wracked by sobs that suck all the air out of the room with a grief so vast you feel you’re drowning in it, flailing as you try to pull him back towards safer shores.

“Aeg…”

He tugs his arm away. Helpless, you try again, closing your hand around the delicate wrist, reaching for something, anything, to make the outpouring stop.

But nothing can make it stop. He cries until the tears peter out and he whimpers, clasping your hand, not so much for comfort but as an anchor. His hold is brutal, unyielding, and then gradually it loosens until the clamor subsides. Embarrassed, he lets you go and wipes his eyes with the heels of his palms.

He picks at his fingernails when he’s anxious. You can't see them in the dark, but it’s a habit of his you know by heart.

You ask the question because you want to take his mind off his father, because you’re curious and you feel like the answer is important somehow—to you, and to him. “What were you doing tonight, before you took my call?”

He freezes. His hands drop and he folds them almost primly on the surface of your faux-wood dining table, avoiding your gaze in such a fashion that you think, if the lights were on, you would find him blushing as well as stammering. He mumbles an unintelligible response.

“What?”

“I was at the Sept!”

“Of Baelor?” You lean forward as if this will help you picture Aegon Targaryen, of all people, resorting to a place of worship during a time of need. “You were in a sept? Willingly? And you didn’t burst into flames?”

“Fuck you,” he laughs, another breathy thing but stronger this time.

“I’m glad I didn’t wager any coin on your whereabouts or I’d be bankrupt right now.” Especially after Ruby. You tuck that story away for a later time, hoping it brings some much needed levity after the funeral or in the near future. There won’t be much humor, you know, in the days to come. “Why the Sept? I know your mother attends services but I didn’t think…”

“For the quiet?” he replies. “And I figured no one would come looking for me there.”

“Well, you thought right.”

“I have my moments… not that he ever thought so.”

“Aegon.”

He waves you away. “I’m not looking for sympathy.”

“Well, I think you're bloody entitled to it—if not now, when?”

He doesn’t reply. He finishes his coffee. The sound the mug makes when it rolls between his hands sounds like a marble, repetitive, ominous. “It was always Rhaenyra… He wanted Rhaenyra—are we all just supposed to forget that? Pretend it never happened? The last twenty years of my life—”

“Like I said, you don't have to go.”

“Is that what my mother told you?”

“No.”

“I thought not.” His bitterness, and the truth lying behind it, that Viserys loved his eldest daughter best and treated her half-siblings like less than a footnote in his life, hits you with a wave of restlessness. He’s right; there’s no use telling him otherwise, and nothing Alicent does now can wipe away the resentments of the past. It was always Rhaenyra.

It was always Rhaenyra.

You get up from your chair and rush to the sink to fill a clean glass with water. “Here,” you say, setting it down in front of him like it should cure all of his ills.

“You’re being fussy,” he complains.

“I’m being assistant-y.”

“You’re treating me like a basket case.”

“Well… you haven’t always been the steadiest bulb in the box, have you?”

You mean it as a joke, but Aegon doesn't take it that way. He slides the glass over and stares into the depths, his expression hangdog, miserable. “You’re right… I’m sorry.”

“That’s not what I—”

“No, I’m a nightmare to work for. I know it, my mother knows it… No one wants me at the helm—let Aemond fight our sister for it, if it’s that important to him.”

“Your mother will say you’re the firstborn son, the natural head of the family.” He scoffs. “There was a time—” A time when he took interest, when he had just graduated from university and sought actual responsibility from his father only to be made redundant at every turn. Let the more experienced men handle it. Keep quiet and watch. Your input isn’t necessary. You’re more of a family representative, anyway. Gradually, he had lost interest, lost confidence. If no one cared, why shouldn't he get blackout drunk during work hours? Show up weary and hungover to important business meetings? Say the wrong thing and blow up tenuous relationships cultivated over decades?

Aegon must be thinking the same thing. “It doesn't matter anymore,” he says. “Nothing—” Nothing matters anymore.

“Aegon…”

“Would you choose me?”

You feel your stomach drop.

“If you were on the board, one of the shareholders… do you think I could do it? Would you choose me over Rhaenyra?”

“I—” Your face heats, your mouth goes dry. You want the floor to open up and drop you in the basement, hide out on the next boat to Pentos. Of all the things he could have said, you would take anything, literally anything, over this. “I—”

“You can't even say it.”

“You’ve stopped trying, Aegon! Maybe if you did… maybe if you applied yourself. You have your mother in your corner, your grandfather, Aemond, people at the company who would take your side. If you wanted it—”

“Bullshit.” He snatches his coat from the back of his chair, stands fast enough that you actually believe him about not being wasted. All you can do is chase after him, grab his arm when he's halfway to the door, just to the side of your cramped, unused kitchen.

“Wait, where are you going?”

“I didn't come here so you could lie to my face! Me or Rhaenyra?” he spits through the gritted teeth.

This is do or die, you know—either you tell the truth and risk hurting him or shatter years’ worth of trust in a second. Even if Alicent pats you on the back and says “job well done,” Aegon will never want you again. He’ll drive you away, make your life miserable if he has to, anything to get you out of his sight.

Your throat is clenched almost to closing when you say, “Rhaenyra… I would… I would choose Rhaenyra. But that doesn’t mean—”

“What? That I’m not useless? That my father didn’t find me a disappointment up to the bitter end?” He turns away, and you can see his jaw clench, the shadow of stubble around his cheeks. “Are you close with your parents?”

You nod.

“Then you don't know. You never will, and there’s no use trying. Tell my mother you couldn't find me.”

No use. You tug on his arm, but he is determined to get to the door and manages to open it a crack before you push it closed, squeeze your body around him to act, irrationally, like a human shield between him and the exit. “Don’t go,” you plead. “I’ll tell her whatever you want, but don't go. Don’t go out there like this.”

You know exactly what he’ll do if he leaves the building: he may have given his vices a mostly wide berth when he first got the news of Viserys’s death, but now, raw with grief and anger and Alicent’s heavy expectations, he’s liable to find the closest bar and drink himself under the table and into oblivion. To call the dealers Aemond threatened six months ago if they ever sold to his brother again. To go off the deep end… for good this time.

Aegon frowns. “Why do you even care what happens to me?”

“Because.”

The word hangs in the air, inadequate. If you tried to explain the feeling, he might call it pity, and perhaps that's what it is: three years' worth of annoyance, resentment, frustration, concern, three years of watching him walk into the office with black eyes or reeking of booze from his latest bender, of watching him and his—admittedly—disgusting friends squandering their fortunes on women, drugs, and self-indulgent purchases. As a man, Aegon has proven himself to be crass, irresponsible, petulant, entitled, completely unreliable. But you have also, on certain rare occasions, seen the set of his face when he thinks no one else is watching.

The fear. The exhaustion. The way his hands shake beneath glass tables. The desire to please, and the ignorance as to how.

The truth is, when he’s not being an absolute tosser, you do see him as something fragile, to be pitied. If you said that out loud, he would hate you and probably fire you on the spot. And it might be for the best, you think. What do I want with this insanity?

But standing there between him and the door, his gaze boring into yours, the faint smell of alcohol, cigarettes, and coffee on his breath, you know that you do care what becomes of him. Even if he fired you—even if Alicent fired you—even if you quit—you would still dread the coming of a day when you would pick up your phone and find a news alert: Aegon II Targaryen, Son of Viserys, Dead at 25 or 26 or 30. It’s as if, in this moment, having been forced to look at him—to really look at him, not just as an unwilling charge, a fully grown man-child you’re forced to contend with every day to make your living—you can see his life unfurling, past, present, and future… ignominious, burdened, without purpose.

How can he stand it? A mere glimpse of it leaves you breathless. Exhausted from a night of fraught nerves and virtually no sleep, you feel your heart kick in your chest like a frenzied horse. How can he stand it? How can any of them? Who would want to be a Targaryen?

“Hey, hey, what's wrong? What’s wrong?” Aegon asks more insistently. He puts his hands on your elbows, lowers you to sit—for lack of a better alternative—in front of the door when your knees weaken and your body sags. “Hey, listen to me, you’re alright, you’ve just got to breathe… Breathe…”

Frantically, you shake your head. I can’t.

“Don’t be a fucking idiot. If you couldn't breathe, you’d be passed out right now. In and out… look at me…” He takes a breath. “In… out…”

It takes a few minutes, but the feeling subsides, leaving you trembly and more than a little embarrassed.

“What in gods’ name is wrong with you?” Aegon asks, stroking his hands up and down your arms.

“Long day?”

He rolls his eyes. “Tell me about it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be stupid, I give people panic attacks all the time.”

You let out a watery laugh.

Aegon shakes his head at you. “I won’t let her fire you, if that's what you're so worked up about.”

“That’s not…”

“You’re not my keeper. She should never have called you in the first place. This isn't your mess to clean up, you’re meant to take messages and go on coffee runs and… keep track of paperclips—”

“Stop trying to make me laugh.”

“Why? It’s been your cheap ploy all night. That, and fussing like a mother hen.”

You sigh. This isn't at all how the night was supposed to go. You were meant to be the helpful one, the adult, the one one in control, the one who could be relied upon. But you're not in control. Not of yourself, certainly not of Aegon. If anything, he’s the one sitting next to you on the floor acting sanely, not having a secondhand existential crisis like a world-class fool. (Aegon, to his credit, had the good sense to lose his shit in the privacy of a sept, without any witnesses.)

“Listen,” you begin, “what I said before…”

“Forget it.”

You don't want to forget it. You want to tell him “You tricked me into saying something I didn't want to say”, something you can't take back, something which, while technically not a lie, obscures a more important truth—what that truth is feels too broad and frightening and, worst of all, pointless, for words. And yet you want him to know. Too many people have failed to bother. The last thing you want is to be added to that list.

“I meant what I said… about Rhaenyra. But for the record, and for whatever minuscule thing it might be worth, I wish that I didn't.… I really, really fucking wish that I didn't.” His hand on your face takes you by surprise, his fingers sweeping against your right cheek.

“What are these for?” He blots your tears away, ones you didn't know you had shed. His voice is hushed and disapproving. Without thinking about it, not even once, you pull him towards you by the back of the neck and crash his mouth into yours. Clumsy and graceless, it is less a kiss than a desperate exchange of air.

Stupid, stupid… Something at the back of your head is conscious enough to ring the alarm, but it is Aegon and not warning bells that is most immediate, solid and real and here. The heat of his mouth. The sound of his breathing. The staggering hesitation of his tongue when it brushes against yours.

Immediately, as if barraged by warning bells of his own, he pushes you away. “I don’t want your fucking charity.” His words are snarled, dangerous. He is a wounded animal and you should let him be. But you can’t. The seeing—you wish you didn’t know him so well, not now, on this night and in this moment. You wish you could shove your knowledge into a box of indifference and leave him to his fate, to face his mother, his brother, and his half-sister, his father’s ghost alone, but you can’t. A fierce possessiveness buzzes through your veins alongside the shock and stress and fear.

You feel tied to him somehow.

Perhaps it's naive to want to save him. The Targaryens are a dying breed, a glorious capstone creature just before its inevitable extinction. Rhaenyra will never go quietly—in the end, they will eat each other alive, if not this morning, then some other day, and a different house will rise in their place. They always do.

There will be other billionaires, other jobs, other men.

But at present, the most important thing to you, more important than your job or your reputation or your morals or basic common sense, is to make Aegon Targaryen believe you… to throw him a rope and feel him take it. And you know—because by now you think you’ve learned the major ins-and-outs of him, the dark passageways, narrow roads, the winding alleys no one dares to travail—that the only way to do that is to hurt him. “You are… an idiot,” you hear yourself say.

His face freezes, only his eyes giving the injury away.

“You’re right, maybe no one at the company except for your own mother wants you at the helm. You’re late to everything. You don’t give a fuck about anything of any weight. You’re a fucking embarrassment around waiters, and half the time a complete dick to Aemond… although, granted, he’s a complete dick to you as well and has a stick up his arse that'll probably never come out without surgical intervention. Your friends are clowns—I mean it, fucking nincompoops with shit for brains. You are borderline actually an alcoholic, and sometimes it feels like you haven't bothered yourself to open a book in the whole of your existence. You have everything, stuff people would kill for, and you appreciate none of it. But I get it… You think I can’t ever hope to understand because I love my sister and my parents call me every week and send me nameday cars, but I do. I’d be like that too, maybe, if I had Viserys for a father. Maybe you’re right… maybe the company is cursed and the best thing you could do for yourself right now is take the next flight out to Lys or Dorne or literally anywhere on the fucking planet and forget about it—forget about your name, your family, the company, all of it. I can take you,” you say. “My car is downstairs, I can drive you to the airport, I can make up a story and throw your mother off the scent if you really want me to. But I also think you’re tired of being this person… You’re a shitty liar, Aegon Targaryen. Maybe the top seat isn't for you, but you're looking for an excuse to stop being the guy who lands on trending pages for being an eternal fool. CEO won’t do that for you… your mother can’t do that for you… gods know that getting high off whatever backstreet shite Reyne and Estermont procure definitely won’t do that for you…”

“Let me guess,” he quips, “only you can.”

“Ha! No, that’s—this is—that is not what this is. What, are you crazy? I’m not your shrink, and anyway, it's not like I’m being paid a small fortune every week to exorcize whatever the hell’s wrong with you and your privileged-yet-unbelievably-fucked-up family. All I’m saying is… work your shit out, Targaryen. Fucking communicate! Don’t let your father, of all people, have the last word on who you want to be, especially if you feel like he did fuck-all to deserve it!”

“Are you finished?”

“Done. That’s my two-cents. So you can stop your whingeing about pity and charity and all of that nonsense. Only one of us has their bed in the same room as their dining table, and only one of us was pulled out of sleep by your terrifying mother who whacked me over the head with an NDA before I was even fully conscious.”

“That sounds like her.”

“She hasn’t even told Rhaenyra that your father is dead.”

“…that sounds like my grandfather.”

You sigh. “I didn’t kiss you out of charity, you numpty. I—I just wanted to. I just really wanted to… I still do.”

“I’m no good for you.”

“Probably not.”

“You’ll end up hating me… you’ll quit.”

You let out a mock gasp. “No one to guard your paperclips? How will you cope?”

“I don’t know,” he says, dead serious. “Not anymore.”

There is no humor in the set of his face. He is all grim, all self-despisal, all—could you be imagining it?—thwarted longing. You are beyond the facetiousness he uses as a shield. He wants you. You can see it in his eyes, in the labor of his breathing, in the way he leans ever so slightly towards you and then leans back. I’m no good for you. You’ve decided you don’t care.

“Aegon, kiss me,” you whisper into the dark.

He’s on you before you’ve finished, kissing you desperately, with tongue this time, the slow wet drag pulling a moan from you which you have neither the time nor the presence of mind to regret before he’s kissing down your jaw, your neck. You feel his teeth scrape against the soft hollow behind your ear and you climb into his lap, ungainly, perhaps, but it matters not when you settle to find him hardening beneath you.

He groans into your shoulder, hooks his thumb inside the open collar of your button-up top to part the material and suck at your clavicle, while his other hand, on your hip, guides you to rub against the seam of his trousers. It occurs to you that he must not realize the way he’s writhing beneath you; if anything, he seems only half-aware as he rambles, underneath his breath, “Need you… gods, I need you…”, before ravaging your tongue again.

Impatiently you undo your shirt buttons. Aegon’s hand moves over your breast, first over your bra, then directly over your naked flesh when you fling it aside, along with your top, to land who-know-where. Your nipples pebble underneath his thumbs. You roll your hips. The placket of his trousers catches you directly and you groan, arching your back, bearing down on him so that a breathy, rumbling laugh escapes his throat.

Aegon’s laugh feels better than his tongue in your mouth, than his hands on your breasts, than the ridge of him growing long and hard beneath you. Oh no… you shouldn't like to hear him laugh.

“Should we get off the hallway floor, d’you think?” Only you can hear the nerves behind his humorous inflection, the wobble in his voice that tells you a part of him is expecting this to be the end, the moment you give in to regret or common sense and send him on his way, push him out the door and never speak to him again. He avoids your gaze, trains his eyes somewhere around the vicinity of your collarbones and he looks, in the faint light coming through your half-parted curtains, like a little boy bracing for the worst.

You pull his head up to your level, kiss him slow and deep, rock your hips, relish in the tightening of his hand around your waist. “Yes,” you say into his open mouth. You feel him relax, feel the exhale of relief that moves from his body into yours before he kisses you with renewed vigor.

He anchors his hands on your lower back, then throws you off balance, lowering your body onto the chilly tiles and laving down your neck to the valley between your breasts, slotting his knee against you—by chance, you think at first. Then his movements become deliberate, impossible to deny. His hands are all over you, running up your sides, pressing along the dip and rise of your hipbones. Your heart pounds beneath his lips. “This isn’t how we get off the hallway floor,” you protest.

“But your bed is so far away!”

“Not so long ago, you were calling my flat tiny,” you remind him, with no little store of resentfulness.

He grins—“I guess it’s all a matter of perspective”—and lets you turn away so you can press your palms against the floor and push yourself into a standing position.

Aegon stays on the floor, splayed, smiling up at you until you offer him a hand. He lets you lead him to bed, where your sheets are rumpled, the duvet fallen on the floor. Neither of you cares enough to notice. After laying you down, he takes the time to unbutton your slacks, take off your shoes, slip your trousers down your legs, pausing only to drop a kiss at the curve of your ankle, the side of your knee, the inner portion of your thighs. When the mattress dips beneath you, you know that he is kneeling at the foot of the bed. You feel two of his fingers going down your slit, over the gusset. Your breath comes in shallow pants. You aren’t ready, but there’s enough for it to dampen the tips of his fingers and make them slide through.

Your mouth parts, hungry, expectant. For a moment, your eyes lock, and you have enough wherewithal to freak out about the fact that he—Aegon, your boss, Alicent Hightower’s son—is looking at you with a fuck-me gaze and that you, despite all common sense, are pressing your clothed cunt against his hand and whimpering—actually whimpering—for him to touch you.

Between you the tension stretches, and then breaks. Aegon dips his head and puts his mouth on you, the heat of his tongue following the same path as his fingers. It glides and it flicks and it tastes you hard enough to make you throw your head back against a pillow, but it doesn’t make contact with your heated skin. You buck your hips against his face, pull at his hair, and he lets out a moan which, if you aren’t mistaken, is laced with a deep, buoyant laugh. He’s enjoying this… The thought makes your muscles clench and pulls a long, fluttery gasp from you. And then, only then, does he bare you fully.

The night air and his warm breath hit you in a way that has you squirming, halfway up the finish line before you feel his lips close around your swollen peak, suckling and laving, gathering your considerable moisture on his tongue only to spit it back out onto your naked cunt.

His fingers move through the mess, gently probing, rubbing circles against you one minute before he turns his wrist and enters you. You moan, feeling two of his fingers stretching you out. In truth, you can’t remember the last time you were fucked, probably around the same time you started working for the Targaryens, and now that the floodgates have opened you don’t know what to do, how to behave. As his fingers work you and he nuzzles his face against the top of your mound, his stubbled cheek rubs against your clit in a way that makes your breath catch and your toes curl, and all you can think is more—not just his cock inside you, but more… more of him… You want him to have you any way he wants.

You clamp your eyes shut and try not to think about the implications of that.

His fingers make an audible sound when they move inside you now. Between squelching and moans and the rumbling in his throat, the room beginning to acquire the heady smell of sex, you’re getting close, so close, to coming undone on his mouth. “Just a little more,” he hear him say to himself, “just a little more…” He brushes against something that makes your eyes roll, your neck tense, your legs spasm around his shoulders. You clutch the sheets and feel the silence that overtakes your body as the knot of pleasure breaks and you hang—back arched, tense—suspended over something that snaps and leaves you boneless, powerless, at his mercy when he withdraws to throw off his clothes and kiss his way up your chest, slipping his tongue in your mouth and notching his hips against yours.

You feel him hard against your tender core. He slides against you, deliberate, slow. You whimper and try to squirm away from him, but he nuzzles the side of your face and strokes your hair, makes calming sounds like the ones he would make for a nervy horse. He doesn’t rush things. Only holds you and touches you where you’ll allow, only occasionally bucking his length against your inner thigh. Slowly, the sensitivity subsides and you kiss him in earnest, restless and eager, moving your hand down to hold him, first loosely and then as tightly as he seems to like. His lips part. His breaths are ragged as he moves over you and thrusts his cock into your hand, the head damp, the length of him pulsing hotly in your palm. You think about stopping, pushing him onto his back, swallowing him down as far as he’ll go. But he stops you.

“Tell me this isn’t just because my father died.”

“It’s not,” you say, your hand going still.

“Swear it.”

Your first thought is What a ridiculous thing to say, but it isn’t ridiculous, not to Aegon. So much of his life has been defined by his father, by what Viserys did or failed to do, and if he won’t have the old ghost here, in the bedroom with you, well, it’s not such an unreasonable thing to ask.

“I swear it,” you say, holding one half of his face and staring levelly into his eyes.

He nods. “I think you might be the only person in the world who doesn’t think that I’m a fucking joke.”

“That’s not true.”

“Yeah, it is.”

“Aegon, can we stop bloody talking about your father? Fuck him! He didn’t know you.” Not like I do, is what you want to say, but too soon, too soon. You kiss him to stop the words from falling out. “I want you… I want you. Is that really so hard to believe?” You take his hand and let it delve between your slit again, to feel how wet you are, how ready. To feel the needy moan you push into his mouth… the way you angle your hips until his tip is nestled, just so, at your entrance. “Do you want me to swear upon the Seven?” you ask him, tightening your walls so he can feel you squeezing around his leaking cockhead, inviting him in. “I’ll do it if you want me to… Mother, Father, Maiden, Smith—”

Aegon puts his hand over your mouth. “Shut up or you’ll remind me of my mother.”

You begin to laugh, a bubbling, ecstatic thing which he knocks right out of you when he pushes in to the hilt. You gasp, only vaguely aware that you never asked him to wear a condom, but he feels so good, too good to stop now. He hitches one of your legs and snaps his cock into you, increasing the pace. You moan at the length of him, the breadth of him, the way his fingers dig into your flesh, the sound of his stones hitting the back of your thighs, rhythmically, over and over again.

His eyes are shut, his teeth clenched, you feel him trembling above you, torn between taking and delaying his own relief. Always something to prove. Annoyingly, he is dampening the moans in his throat just as you want to hear him—gods forbid you think less of him. “Aegon… it’s okay,” you speak into the curve of his neck. You kiss his shoulders, tighten your thighs around his hips, bear up on his length.

From his lips pours a sound of mingled pleasure and distress. He is trying so hard not to finish, but can no longer keep up with the measured thrusts he first started with. His pace falters, he grinds against you, fucks you deep into the mattress in a way that, had he lasted longer, might have drawn from you another peak. But it doesn't matter. You feel his body start to shudder and you want it, want him to cum, want him to come undone, want him to cum inside you—what are you thinking?—want him to feel good, want him to feel so good… Not even with a gun to your head can you later recall everything you said to him in those crucial seconds before he spilled inside you with a deep, audible groan.

You remain that way for an unmeasured length of time, arms wrapped around each other, sweat cooling, breath coming slowly back to baseline. Then, with a kiss to your cheek that is sweet and almost chaste, he parts from you. You wince at the loss, the mess pooling between your thighs, and for a moment you fear that this is it—Aegon will walk out the door like he’s done to so many others. Goodbye. Thanks for the good time. Instead, he rests his head on your shoulder, tentative, an uneasy dog craving affection but not wanting to get in the way. You kiss the top of his head, let him doze. Even when he shifts away from you to lie on his stomach and bury his face in a pillow, he keeps his arm thrown across your middle.

The gesture is oddly moving. You think about it until you wake, just a little after 7:00 and see that the sun is newly risen in the sky. For a few minutes you match your inhales to Aegon’s, his exhales, the brief pauses in between. You’ve never felt closer to him than now, and with that comes a feeling like he’s yours somehow. Yours…

He wakes on his own, rubbing sleep from his eyes. He turns his head to squint against the daylight, and though you’re trying to be chill and sophisticated about it, you hold your breath and wonder what his reaction to you will be.

“Seven hells,” he curses, burrowing face-first into his pillow. “Did we only sleep for two hours?” We. The little word calms you, even as he drags his body to sit at the edge of the bed.

Without overthinking it, you wrap your arms around his chest and kiss the side of his neck. He sighs, caresses your arms and holds loosely to your wrists. Soft as you can, you ask, “What’ll you do?”, and press your cheek against his thin, pale shoulder.

“I’m going to see my mother. I’ve kept her waiting, and I can’t just hide from her like some pathetic—” You squeeze him and he breaks off. “I need to speak with her. After that…”

“Whatever comes after that comes after that.”

“Wow… you’re a regular portrait of wisdom.”

“Hey! You came here, remember!”

“That, I certainly did.” From the smirk you see spreading across his face, you can tell he isn’t referring to the simple act of having walked to your flat.

Your face heats. “Idiot.” You say it without bite and it comes out fonder than you meant it to. He smiles. “Do you want me to take you?”

“I can manage.”

“I know… but you don't have to.”

“Fine.” The word is vulnerable. Immediately he has to clear his throat, stand, and begin to dress. You do the same.

You should really have considered having a shower, especially after the long night and the hasty sex (the sex… a part of you still can't believe it happened except for the dull ache between your thighs and the way you keep stealing glances at Aegon, remembering his hands on you, clinging, seeking, sorrowful) but there is no time. The markets open at 9:00. Alicent will want to speak with him before then, draft a last-minute press release, calm the shareholders, the board. As it is, you and Aegon are walking a thin line. You settle for picking a clean black dress out of your closet, and are in the process of trying to fix your hair when you feel him coming up behind you, his hands gentle on your back as he zips you up.

The gesture is so simple, so earnest, that it breaks down every pretense and you have to admit to yourself that, even if you’d had the time, you don’t want to wash him off or have this quiet moment you’ve shared come to an end.

In the car, he sits with his head propped against the passenger window, deep in thought, fiddling with his hands, and especially with the signet ring that depicts his family crest.

Try as you might, you can't read his thoughts and you don't want to pressure him by asking what he plans to do. He could very well be on his way to starting a war between his family, or he could end it—walk away, probably earning the resentment of Aemond and his mother. Either way, there isn't a right choice to be made, only one he thinks he can live with.

Once out of the car, he takes your hand and doesn't let it go, not in the lift up to the lobby, not when you swipe your keycard for the executive floor and the doors open to a hushed, semi-lit chaos. He doesn’t speak. He keeps his head bowed, wary, observant, but he is calmer somehow—you can tell that he’s decided.

Together, you walk around a small handful of department heads speaking into phones. Their assistants cross the floor, exchanging fretful looks while clutching file folders, tablets, cups of coffee. Along the far wall, glass-encased offices are mostly empty except for Conference Room 1, where Alicent Hightower stands at the head of a table at which are seated her father and the head legal counsel, the company’s financial officer, a few of their allies on the board. Aemond, too, is there, immaculate even at a distance. He is the first to spot them; his lips purse, even as his one visible eye remains defiant.

“See you on the other side?” Aegon asks, finally letting go of your hand. You tug his fingers before he can pull the conference room door and he turns to you, waiting, watching you rack your brain for the right thing to say. “Don’t worry, it’ll be all right” and its many variations seem like the veriest wrong, platitudes, lies.

“You can handle it,” you tell him at last, “whatever it is.”

Aegon appears doubtful at first, then he exhales. His face settles, his shoulders square. He has a look about him you've never seen before… Perhaps he and Aemond have more in common than either of them think. Perhaps he is more like his mother than he believes.

He strides through the door and everyone turns to look at him, the heir apparent or the prodigal son. You leave him to it, thinking, To war, then, or whatever it may be.

[fuckyeahdindjarin]

Voicemail

A Seams oneshot, but can be read independently of the series

{ Series Masterlist | Main Masterlist }

Rating: T

Summary: You find Joel's old Nokia at the back of a drawer.

Warnings: Angst, description of a panic attack, grief, comfort, no use of Y/N, reader has a nickname related to her job, reader has no physical description, definitely incorrect description of how mobile phones work, very lightly edited.

As always, Seams oneshots are set on a relaxed timeline. Voicemail can be considered to take place at an unspecified time after Part IV.

Word count: 1.8k

Notes: I don't know if anyone has written anything similar, but I've always wanted to write something about Joel's Nokia (the idea for Butter actually came from the phone scene in episode 1 - can't you tell? lol). This idea took me by surprise one night and didn't let me go.

Important note: I know voicemails don't work this way, but let's pretend that they are saved onto the mobile phone itself and can be accessed decades later, and that a Nokia can indeed survive the apocalypse.

After the outbreak, after Sarah, after missing his shot - he doesn’t remember much of those early, blurry days. Tommy barely managed to drag his catatonic ass to an abandoned house somewhere on the outskirts of town, where he had to punch him in the face to snap him out of it. 

It being a cocktail of shock, grief, pain and numbness that should’ve killed him, could’ve killed any man. And for the longest time he wished that it did.

It was in the aftershock of that punch, left cheek snapped to his shoulder and his eyes downcast, that Joel saw his Nokia was still clipped to his belt, by some miracle unscathed when everything else had fallen apart.

And he keeps it all these years.

He hadn’t meant to take it with him when he packed up his meagre life to leave Boston behind. But the grubby afternoon light glanced off the screen when he was grabbing maps and hammers from under the dusty floorboards, and with a fuck it, he shrugged and shoved it into the bottom of his backpack. 

If he was being honest with himself, it didn’t feel right leaving it behind.

And so the phone made it to Jackson, and survived the detour to Salt Lake City, largely forgotten. Joel was almost surprised by the sight of it when he finally unpacked his bag in the house that was now his and Ellie’s. 

With a wry smile, he tossed it into a nondescript drawer in the garage, never to see the light of day again.

Until one weekend, Joel asks you to help him find some obscure screwdriver in his garage, not able to get up from where he’s on his back, stemming the flow of the perpetually leaky sink in Ellie’s bathroom.

The space is cool, the shutters down and the air dank from the lack of sun. Under the flickering fluorescent light, you go through a frankly ridiculous number of toolboxes without sighting the elusive screwdriver. With a sigh, you try the middle drawer in the workbench, which is clogged with what looks like everything under the sun. 

Your lips twitch - Joel Miller is a messy man.

Digging around the random clutter, you startle when your fingers brush the long-forgotten, yet instantly familiar plastic case of the Nokia.

Wrapping your hand around the rectangular frame, you smile, in disbelief that you’re holding a mobile phone. You had a similar one that got lost in the confusion of the first days of the outbreak, and you haven’t seen one in the years since. At least not one in such good condition.

Joel’s faraway voice jolts you out of your thoughts. ‘Found it, sweetheart?’

‘Just a second!’ you call back.

Tucking the phone back where it came from, you grab the nearest screwdriver and hope for the best. 

It takes you a few days of asking around town, poking around dusty storerooms and untangling twenty year-old electric cords, but you eventually find what you’re looking for, and there’s a spring in your step as you cook dinner that evening. 

Joel seems to pick up on your energy, and he grins, amused, when he brings in the empty dishes after you eat.

‘You’re buzzin’ out of your skin, sweetheart,’ he teases, grabbing you by the waist. ‘What’s up with you?’

You cock your head to the side. ‘Well, I have a surprise for you.’

‘Is that so?’ he hums, then lets his voice drop an octave in playful insinuation. ‘What kind of surprise, hmm?’

‘Not that kind of surprise,’ you huff with a smile. ‘It’s - it’s hard to explain.’

‘Try me.’

Twisting out of his grip, you open a cabinet and pull out something that fits neatly in your palm. Joel frowns, confused by what looks like - a charger.

When you speak, it’s slow, as if you don’t want to startle him. ‘There’s a whole warehouse of wires and things down by the canteen. A patrol stumbled across an electronics shop in a nearby town a few years ago.’

He gives you a crooked smile. ‘And what am I s’pposed to do with it, sweetheart?’

You take a moment, making sure that his eyes are on you before the words come out. ‘I found the Nokia in your garage the other day, when I was looking for the screwdriver.’

You watch as Joel processes your words, and he goes still, stiller than you’ve ever seen him. 

Then he blinks and shuffles his feet, glancing down at the charger. ‘I - I didn’t expect this.’

You let out a breath you didn’t know you were holding. ‘I know. And you don’t have to do anything with it, really, but I just wanted you to have it.’

He nods, slowly. ‘Ok.’

Hesitating, you stutter, ‘So, um, do you - want to take it -?’

Joel holds his hand out, calloused palm quietly upturned. You half expect him to jump at the contact, but he doesn’t move a muscle when the black wire lands in his grasp, and his thick fingers curl around them.

‘I got the dishes, if you want to go first,’ you prompt softly.

Joel swallows, then nods. ‘Yeah, I think I’ll do that. If y’ don’t mind, sweetheart.’

‘Of course,’ you smile, pressing a kiss to his lips.

It’s cold outside, but he doesn’t feel it, not when the charger seems to be burning a hole in his hand. When he gets back to his house - empty, Ellie is at Lucy’s for dinner - he heads straight to the garage, and tugs open the drawer.

The Nokia stares back at him, screen blank.

Flinging the charger into the drawer without seeing where it lands, he shoves the drawer close with a snap.

Weeks pass. It hangs in the back of his mind like a spector, even though you don’t bring it up again, and he doesn’t either. 

He’s not sure if he’s afraid of it, or dreading it, or worst of all - hopeful of what he would find on it.

It’s been twenty years. Electronics don’t last that long. It’s gotta be wiped clean.

One Wednesday night, Ellie is upstairs, music blaring, doing ‘homework’ or whatever she does on a weeknight (he doesn’t believe in helicopter parenting), and Joel finds his thoughts drifting to that damn drawer.

Feeling reckless, he reaches for the top shelf in the kitchen, pours himself two fingers of whiskey, and charges into the garage.

Hopping onto a workstool, he takes a big gulp of liquid courage and sets the tumbler on the work surface. Before his resolve slips completely out of touch, he yanks on the handle, and he winces when the drawer yawns open with a screech.

The Nokia feels foreign to the touch, like he’s forgotten how to hold a phone. It was, of course, glued to his ear almost all hours of the day and night once upon a time. He turns the plastic case over and the other way around again, smoothing the pad of his thumb over the buttons.

There’s no putting it off forever.

In goes the plug into the electric socket, and he looks down, phone in the left hand, the end of the charger in the other.

He thinks he’s seeing double until he realises that his hands are fucking shaking.

In one determined motion, he slots the charger into the bottom of the phone and drops it like it’s acid.

Then he downs the rest of his whiskey.

He’s not sure how long he stares, the very air around him as unmoving as himself, and he feels the alcohol spread its warm fingers through his veins. 

Just when he’s about to look away, it happens.

The battery sign appears on the screen.

Joel almost chokes on a chuckle. He can’t fucking believe it. You really can’t kill a Nokia if you tried.

It doesn’t take long for the familiar home screen to pop up, the time on the top right corner, the battery in the bottom right. The bright green glare casts a cool glow in the dim. Joel picks up the phone, only to be nearly knocked backwards off the chair when the words flash across the screen.

1 NEW VOICEMAIL.

He’s sure his heart has stopped, it definitely feels like it, a deadweight in his chest sinking into his stomach. But he hears it, the relentless beat of it, pounding violently in his ears. Too fast. Gripping the edge of the work surface, he tries to breathe, mouth open, but air isn’t getting in.

It could be nothing. Could be a voicemail he missed from a client that night, or a junk call.

He’s not sure if he’s afraid of it, or dreading it, or worst of all -

He’s trembling so badly that he needs both hands to hold the phone steady, just so that his thumb presses the selection key.

He doesn’t hear the pre-recorded message, his brain skips it entirely. Then there’s five seconds of silence, and his life flashes before his eyes at the familiar beep -

Dad, are you on your way home? Please tell me you remembered the cake. Uncle Tommy bet me ten dollars that you won’t and I kinda need that lunch money tomorrow. See you soon, love you dad -

And everything goes white.

When Joel comes around, he’s on his knees, the empty tumbler in crystalline pieces around him. The phone is no longer attached to the charger, clutched so tightly in his hands that he feels the imprint of every button in his palm.

He won’t know that his face is wet with tears until you thumb the streaks off his cheeks on your doorstep minutes later, no memory of how he got there. You draw him into you, but your embrace barely contains his broad frame.

You can’t get him far in his state, whiskey on his breath and shivering all over. You drag him across the living room and onto the couch, where you curl up against him, warming him up with your body heat, cradling his head on your chest. The candlelight bounces off the phone screen, which glows green in his grasp.

It will take him weeks to get his head around what you have given him. And when he does, he will ask if you want to hear Sarah’s voice - shyly - as if you would ever say no. 

Watching him watch you, Sarah’s warm, fun-loving voice in your ear, the seams of your lashes sting with tears as your heart clenches, swells, breaks for him - and then put together again by his hand finding you, fingers filling the gaps between yours.

But for now, he lies prostrate, his weight pinning you to the couch, as you comb soothing fingers through his hair, anchoring him to you.

‘I got you, Joel,’ you whisper in his ear, and his eyelids droop and his breathing evens out, as if he’s run a thousand miles. ‘I got you.’

As he drifts off to sleep - his baby girl's love you dad echoing between his ears - he knows that you do.

More notes: I don't lean too hard into angst in my fics as a rule, so this took me places I haven't been for a while, but it's ok cos Pin's got our man 🥺 Thank you for reading, as always! ❤️

[faeryarchives]

its you, it always has been you

summary: it was right then and there that he knew, he had fallen in love recent works: don't lose me, not yet & stay with me (leona kingscholar x gn!reader) & heartslabyul with a furina-like female reader!

* ˚ ✦ you're always on my mind, even out of sight: he always wonder when did it actually start? sometimes in the middle of the day, his thoughts would randomly travel back to you - are you taking care of yourself? oh look, he found a patch of (favorite flowers) in the hidden area of the botanical garden + wondering if you would like it if he give you a bouquet 💐 everything reminds you of him and he is getting frustrated why does everything goes back to you until he saw you from the distance admiring the sunset with grim and that is when he knew "no wonder you're always on my mind, even when you're out of sight' (girl i was wondering why it sounds familiar it's doppio's debut line) 🤍

— riddle rosehearts, cater diamond, LEONA KINGSCHOLAR, azul ashengrotto, vil schoenheit

* ˚ ✦ the world looks so dull without you: at first, it was not really noticeable but when you start to get busier day by day, his world gradually lost it's color (not literally) he didn't know why but there was something very important missing and yet he try to distract himself + thinking everything will go back to normal → he was so wrong and everything felt wrong 🤬 he tried going back to the root of all this and he noticed that everything happened when you spend less and less time with him so he tried the theory out and went out to see you and voila !! it was like he was feeling everything at once and the realization sink in + not spending another minute to waste and went on to spend time with you with his heart so full and beating rapidly against his chest from joy 🤩

— ACE TRAPPOLA, ruggie bucchi, floyd leech, kalim al asim, rook hunt, idia shroud, silver

* ˚ ✦ i can't imagine you with someone else: he doesn't like the feeling he gets when you get close with others and he hated himself for that 😿 it's an ugly feeling to have and he treats you as a friend + he has no reason to feel selfish right? they tried hiding it to themselves yet to no one's surprised - the more they bury the thought the more it grew and they finally come to terms with it when he realized it's not that he doesn't want you to have other friends, but he can't imagine you being in a relationship with someone else. he know that he is not the perfect person you want to have but won't you give him just one chance? 🥺

— deuce spade, trey clover, jack howl, jade leech, epel felmier, SEBEK ZIGVOLT

* ˚ ✦ all of the above in order: this man will go stages of grief for aloooong time i tell you 😭 their first stage is thinking about you all the time along with denial → they may be too smart for their own good but really dumb when it comes to acknowledging their own feelings 🧍🏻‍♀️second stage ofc they would realize the empty space you left behind temporarily and how their world seems to be incomplete + like the colors just vanished in thin air and they would start to recognize the fact that maybe it's okay to have feelings for you? nothing is stoping them from admiring you right? 🧐 but no is still no! maybe you are just close friends and he misses your company that's all! 👩🏻‍⚖️ third one is the same → they believe some people do not deserve your attention at all and made them very sad at one point because they can't stand the image of you with someone else 😔 last stage is acceptance and it just came on a random day of you two hanging out - hearing your usual stories and laughter light a bulb inside of his head and he finally accepted the fact that he had already fallen in love with you. 🫵

— JAMIL VIPER malleus draconia, lilia vanrouge

[hisonlykiwi]

"stargazing"

synopsis: you cross paths with the infamous satoru gojo. according to everyone on campus, he is an egotistical, arrogant, reckless, man whore. but after a night out with satoru, he debunks what the rumors say and turns out you two have more in common than you thought.

paring: satoru gojo x reader

wc: 4.4k

warnings: mentions of grief and death

a/n: i actually had so much fun writing about satoru, i'm planning on making this is series heheheh

⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆

“Your turn.” Utahime says, gently shaking your shoulder, interrupting you from your thoughts. You gaze over at the empty wine bottle sitting in the middle of your group of friends. God, what’s with college students and their love for spin the bottle?

You let out a huff in annoyance, “Actually guys, I’m going to go get a drink, I’m not in the mood.” You say, excusing yourself and getting up from the floor. “Booooooring!” You hear Choso say, you shoot him a glare and a middle finger to match.

Not bothering to respond, you exit out of the room and head downstairs. Not in the mood to deal with anyone. Should’ve never come to this stupid party, you thought to yourself. The music is getting louder the closer you approach the stairs, the party downstairs still lively as ever. The faint smell of weed and sweat lingering in the air.

To your luck, there’s a couple eating each other’s faces at the top of the stairs making it hard for anyone to pass them. “Excuse me.” You say, your voice falling short thanks to the blaring music. “Hello? I said excuse me.” You say to the couple. Again, no response. Another sigh escapes your lips, guess it’s a no on getting another drink.

If it was any other day, you would've probably just shoved them out of the way but today has just been fucking exhausting.  Somehow you let your best friend, Utahime, convince you to go to this house party to “take your mind off everything” and frankly, this party was only making everything worse. 

You walk away and wander the hallways of the house instead, it’s probably the biggest house you’ve ever been, to be honest. Who did Utahime say this house belonged to again? Was it Goto? Gejo? Godo? Gojo? Yeah, who knows but whoever it is, that man has exquisite taste.

You make your way over to a door at the end of the very long hallway, there were no people by this side of the house, and it was much quieter than where you were previously. Very much needed. The thought of having some peace and quiet brought some comfort to your aching chest.

To your surprise, the door farthest from the stairs and everyone was open, you made your way in. The room was decorated the same way as the rest of the house. Modern, clean, well decorated. You looked over to your right and spotted a balcony, perfect, you thought to yourself. 

You put your hand on the handle and opened the balcony door, the cool, night breeze hitting your face. It felt… nice. Completely opposite to how you were feeling on the inside. You closed the door behind, there was a table accompanied by two chairs and you decided to take a seat. The music was a distant hum in the background.

You took a deep breath and looked up to the night sky, the stars decorated across the dark sky. The stars were shining so beautifully but there was a particular star, bigger than the others, it almost seemed to be winking at you. You softly smiled to yourself and hugged yourself. 

It’s the 5-year anniversary of your baby sister’s accident and death. Grief is a funny thing; you think the pain is gone and then something as random as washing the dishes will set the emotions off again. You think you’ve moved on because years have passed but grief will keep reaching back and make you feel like drowning all over again and tonight felt like that. 

The lump you had been holding in your throat got bigger and heavier and before you knew it, a small sob escaped your lips and a cascade of tears started to come out. It never gets easier, does it? 

You felt a vibration go off in your pocket, a text from your best friend flashed on the screen of your phone.

Utahime: You okay?

You set the phone down on the table in front of you, not having the energy to text back at the moment. 

“Rough night?” You jumped at the sound of a man a few feet away. Your head felt so full of thoughts and emotions, you hadn’t realized someone had opened the balcony door. 

“Fuck, you scared me.” You say to the man, trying your best to wipe the tears with the sleeve of your shirt. “My apologies, I should’ve announced my presence a little louder.”  The stranger chuckled and put his hands up. You felt him walk towards you, “Here, take this.” You looked up to see the object in his hand, a simple white handkerchief. 

You carefully took the handkerchief from his hands and wiped the rest of your tears before looking back over at him. The stranger stood tall, his white hair illuminating beautifully against the moonlight. 

You let out a slight sniffle before saying “Sorry, I didn’t realize anyone else would be here. I just needed to get away from the party for a little.” He takes a seat across from you, “Yeah, tell me about it. There are too many insufferable people attending, anyway.” The stranger says whilst looking up at the night sky, just like how you were doing minutes before.

A silence fell upon you two as you stared at the man, unsure of what to say. His white hair was such a stunning contrast against the dark blue of the night and his bright baby blue eyes that reminded you of your favorite flower, the myosotis scorpioides. 

“I don’t believe I’ve seen you before.” He said, looking back over at you and meeting your eyes. “Probably not, I hardly go to parties. I’m not sure why I thought tonight was any exception.” You respond to him with a small shrug of your shoulders.

He gives you a soft smile, “I assume the reason was due to peer pressure from people or your friends perhaps?” You stifle a small laugh at his spot-on assumption, “Ding Ding Ding!” His eyes crinkle in amusement and he chuckles slightly “I’m going to take that as a very strong, yes?” 

“You hit the hammer right on the nail, stranger. Were you dragged to the party too?” He looks at the star-littered night sky, the smile on his face never disappearing. “Something like that.” 

Despite his cheerful aura, you couldn’t help but think there was a hidden sadness to him. 

“How about you? Having a rough night too?” You ask him to cause him to let out a snort, “Rough night, rough day, rough life. This time of the year is always quite the hassle for me.” 

“God, tell me about it.” You say with a sigh, thinking of your baby sister. He nods in agreement, tilting his head back slightly and stretching his arms. 

“I’m Satoru, by the way, I don’t think I caught your name?” You say your first name to him, and Satoru cocks his head softly, studying you closely, taking in your features. “Pretty name, it suits you.” 

The loud ringing of your phone startled you, causing you to jump in your seat. You hear a small laugh come from Satoru’s direction. You playfully roll your eyes at him and see Utahime’s name flashed on the caller I.D. 

You: “Hello?” 

Utahime: “Finally! Are you okay? You ran off on us and never responded to my text.”

You: “Yeah, I’m okay, sorry I got caught up talking with a, uh, friend. I’ll come back in a bit.” 

Utahime: “Make it soon because you already missed out on Choso and Nanami smooching.” 

You: “No fucking way! I would’ve pay such good money to have seen that, are you kidding me? Please tell me someone took a picture.”

Utahime: “What kind of best friend do you think I am? You already know I did.”

You: “Of course you did but hey, I’ll text you when I’m on the way back, okay?”

You hung up the phone and apologized to Satoru for taking the call. I’m a friend, hmm?” Satoru smirked over at you. “Shut up, I didn’t know what else to say, I just learned your name two seconds ago.” You playfully respond, crossing your arms over your chest.

 “Well, since we're “friends” now, I believe it is only right for you to ditch this party with me.” He looks amused, “Ditch this party, huh? Now why would I do that?” You say, raising your eyebrows at him. “Because I’m craving something sweet and who else better to go with than with my new friend?” You looked at the time on your phone, “You want to drag me away from this party to go get sweets at… 1 AM?” 

He gives you a small hum and grins. What’s the worst thing that can happen? You’re already having the shittest of days, having a sweet treat with a stranger can’t hurt. After contemplating for a few seconds, you give him a smirk, “You make a hard bargain, Satoru. Lead the way.”

You put the handkerchief Satoru had given you in your pocket and follow behind him. “I’m going to assume you have a place in mind?” Satoru placed his hands in his pockets and continued leading the way out towards the party that was still happening downstairs. “You think I’m going to invite you out to eat and not have a place in mind? C’mon have a little faith in me.” 

His comment had earned a small laugh from you. You kept following close behind him, making sure to not lose him in the sea of people. Not like it’s possible anyway, hard to miss the tall guy with the remarkable white hair. 

You pulled out your phone really quick to shoot Utahime a quick text that you’re leaving. 

You: I’m leaving with a guy named Satoru to go get something to eat really quick. (:

You put the phone back in your pocket and see Satoru glancing back down at you, “Was that your best friend?” He asks, you give him a small nod. Before you realize it, you two have made it outside and you’re in front of a vehicle and a random man is opening the door for you and Satoru?

“Thanks, Ijichi” You hear Satoru say to the man. Satoru turns to you and moves out of the way to let you into the car first. “Thank you.” You say to the man, Ijichi, who was propping the door open for you, and he gives you a smile in return. 

Satoru follows in after you and takes a seat beside you. “You have your own personal driver?” You whisper to him, Satoru chuckles and tilts his head slightly to the side, glancing at you. “I do, it comes with being who I am, but please don’t think of me as some privileged brat.” You have confusion written all over your face, what is he talking about?

“Where to, Mr. Gojo?” You hear the man ask up front. Gojo? Who is Gojo? Satoru responds to him, naming a late-night diner a bunch of the college students from school like to hang out at after they’ve gotten hammered after a night out. Ah, that’s Gojo. You stop, feeling the wheels in your brain turning, wait Gojo? As in?

You felt a vibration coming from your phone and open your phone to see a text back from your best friend. 

Utahime: Satoru? You mean as in, Satoru Gojo? THE ultimate snobby, rich kid whose family owns this house Gojo??

Utahime’s text confirmed your suspicions, holy shit, that was Satoru’s house?

“Heyyy, I’m not snobby.” You hear Satoru playfully scoff beside you who was peering at your phone, “Rich? Filthy. Snobby? Nope.” He continued, popping the P. “Satoru!! That’s an invasion of privacy.” You whine, giving him a playful shove at his shoulder. You lock your phone and put it back in your pocket, making a mental note to text your best friend back. “Not an invasion of privacy if your topic is me.” He gives you a sly smirk. You roll your eyes at his statement.

“Wait wait, let me get this straight, you’re the Gojo I keep hearing things about on campus?” You say, turning your body to face him. “In the flesh, sweetheart.” Satoru responds, he grins widely at the realization on your face. “I’m sure you heard all kinds of things, huh?” He continued, leaning back further in the seat of the car and spreading his legs slightly. Your legs and his almost touching.

You’ve heard so many stories about this Gojo guy, never caring to pay attention or learn who he was but couldn’t help but overhear all the bad stuff people would often say during class, in the library, in the hallways.

“Uh, I’ve heard a couple names being thrown around…?” You nervously say, unsure of how to tell him what you truly have heard. To name a few, Satoru Gojo has been described as a rich, egotistical, arrogant, reckless man whore whose family has given him everything on a silver platter.

He feigns surprise at your words and puts a hand on his chest, he looks at you with a mock-scandalized look. “You’re saying you have no idea how many nasty whispers and rumors there are about me? I’m basically the big bad wolf on campus.” He says in such a sarcastic manner. 

You give him a lighthearted laugh, “I try my best to not listen to the gossip that circles around at school but it’s hard to miss when everyone around you is whispering about the same guy over and over.” He chuckles at your response and crosses one leg over the other, he looks at you with an amused glint in his eyes, he's enjoying himself.

“I don’t even blame you; the rumors are impossible to miss. Believe me, I find it hilarious how absurd some of them can get.” He says with a grin. “It doesn’t bother you?” You curiously ask him, you can’t even fathom what it must be like being in his shoes. You’d probably never show your face in public ever again if you were him. 

“I’d be lying if I said it doesn't irritate me from time to time. It gets pretty annoying when everyone you talk to thinks they know everything about you. But you learn to ignore the majority of it.” He smiles slightly, “I’ve been surrounded by whispers and stares since I was a kid.”

Your heart can’t help but break for him, living a life surrounded in rumors and people talking down on you, cannot be easy but he seems to be doing very well. You reach out and put a hand on his knee and give it a small squeeze, “Despite all those people, you’re still here. You’re showing up and not ducking your head down at the nasty things people say about you. The universe knows if we were to switch places, I would move continents and change my name to never be seen again. You should be proud of yourself, Satoru.” You give him a small smile. 

Satoru's eyes soften and for a small moment he looks over at where you touched him. Something about your words and your gesture set off a warm feeling in his chest. He is quick to compose himself and throws you a smirk, to deflect the feeling that stirred within him. “Careful, I might start getting big headed if you keep complimenting me”

You throw your head back in laughter, “More than it already is?” You quickly respond. He chuckles and shakes his head in amusement. The natural conversation flowing between the both of you is a nice change from the people he interacts with others every day. 

“Well, I mean, we just met, you’re calling me your friend, you’re joining me on a night out and not to mention, you’re holding my knee.” You glanced down at your hand, forgetting you had left it there, quickly removing it and crossing your arms across your chest. A warm blush creeping up your cheeks.

“I was just being nice.” You say, playfully rolling your eyes at him. Satoru watches you for a few moments before he speaks, in a playful, mocking tone. “Aww, is somebody getting flustered? You look a bit red, sweetheart.”

You feel the car come to a complete stop, “You’ve arrived at your destination, Mr. Gojo.” Ijichi states. Thank the heavens above, this conversation was getting a little all too much. 

Satoru exited the car first and you couldn’t help but look at him and feel thankful. His presence is taking your mind off of her. Even though she was still there in the back of your mind… being in Satoru’s presence was comforting.

“Thank you for the ride, sir.” You thanked Satoru’s driver, Ijichi, who was sitting in the driver’s seat. You made your way out of the car, Satoru shutting the door behind you. 

You gaze over to Satoru who is looking down at you. At this angle, standing closer to him and looking up at him, he looks even taller. He put his hands in his pockets and gave you another smirk, “Shall we go, sweetheart?” You gave him a soft smile before sarcastically responding, “After you, “Mr. Gojo.” You say jokingly. 

He laughs in mock-annoyance at your sarcastic response, and he shakes his head, that familiar smirk still in place. “You’re insufferable. And here I am, trying to be a gentleman for you.” He walks ahead of you, following his lead, as he opens the door to the diner. 

“Why thank you, Mr. Gentleman.” You say, giving him a small wink. He lets out a bark of a laugh at your words, he shakes his head and steps inside after holding the door open for you. 

You both placed your orders, you opted for a simple side of French fries and a chocolate milkshake and Satoru a pizookie? You’ve been at the diner a hundred times and weren’t aware what that was or that they even sold them. 

“I can’t believe you’ve never had or heard of a pizookie.” Satoru stares at you in slight disbelief. “I know for a fact you are not acting as if pizookies are a vital part of life.” You say, giving him a deadpan look. “What is it anyways?” Curious as to what it is, it sounds like it wants to be a pizza and a cookie. 

“It is a big ass cookie with vanilla ice cream on top.” He says, you purse your lips in disappointment, “That’s it?” He clutches his chest as if someone had shot him letting out a big gasp, “That’s it?!” He repeats after you. “Pizookie means everything to me, don’t you dare talk down on her.” He half yells, causing some of the workers and some customers to look over at your table. 

You couldn’t hold in your laugh at his pathetic attempt of being mad. “Okay okay, I’m sorry for disrespecting the love of your life. Cross my heart it won’t happen again.” You joke, bowing your head down and putting a hand over your heart. 

Satoru squints his eyes at you with a mockingly unamused look on his face and he lets out a scoff before letting a smile break out on his face. He puts a hand on his chin and hums dramatically as if he’s contemplating if your apology was worthy enough “Hmm, that’s a good start. but I’m sorry to inform you that is not enough” 

Your mouth opens in shock, “What?! My apology was an award-winning apology. It would've had the prophets in awe.”

He crosses his arms, and he fakes disappointment at your words. He shakes his head in disapproval and scoffs at you. “Your ‘award winning apology’ was hardly up to my standards. I think you should apologize once more, and this time with more effort and sincerity” Satoru says with a sly smirk.

Just in time, the waiter brought out the food to your table and you both thanked them. Not breaking eye contact, you continue staring at each other, in some sort of staring contest. Without breaking eye contact he grabs the spoon and successfully puts a spoonful of pizookie in his mouth. He slowly chews the bite, and he looks at you with a smirk, clearly enjoying himself. He swallows the bite, “De-li-cious” he says, sounding out every syllable. 

You picked up a fry from your plate and threw it at him, the fry hitting his cheek. You both are holding back your laughter and Satoru manages to let out, “Excuse me? A fry was thrown at me?” Which was enough to let you both break out in a fit of giggles and laughter, warranting the looks of the people around you, once again, but you didn’t seem to care. 

⋆｡ ﾟ☁︎｡ ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡ ⋆

“Thank you for the meal.” You say to Satoru as he holds the door open for you. He glances down at you and gives you an amused smile, “Glad you enjoyed it, sweetheart. Should’ve believed me when I said pizookies are life changing.” You couldn’t help but let out a scoff at his words, not wanting to say anything to prove he was indeed right.

He steps outside behind you and looks up at the sky momentarily before looking back at you. “Walk with me?” Satoru asks and you give him a simple nod. You follow him and walk alongside him, matching your pace, his footsteps in sync with yours. 

You look up at the night sky, your baby sister crossing your mind once again for the millionth time that night. You let out a small sigh, it was nice being distracted and forgetting about her painful death even if it was just for a fleeting moment. 

Satoru gives you a sidelong glance as you walk in silence for a few brief minutes, a comfortable silence in the air. You sense him looking at you like he wants to say something, but he hesitates, wanting to choose the right moment to speak. 

“Ask.” You softly say to him, his eyes widen slightly and his lips twitch as he looks at you and looking away, clearly surprised that you read him like a book. He gives a small smile before saying, “I was just curious.” He looks at you, as you both walk side to side. You look up at him, letting him know it’s okay to continue.  

He hesitates for a moment before the words leave his mouth, “I’ve been wondering… why did you agree to join me out? I mean, not to sound cocky, but I doubt it was only for my charming personality.” You barked out a laugh at his last comment. 

You pondered your answer for a split second before answering truthfully, “To be honest, I was having a shit night, and you were kind enough to ask me out to have food with you. And I just kind of went along with it, spur of the moment kind of thing.” You gave him a small shrug. 

Satoru lets out a small hum and gives you a small smile, a curious look enters his eye. “Why were you out there anyway?” You tense up for a moment hoping he didn’t notice, “I told you, I was having a shit night and I, uh, could ask you the same thing?” You ask him, trying to dodge his question, scared that once you say the actual reasoning that the water works would start all over again.

He shoots you a sympathetic look as you speak, he seems to notice your change in demeanor, but he doesn’t mention it. “You want the truth?” He stops walking and shoves his hands into his pockets. “My best friend, my one and only best friend…” He cleared his throat before continuing, “It’s the week of his death anniversary.” 

Your heart dropped at his response; eyes widened slightly at his words. The timing of his delivery shocked you to say the least. That was not an answer you were expecting in any means. You take a second to compose yourself, unsure of what to say since you’re dealing with the exact same thing, surprisingly. You let out a small sigh, your tone much softer than it's been the entire night. 

“I-I’m sorry for your loss, Satoru. I shouldn’t have asked, my apologies.” You say to him, not realizing tears started falling to your cheeks. He gazed over at you, his eyes softened at the sight of your tears. You whipped your body around, not wanting Satoru to see you.

There was confusion etched on his face, unsure of what was happening. You started speaking, “I’m sorry, it’s just the timing of the situation.” You looked up at the sky, the bright star you saw earlier blinking at you, again. Taking a deep breath, you continue, “It’s just, uh, today marks the 5-year anniversary since my baby sister’s death…” You choke out a sob.

He stays silent for a moment, taken aback by your words. He didn’t expect that answer, if it was even a possibility at all. He feels a pang of sympathy and sadness form in his chest at your response, knowing the pain is a feeling he knows all too well. 

You felt a gentle hand on your shoulder, turning you around slowly. You and Satoru were now facing each other but you didn’t have the energy to look up at him. That’s when you felt his arms wrap around your frame, a sign of relief escaping your lips. 

Satoru held the back of your head with his hand. He knows he should say something, anything, but he doesn’t know what to say that would help either of you. 

You cried in his arms and hugged him tighter, his embrace being the only thing holding you together. It was unexpected but, in this moment, it was everything… 

You gave him a squeeze before pulling away, still standing close to him. Words seemed to fail as you peered up at him through your wet eyelashes. There were tears in his eyes, threatening to fall on his pale cheeks. You both looked at each other, one look saying more than a thousand words. There was a mutual understanding there. He understood your pain and you understood his. 

Satoru breaks the silence, “Today fucking sucked, didn’t it?” You let out a soft chuckle causing a few more tears to spill, “One could definitely say that… but meeting you wasn’t so sucky.” He smiled softly at your words.

[its-in-the-woods]

Hi! I am Chris, 30s, they/them, pansexual, I am from the great white north eh! Minors are very much not welcome. Please exit or block.

I primarily write fanfic, I am down with any ship but I won't write every ship. Listen to variety of music and watch a variety of TV show/movies.

Find me here for AO3

Find me on twit-ter

*Last update Sept 18/2024

Lifes Too Short (complete)

Pairing: Cooper Howard/ The Ghoul x Lucy Maclean (Fallout tv show)

Rated: Mature - Canon typical violence and smut

Synopsis: Weeks of wandering the desert brings Lucy and the Ghoul closer. Takes place after the last episode for fallout tv show

Chapters one, two, three, four, five, six

Down The Rabbit Hole (wip)

Pairing: Walton Goggins x you (AU) (both are single)

Rating Mature: Romance, fluff, older man/younger women, eventual smut (read all tags in chapters)

Synopsis: Working as a Make-up Artist in film is hard enough. But when the lead actor, Walton Goggins, ask you to be his artist. It's easy to slip down the rabbit hole.,

Chapters one , two , three , four, five, six, seven ,eight , nine, Ten, Eleven, twelve , thirteen , fourteen , fifteen , sixteen, seventeen , eighteen here, nineteen here , twenty here , twenty-one here, twenty- two here <-new

The Woman Who Couldn't Die

Synopsis: Set a few years before Dom Pedro gets a hold of the Ghoul. The Ghoul is traveling back from the east coast, doing side quests for chems, after saving a girl from closet. She becomes an unlikely companion, that softens the Ghoul’s hardshell.

One , Two , Three, Four , Five, Six , Seven, Eight , Nine , Ten, Eleven , Twelve , Thirteen <-new

An old farm set on a couple hundred acres of land, surrounded by forest and wildlands. Lucy Maclean is now the new owner of her childhood home, much to her family’s dismay and anger. The land doesn’t feel the same without her Granddaddy around, the woods seem darker and much vaster. Maybe it’s the fact that she’s alone in the middle of nowhere for the first time in her life. Her great uncle Harris has stepped up to help her learn the ropes of the business, which is bigger than Lucy ever imagined. Her neighbor Cooper Howard, is happy to meet a new face in the area. Bonding over their shared grief and strife to make ends meet as the world is changing. Their worlds are shaken when Lucy’s home is vandalized, and secrets that were supposed to be buried forever begin to emerge from the woods. Horror, mystery, and drama all rolled into one. There is something in the woods.

One, Two, Three , Four Five, Six, Seven, Eight, Nine , Ten , Eleven , Twelve <- new

Knife's edge ~ co-written by @dichromaniac

Pairing: Boyd Crowder/Raylan Givens, Ava Crowder/Boyd Crowder

Warnings?: Dinking/alcohol, knife kink, Blood/injury, hand job, blow job, alternative universe, Hurt/Comfort, Infidelity, Canon Divergence, Closeted,

Summary: Boyd punctuates his statement with the gun, bruising Raylan's torso with the thrusts of the weapon. “You're the same angry young man who left, only difference is you ain't so young anymore.”

Part 1 *~* Part 2

One-shot-wonders

Smokey Music walton x you

***

Short Stories

Smoke and shadows -> horror

Random poetry, very personal often deals w mental health

Empty houses

Crave

[rikiws]

꩜ single serving friend.

hyung-line x gn!reader ┆ fluff!!

꩜ The one time when you met someone amazing- arguably your twin flame- until you part ways, never to meet again. Well... mostly.

warnings: n/a (i think)

ps: jakes one lowk hit so hard, my no 1 delusion whenever I go to some random comp I never wanted to sign up to... also my first time doing headcanons like this, please lmk what you think 🙏

. . .under the cut! ⊹

𖥔 Lee Heeseung : a holiday getaway

clinking glasses, loud blaring music, and the feeling of the warm, humid air brushing through your hair: just what you needed to get some well deserved rest

especially with your friends, who seemed to have all disappeared into thin air, considering that you were now huddled around a fire on the beach with a group of unfamiliar faces

what you most definitely didn’t need however, was to see a rather irritated crab scuttling through the sand- it's antennae-d eyes glowering at you, pincers snapping ominously

then the crab started to scamper towards your feet and the SCREAM you let out

good to know that the guy next to you was just as terrified, seeing that he was about to break your shoulders from gripping them too hard

you could hold your dignity for a little longer

....until the crab decided to test your courage again, and the first thing you did was sonic far away from that little thing

guess who followed? your now holiday buddy- who's also super cute

10/10 wingman-ing, crab

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

"I'm starting to feel bad now."

"It's not our problem anymore, survival of the fittest- or something."

As similar screams sounded from the distant flicker of light of the campfire you had left behind, the two of you couldn't help but laugh. Heeseung was the first to speak up, a melodic voice to match his attractive appearance, which you could now admire in its fullest without having to worry about a tiny crab trying to pinch your toes.

"What about we stick together for the rest of our trips, for the crabs- obviously."

"Will you help me fight them off?"

Heeseung grinned at your question.

"I couldn't say no to you."

𖥔 Park Jongseong : a tiresome visit to the police office

as if your day couldn't be any more unbearable, you get "caught" speeding

"caught" as in the car before you was speeding, but the automatic camera only took a photo of the number plate of your, very sensibly paced, car instead

so here you were, standing in a dingy office, aeons of crime-dust spilling into lungs while you tried to convince the half-asleep police officer that it wasn't you who was speeding

"you too?" some MAJESTIC looking man was seated right behind you, his face somehow displaying all five stages of grief at the same time...poor guy though, getting his car towed over nothing

at least he could keep you company, especially while you both bonded over your terrible luck

it looked like the police got the hint, since they ushered the both of you out without any apology

indoor road rage is real everyone

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

Your hand was gently moved away from the direction of the police station by someone else's, middle finger propped up just so you could give those wretched old men a piece of your mind,

"o...kay lets not do that now."

The other hand belonged to Jongseong, who offered you a kind smile to try and calm you down as he was...except for the very obvious eye twitch once he heard the double-doors slam shut in the distance. You returned his kindness with a small pat on his shoulder while Jongseong only sighed out a fraction of his frustrations away.

"I hate this city."

"Tell me about it."

"All this arguing got me a little hungry, though."

You chuckled at his fruitless attempt at lightening the mood, though your grumbling stomach had different plans. Jongseong playfully raised an eyebrow.

"Okay, how about we go get some food together?"

"You have a deal, I'll drive then."

"You won't speed, will you?"

"No promises."

𖥔 Sim Jaeyun : a not-so-boring science competition

sure, you were good at it- sure, you liked it, but definitely not enough to do a whole competition for physics

squeezed between your teammates on a table much too small for a 3 member team, hearing out all the different answers your peers hurled at you at the same time, not to mention the fact that you had to correct them yourself as well, only then could you press your clicker to select the correct option

you kept a mental note to drop out of the team after this competition, secretly of course, since your teammates would start a riot if they found out

at least you could tell that cute guy from some other school about it after all of the academic events while your teammates abandoned you for a bit of socialising

sim jaeyun, bored out of his mind, and very much exasperated over his own teams antics, just as you were

the two of you decided to stick together for the rest of the programs: giggling at the jokes the hosts would make as they bought time to mark all of your mark sheets, making stupid jokes about the kids who participated in the impromtu talent show right after, complaining over the mediocre lunch you were provided with

you both made sure to stay right by each other during the award ceremony as well, with both of your teams neck-and-neck with the awards you had gotten

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

"And finally, its time for the individual quiz results.."

the host fumbled with the laptop opened in front of him. Jaeyun looked at you with a competitive glint in his eye; one which you immediately returned yourself. Though you had won 1st place for his segment 3 times in a row already, ever since you joined the academic team.

Yet, your confidence wavered when you heard your name.."second place" Jaeyun gave you an overenthusiastic pat on the back as you stood up, your eyebrows furrowed and wondering who in the world had beat you.

Only you meet Jaeyun's eye as went up to the stage right after you, a quick raise of a brow as he nonchalantly took his place in the centre, just next to you. He posed awkwardly for photos, you following in tow. You felt him lean towards you, whispering from the corner of his mouth

"You still thinking about quitting after this?"

"Not until I get my trophy back, Sim."

You broke into a smile, and Jaeyun seemed to have been caught in the crossfire, seeing that he harboured an even giddier smile after seeing yours.

𖥔 Park Sunghoon : an energetic concert-show

you lost your friend in a crowded concert, the nightmare.

searching through the jumping crowd, bass-boosted music blaring in your ears as you passed by, you made your way through the swarm of bodies, only to feel an arm grab onto yours

turning your head, you face arguably the most gorgeous man you have seen in your life, far better than the band guy you had bought tickets to fawn over tonight

the boy quickly ripped his hand away from yours with a frantic apology, explaining that he had lost his buddy as well

poor guy was about to trip and your arm was the first thing he managed to grab onto to keep his trip

Sunghoon, as he introduced himself, agreed to stick with you for the remainder of the concert until the two of you could venture out of the crowd to search for your friends

though you ended up leaving the crowd much earlier than you anticipated, just to catch some fresh air after inhaling the stench of random sweaty people and nearly losing your eardrums

.𖥔 ݁ ˖

"You've gotta be kidding me."

"I think they hooked up with each other.."

You and Sunghoon stared at your phones, slack-jawed at the messages the both of you had received. Your friend had stumbled upon Sunghoon's mate, and now they were off to the dude's house to do- you didn't even want to know. You were left to drive on your own, while poor Sunghoon was left without a ride at all.

"It's just you and me then."

"Yeah."

"You want me to drop you off?"

You heard the deafening drums of the concert the two of you had left behind, exasperated at your friends' rash actions. What if the guy was some serial killer, and not just a random college kid's good friend? You were shaken out of your thoughts by Sunghoon grabbing hold on your hand, steering the both of you closer towards the crowd once more.

"Finish the concert at least- with me."

You gave in, obviously.

꩜ want to read more? check out my masterlist

[krak-jj]

Ask: "Hey i was wondering if you could do a Saiki x reader who loves cats, preferably x male or gn!"

(sorry if i didn't get the ask right all the way, first time responding to one 😅)

KITTY KAT!

saiki k. x male reader.

!lowercase intended for the story!

summary: kusuo didn't like cats to begin with, so why would you bring one to him knowing how he feels.

warnings!

jealous saiki

hope you enjoy!-JJ

(author note at end)

A nice spring day as the birds were singing and the bees a buzz, and flowers blooming.

today, kusuo saiki will be hanging out with his boyfriend, alone for once. he wouldn't say it outloud; but he was excited, to say the least. he hasnt had the time to hang out in a good amount of weeks.

so he was waiting patiently for the man. but when he looked at the time, he realized his lover was five minutes late. which was unlike his loving boyfriend.

but before the pink headed man had time to worry, he heard you approaching the gate to his family home.

as your finger went to press on the doorbell, the door flung open with an agitated looking kusuo on the other side. 'what took you so long?'

"kusuo, im like 5 minutes late. and plus, i brought a surprise!" you said excitedly as he walked over to the gate to let you in. 'you're not bringing that thing in. You know my mom is allergic, right?' "come on, kusuo, just for a little!" 'no.'

"then im not coming in." You said as the orange tabby cat peaked out of your shirt. 'y/n. dont be petty.' "at least get to know the fella before you say no?" 'i'm not doing that.'

kusuo couldn't lie. he didn't care for catsorr dogs. but something about this cat annoyed him. the way it kept talking about you in its head. as if he'd let a stupid cat take you away. how idiotic.

"comon kusuo, look at it!" your voice rang through the psychics' ears as you brought the cats face up next to yours.

'no, and that's my final answer.' his voice rang through your mind. your face dropped as so did the cats. "you're an evil man, kusuo. denying your one and only boyfriend the joy of having a feline companion. how could you?" the brows on your face furrowed .

you saw as the pink hairs above your boyfriends eyes furrowed in. you got him. "just make sure you clean up after it, and it leaves with you. understood?"

his voice rang through your ears for once, which made your heart skip a beat, but then you realized. "Oh hell yeah! thank you so much, ku!" you exclamed excitedly as you passed by him with the cat in your hands.

"good grief."

Masterlist

Hey guys, really sorry for the long as hell and random break. I was experiencing major writers block; then i had gotten this request.

after that i was like BOOM: MOTIVATION. But in the middle of writting i was stumpped. so thats why this took such a long time and is so short. so anon please know i am soooo sorry for how long this took! 🙇‍♀️

[harmonysanreads]

With which hsr characters would you ship your mutuals with?

Hmmmmm, limiting this to just hsr characters makes it a bit difficult for me because I actually don't know all of the hsr characters as well as I do with the Genshin cast but I shall try :> Welcome to Harmony's matchmaking service I guess?

@teabutmakeitazure Ratio. I know who the love of your life is Zuri, but, the rivals to lovers potential of this pairing is astronomical in my brain. Not only can they bond over Mathematics but if things go south, they can establish dominance by seeing who can twirl a pen the best and for the longest :D

@navxry Navina, idk how you'll feel about this one but if I had one chance, I'd love to push you in the middle of Kafka and Himeko. Their ‘chemistry’ has always intrigued me and I just want to see them explode over the same person :>

@yandere-romanticaa Blade? Jing Yuan? Oh, who am I kidding, BOTH. I want to see Blade yearn and claw at the walls of the Luofu because Jing Yuan has what he wants. I want to see him to go through all of the five stages of grief and multiple existential crises until he finally decides to take action :3

@mochinon-yah I said this before once but Argenti! The duo is extremely comedic in my head for some reason. While Argenti goes about his tangents and monologues, Reli silently judges his whole existence while pining for Dan Heng. Unbeknownst to her, Dan Heng thinks she's into Argenti due to how ‘comfortable’ they appear so he chooses not to approach her and— yes, you can probably see where this is going.

@stickyspeckledlight Aventurine and Boothill. I think they should team up and destroy the capitalist empire of the Honkai-verse, IPC. But also because I think these two would appreciate their sense of humor :)

@vivalabunbun Pairing them with anyone other than Alhaitham feels kind of criminal but from my understanding, Viva is a very thoughtful individual and they also seem to value independence, so I think someone wise and understanding like Welt!

@iceunhie She gives off gentle sunshine vibes and I can't help but think of Blade in this case. But I think she can be protective of the people she loves as well, which is something he actually really needs. A very wholesome cycle of healing.

@beloved-blaiddyd Aside from their soulmate Gallagher, I had multiple random characters giving me ideas for some odd reason. First was Ruan Mei, idk how you feel about her Brynn, but I think a conversation between you two would be very interesting. Then I thought of Gepard with an unrequited love-esque storyline. Lastly, Sampo because I think you two would have great synergy. Hm. Maybe you should experiment with everyone until Gallagher himself yanks you away?

[melobin]

“i love all 7 not just one” yet ur so dismissive abt a certain member which clearly isn’t loving all 7 goofy ass. no wonder ur friends with ninona 🤣 both y’all r ot6ers

me when i’m onto nothing the fact you can sit and assume you know how i genuinely feel about ot7 riize is crazy to me. you can continue to think what you want to because i can assure you both ninona and i do not gaf !! im far past the point of caring if people think i negatively of me over the situation with seunghan !! i know i love seunghan ! my friends know it too ! i do not gaf if random people on the internet think differently bc frankly why should i ? i run a smut blog girl im just here to talk about cock 99% of the time 😭

if i’m being completely honest here. i feel like people seem to struggle to grasp the concept that people handle things in their own ways. i’m a very sensitive and emotional person and over the years ive been trying to deal with that in a way where i don’t get hurt so easily. i’ve been dealing with severe anxiety for years i have chronic depression if i sat and thought about seunghan’s hiatus every day i would be completely miserable and worried and that’s not how i want to be i want to be okay i want to feel okay.

grief has never been something i ever get too emotional over it just doesn’t happen, of course it’s sad to not see him there but the way i handle things doesn’t mean i dislike him in anyway shape or form and i’m frankly quite tired of having to explain myself about this. at the end of the day, if seunghan returns it’ll be one of the best things to happen, it’ll make me incredibly happy, i don’t talk about my emotions often but if you want the truth there it is. if he, god forbid, ends up being removed from riize then it will hurt me and i will be upset. i’d rather spend his hiatus in a middle group of knowing there’s realistically a 50/50 chance of him returning and him not rather than sitting and getting my hopes up only to be hurt and upset after.

the way i deal with this hiatus is for my own benefit and my own sanity, i don’t want to be sad all the time, i just barely made it out of a depressive episode and i know if i sat and dwelled on him being on hiatus then i probably wouldn’t have made it out of it. the way i treat the other 6 members is the same way i treat seunghan, i feel the same way about them all, it’s just not as simple to show that when he’s not in gifs or videos or photos.

writing about him is not as easy because i haven’t seen him for months and as time has gone by the other 6 have become more visibly comfortable and free on camera and we never got to see that with him. i love writing for him, his porn plot fic is one of my favourite fics ive written and im always happy to write for him. i just tend to write more for sungchan and eunseok because those are the members i am more sexually attracted to, im a slut man idk what you want me to say. people rarely send asks about seunghan, they’re mainly about sungchan and anton and there’s nothing i can do about that. if people send asks about him, i answer them? if they don’t then i dont, i can’t answer something that isn’t there.

i don’t mean to post such a long rant but frankly i’m just tired of having to say the same thing over and over. no, i don’t care if you think badly of me over it, i don’t care for people who think they know how i feel about something and act as if their opinion is the be all end all. so thank you for sending this so i could freely express my feelings about this.

and DAWG leave ninona out of this as well !!! she expressed why she doesn’t write for him and i touched on my own feelings about writing for seunghan. i never once viewed her in a negative way, she’s one of the funniest people ive had the pleasure of befriending and no, she doesn’t hate seunghan either !

[burplewrites]

saudade | tamarack & qiu

𓆉 | fandom: our life: now & forever

𓆉 | characters: tamarack, qiu, reader

𓆉 | word count: 1,075 words 5,946 characters

𓆉 | a/n: this story is sort of in qiu's pov, and about grief and stuff!! i don't think its too sad, just an experience but you have been warned!

𓆉 | quick summary: y/n passed. the world just needs to learn how to deal.

saudade is an emotional state of melancholic or profoundly nostalgic longing for a beloved yet absent something or someone.

“and you two are gonna grow up someday and i’m gonna grow up too, but that’s never gonna stop us from being the same age. cool.” that’s what they said, eight years ago, when they first met y/n and tamarack for the first time after the duo waltzed their way into their life.

ever since that fateful day, the three were friends, best friends. even with the little break of their friendship from ‘personal problems and moody feelings’ as y/n used to say, y/n brought them together again and reminded them why they were friends in the first place.

their friendship only got better from then on, and they committed to bettering themselves and each other, talking about problems, and about random thoughts that entered their minds. at least, that’s what qiu thought. he thought that they all told each other everything, all their stupid secrets, random thoughts in the middle of the night, things that would be considered too much information for other people. so why didn’t y/n tell them, not tamarack or him, anything about what they were going through? why didn’t they say anything at all?

they never expressed pain, or acted like they were suffering at all. they were always smiling, expressing their positive emotions with not a care in the world. qiu loved them for that. they had been crushing on each other for a while, qiu knew that, y/n knew that, and even tamarack, who had to watch the whole thing unfold in front of her, knew that. they just never got together, and now they would never get the chance to.

it was only a year ago when their life changed. when tamarack yelled in the middle of the night, alarming everyone out of their drowsy state, y/n was having trouble breathing, and was trying to get upstairs to their mother's room without disturbing their best friends on the couch. their limbs started giving out, making them fall to the floor. that whole night was a blur for qiu and tamarack alike. watching their best friend’s mom trying to help y/n take some breaths as they all cried, seeing the tiredness in y/n’s eyes, like they’ve been fighting this for years and was finally starting to give up, and opal’s sobs as she begged her only child to keep trying, to keep breathing. tamarack clutched hard onto qiu that day, the shock causing her to freeze up.

hearing their best friend's last words, being so weak, so quiet, yet so genuine. it was like y/n trying to fully get everything out like they knew this would be the end.

"hey its okay, you're okay… you're okay. i love you guys so much, more than you'll ever know."

that's what they whispered, as the paramedics took them away. a smile never left their face, even with the ventilator on their face and the paramedics checking their vitals on the way out the door. they died on the way to the hospital. even to the end, they were caring for others.

opal changed as a person after that. having to bury your only child, someone who you watched grow up, someone who you experienced their good days and bad days, and was just expected to keep moving. but that was impossible, how could she? her world stopped that day but everyone kept moving, the world kept spinning at the same speed it always did, no faster, no slower.

but y/n was gone.

tamarack put her whole being into her cello practice since y/n always seemed to like it when she played for them. she even played a song she wrote at the funeral; a song that was supposed to be for her best friend. one that they were somewhat writing together. she still tried being normal, helping opal with whatever she needed, but never trying to pressure her. it was tamarack's form of escape. if she could be in the house that y/n was in, surrounded by all the things that made them, them… that would be enough. it had to be enough. qiu simply regressed into themself. it was like they were back to when they were fourteen. they stayed outside sitting by their ‘hideout’; hiding away from the world. tamarack tried to stay with him some days, when qiu wanted the company and couldn’t deal with being alone without someone to talk to, someone who understood, but other times it was too overwhelming and they preferred to be alone.

life changed. golden grove moved on, and people found other things to talk about, but sometimes things brought them back to that day one year ago.

especially today, the one-year anniversary of y/n’s death. three hundred and sixty-five days without them. it was early morning, around five am, and qiu biked to the cemetery to just be with them alone. they knew tamarack would be coming in the morning after she woke up, and opal would be coming in the afternoon, so this was the best option. plus they couldn’t sleep.

qiu never knew they could cry that much. every time they came to visit, to talk about something exciting that happened, or something weird, or anything really, they would end up breaking into sobs each time, gasping for air by the time their tears ran out.

‘why did you even have to come into my life if you were going to leave it partway?’

that was a question that they asked themselves multiple times and always felt bad for thinking about it after. they knew tamarack felt the same. tamarack was the first of the two to mention that thought out loud.

but it was true, wasn’t it? they never regretted having y/n in their life. everyone's life shone so much brighter with them there, like the sun on a summer day, but with the sun gone it gets darker. the sun always comes back, but y/n wouldn't. y/n was dead. they were gone, and they were going to stay gone.

no matter how much opal begged, how much they all hoped and dreamt, y/n was not coming back. they were never coming back. they had been gone for the last three hundred sixty-five days, they would be gone for the next year, and the years after that. and nothing could change that.

so as qiu sat there, laying by their grave while talking about everything and anything, all they could really do was hope y/n was there and listening.

[cumsuga]

Grey Areas Teaser

twin!Taehyung x fem!reader

genre. SMUT, fluff, angst, Romance

18+ (Minors DNI)

Your husband is dead, now you're trying to avoid the man that looks exactly like him. The only problem with that is trauma bonds people, sometimes in more ways than one 

warnings: Death of a spouse, sleeping with your brother-in-law, grief

“Taehyung, I don’t need your help. I need you to leave, please. You can come over later, but I want to be alone now.” You take Azra out of his high chair and walk towards the den. “We can discuss why you were in my bed after I take Azra to daycare. You can come with me to pick up some of Taejoon’s things from the base. Come back in 2 hours, I’ll be ready then…”

Taehyung reluctantly agrees. He’s scared to leave you, in all honesty. Taejoon had mentioned to him about your past struggles with your mental health, but he didn't want to come off as he couldn’t trust you. You wanted you to know he understood what you were going through and was there for you and Azra. 

You watch through the curtains as Taehyung pulls out of the driveway and drives off into the distance. You turn back to the living room and look around. You feel… empty. You knew that grief never grows smaller with time and that life grows around grief. It was such a cliche analogy, and it helped you when your grandmother died, but this was different. You and Taejoon talked about getting old and grey together. About watching Azra graduate high school and college, get married, and have children. Now, it was just you, no Taejoon, to help with the woes of parenting. You, at 25, are a widowed mom of one. You’re going to miss hearing the sound of him breathing when you lay your head on his chest. You’re going to miss the way he kissed you, held you, and made love to you. You would miss the way he would quote Napoleon Dynamite at the most random times. You were going to miss him. Plain and simple. You wish you had time to grieve but couldn’t because you had responsibilities. So you pushed yourself to keep going because of Azra.

About 2 hours later, you pull into your driveway, returning home from taking the baby to daycare. Taehyung is already there, waiting outside, smoking a cigarette. The feeling of annoyance was brewing inside you. You get out of the car and join him on the stoop. “Why are you waiting outside? You know where the house key is. It’s the middle of fall; it's cold.”

“I didn’t want to be reminded of him right away.” he takes a drag, handing you a coffee he picked up on the way back to the house, which you happily accept. “Your house smells like him still. It’s weird.”

You nod; he’s not wrong. It does smell like him, but you like that. You didn’t want to forget that smell. “Yeah, I know. It is kinda weird, isn’t it.” you chuckle softly. He smiles at you, and you meet his eyes finally. You feel something weird, something that makes you blush. He looks away quickly, taking another drag of his cigarette as he stands before flicking it. “Let’s go get my brother’s shit.”

[an0nfr0mth3d3n]

Ever heard the ‘Foolish and Bad are divorced’ theory? Here’s totally what happened.

Bad probably lost one of his lovers, and it happened to coincide with Foolish losing one of his lovers, and usually what happens is they seek each other out and cry about it (well Bad cries, Foolish makes a bunch of really sad and deprecating jokes because humor is his coping mechanism).

Well when the coincidence happens, they both end up finding each other and just, venting about mortals and how immortality sucks sometimes, until Bad is like, “gosh darn it Foolish I can’t go through this again. Can you just marry me so we can find love together and not get love-trapped by stupid mortals again?”

(I’m aware the words are out of character but if it was in character the amount of dodging and implying would take up several paragraphs and I’m not doing that)

And Foolish laughs and is like “Aaa fuck it. Might as well try I guess, your stupid ass is the only one who doesn’t leave anyways”

It’s very unofficial, they don’t go to a church or anything, and their rings are just mismatched random rings that Bad stole, but they both have weird and mixed feelings about this.

Bad says he’s sure they’ll love each other eventually (I hc him as demiromantic because it’s on the spectrum and because also that’s me too so yippee)

It takes a day or too before Foolish can’t take it any longer. Not only is it too soon, but when he takes a step back from his grief and actually imagines being in a somewhat romantic relationship with Bad, he wants to puke and roll over and die somehow. Also probably had something to do with the fact that Bad started moving in to his current build project and setting up space there and usually it’s not a promising sign for a marriage if you started the day after absolutely strangling your partner.

Bad also realizes this too. The thought of a traditional marriage at ALL has never sounded appealing. He isn’t one to get domestic with it, and despite trying to set up a home with Foolish sounds unappealing (noooo had nothing to do with the current bruises on his neck right now…) Bad lived for adventure, and liked solitude once in a while, and marriage was just a tether that promised no benefits except for tax purposes and he already evades taxes anyways.

They both fight each other to be the once that divorces the other, and they start by making this EVERYONES problem. They never had a traditional wedding, but they DID go to an official divorce court, making it a point to hire the best talent with divorce lawyers out there. Not that there was much to go on, they were only married for a handful of days, and it wasn’t even official so the lawyers have no clue what to do. They go with it anyways because it’s a totem shark and a demon and they are already beating the shit out of each other in the middle of the court, and the lawyers did NOT want to get in the middle of that.

Bad of course tries to weasel his way into getting 50% of Foolish’s build, and Foolish gets impatient with the court and just attacks Bad himself, fed up at the consistent attempts to steal his build.

They both roll around on the ground, biting, kicking, punching, and both of them are smiling through it. They can lean on each other when times get tough, but Landduo will NEVER stoop to petty human traditions ever again.

(whoops this turned into a mini hc fic)

[sundrop-writes]

Miss Nectarine

Donna Troy x Fem!Thick!Reader

Miss Nectarine, jawbreaker sweet.

Summary:

Ever since the old Titans have come 'home', Donna has been swimming in stress and grief over the friend they had lost the last time they lived at the Tower. She unintentionally found the perfect way to combat that grief when she accidentally walked in on you in a very revealing situation.

Donna Troy x Fem!Thick!Reader. Friends to Lovers. Smut. Set during Season 2, Episode 7.

Word Count: 2,600

DC Titans Masterlist | AO3 Link

Detailed warnings and author's notes below the cut.

Warnings: this is such a random fic lmao; this is primarily smut; this fic does feature spoilers for the canon if you haven’t seen the show before and you want to watch it spoiler-free; mentions of Titans!Bruce Wayne’s intense paranoia; mentions of background (past) Dawn/Dick; mentions of canon violence (no in-depth descriptions); mentions of Donna/Garth (but I never outright state in this fic that Donna and Garth were romantic in the past or if they were just friends - I like them better platonically tbh); mentions of Donna’s grief for Garth as a best friend; this uses the ‘caught masturbating’ trope - Donna accidentally walks in on the reader masturbating and all the lustful feelings she has ever felt for the reader come flooding toward the surface; there is no hard dom/sub, but Donna is more dominant and the reader is more submissive to Donna’s orders and whims; the reader uses she/her pronouns and has a vagina; she reader is described as fat/plus sized (through a very loving gaze - Donna is very turned on by her body); accidental voyeurism (Donna watches the reader masturbate for a while); clitoral stimulation (the reader masturbating); the reader calls Donna ‘D’ (because that’s a thing in all my fics now); very clear consent is established before Donna touches the reader; mentions of Donna manhandling the reader slightly (using her superpowered strength, but nothing that would be incredibly unrealistic); oral sex/pussy eating (Donna giving, reader receiving); I believe that’s about it. 

A/N: This is named after the recent song Miss Nectarine by Ashnikko, which is about someone struggling with their attraction to women and I fucking love the song so much - the second I heard it, it captured my heart. I highly recommend listening to it. Also, I feel like this fic is not my best work. Idk. I wrote it with a really awesome inspiration in mind (Donna lusting after a thick girl) but I couldn’t really get the writing flow down, and I feel like some parts of it are clunky. But I know that sometimes we should stand behind work that’s not our best, and people still might enjoy reading this. So, here you go!

...

Titans Tower was a place that had a lot of usual features. Things that no other home would ever need. 

The large serenity garden in the center of the house that never seemed to bring anyone serenity. (It was likely just there because the Tower had been built for people who were city-dwelling chronic night owls, the type of people who never saw plants in their natural habitats, and needed a simulated one in the middle of their million dollar condo.) The large, state of the art training facility. The medical bay, stocked with all kinds of equipment and medication - including a freezer filled with spare blood, in all of the original Titans blood types. Which is something that would be insanely creepy to any outsiders. 

And among the more peculiar security measures: none of the internal doors in the house had locks on them. All the bathroom doors, all the bedroom doors, the doors to the training room - none of them locked. 

To a certain extent, Donna understood why. 

The place had been designed by the most paranoid man on the planet - at least, that’s what Diana often called Bruce, and Donna had to believe it wasn’t an exaggeration, because Diana didn’t really believe in hyperbole. There were cameras in every single room, endless security protocols to breach the Tower from the outside - most of which Donna likely didn’t even know about. The place had been designed around its own unique, state of the art surveillance system. 

So, there being no locks on any of the bathroom doors or bedroom doors was just another… quirk. Something implemented for security purposes without ever considering how inconvenient it would be for a person to actually live with. 

It was something implemented with the idea that locks put barriers between the members of a team, and those barriers can create secrets. Secrets cause friction. A team should be one solid unit. That, and it can be dangerous, taking away precious life saving seconds if someone is locked in their bedroom while sick or injured and a door needs to be smashed up in order to get to them. 

At least, that’s what Bruce had in mind when designing the place. 

Back when all the original Titans had moved into the Tower, knocking became the most easily upheld rule in the household. No matter how much they argued over who did the dishes or complained about certain people making noises at ‘impolite’ hours - above all, it was a sacred practice not to barge past a closed door without asking first. 

And as Hank taught them, whenever someone wanted privacy in their room, as a kind of ‘do not disturb’ sign: a sock was to be wrapped around the doorknob as a universal signal that the person inside did not want to be bothered. It was a good old fashioned standby that he had learned while living in a frat house that had shitty, broken bedroom doors with locks that often failed. It came in very handy whenever someone wanted their privacy to masturbate uninterrupted, to unwind and sob without question after a particularly hard mission, or - when Dick and Dawn coupled up - to fuck like rabbits without anyone else barging in on them. 

Somehow, being back in the Tower, it was easy to forget that sacred law of knocking. Something about taking a five year hiatus from living in the strangely designed condo and wallowing in the tense emotions that being here brought back to her - Donna was more focused on the stress of Deathstroke and Doctor Light, everything around her old home that reminded her of the dear childhood friend she had lost the last time she was here. Her mind was a mess, and sadly - it was easy to forget about something as simple as knocking. 

Over the past few days, her mind had been occupied by far too many things. 

Doctor Light’s ‘escape’, and then his strange, untimely death. Deathstroke suddenly showing up again, and the moral conflict of harboring another one of his kids in the Tower. Which was made even worse when she considered that he would be an emanate danger to her - and to everyone else. 

All of this stress was topped off, brought to a boiling point when Donna had walked into her room after doing some yoga and meditation with Dawn (trying to calm the rockiness of their minds) and she found a bottle of orange soda on one of the bookshelves. Not just any orange soda - the orange soda. 

Her memories of Garth were painful enough - she didn’t need to be reminded of him like this. She wasn’t sure if someone was doing this to fuck with her, or if someone had put it there to try and comfort her. As an attempt at reminding her of the good parts of her past. If that’s what they meant, it wasn’t working. 

As soon as she found it, Donna rushed down the hall to your room to confide in you. She simply needed to share this strange occurrence with someone who wasn’t going to jump down her throat with conspiracy theories or brush off her concerns. She needed a shoulder to lean on, maybe cry on. Maybe she needed to reminisce about Garth when she had banned speaking his name since she had re-entered the Tower. 

She thought nothing of it when the doorknob to your bedroom turned under her palm with absolutely no resistance. 

She found herself standing in your doorway, holding the bottle of warm soda in one hand, staring down at it like it was a bomb about to go off. With her other hand still poised on the lockless doorknob, her mind filled with stale grief over her lost friend - when she heard it. 

A soft moan. 

Donna’s head shot up toward the noise, mostly an instinct of her training. The sight she was greeted with instantly shifted all of the energy in her body from confused, saddened, and hurt to pure, blinding lust. 

You were laying in the middle of the bed, your head propped against several pillows, making you look like a fantasy, purposefully displayed and laid out for her - and you were touching yourself. Your oversized, comfortable shirt was shoved up to sit underneath your chin, revealing your gorgeous tits, bared so perfectly for the eye to consume. 

Your lounge shorts with your panties tangled inside them were tossed off to sit around your ankles, clearly in a haste to partake in the act of ‘self care’. (Something different than the calming yoga Donna had been doing to take her mind off things, but just as effective.) This left your wet, wanting pussy out in the open, completely visible for Donna to see, and she even swore that she could smell you - a pungent tang in the air that drove a carnal hunger deep inside her. 

The thing was, as much as Donna had acknowledged in the back of her mind that you were attractive, and funny, and cute, and that your strength when facing enemies put an undeniable heat in her gut - she had never truly looked at you with this much lust boiling inside of her. Not until now. Because she had never truly seen you until this moment. 

Well, up until this moment - she had seen you as a friend, as a companion, as a fantastic warrior, someone she always wanted by her side. But this was the first time she had seen you as a potential lover. As someone she so badly wanted to fuck. 

With you laid bare to her like this, so desperately humping your own fingers and intimately visible, she couldn’t help but to stare. 

Two of your fingers worked furiously over your swollen clit while you held a lip between your teeth, clearly trying to hold any noises tight inside of your throat. This was something that made Donna even more desperate to hear your sounds, to hear what kind of moans or whimpers you would make for her. 

Your breasts bobbed in the air as your chest heaved - two beautiful mounds with peaked nipples, zagging lines of stretched skin where reality had quaked to prepare for your gorgeous muchness. This caused her eyes to trace down your quivering stomach; her gaze following the smooth rolls of your body that perfectly guided her eye down to the beautifully fat mound of your cunt. Your pussy was dusted with hair that was absolutely dripping with your need - so utterly soaked that you were beginning to form a small stain on the comforter below you. 

Perhaps best of all - the wideness of your thighs perfectly framed your clenching hole, clearly so needy and yet untouched as you rubbed sloppy, increasingly loud circles on your clit. It was a space where Donna wanted to slot herself and be smothered by the perfect dimpled thickness of your thighs, wanted to feel the endless warmth there, encasing her in everything that was you and barring out the stresses of the world. 

She stood there, frozen in place for too long, simply admiring you. 

She still had her hand on the doorknob, standing in the doorway, and with your eyes screwed so tight with pleasure and concentration, she knew that you hadn’t seen her yet. 

Part of her wondered if she should approach you. If she should be so bold as to assume that you would want her in your bed. 

But when she glanced down again, she saw the orange soda bottle. And something in the back of her mind was reminded of that haunted past. Something that said she was never meant to be happy. Something that told her living in the moment only fucked things up. Everything she had done back then, it was karma, that-

“Donna.” 

You said her name like it was the sweetest song. 

A soft, delicate moan coming from your lips - not an accusation, not a griped yell for her to get out. 

When she looked back at you, your eyes were even tighter with pleasure, your back arched slightly off the bed, displaying your breasts in an even more perfect way. Your fingers worked more furiously on your clit, clearly trying to make yourself cum with even more intent. Your other hand came down to hook under your knee, lifting your leg up in a way that spread your thighs even more. This made Donna breathless at the visible wave of slick that leaked out of you and the way your fingers dug into the fat of your thigh. 

It almost made her jealous of the act. She should be the one grabbing your thigh. It made her entirely tempted to charge over there and simply take over.

“Fuck, D.” You sighed breathlessly. 

It was clear in her mind: you hadn’t caught her. You were thinking about her as you were getting close. 

Donna’s own pussy throbbed between her thighs, and as she clutched around the glass bottle so hard she swore she heard it crack. In that moment, she could almost hear Garth’s voice in her mind. He was chanting, telling her to ‘go for it’. Telling her that the concept of ‘karma’ was bullshit and she had to make her own fate. He would have told her that she was stupid to pass up an opportunity with ‘such a hot babe’. If he was a ghost, supposedly haunting the Tower, he would probably be her wingman in this. 

Maybe it was his ghost, with a hand on her back, guiding her toward you. Whatever it was - in that moment, Donna felt the impulsive Atlantean side of her take over. 

Or maybe it was the fact that she needed to turn away from all the grief - for the first time since entering the Tower, Donna needed to make herself forget about all the ghosts that haunted the halls. She needed to hold onto something real, something good that was right in front of her - she needed the real, tangible now.

She stepped fully inside your bedroom, shoved the door closed behind her. It was only with that quiet slam that you actually came out of your personal, lustful bubble. There wasn’t enough time for shock to take over as Donna abandoned the mysterious orange soda bottle on your dresser and strided toward the bed with intention and purpose in every single movement. You snapped your legs closed around your own hand, suddenly feeling shy under her ravenous gaze. 

“Yes or no?” She asked you firmly. 

She placed a knee on the end of the bed, looking at you with heat blooming across her cheeks. Her own chest shifted with puffs of hot breath as the lust rapidly increased her heart rate. 

Of course, she would never do anything without your explicit consent. 

Even though shock was still barreling through your system, unsure if this was a fantasy or not, perhaps a strange illusion blurring into reality - you managed to squeak out a reply. There was only one possible answer you could think of when she was looking at you like that. 

“Yes.” 

Donna nodded firmly and then moved onto the bed. Before you could blink, she had hooked both her hands under your knees and, using her enhanced Amazonian strength, she pulled you down the bed toward her. This caused you to let out a sharp squeak - a sound of delighted surprise at the fact that she could move you around so easily. Nobody else that you had been with ever could. 

She placed both her hands on your inner thighs and spread your legs open like you were a book that held all the answers to life’s most demanding questions. She was glad that her hair had already been up in a low bun, because it was out of her way as she held your legs open with impressive force and dove in. 

Years of unrealized lust for you came rushing out of her, concentrated on the tip of her tongue. Feelings that she had been holding back through intense, well-trained self discipline began to pour out the minute that her tongue met your mound. It was a demonstration of her sheer power painted in front of you as she flicked her tongue over your needy clit, fucking you hard and fast. She couldn’t help but to moan loudly at your taste. Sweet like a nectarine. 

“Fuck!” 

You moaned out, unable to take your eyes off the sight of such a gorgeous, goddess-like woman between your thighs. Your mind almost unbelieving that it was real - barely able to comprehend how perfect she looked with her pretty pink lips pressed against your cunt and her tongue working in hard, fast circles as she fucked you in such an utterly demanding way. 

“Oh my god, Donna!” 

Your muscles quaked with the effort, but you were unable to move even an inch to shut your legs around the intense, overwhelming stimulation that she provided. Heat shot through your body from that one point - from that beautiful place where her lips were sealed onto your cunt. 

Donna felt the spasming of your legs, felt the heat pouring off you in waves, and she reached over with one hand and worked two fingers inside of you. This was entirely easy with how slick you were, open and ready for her. You moaned sharply and your face was twisted into a gorgeous pinch of pleasure when she glanced up at you through her lashes. 

There was just one more thing that she wanted. 

She popped off your clit with a filthy wet noise, causing you to whimper. 

“Cum for me,” She demanded sharply. 

You couldn’t help but to follow the order. 

When you fell apart underneath her touch, you couldn’t contain your screams. Everyone in the Tower heard you.

...

If you enjoyed this fic, check out my DC Titans Masterlist for more of my other fics!! And please consider reblogging and commenting on this fic to tell me what you liked about it.

[anthrophobixx]

Since I don't often talk abt stuff over here, I think it's safe to assume ppl don't know abt my version of olandy either, so here's an extremely LONG post w all my olandy headcanons so far :33

(fyi I project onto both of these guys, esp randy, so some of these headcanons are a bit more personal o(-( u don't need to know which ones tho)

Randy always gives the corniest but cutest compliments and Oliver is extremely flattered by them

They have cute matching nicknames for each other, Randy calls Oliver sunshine n Oliver calls Randy moonlight 🙏

Randy is always hesitant on accepting gifts from Oliver cuz he feels guilty for not being able to give him stuff in return even tho Oliver has told him multiple times that he doesn't owe him anything

Randy tries to save up money whenever he gets his paychecks so he can get something nice for Oliver once in a while too :33

Oliver's only topic around other ppl is literally just Randy. He's sooooo in love rhgrgrhrh

Oliver usually hums songs for Randy to comfort him or to help him fall asleep

Randy often visits Oliver at his place (and by that I mean bro literally just lives there atp)

They like to go on walks together or to watch movies after work, depends on what they're in the mood for

Randy is a great listener and Oliver *loves* that about him. He's comfortable with rambling abt whatever comes to his mind because he knows he's paying attention and Randy loves it when he's talking abt random stuff cuz he thinks it's cute

They're both touch starved as fuck, the difference is that Randy is terrified of physical contact while Oliver desperately craves it

Randy always feels like Oliver deserves a lot better than him and whenever the topic comes up Oliver tells him to shut the fuck up and showers him in compliments

Whenever one of his scars starts healing Randy always shows it to Oliver and Oliver being the lovely bastard he is hugs him tightly n repeatedly tells Randy how proud he is of him

Oliver and Randy definitely have matching kuromi n melody plushies

Oliver calls Randy up every single hour during work cuz he misses him

Randy is a cat person and Oliver's a dog person

Whenever they're on walks and they run into a stray cat they need to stop asap cuz Randy just *has* to pet the lil creechur

Randy needs constant reassurance from Oliver that he's infact dating him because he actually loves him and not just out of pity

Adding onto that, Randy often feels like he's annoying Oliver by constantly worrying about stuff that he knows aren't true. He can't get rid of the constant feeling of guilt and he often tries to just swallow it all n suffer in silence. Oliver knows this and he tries to get Randy to open up to him more often, but he also doesn't want to pressure Randy into saying anything he's not comfortable with

Randy stopped having nightmares so often n waking up randomly in the middle of the night once he moved in with Oliver n they started sharing a bed :33

Randy's the one that cooks food in the house since he's surprisingly really good at cooking, even though he hasn't been in a kitchen for god knows how many years, he's probably even better at it than Oliver :o

Whenever Randy gets a compliment from Oliver he just starts muttering nonsense since he's not used to getting complimented n Oliver thinks his reaction is really cute

Oliver is the one to always arrive home first n he likes to wear Randy's iconic denim jacket until Randy finishes his shift, cuz the dude literally goes through the 7 stages of grief multiple times a day without his loser bf

Whenever they're in crowded places Randy either hides behind Oliver or closes his hoodie completely, let's Oliver drag him by his arm n lead the way

Randy often reads stories and poems out loud to Oliver cuz it helps him with his stutters

Randy always slightly twitches whenever Oliver touches him (his fight or flight just kicks in ok)

Oliver has a bug collection Randy's terrified of

Oliver often steals Randy's hoodies bc he likes baggy clothes and because Randy really can't do anything abt it ☠

Oliver gets extremely happy whenever Randy buys him small gifts like chocolate or tiny stuffed animals, although he often feels bad cuz Randy's spending all the money he gets from his job on him and waaaaaa why would he do that :'O

Although Randy's terrified of being touched, he actually craves hugs *specifically* from Oliver quite often n Oliver does not hesitate to give him as many as he needs :D

They hold hands whenever they get the chance. They hold hands when they walk, sit, eat, talk, lay in bed, etc etc.

Randy is still surprised Oliver gave him a chance, cuz at first he thought Oliver found him annoying and pathetic for his stutters, constant apologies, for his jobs, etc. He has never actually felt more loved by anyone before and he can't thank him enough for his kindness

Ever since they've been together Randy has become more confident, stronger even, both mentally and somewhat physically too

Oliver taught Randy how to fight back and he has become more confident since. His self esteem also grew and he feels sm happier this way

That being said Randy is still a very sensitive person. He panics extremely quick when he feels like he fucked up and WILL apologize for hours on end, ESPECIALLY if it's someone dear to him. Although if he feels like HE was wronged, he won't hesitate to stand his ground, even if it results in him crying by the end of it

Oliver likes to run around in the rain when it's dark and he always drags randy out with him, he says it feels like the entire world is theirs

Oliver taught Randy how to cook !! Yay !! Randy almost burnt the entire kitchen down once but hey someone had to believe in him regardless, especially since he's an amazing cook present time

Randy used to live with his swan and his pet possum at the ticket booth. He tried introducing Oliver to them and the swan got used to him rather quickly, meanwhile the possum kept hissing for a good few days whenever Oli tried to approach it. They all get along now tho

Oli has a shitload of vhs tapes with old cartoons on it that he got from Mr dickens and they have to bingewatch at least one of them every week

RANDY CAN SING I'M DYING ON THIS HILL LITERALLY FIGHT MEEEE they sing together a lot btw

They both had a pokemon phase, Randy was just more….deeply into it

Oki p sure this is all I got !! Sorry for any broken english I uh. copied all of these from older twitter threads

Feel free to use any of these btw :DD

CRINGE CULTURE IS DEAD I FUCKING LOVE OLANDY OKAy BYEEEEE

[lenaboskow]

you know what i want? i want them to pretend to kill eddie off. like full on, we have a funeral for him and everything (empty casket, maybe he got trapped in a cave or something and it crumbled, so there's no way to retrieve the body and there's no way he survived after several weeks).

we get to see the whole crew, buck and chris especially, go through the stages of grief, though i whole heartedly believe that chris would be the one to say "he's not dead, we don't have a body" and be stuck in the denial stage.

if buck and tommy were still together, i think it would prompt a breakup (tommy doesn't strike me as someone who wants kids, and i think the whole will situation would make him realize it was never going to work, if he hasn't already) and we would get to see buck regret not figuring his shit out sooner because maybe they could've done something different

if eddie and marisol were still together, we could see marisol try to fight for chris, and then realize that she was never going to take buck's place in their life. so she leaves.

we get to see season eight promo of the actors talking about how each of their characters will deal with the grief in their own way. we get to see them talk about how the dynamics shift, about how they all learn to adapt to life without eddie diaz.

ryan would do a side project, spend all his time promoting it. we wouldn't see him step foot near the set.

as it draws closer to the premier of 8x01, we get vague stills. buck crying, a conversation between hen and chim, maybe a still of chris, and bobby and athena. the synopsis is vague, too. or maybe we don't even get one. all the trailers seem like they've been cut weird (see bobby telling eddie "i can't tell you how you feel about this job" as the perfect example)

abc does a good job of making us think he's dead. all the promos, all the interviews, have made it clear eddie is gone, and the 118 is moving on as best they can.

so, people tune in for 8x01 at 8pm est on a random thursday. the first scene?

eddie diaz waking up in the middle of nowhere.

tumblr immediately crashes.