#that i forgot i was drawing something interactive. whoops.
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carma-tjol · 9 months ago
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whaaat i blacked out for a few hours and this was on my screen how did that get there?
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tm87lord · 5 months ago
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it's been a month since i started streaming (and therefore just over a month since i started trying out pixel art) so i'm sharing my brb screen and a couple of the other short pixel animations i've made exclusively in regular procreate for my twitch channel!!!! also i truly just forgot to share these here sorry.........
i'd always planned on just streaming as myself instead of having a character to stream with, but since it felt way too awkward to draw myself in my usual art style for a pngtuber......i started trying out pixel art instead a little over a month ago (?)..........and now my entire overlay is pixel art.....
i was also incredibly worried that i wouldn't be very talkative and that just watching me stream my art progress would become boring for those who stopped by, so i decided to add some interactive features like gacha-type commands for viewers to play with
but i also wanted a fun way to advertise said commands while giving viewers the option to focus on something else visually
so, inspired by those subway surfer/minecraft parkour reddit videos (lol) i tapped into my old flipnote hatena days and added a TV of various animated "channels" and "ads" to my overlay that can be turned on with the command !tv
(i have since proven that i'm actually an S grade yapper but the tv is still a fun time for everyone)
all of my channels (like everything else on my stream) are an amalgamation of media i've loved in the past, my personality/likes, and things i've watched on tv growing up!!
and yes that's indeed a self-insert shoujo anime jotaro confession episode based on my animal crossing island ok it was serious business and very involved.....
also everything was made entirely in regular procreate on ipad on a small 134x102px canvas! i have a tendency to not use shortcuts and use my art programmes like a caveman would, so i actually did not realise that the animation assist feature existed until the final 2 animations whoops
which meant to check the frames per second i would be test-exporting all of my layers (that i onion-skinned by hand lol) as an animated gif just to check the animation progress!!! i have since started using the assist but we started off truly dabbling in some unga bunga art fellas
anyway, thanks for reading all this if you did hehe i just wanted to document some stream stuff on my blog since i've been using this thing since 2013 and plan to keep using it for much longer.....have a good day and feel free to stop by and say hi during streams :¬)
thank you for being here!
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callsign-relic · 19 days ago
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cityspeaker Ultra Magnus/Minimus.... yesssssss!!!!!! that'd be so so good in a post-IDW au... my heartttttt
or!! OR... ppppost? war? au?? maybe even no war au. anyway an AU where Megatron and Minimus have never met before. Megatron has had several cityspeakers in the past before but none interact with him like Minimus does. None have bothered to speak with him more than necessary, if at all. wardens very rarely need to speak to their prisoners.
Minimus comes along and just... quietly greets him the first day. for such a simple act, it sure draws Megatron's attention.
i think this would be particularly fun in a version of the AU where Megatron IS inhabited (be it in root mode or city mode. TF please give us more cityformer continuing to have ppl living on them in root mode. please please pleasr) because what better way to pay your dues than being of Literal Service to the people? Ultra Magnus gets hired on as cityspeaker/enforcer (what better way to enforce the law than having optics and audials everywhere as part of the living city...) because they are hoping that with him being a stickler for the rules, it will help keep Megatron in line. except instead of doing his job as intended, Minimus ends up befriending Megatron and making the city better for those living there.
wait silly thought for a second- Minimus walking around and taking notes of all the unsafe places around the city/Megatron. there needs to be a guard rail here. this lighting isnt up to code. those overhead pipes are a safety hazard. these stairs are too steep, regulations state that each step must be so tall, and so on. Megatron fixes them by the next day.
anyway cue dramatic chase scene where Megs gets to shift around Minimus as he's getting chased down by the other enforcers. if you want to be particularly poetic about it, he might even use the safety regulations against the oncoming pursuers (whoops there went that guard rail. totally forgot about it. those stairs? Minimus or Ultra Magnus sized now. he can get up them easily.)
hhrhghgrh them. they. augh. i need to write another ask. <- (trying desperately* to convince myself that no i don't need to write a fic or draw something based on the titan au!!! i don't!!!!!!)
*trying desperately and failing. adds it to my list. someone write smth for this so i dont have to hhrhhghgdh my list of projects is too long
- initiate
IM GOING CRAZY IM GOING CRAZYYYYYYYYY (positively)
It’s official. Titan au is my newest brainrot 👍 I encourage any and all asks pls I’m going insane the voices the brainworms the auahgauahaha
All of these ideas are genuinely so good I love them so much holy shit. Oh my god the part about different structures not being up to code in particular… what came to mind for me is Megatron having been carrying out his penance for so long and being so wrought with the guilt he failed to take care of himself as well, his internals a dilapidated city. Meanwhile Minimus is just very matter-of-factly going around assigning OSHA violations to everything he sees and…
…Megatron finds he doesn’t feel apathetic towards it.
Perhaps Minimus was right… it would be nice if his citizens had guard rails. Oh, those stairs were in poor shape, and it would only take him a second to clean them up…
Just. Minimus helping Megatron both literally and metaphorically pick up the pieces of himself after showing he cares for him
Also oh my god the shifting the environment around to help Minimus escape? Insane. I’m in love with it. Even better if Megatron never really let Minimus close to any of his more sensitive spaces before, only to lead him right to his spark chamber and seal off any exit to ensure Minimus’ safety. Right there, in the place Megatron never allowed anyone near, he knew Minimus would be safe.
Also PLEASEEEE PLEASSEEE send more asks or make art or write fic!!!!!!!!!!! It would genuinely make me so happy 😭😭😭 ough speaking of art I’m already imagining titan!Megs’ design… imagine him having big cuffs on his wrists and ankles or anywhere else they might fit really to symbolize his imprisonment in his punishment. And his imprisonment in his own guilt. Perhaps chains as well idk
I am just brainrotting severely so PLEASE keep talking about this to me 🙏🙏🙏
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ceo-mochee · 2 months ago
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🤖👾 Introduction 👾🤖
(Cus I forgot to make one long ago WHOOPS)
Salutations!! 💥👾
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Welcome to my (very gay and silly) office!! The name's Mochee/Mochi (or Moch for short). I'm a silly little cyborg who likes drawing and talking about MCSM and BATIM, but I also enjoy other stuff as well!! 🤖
I'll probably be reblogging other people's works or talking about opinions most of the time, but I’ll post art whenever I can!!
I'm heavily obsessed with rarepairs as well (especially Lukxel (Axel x Lukas)) sooooo expect to see that here too.. heh. :3
- Rules -
I recommend ONLY people who are 16 or older be around on this account. If you are 15 or younger, I'd appreciate you being respectful and leaving.
This is a safe place for LGBTQ+, homophobes and transphobes DO NOT INTERACT
Pr^shippers, r@cists, z!onists DNI
Do NOT repost any of my art without permission and/or credit
You can use my art for pfps and/or banners as long as credit is involved
I don't mind you sending asks that have questions about my ships and opinions and such (I actually encourage it!), but try to limit NSFW talk around me (makes me very uncomfortable, especially if I don't know you).
I don't really take drawing requests that much due to easy burnout and motivation (sorry).
DO NOT force YOUR opinions, ships, headcanons, and such on me please, if I say that I don't like a ship or something then that means I don't like it.
MCSM Axel haters booooo tomato tomato DNI
Just be respectful to me and I'll be respectful back to you! 🤖
I think that's it, I'll edit my intro/rules if I feel the need to. Until then, enjoy your stay. 👾
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- My Tags -
#Moch works (art/fanfic tag)
#Moch meetings (rambling/rant/opinions tag)
#Moch responds (Answering asks)
Other socials ⬇️
Instagram - mocheewashere
Ao3 - CEOMochee
Bsky - mrmoch
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radical-boy-kisser · 2 months ago
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I should do an intro huh
MAXWELL INTRO!!!!
══════════════════
☆ >> Name ; Maxwell / Max [pref max]
☆ >> Gender ; Male [Transmasc]
☆ >> Pronouns ; He/It/Xe
☆ >> Sexuality ; Achillean [mlm]
☆ >> Other ; AuDHD + DID
____________________________________
☆ >> Likes ; My mutuals ♡, JJK, Genshin, WuWa, HSR, DS, BLLK, Haikyuu!, Dead Plate, Omori +
☆ >> PLEASE INTERACT ♡♡♡♡ ; WILL STETSON AND TRICKLE FANS ♡♡♡♡♡, JJK fan, Genshin fans, basically any fans of my interests
☆ >> DNI ; Basic DNI, pro/comship, neu/pro endo
☆ >> Extra ; Despite being a memory holder I have horrible memory!!! , I like to draw so maybe expect drawings from me perchance... , I have a hard time understanding tone ESPECIALLY from people I don't know so im sorry if I misunderstand something 🙏
══════════════════
That's all for now so ya :3
Edit: forgot to mention I'm the host + a memory holder whoops
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partnersincrimesuau · 1 year ago
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How do you think Classic Steven and Past/Original Form Spinel would interact with one-another? Just seeing these two pre-traumatized adorable and happy-go-lucky kids interact with one another would be pretty wholesome.
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[Image ID: A pencil sketch on lined paper of 'Past' Spinel and 'Classic' Steven from Steven Universe. Both are smiling, holding hands, and walking towards the right side of the page. A caption says "on their way to Funland". In the top right of the image, the same two characters are drawn asleep, cuddled up with Lion from Steven Universe. /.End ID]
(How'd I do? That was my first Image ID! ^^ and I just realised I forgot to write my signature on the drawing... whoops)
But anyways, to answer your question - something like this!!! Spinel would have an immediate new best friend, and I would imagine that these two would never leave each other's sides for the LONGEST time. They'd probably frequent Funland and the arcade, and when they're all "funned" out, they'd crash with Lion XDDD
Absolutely wholesome!!! I can hardly see these two fighting, ever... until Steven grows up and becomes an angsty teen XD
Thanks for the ask!!! (And sorry it took so long to answer... you don't WANT to know how long ago I got this one)
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rubykgrant · 2 years ago
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Just thinking about my RVB character Poppy... I'll eventually get her in my story-line, there's just all the other plot stuff that needs to happen first. I do have some pictures of her, though! I can't draw armor to save my life, but hers would be white (with tan accents, styled a bit like Florida's during Project Freelancer). When I started absorbing RVB, my brain sparked several potential story concepts and characters... eventually, I refined what I wanted, and combined a few ideas into Poppy! She's going to be part of Red Team; for one thing, they almost never get new people (true, this is because their current members don't... die... as often as SOMEBODY, but still. even though Carolina isn't technically on either team, she and Wash kinda gravitated toward the Blues. The Reds "unofficially" have Doc, because he hangs out with Donut, and Grif caught Locus in the friendship net, but we need a REAL "New Red!"). For another, they've got exactly zero girls. Blue Team gets all the ladies (*finger-guns from Tucker*). Somebody needs to even this out. Finally, with white armor, the prophecy of Red Team being the lesbian flag has been fulfilled!
Her name was chosen because I wanted to use a flower, but not one I've named a character before. I was also re-watching Little Nemo, so I borrowed the name McCay
Some more info about her below~
Poppy didn't actually "join" the army. At least, not in a traditional sense. She was "selected" to be part of a "special training program", which turned out to be tricking poor and homeless people into working at dangerous outposts. When one area was getting attacked, a lot of the people running the show took escape ships for themselves. Poppy was able to find a set of armor, and now looking "official", she helped guide all the people who would have been abandoned to safety. When she got them all to a rescue ship, a soldier asked if she had been in charge of that outpost. She basically pretended that yes, she TOTALLY was the boss. Yep. Hired herself, and gave herself a promotion. Before she could back out or escape, she was congratulated for saving all those lives, and then thrown into a new "assignment". Whoops.
Poppy was later sent to a group of Red and Blue team Flag Zealots (during the Blood Gulch days, but they never interacted with anybody from there). She was supposed to evaluate their efficiency, and order more supplies as needed. The Blue Team contained Lou, Drew, and Hue. The Red Team was made up of Ted, Jed, and Fred. Obviously, they weren't very efficient at ALL, but were suprisingly endearing. Because Poppy wasn't technically on one side or the other, both teams decided she was off-limits when it came to fighting; nobody hurts Poppy! She's everybody's friend. At most, they would fight over who was her favorite~
Eventually, they ran out of ammo, and Poppy just... didn't order more. The fighting turned into more harmless pranks, and they perhaps would have eventually reached a point of shared friendship if things had continued like that. Unfortunately, something terrible happened. It started when Poppy was injured saving the others from a mine they forgot they planted. She was hurt and knocked-out, but recovering. That wasn't the terrible thing; while she was out, Somebody from Temple's group came looking for new members. These Reds and Blues refused to join. They were killed, and when Poppy woke up, she was alone.
For a while, Poppy had to stay hidden and keep a low profile. A lot of stuff was happening in the background. By the time she got discovered by UNSC soldiers again, she was still recognized as part of the Flag Zealots (even though she literally DID NOT CARE ABOUT THE FLAGS), and Temple just tried to pull his big plan... so they decided this made her a criminal (ha! when she does something illegal, it's on purpose, and she's less annoying about it, thank you). Somebody at the UNSC thought the best thing to do with left over Flag Zealots was to use all their "devotion" for a different cause... which is INSIDIOUS AS HECK. The person called in to handle training these soldiers is somebody very LOYAL and PASSIONATE, the Reddest Red to ever Red; Sarge.
At first, Sarge is very happy to be back in his comfort-zone. However, well... he might always be seeing red, but he doesn't quite have the rose-colored glasses when looking at the military that he used to. In particular, when he hears about the life of one particular trouble-making smart-mouth named Poppy, it reminds him of the people he's been spending the last couple of decades with. The way the military chewed them up, spit them out, and told them it was a good idea to take other people down with them. Papa Warcrimes has some things to think about!
One thing he knows for sure, he's adopting this little firecracker! Although she's introduced to the Reds (and the rest of the group) through Sarge, once she's in there, Poppy is meant to sort of mirror Simmons. Just like the Reds rarely get new people, Simmons rarely gets new friends. She has things in common with him, like rattling off random trivia she knows, and she's also very different from him. The fact that Sarge likes her, and she's a nerd, SHOULD make Simmons hate her guts, and he was about ready for that... but after one conversation with her, he internally just clicked with her- "Oh, sibling? Sibling!". This is extra symbolic, because the one who killed her Reds and Blues was, in fact, Gene. Poppy really doesn't care for him very muchly, but she likes Simmons a lot, and that makes him very happy (she DOESN'T think he's the same as Gene? She LIKES all his nonsense nerd chatter? SIBLING!). Also, she and Simmons are trans in opposite directions~
Some of my favorite little lines I have for her-
(after being ordered to inspect a dark area in the woods) "I'm not going in there. It looks like the Blair Witch is in there!"
(somebody rudely tells her what to do) "Hey, how about you try asking me again, but this time, get that tone out of your mouth when you talk to me~" *sarcastically cheerful*
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mamamittens · 7 months ago
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Well, I got halfway through a comm, so there's that. Then I realized it was Whoops All Set Up and I hadn't considered how to write the interactions to lead up to that smut so I took a step back to think it over.
I was asked for fluffy romcom and I'll be damned if I don't deliver it!
But that's a later problem, here's me rambling about ideas for an alternative shine riolu design for Platinum, Fin's service pokemon.
So, I decided against keeping canon colors and mostly the same design cause damnit, I still don't like the yellow.
I'm sure game freak had lovely reasons for the yellow but I hate it.
Away it goes!
And anyway, while I was at it, I figured I'd further tweak the design to highlight how Platinum was specifically picked for Finley. Perhaps as a favor from someone who was really moved by her tragic backstory.
Silver, her original Abra, looked pretty normal aside from a spiky ring on his tail. But that's more because it was pretty early in the days of Designer Breeding more geared towards unique iterations of pokemon. Particularly driven by the growing market for coordinators trying to get a leg up. And as a standard ish support pokemon he didn't need to look outstanding, just more identifiable if something happened.
So I decided towards a slightly artistic inspiration.
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A mostly silver/gray coat explains the name easily enough. And I do like the original color pallette so I kept the blue/black. They also look unexpectedly tall and that's partly because I suck at the proportions but idk, maybe Platinum is just unusually tall as well lol
The flourishes make Plat look more rugged and (according to my roommate) dirty lol. But it's meant to be like paint brushes and paint splatter. Had no interest in a rainbow baby or anything too crazy.
The goofy leg/pant bulge looks more like a deliberate attempt to imply shorts, which I appreciate more than trying to figure out wtf canon is doing with that drumstick butt (or frankly dick shaped torso, it's so damn close to being a dick, I can't unseen it and I'm sorry you won't be able to either).
This is without any support pokemon gear. A vest is the obvious choice but when he evolves it'll have to be adjusted cause of the chest spike Lucario has. Maybe I'll just stick to a bandana? Or a belt?
...ah, I forgot to try the button... Well, whatever. I like it as is regardless. It's a little fancy but not too busy? If anything I might get rid of the 'holes' in the dark sections so it's just paint splatter inspired.
Be easier to draw at least lol
Idk if I mentioned earlier but Fin's official job is illustration/painting. Mostly for books and other projects she can consult for and do at home rather than travel. Very much a home body until the start of the fic when she decides she's well enough to handle it. Likes watercolor specifically for painting personal projects such as her old team's books or for friends (when she finally has them). But does oils, acrylics, murals, and mixed mediums as well.
Perhaps Platinum was a 'thank you' gift for a personal mural from a breeder who put Platinum through official support pokemon courses.
Despite being a support pokemon, Platinum is just as happy in a battle as any other riolu. His first duty is just to Fin though. So he would be more likely than most to forfeit a match if his trainer showed too much distress or lash out unexpectedly in times of peril.
This both pairs well with the rest of her destined team and against one specifically who would rather be doing that themselves. But for now I'll leave it at that lol.
Platinum will be her only special/shiny Pokemon. Unlike Edna, she doesn't have any connections or unexpected 'gifts' netting her rare pokemon.
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cryaboutitpal · 10 months ago
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Whoops, forgot an intro. Welp.
Hello! I'm Akemi!
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Use whatever pronouns you want. I really don't mind.
You can request stuff! Art requests are open if you wanna.
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Important info I think:
I tend to act pretty impulsively, if I do something that makes you uncomfortable then I probably did it on impulse because I thought it would be funny.
I am a multishipper and ship an unholy amount of ships. I won't decide to just not interact with you if you like a ship I don't, though.
Just because I like fictional romance doesn't mean I like real life romance. I'm aroace (used to identify as aroallo in case you get confused by some of my older posts regarding aromanticism), in case you couldn't tell. Just because I don't wanna date doesn't mean I can't ship. I think. I dunno.
Also, I'm autistic! I didn't tell anyone this at first because I don't like to over share details I deem 'too private' on social media but now I'm a little more comfortable telling people that I'm neruodivergent.
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What to expect:
I mainly post about Inanimate Insanity (It's a very big interest, I'm thinking about it more than most actually important things in my life) but I'll post other things, too! If there are spoilers in a post I make they will be unmarked!! You have been warned!!
What exactly I post is usually shitposts and kinda bad drawings and stuff but I might make a few analysis posts here and there. Those will be rare but they'll appear!!@
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I guess that's it. Ah well. Have fun here!
My AO3 account if you wanna read my fics!
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vynegar · 1 year ago
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anniv3 card liveblog dump. updated as i go. spoiler warning!
luke
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i’m gone TT (it’s actually all still pretty fluffy and sweet. barely a hint of angst)
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YEAHHHHHHHHHH HIGH SCHOOL!ROSA MY BELOVED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (ah i forgot to show you guys her new outfit in this card, she’s v cute, i’ll screenshot after this flashback scene)
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agh. this expression. always so cute TT rosa it is an honor to be able to play as you 🫡
a;dlfjadkl okay i know the card wasn’t hitting (yet) but like. now with the new bgm i’m really feeling something :’) perhaps we will be budgeting for anniv3 after all
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HADFJA;LDKJF;LAKJERLAJLEKRJAKLE
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omg poetry reference. truly the bread and butter of this blog’s analyses
ok the interactions: i mean, they’re nice. the animation is very fluid and there’s definitely more motion and more variety than in normal card art animations (though those have been advancing over the years too!) lol i think the knowledge of how purely-fanservicey this is kinda limits how excited i get over this part
overall: i mean it’s a good card but doesn’t make me lose my mind over it like luke’s previous anniversary cards; like this is closer to the caliber of a birthday or top-up card. nothing necessarily bad about it but... i think the most emotion i felt was because the combination of a new bgm (or at least new to me) + high school era lukerosa which i have a soft spot for. 
anyway. off to watch vyn’s, which is my last hope for this anniversary really delivering on the card stories :’) also based on my quick glance at his interaction video they might have fixed the piano keys...?? BIG if true
ahhh almost forgot the keepsake!!
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BIGHEAD ROSA!!! ahh i was wanting to draw her but mhy beat me to it lol
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vyn
omg already >100 comments on his video. yes. my brethren. we are all broke and watching the video instead of getting the card 🤝
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55 other people are watching the video literally right now. hell yeah
omg. they really did fix the piano keys XDDDDDDD
me trying to zoom in on the sheet music. LET ME PLAY IT
wow. reference to a very famous and iconic vyn card moment in this story. hint it has to do with water
what the fuck dude extreme weather even showing up in the tot cards TTTTTTTTTTTTTTT
whoaaaa okay worldbuilding: svart has its own language i guess? there are labels written in it, and the narrative calls it svart language and not like english or french or whatever
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i think a fun thing about backgrounds being reused is that everyone probably has different scenes that they most strongly associate each background with. for me, this is the winery from food for thought. vyn infodumping about how to cultivate wine grapes. mixing wine with sprite. that’s MY reference to a previous vyn card for this story
VYN HAD HIS MOTHER SEND OVER THE PIANO FROM HIS CONFESSION AS THEIR MOVING IN GIFT????????????
VYN WROTE THE SHEET MUSIC!! NEON MELODY CALLBACK????? (HUGE WIN FOR ME PERSONALLY)
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ok only halfway through the card rn but i Need to sleep. back tmrw to finish this and to watch marius’s (even though i’ve barely seen any of this recent cards... whoops)
WAAAAAAAAIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT HOLY SHIT THIS FUCKS SO HARD ACTUALLY??? THIS REFERENCE THEY’RE DOING?? WITHOUT STATING IT OPENLY AAAAAAHHHH THIS IS SO POWERFUL TTT
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ok here’s vyn’s illustration. wet rain-soaked little meow meow
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rosa forgetting about the instant noodles she’s cooking. just like me fr
hmmmm kinda criminal that they’re supposed to be playing piano here and the bgm is one of the ones that DOESN’T have piano
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ok yeah they definitely fixed the piano keys. just compare this to the original anniversary PV you’ll see. NOW FIX THE SSS CARD SYSTEM NEXT
one comment saying the sheet music is liebestraum which i was kinda also suspecting since structure is very similar but some of the measures don’t match up exactly (at least not against the copy of sheet music i have). however, the section behind vyn’s right shoulder is pretty much measure 25 and the part behind his left shoulder is close to m35-36. (which... is not a song that vyn wrote xDDD we’ll say he’s alluding to or remixing it for their purposes)
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you’re telling me his hand accidentally hits the piano and there’s a “pleasing sound”??? he’s falling backwards onto it and playing chords???
ok back to checking the sheet music (my priorities are exactly where they should be)
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i think the two sheets here (behind his left shoulder and under his left hand) are the same page (which we said before was m35-36). it’s the only place in the song where the key signature change looks like that (in the upper right; it’s definitely the sharps pattern and not the flats) and the following sections match as well. so i think that pages goes like this:
line 1: m34-36 (and key change where five sharps are made natural)
line 2: m37-m39
line 3: m40-m42
line 4: m43-44 (not sure if that last note should have a slur tho)
it was kind of throwing me off earlier since some of the chords that would be octaves didn’t seem far apart enough on the card art, but maybe it’s a combo of perspective + shrunk down + artistic license
ok i can’t rly find a keepsake investigation video yet and i’m still just watching the interaction in the bg but this card is fine. i know i got really excited at one point but it’s because i’m especially interested in the plant motif (still have not fully stated what the exact reference was bc i’m sure i’ll point it out later). so far the cards feel like nice top-up cards (since those always make sure to have spicy/fanservice-y parts) that are trying hard to reference previous events. i checked the comments of BOTH vyn and marius videos and there was someone (different people!) asking which of the cards had a better story (because what they’d seen so far was disappointing).... does NOT bode well ufnfortunately
edit: i will say that these even feel a bit worse than top-up cards since those usually try to grapple with substantive potential issues in the relationship, while these anniv3 cards don’t. also still haven’t watched marius’s yet but yamashina jin just translated artem’s card and even she’s disappointed by the writing quality so like... widespread disappointment i suppose 😔
marius
ok yeah this is a very good continuation/evolution of the idea from tideborne romance. unfortunately i was also meh on that card
omg... marius is gonna make himself the present isn’t he....
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OKAY THERE’S AT LEAST ONE (1) THING I LOVE ABOUT THIS CARD 🥺🥺 (doesn’t even get a mention in the story it’s just a visual easter egg in the bg)
artem
halfway through pt 2 and i’ve figured out how to describe how i’m feeling. you remember marius’s 1st birthday card when they were just kinda doing random things to fill up time in the plot? it’s kinda like that. (though it doesn’t have the weird ooc-ness of that card and it’s not as long)
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the bear from his bday event and the eyemask from wandering heart!! actually maybe my favorite part of these cards will just be the little easter eggs in them
ok so after the “reveal” of what artem is Actually up to, i do like the card more. i really like what his true plan, i just kind of dislike how MC is kept in the dark again. it’s not even bad this time around, like it’s very much a cute surprise between lovers, but i think that stuff in his engagement left a bad taste in my mouth about it and i didn’t want to see it again lol. also, i feel like it would have been cute if mc was the one to propose moving in together (just a random thought since for all the these, it was p much the LI bringing it up)
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ok this is one of the better illustrations for anniv3 cards tho.
alright. finished the card. umm nothing more to say xDDD
on the keepsakes tho; these genuinely fuck so hard. also artem's a protective charm from cloudbreak temple and red beans and he recites The Lines again.... literally why can’t we have this kind of energy in the actual card story TTTTT
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quirrelli · 1 year ago
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playing a Pokemon game for the first time in 2023
TL;DR: mixed bag, some strong aspects but also one big fat fatal flaw.
Even though I'm a 90s kid, the whole Pokemon phenomenon somehow passed my childhood by. Now, that isn't to say I'd never heard of the franchise and thought a Pikachu was the sound of 3.14159 sneezing; I have picked up some basic things through cultural osmosis. Like that you get one of three little lads to start with and then you go out and with your lad catch more lads, use them to fight other, evil lad catchers and then, presumably, save the world.
Anyway, I decided to see what all the fuss has been about these past 25 odd years and picked more or less at random one of the games I already had on emulator, Pokemon not being famed as a franchise that evolves (hah) drastically from game to game. I ended up with Pokemon FireRed, which turned out to be a stroke of luck because it's a remake of the original Pokemon Red and since I do sort of kind of know the names of some of the Gen 1 lad roster, there was bit of familiarity there.
I picked Charmander (named him Chomp) and off we went. First off, catching new Pokemon never stopped being exciting. I suspect it's a similar effect as Gatcha machines, where you'll probably just encounter another goddamn Pidgey but there's also a small chance it could be something cool. Like, I was super hyped when I caught a Pikachu very early on because I assumed, being the mascot and all, it must be super strong, so I named him Thor. I was only whelmed by his performance in the end but fine.
I will say, up until maybe the second gym, the fights are quite well balanced and I felt challenged but not overpowered. This being a JRPG I had braced myself for a lot of grinding but I ended up needing to do very little, which is nice. Also nice is the manner by which I, as a new player, got eased into systems like type matching, items, etc. Sure, literal sign posts with "trainer tips" are a bit on the nose but overall I appreciated not having an encyclopedia chucked at my head first thing. There is in fact an encyclopedia in game but I rarely used it and had a lot of fun drawing my own little diagram with the types and their interactions as I figured them out.
Progressing onward, I would describe the game as monotonous yet absorbing, at least for a while.
Whoops, that loaded sentence needs unpacking. Right, so, while your lads are still levelling up frequently and you're still constantly encountering new species on the road, the travel and various battles are a way to pace out the excitement without ever allowing it to die away entierly. Cool, works for me. However, this stops being the case in later dungeons, when, in a spectacular display of misplaced confidence not seen since the Virtual Boy, the lvl12 Rattatas of the world still think it's a good idea to spit at my lvl32 Machoke's feet (named Chad obvs). Simple fix I can suggest there, weak ass baby pokemon should just automatically stop coming at you and not require a consumable item to avoid.
On a vaguely related note, in that even random encounters are unnecessarily drawn out, this game has too many text boxes. You can't scratch your ass in this game without 5 text boxes describing the smell of your butt sweat. It really needs turbo text rather than just fast text because every time I get into a fight or go into a pokecenter to heal my nigh expired Meowth (Marx, bc she redistributes capital by throwing it at ppl), after I once again forgot you're not supposed to use bite on Nidoran, I have to read through the nurse's unedited life story first. It's almost as thumbnumbingly tedious as navigating the PC and every other menu.
As a final criticism on the topic of monotony, I'd like to mention that the overworld trainer battles could have been handled better, fancied up a little, arranged with more care than the spoons in my cutlery drawer. How it usually works, is that they're copypasted in groups of 5-10 along a path and you just fight one after another. I feel like the same effect could have been achieved by just having, like, 3 unique trainers and they all just give you 3x as much XP.
XP distribution is of course an eternal sticking point in party-based RPGs but since you usually fight all of these trainers in a row you'll have the same team anyway. In general, the limited XP distribution means that to avoid grinding you pretty much have to limit yourself to one team (+ a couple of situational swap outs) that counters more or less every type, irrespective of whether they are your personal faves. On the other hand, this does help you get emotionally invested in those particular pokemon and their growth in an organic way, but then on the other other hand... well, we'll come back to that.
To be clear, none of these criticisms are dealbreakers, just quality of life issues and maybe signs of age, which I should hope have been adressed in the meantime. Do let me know.
Overall, I made my way through the game without too much trouble. The only gym I temporarily got stuck on was poison mcninjaman, which might have been because it was the one thing I did slightly out of order. I was generally surprised with how linear the game is but I really didn't mind that so much. It allows for more control in levelling and exploration. Speaking of which, one of my favorite features is how your lads can learn certain moves to make new areas accessible. It massages my metroidvania brain and is a neat way of letting the overworld and the "battling dimension" blend together a bit.
Finishing the elite four and absolutely trouncing my rival one last time was perfectly serviceable as finales go. Honestly though, it was the battles before that, on victory road, that were the most engaging because it contained some of the only trainers in the whole game that have diverse teams, not just four ambulatory flowers that fare against my pet flamethrower the way a white couch fares against a toddler with permanent marker.
Regardless, I got my title as lord high champion master trainer of all the strongest lads in the land and was actually excited to dive back in and fill out my Pokedex, fully explore Kanto and continue evolving my team (and maybe some of my benchwarmers). It was then, when I finally took to the internet to look up how to most efficiently turn Nosferatu, Haunter extraordinaire, into Nosferatu, Gengar spectacular, that I was delivered a gut punch which instantly obliterated any desire to keep playing or any recommendation for this game I might have made. See, you can't evolve some Pokemon (i.e. about half my team) into their final form without trading them with other players. Combined with the fact that you apparently can't get the other starters at all, you have no chance to even get remotely close to completing your Pokedex if, say, you're playing the game 20 years after it came out and it's on an emulator and thus not multiplayer compatible. This is a problem, to put it mildly.
I understand that nintendo wanted to encourage players to use the multiplayer features, but in a game that is still designed 99% around a singleplayer experience, it is just not ok to lock players who don't happen to have anyone to trade with out of crucial content like this. It clashes directly with the idea that you grow attached to your Pokemon through your adventures and that they will grow with you when eventually, no amount of rare candies, items or love you can bestow upon them will help. It's the much, much worse flipside of the limited XP problem, first forcing you to focus on a core team to the detriment of all the others and then putting a hard stop on that team's development. It would be possible grind XP if you really wanted that Alakazam but you can't magically conjure a friend (trust me on that). I could bear, like, one super special rare pokemon being exclusive to multiplayer but this is just bullying lonely kids and any astronauts who might be playing.
To summarize my overall opinion with a metaphor: Pokemon FireRed just about manages to squeeze into the crowded bus to Good Video Game town choking in Earthbound's musky armpit, only to be shoved out again on the second to last stop and faceplant into a concrete bench.
I would give Pokemon another chance if it didn't have that irredeemable anti-loner feature. Having said this, I've come to realize that, although I don't dislike the trainer battling, it was but the complementary bread rolls of this meal. I much preferred finding new Pokemon, figuring out how to best fight them without accidentally killing them/having them escape and exploring new areas. So I guess my ideal Pokemon game would be one where trainer duels are kept to a select few and instead the mechanics of finding and catching new lads as well as taking care of them are made more intricate (and less reliant on RNGesus).
Like Monster Hunter meets Nintendogs. Does that exist? Someone let me know if that exists.
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kindaoptimisticsquirrel · 1 year ago
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Why not: A CCS reread, Part 4
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Having lots of fun with this!
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7
Ch24:
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It's Yue! Finally! :D
Ch25:
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Aaah I really like it when the story is not about life or death for the whole world, but something that's for the main characters on a much deeper emotional level. It makes it much more interesting!
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I forgot they had this cool battle! And overall a very cool scene. Good thing I'm rereading this, motivates me to draw them :) Ch26:
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Yes, be friends! <:3 Yue needs some pal.
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You fear you might make things difficult, sir? Why not just...not do it then. Hrmpf.
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What a casual one-hand catch 👍
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Awww Yukito is so cute in the dark sweater :3 (I'm getting some Trigun Stampede Vash vibes hihi) The form fitting suits him though!
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Aaaand we have the confirmation that Touya basically gets all what's going on. He's just not trying to interfere, and make things any more complicated. Also, the last time I consumed this story was when I watched the anime 3 years ago (before that, I had read the manga the first time another couple years ago) and although it's been some time I'm preeeetty sure they didn't make the Touya/Yukito hints so strong in the anime. I love the anime, but I'm glad I'm rereading all this now!
Ch27:
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CLAMP does love their Tokyo Tower, don't they?
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New student...well, if it isn't the little shit himself. (sorry for the language. He did annoy me on my first read)
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In the meantime this little shit here is getting more and more adorable.
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And Ruby! They annoyed me on my first read too, but now I got a feeling I'll enjoy them a lot more! (When I say annoy I mean not as in, didn't enjoy reading, but as in, 'that character is creating exactly the effect they are supposed to do') Man that smug smile back at Yukito...I do wonder what he's thinking in that moment. Doesn't let any emotions like jealousy play on his face, but I cannot imagine he is not at least a little bit unnerved by this. Also DAMN Touya, get your grip together and just shake them off. It's not that hard. Ch28:
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Hehe I like their sibling interactions.
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As I look longer at this panel I realise just how reduced the lineart is in ccs and how it still looks so good. Those few carefully set strokes are so well done!
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The way we only see the back of Yukito we know he definitely has his thoughts about what Nakuru/Ruby told him....Gruah! Let me know what he thinks!
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Hihihi the cups in this panel look like they're having faces and are frowning :D
Ch29:
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Just a normal lunchtime for Yukito! (oh god even Touya looks shocked :D)
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Nobody says gender equality like Ruby! (or, maybe more accurately, gender carelessness. What does it matter anyway?)
Ch31:
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Oh GOD they're all so exasperated with Yukito's obliviousness
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Whoops. Don't try sewing at home kids, as it can go awfully wrong.
This post is long enough! Cutting it off here :)
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hxneyhxrts · 2 years ago
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Sun Bleached || Jake “Hangman” Seresin (part 5)
Part 4
note: you guys i woke up to 90+ notifications you all are fucking mental thank you. PS follow me on tiktok (18+ pretty please i don’t want to send hangman thirst traps to minors babes) @ brains4hands (let’s be besties). enjoy this, love you guys, happy pride
warnings: explicit language
God Must Hate Me
Jake almost couldn’t bring himself to attend the graduation.
Since his little revelation (could it be called that if Rooster had to practically beat it into him?), Hangman had successfully and narrowly avoided Gwyn outside of any professional setting.
For the most part.
There was the occasional run-in in the hallway or casual glance during meetings, but those interactions were enough to shake him so thoroughly that he had avoided her like the plague.
Unless they were flying.
In the sky, they were just pilots with a job to do and drills to work through. He had something else to focus on, somewhere to put his hands so they wouldn’t traitorously reach for her instead. It was also the only place he allowed himself to really talk (honestly, “flirt” was probably the better word) with her, pushing at pulling at her over comms from the safety of his plane where he couldn’t see her face light up or twist in annoyance. Treating her like everyone else could be done, so long as he had the buffer of open air between them so she couldn’t see him wiping his hands across the canvas covering his thighs every few minutes.
Drills became his favorite part of the day.
The utter helplessness Jake felt was what had him casting off attending their graduation altogether, but Bradshaw had given him a knowing smirk and teased him about being a good squad leader and making a good example.
So he sat through the ceremony, completely tuning out whatever instructor they had deemed important enough to speak about the eliteness of Top Gun, and keeping his eyes glued to the back of Gwyn’s head from her seat in the front row. He hadn’t seen her face yet, thank God, and he had spent the entire ceremony thus far mentally preparing himself for the inevitable.
Too soon, the speeches and clapping and whoops were over, and Jake steeled himself with his signature smirk as graduates filed their way around him with grins that he met with small, “congratulations”. His eyes snagged on the very person he had been eyeing since he arrived, holding his breath until he saw her quickly peel away from the crowd and stalk away alone.
He wanted to follow her. Wanted to chase after her and ask if everything was okay. He could easily blame it on being a concerned squadron leader, he reasoned.
Alec slid up next to him as he stared at the spot she had just been, the other man’s eyes scanning the crowd as he spoke. “It’s too goddamn hot to have these things outside.”
Phoenix appeared at Jake’s other shoulder, the brunette only glancing at him strangely before addressing the younger lieutenant. “Where’s the rest of you?” she teased.
Laughter peeled from Alec’s chest. “She ran to change her clothes real quick. Hates the dress whites.”
Jake blew out a sigh that had lodged itself in his throat, the noise immediately drawing the attention of both of his counterparts, but he drew on a smile before Phoenix pushed her way into figuring him out the way she always seemed to do.
Guests and graduates alike mingled all around them, and he half wondered which were here for her. He couldn’t spot any with the same wild hair or curve to their nose, and no one seemed to be looking around for her the way he was.
Strange.
“Oh, darling, thank God! I was starting to think you forgot how to do the zipper,” Alec hollered, a few people turning to gawk at his volume, but his eyes (and Jake’s) remained on the girl sliding through the crowd. “It goes up and down, by the way.”
Her laugh was short but filled with mirth nonetheless. She slid under Alec’s arm, and Jake wanted to laugh at the pathetic jealousy that cracked itself open inside of him.
Jealous.
He was jealous.
Of fucking Alec.
Phoenix congratulated them both with a polite smile as Coyote came up behind the pair and shook their shoulders. “Look at you two! Freshly graduated and already landing a spot with the big boys, huh?”
Words blurred together and Jake tuned them out, not really in the mood for teasing and talking, until a hand landed at his elbow softly. Hesitantly.
Looking up was useless, he knew who it was immediately from the tingles he felt where her hand met his body, but he did it anyway. Her eyes were on him and she was smiling. Not the full, broad grins she handed out freely during drills or when Alec made some raunchy comment that made Jake look like a saint. No, this smile seemed private, like it was only meant for him.
Fuck.
“I wanted to say thank you, Lieutenant Seresin,” she started, pulling her hand away while Jake resisted the urge to grab it and put it back on his arm. “Alec and I are really excited to join the team and work with you.”
“Jake,” he barely choked out past his own tongue. “You can call me Jake.” His hands clenched by his sides and it was the weight of Phoenix’s eyes on the side of his head that forced him to grin that infamous Hangman grin when he spoke next. “Since we’re on the same team now, and all.”
Gwyn smiled again, this one happier, and God he wished Trace would mind her business so he could swallow and short circuit in peace.
“Jake,” Gwyn said, finally.
“Gwyn,” he replied.
“Alec,” her RIO announced, inserting himself into their bubble. He smiled down at his friend and Jake watched as color filled her cheeks. “So Jake,” Alec began, tone light and teasing, “what’s the job?”
“Not today,” Jake insisted. “Today is about you guys. We can talk specifics later. For now, just enjoy the day with your families.”
Alec’s face dropped at the mention of family, head whipping around to scan through the faces gathered. His brown was pinched as he turned back to Gwyn. “Where are they?”
The younger girl looked sheepish and Jake zeroed in on the expression. “Not here,” she muttered.
Alec’s jaw tensed before he slid his arm from her shoulders and spun on his heel. “I’m calling them,” he decided and Gwyn was quick to snatch his arm to yank him back.
“I will tell them!” she insisted. “Just not yet.”
Shaw looked at her wearily, his gaze more serious than Jake had ever seen it. With a sigh, he pulled his arm free, but remained where he stood. “Fine,” he relented.
Natasha had struck up a conversation with Payback, leaving Jake to witness the conversation play out alone. The look on Gwyn’s face told him now wasn’t the time to pry.
So he smirked instead, faux cheer and coolness clouding him. “Now that you two are finished with your lover’s quarrel, we have speed drills tomorrow at nine.” He turned to leave, and realized his fists were still clenched at his sides. “Don’t be late,” he threw over his shoulder before charging away as quickly as he could without raising suspicion.
—------------
California had taken a noticeable break from its unrelenting heat, and the crisp morning that greeted them was refreshing. The sky was clear and bright and Jake had secretly relished in the dew he had to wipe from the canopy of his plane before takeoff.
The perfect morning, he mused.
The drills were to be done solo today, each pilot running through routine speed drills and the like by themselves. ‘Back to basics,’ Maverick had said. A way to keep everyone fresh and alert in case they got called out. Jake didn’t mind and found it a bit easier to focus without others around him.
The threat of attack was always looming over them, a counter strike against their last mission, but the urgency seemed to be fading with every day that passed. Jake reasoned that if an attack were actually planned, it would’ve happened by now. Yet, he kept that to himself, content to enjoy the quiet days with his team.
And now Gwyn, he could begrudgingly admit.
Gwyn, who was now taking her laps out at the clearing. He had decided against listening in on comms, preferring to give himself a little bit more time before he had to be consumed by her for the day.
He had leaned himself against one of the makeshift desks in the hangar, chatting with Payback, and silently counting down the minutes until he knew Cheek and Rev were scheduled to return. If his friend noticed him anxiously glancing at his watch every few minutes, he didn’t say anything.
The sound of boots pounding against the cement echoed suddenly, a fast and angry stride filling his ears. He turned his head to find Maverick trying and failing to keep pace with a much larger man. A sailor, by the looks of his uniform, mixed blues and boots that thunked with every heavy step he took. The man was broad, just a hair shorter than Jake, but not weaker by any means. And by the look on his pinched face, he was pissed.
“Where is she?” he all but yelled, and Maverick’s stumbling steps caught up to him as he replied.
“She just landed, it’ll just be a moment, Commander.”
Jake’s spine straightened unconsciously at the title, but the man didn’t seem to care who was around or who was listening as he stormed closer.
“Gwyn!” came Alec’s holler from the opposite direction.
Jake’s head swiveled to find Alec chasing her much like Maverick had chased the newcomer, desperately trying to match her pace.
If he thought the commander looked angry, it was nothing compared to the malice that poisoned Gwyn’s usually open and bright face.
“What the hell are you doing?” she sneered, chucking her helmet to the side as she stomped, coming almost toe to toe with the sailor, and Jake actually cringed at the way her voice rattled through the room.
A voice that was directed at someone several ranks above her.
Christ.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he fired back, hands on his side in a pose that screamed authority. Gwyn didn’t even flinch.
The tension in the room could’ve been sliced with a knife and every single team member who had gathered for drills watched the exchange like a tennis match, eyes bouncing back and forth and rapt with attention.
“What are you even doing here?” Gwyn hissed, and Alec eyed her nervously from where he was rooted just a few feet behind her.
“No, no, no,” the commander barked. “It’s not your turn to ask questions. I want to know what you’re doing. Why the hell didn’t you tell me you were at Top Gun? You didn’t think to call me and let me know?” his voice rose with each word, and Jake clamped down on the urge to step in. “I had to hear that you were not only here, but had graduated, from my fucking coworkers!”
“So you think it’s okay to drive down here and jump on my radio?” Gwyn shouted, throwing her hands up in a rage.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” her opponent pressed.
The young woman laughed in disbelief, gesturing to the space between them. “Look at how you’re taking it. Would you tell you?”
“I can’t believe I’m even having this conversation with you,” the commander hissed. “I mean didn’t a kid die in this program a few years ago? And you thought ‘oh that’s perfect’? What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I’m thinking I finished top of my class,” Gwyn raged, moving in closer now, getting a wary glance from Maverick. “None of this has anything to do with you.”
The sailor’s face deepened several shades, and Jake noticed Phoenix cringe beside him as the man practically roared at his team member. “It has everything to do with me!”
Hangman couldn’t help the small surge of pride at seeing Gwyn hold her ground so well against someone who made men cower for a living. A ridiculous feeling, but one he reveled in.
“How?” Gwyn shouted, more of a demand than a question. Jake’s ears were beginning to ring at the sheer volume, but he couldn’t pull his eyes away. It was like watching a plane crash that you desperately want to look away from, but watch in morbid fascination, eager to see what happens next.
“Because I love you!”
A stone dropped in his stomach.
Gwyn scoffed, putting her hands on her hips and perfectly mirroring the commander’s stance as he barreled on. “And when you love something, you tend to want what’s best for them. And this-” he gestured around wildly, “-is not necessarily what I think is best. It’s dangerous. It was one thing for you to enlist and just fly, but Top Gun?”
Jake had never considered the possibility that Gwyn had someone waiting for her at home. He had never stopped to think that there could be someone out there who saw the same obvious appeal in her that he did. Now being faced with it, watching an actual lover’s spat play out in front of him…
He swallowed down that now familiar pang of jealousy.
Because of course she had her person. No one that charismatic and alluring stayed single for very long, and Jake had been too naive in his blooming feelings for her to consider that she had already been plucked off the market.
Not the perfect morning, then.
Gwyn spun on her heel, heading back out towards the tarmac. “I’m not having this conversation with you.”
The commander huffed. “I don’t want to spend our first day together in months fighting. I’d rather talk this out now before we end up bickering at dinner.”
“Too bad,” Gwyn snorted, snatching her helmet from where it had skittered across the cement.
Jake watched Gwyn’s partner clench his fists, nostrils flaring. “Lieutenant Canadee, I am not asking you, I am telling you.”
Gwyn stopped a few feet away, shoulders tense and hand curled into a fist where it white-knuckled her helmet.
Then all hell broke loose.
Gwyn turned on him, quicker than Jake could process, striding to do him fast enough to charge him before Alec grabbed her forcefully by the arm. “What the fuck did you just say to me?” She was pushing against Alec who had now inserted his full body between her and the sailor. “You’re pulling rank? We aren’t even in the same division, dickhead!”
“Canadee!” Maverick chastised, seemingly without realizing it. At his voice, Cheek stopped bucking against her friend, but her eyes remained locked on the commander.
Rev’s hands were firmly planted against her chest as he spoke to the man over his shoulder. “If it makes you feel any better, Mo, she has a fantastic flying partner. Real handsome guy,” he joked, trying to dispel the tension even though his voice was strained.
The man, Mo, broke his stare, and the look he leveled Alec with was venomous. “That doesn’t give me any sort of relief, Lieutenant Shaw.”
Alec’s face fell slightly and Gwyn was lunging again while he pushed at her shoulders. “Watch how you speak to him.”
Alec blanched, the pure panic in his eyes finally registering. “G, it’s fine. Just-”
“No, it’s not.”
“It’s fine, I promise-”
“I’m not going to let him-”
“Gwyn, I am begging you to just let it go and walk away,” he pleaded. “Please.”
Gwyn’s eyes were still steely, but she relented and turned to leave once more.
Mo scoffed. “See you at dinner!”
Alec’s hand grabbing the back of her suit was the only thing that kept her from turning around.
—--------
Drills came and went, Gwyn remaining silent throughout the entire day and stomping off once four o’clock rolled around. Jake tried not to envision her getting dressed for her dinner date, tried not to think about how she’d pick out something nice to wear despite her irritation, and how badly he wished he was on the receiving end of her efforts.
‘This is fucking stupid,’ he told himself. ‘Who cares that she has a boyfriend?’
‘Or a husband,’ came the reply in his head.
He wanted to throw up at the thought.
Jake Seresin had always been a jealous person. Vehemently so. Old girlfriends had teased him for it, but he had never minded it. He was man enough to admit that maybe he toed the line of being possessive, but it had never bothered him. Not like this.
She was in a relationship. Someone loved her. There was someone waiting for her at home, someone who cared so deeply about her that they’d risk her wrath just to keep her safe. Sure, Jake thought it a bit ridiculous for her partner to try managing her so closely, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that there was someone to try and manage her, regardless of how controlling it seemed.
It wasn’t his place to be angry. It wasn’t his place to quietly simmer at the man who had waltzed in and tried to outrank her feelings and aspirations because it wasn’t what he wanted. Jake knew it wasn’t his business how their dynamic played out, but he couldn’t help disliking the way Mo had spoken to Gwyn, the way he had tried to dictate her with such authority. He could understand being upset. Hell, Jake would even be upset if his girlfriend (or wife, he thought bitterly) hadn’t told him about shipping off to Top Gun. Maybe even livid. But he wouldn’t try to stop her. He’d never even dream of it.
It wasn’t about what he would do, though. Gwyn wasn’t his girlfriend (or fuck, his wife), and it wasn’t up to him how their relationship unfolded.
And besides, he had only known her for about two weeks. Two weeks was nothing compared to a relationship with someone in love.
He knew all of this.
It didn’t lessen the sting.
—------------
The Hard Deck was just as deafening as usual. Aviators and civilians alike crawling their way through and around each other filled the space, and God even the air felt sticky.
Gross.
Jake’s foul mood was absolutely to blame for the bitterness in his attitude, but he couldn’t be assed to care. He lost count how many times Rooster had ribbed him for glaring at anyone who brushed too close to the group, joking that the Navy had invested in guard dogs. Even biting back at Bradshaw felt like a chore, so he just let him ramble on.
Maverick had showed up not long after them, choosing to sit at the bar and longingly stare at the older brunette mixing drinks behind it.
A man in love.
How awful.
Jake was just starting to find amusement in the love-stricken face of his instructor when a bawdy cheer and holler tore his attention back to his team. Coyote had his arms raised in greeting before bringing them down to clap Alec across the back as the man stumbled in with a placated smile, Gwyn trailing closely behind him.
And behind her, the commander.
The elder had dressed out of his uniform, like the twins, opting for something much more casual. The way Gwyn pulled at the hem of her denim shorts snagged his attention, and fuck, he wished California wasn’t so goddamn hot so she didn’t wear those goddamn shorts that strung him out.
She was smiling, a complete switch in her scowl from earlier, as she shoved at Payback affectionately before turning to him. Her eyes lit up just a fraction, small enough that he questioned if he had imagined it, but she was walking up to him with a bounce in her step and wait fuck she was walking up to him.
“Hi,” she started, playing with her hands.
“Hi,” he responded and God he needed water or something.
He hadn’t expected to see her tonight. She was supposed to be off on some dinner date while he sulked around the bar until Penny kicked him out so he could drive himself home and wallow in his own misery for the remainder of the night. But now she was here, and this wasn’t part of the plan. He needed ample time to mentally prepare for her but now he was thrown right into the middle of her orbit, no lifeline or tapping out.
She already has someone who loves her.
Gwyn settled into the chair next to him, her arm brushing his as she settled her elbows on the high top table. A thrill ran through him at the contact and he wanted to flex his fingers so he could run them across her skin and see if it was as soft as it looked.
Jake wanted to tell her how pretty she looked in the low lighting of the bar. Or how he had memorized the curve of her cupid’s bow instead of paying attention during the team meeting. Maybe tell her that he hadn’t stopped thinking about her all day even when she wasn’t around and that his little crush was bordering on infatuation and that he had never dealt with this kind of feeling and how sick it made him to see her walk in with someone else.
“I thought you had dinner plans,” he said instead.
Her eyes softened, looking behind him at Mo quickly before turning her attention back to him. “I’ve had enough of him for the day, I wanted to hang out with you guys.”
Jake didn’t want to think what “enough of him” meant, so he just nodded instead. “So, you didn’t tell him about Top Gun?”
Gwyn tensed and he wanted to take the words right back, snatch them out of the air and swallow them whole just to wipe the soured look on her face away. “No,” she sighed. “I didn’t.” Her fingers played nervously with the cotton of Jake’s sleeve, a mindless gesture she didn’t seem to notice she was even doing, but fuck he did. He had honed in completely on the caress of her fingers through the fabric and almost missed her words altogether. “He’s just a worrier. I knew he’d be upset and try to convince me not to go, so I told him I had been stationed out in the Carolinas. I figured I’d tell him after I finished, but it looks like naval gossip beat me to the punch,” she laughed.
Jake swallowed. “He must care about you very much.”
Gwyn looked at him, almost through him, when she smiled. “Yeah. He does.”
As if sensing the discussion surrounding him, Mo popped up behind her and slung an arm across her shoulders. “Lieutenant,” he greeted them with a small smirk.
Jake’s entire body was rigid. “Commander.”
Gwyn rolled her eyes, and this time, her fingers splayed across his arm completely and intentionally. “You don’t have to call him that.”
The man laughed, shaking her shoulder a bit where he held it. “God forbid someone has some respect around here,” he laughed as he detached his arm from her shoulders to offer his hand to Jake. “Mo,” he introduced.
“Jake Seresin,” he replied, gripping the hand held out to him a little tighter than necessary.
Mo’s eyes shifted, suddenly unreadable. “Hangman,” he concluded while pointing at Jake, and the callsign sounded accusatory. He nodded his head, glancing down at Gwyn while he continued. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”
‘I’ve heard all about how cozy you are with my girlfriend,’ the unspoken words hanging in Jake’s head.
‘Or wife.’
Fuck.
The air was thick around them. Gwyn had taken to nervously glancing at Mo, some unspoken conversation passing between them until the commander detached himself with a small serpentine smile.
“Well I’m gonna go play pool. You two have fun.” And with that, he was gone.
Leave it to Jake to develop feelings (and God, even flirt) with a taken woman. He deserved to get his ass kicked thinking back on all the little remarks he had made to her in an attempt to “treat her like everybody else” and the urge to stand up and deck Maverick for the suggestion was overwhelming.
“Sorry about him,” Gwyn mumbled, fingers recoiling from him and no, no, no he wanted to beg her, come back. “He can be insufferable.”
Treat her like everyone else.
“Probably just checking that I’m not putting the moves on his girlfriend,” he swallowed, itching to flee to the bar and drink his sorrows away right next to his captain.
Cheek’s eyes flew to his face, searching for something before her lip curled. “Oh my God, what? No. No, he’s not my boyfriend.”
Husband, then.
Fuck.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
“Mo’s my brother.”
Oh.
Oh.
Shame pulsed at Jake’s temples at the immense relief he felt (fuck, he needed to get a grip). Gwyn was still sputtering at him, and he only half heard as she fake gagged.
“Christ, did you think he and I were dating? Oh my God, no. Ew.” She shook her head, brows completely pinched. “No, that jackass is alone forever as far as I’m concerned,” she mumbled while she played with the label on his beer.
He was her brother.
Brother.
Jake couldn’t help the grin that split his cheeks, staring at her openly and unabashedly as she ranted. He took the chance to rub the pad of his finger across the back of her hand while she talked, basking in the silk feeling until he spoke again. “I must have misread that, then,” he smiled, and he had never been happier to be wrong.
“Big time,” she laughed, eyes flickering to where his finger danced across her arm. “Besides, I don’t think any sane person would want to date me with as much as I have to move around. Not very appealing, huh?” she joked as she bumped her shoulder against his.
Single. She was single.
“You never know,” he grinned without trying, full and unguarded and he hoped she couldn’t see how completely taken with her he was.
She scoffed, but it held no malice. “Yeah, we’ll see about that.”
They certainly would.
Part 6
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no-droids · 4 years ago
Text
Rumors, Freebies, and a Race for Last Place
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Part Two of The Bet series
Pairing: Poe Dameron/Reader
Rating: Explicit
Word Count: 22.5K DONT say shit alright just don’t
Warnings: Okay. There is degradation in this, some name calling and heated interactions. There is a LOT of smut, dirty talk and rough sex. If these things offend you, please do not continue reading.
***
It’s recommended to read part one first.
***
Getting into the x-wings is always fun.
It actually might be your favorite part.  Granted, alarm bells ringing and thousands of jumpsuits scrambling in all directions is never typically a good thing, but there’s also an inherent rush about it, a thrill in launching up the metal paneling as quick as you can and suiting up to provide aid.  It’s a side-effect of camaraderie, of being surrounded by like-minded individuals willing to do everything they can to help.  You never feel like you’re going to your death, even though that’s often the grim reality for at least one of you on a good day.  There’s always a roaring in your ears while you do it, adrenaline sharpening your senses and preparing yourself for conflict, not thinking anything beyond gogogogogo—
But getting out of the x-wing is… not great.  At least for you.  It’s sluggish.  Your body is always completely drained and you never come out of it feeling the same way you went in.  Even in times of victory, there’s a somberness inside you after battle.  As much as you tell yourself you’re fighting for good, for prosperity against an evil machine hellbent on enslaving the galaxy, there’s only so many explosions lighting up in front of your eyes and screams cutting out through your comms you can take before winning just doesn’t really feel like winning anymore.  Most pilots are able to handle it better than you are, but since you joined the Resistance, you’ve never truly felt the desire to celebrate.  Not even when you serve a massive, glaring defeat to the other side.  There’ll always be at least one missing x-wing, one empty seat at the table, one person not here to celebrate with you.
You came back in one piece this time.  Barely.
The whole mission went sideways—literally.  You’d purposefully stationed the tandem just outside the coordinates you were meant to be surveilling so that you’d be hidden from sight and dead to the scanners should the fleet arrive, but something must’ve happened.  You must’ve powered down a few seconds too early after he turned the thrusters off, because apparently the ship drifted in dead space for close to eight hours without either of you noticing, having no working computers to actively read your location and correct it.  You were sitting ducks right in the hyperspace drop zone by the time the First Order showed up, and by that point you had no choice but to engage.
“Gold-Ten,” a voice murmurs from behind you, and you blink, suddenly seeing the base landing platform stretching out long in front of you, hundreds of docking ships and boisterous pilots scrambling out of them to hug their comrades and congratulate them even as medics rush past with white coats and gurneys.  They’re never for the pilots, but they dispatch healers anyways whenever a convoy returns in case a straggler gets picked up.  There’s an unspoken understanding in space battle—pilots never get injured.  They either come back unharmed, or they don’t come back at all.
Dameron.
You turn around and watch him slowly approach you with an unreadable expression, his jumpsuit still bunched halfway down his torso.  The once bright white sleeveless undershirt is now greasy and damp with sweat,  his dark curls sticking to his forehead.  He winces with every bow-legged step—you know the feeling—before he’s standing directly in front of you and something is carefully being pulled out of your hands.  You didn’t even realize you were holding onto anything.
Your helmet.  You forgot to leave it in the x-wing, and you’ve been carrying it around under your arm aimlessly while mentally checking off the squadrons as they return, counting the numbers you lost today while everybody else hugs and whoops and claps each other on the back.
It’s not as bad as you were expecting it was going to be, not as bad as it seemed just an hour earlier when you were listening to Dameron bellow out evasive flight maneuvers a millisecond before he enacted them and you adjusted your firing at the TIEs accordingly.  You used to think you were quick with how rapidly you could suit up and fly out, drop in to assist and engage, but on the other side, it felt like your reinforcements lollygagged for ages before arriving.  You were left to defend against an entire fleet in one stupid ship, more lines of TIEs sinking like flies from launch decks every second.
“Gold-Ten,” you hear again, and you blink a few times, needing to focus your vision before you can find his gaze.
Dameron’s palm, previously hovering a few inches above your shoulder, suddenly drops to spread along the curve of it and you take a deep breath, almost wanting to shudder at the feeling of something touching you.  You channel all your focus into it, feel his fingers branch out strong along the tight muscles in your neck, giving you an anchor you automatically lean into.
You and him are no strangers to touching.  Before today it was mostly reserved to poking and prodding and flicking and light slapping in an effort to piss each other off, but now… you can’t even think about it right now, your body will just fucking glitch out on you.  After everything that just happened, you cannot think about where else that hand has been recently, not right now.
“You did… you did really fucking good today,” he tells you quietly, slowly trailing his hand down the length of your entire arm until he catches your wrist and a few of your fingers in his loose grip.  “Seriously.  That was… we were…”
His touch is so present, so reassuring.  Grounding, when all your mind wants is to just float away.  You glance down at where his fingers are gently tangled with yours and you feel your hand tighten just slightly, the smallest squeeze while he blinks down at you.
“We almost died, like… every single second,” you barely manage to croak, not really having the words to express it right now.  You always need at least an hour or two after missions like this to just sit in one place and regroup.  Usually you find yourself wandering back to your room to lay on the bed and stare up at the ceiling while you consider your own mortality, but Dameron interrupted you this time before you could process it by yourself.  “We…”  Your voice sounds absolutely shredded.  “W-We shouldn’t even be alive right now.”
“I know,” he nods in soft agreement, taking a small step closer to you.  “But we are alive.  Hey.”  He dips his head as soon as your gaze starts to drift, catching your eyes once more and drawing your attention back to the present with a squeeze of your hand.  “We’re alive, right?  Be alive with me.”
You take a big breath in and close your eyes, feeling the oxygen fill your lungs once more, but this time, it’s… restorative.  A wonderful, beautiful reminder of your existence.  You’re alive.  Usually the word just feels like a synonym for persevering.  Pushing onwards despite trials and tribulations, not looking back.  But the way he says it, especially with his hand in yours and a quiet invitation to tag along, it sounds… breathtaking.  Full of light, and hope.  It suddenly leaves the dim shadows and slides into a completely different category of feelings, feelings you’d never imagine being able to conjure so quickly after such a close brush with death.  Alive—it slots right in next to words like colorful, radiant, sunshine, and butterflies.  Enchanting words, ones you’d like to hear again and again.
Your eyes slowly open and there he is, the man you were sure was going to accompany you to the afterlife.  You were stuck with Poe Dameron in one of the closest calls you can remember, and strangely, his presence was nothing if not… a comfort.  For the first time in your life, you were grateful he was there.
You open your mouth, suddenly feeling the needy, unfounded urge to tell him that.  “I’m gla—”
“Dameron!”  You hear a series of voices call from somewhere to your left, and he immediately drops your hand to whip his body around and place himself directly between you and the approaching onlookers, using his large frame to hide you from their sight.
“What’s up, Briggs?”  Dameron projects to one pilot in particular that seems to be leading the group, his back oddly close to you in this position.  Your fingers still feel tingly from where he was holding onto them.
A chorus of congratulatory, “Nice flying, Captain!” and the like can be heard floating through the air from beyond his shoulders, before the leader speaks loudly over them.  “Hey—me, Seven, Six, and Twelve were gonna grab some drinks in the mess hall with a few of the Blue girls,” he tells Dameron, slowing to a stop as soon as he sees you standing awkwardly behind him.  “Oh hey, Goldie.”
You lift a hand and clear the remainder of the dissociation from your throat, not knowing him well enough beyond the squadron he and his group fly with.  “Greenies.”
“Anyways, I guess they wanted to know if you’d come too.  These idiots are convinced they’re never gonna give us the time of day unless you—”
“Uh—fine, whatever, just give me a few minutes alright?”  Dameron quickly assures him with a dismissive wave of his hand.  “I’ll meet up with you guys later.”
A few of them take turns giving him heavy claps on the shoulder and acclamatory words before the group eventually disperses, and he waits a few more seconds for their attention to fully scatter in another direction before turning back to you.
Shit, he’s standing really close.  Why is he so close to you?  You take a step back and blink up at him, the noises of the landing deck gradually amplifying back up to normal volume as you retreat back into your own space.  Since when did he have that effect on you?  You suddenly feel wide awake, and the chorus of happy chaos surrounding you is something you’re finally able to take in.  You knew it was happening before, but it was like it just existed outside of the creeping numbness.  Now, the knot of internal turmoil has untied itself a bit and you feel your surroundings start to fight for your direct attention.
Dameron continues to look at you the same exact way, though.  Like you’re still the only one here.
You look down at his half-suited figure and blink at the helmet loosely held in one of his hands.  Hey.  Hey, that’s yours—
“Give me that,” you hiss, suddenly snatching it from his fingertips.  “You have people waiting.”
The cutting words serve to snap him out of whatever spell he’s under.  Dameron quickly lifts his head and looks around a few times with sharp eyes, before hooking your elbow and twisting you into a complete 180 until your back faces most of the excitement.  You resist, immediately trying to push him off you and worried he’s going to confront you about… things, but he’s determined.
He doesn’t say anything to you at all, though.  His fingers quickly grasp the baggy fabric of your jumpsuit even as you sputter and start to ask what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, and you glance down just in time to see him yanking the gaping velcro closed at your crotch.
Your cheeks instantly start burning as he tugs and smooths the fabric down until it’s seamless once more, especially when his eyes flick up to yours without moving his head.  Fuck, you’re instantly hot with some wicked emotion, a mixture of embarrassment and outrage and… something else.  Maker, you almost wish you were numb and disoriented again, if only so you could avoid feeling whatever the fuck this is.
You quite suddenly shove your helmet back into his stomach with an infuriated sound even as he doubles over with a shocked whoosh of air, changing your mind about returning it to the ship yourself before storming off without another word.
*** 
Okay, so you’ve done some thinking, and.  Well.  Fuck him, that’s what you’ve decided.
No—not… fuck him.  But like, fuck him.  You know.  In the negative sense of the word.  The bad fuck.
There’s a full tray of food sitting in front of you but you’ve so far been unable to touch it.  Mostly you’re just wondering why the fuck you’re even here.  Well, you know why you’re here—you should eat, it’s dinnertime and this is the mess hall.  You’ve been known to skip out on meals after heavy missions, secluding yourself away and just wallowing for a bit, but you… strangely didn’t feel like doing that today.  You don’t want to self-isolate when you feel okay enough to avoid it, not again.  So you’re here, because the clock says your tummy should want food, but you can’t bring yourself to even look at it.
No, you’re looking at him.  Glaring, actually.
Across the mess hall and beyond the transparisteel divider that separates the cafeteria from the bar area, Dameron is all eyebrows and smiles and side nudges and winks right now.  You can’t hear him—the sound won’t travel this far, but you can see him situated in the middle of a rowdy group of pilots.  He laughs in that disgustingly charming way of his, where his stupidly cute nose scrunches up all cute and stupid and you want to just ask the Maker why he’s doing this shit to you.  What have you done to deserve this torture?  Sure, you may have willingly agreed to it, even… conceived and propositioned the idea, and sure, absolutely nothing is stopping you from forfeiting and walking away at this exact second, but does that make it okay?  No, you’ve decided.  It’s not okay.  He’s not allowed to… to make you feel like this, so fuck him.  In the bad way.
“Just fuck him already,” a voice suddenly grumbles as someone plops down into the seat to your right, plastic trays of food clattering loudly on the table and snapping you out of your reverie.  Gold-Sixteen blocks your view as he silently drops into the seat in front of you and wraps his green lekku around his neck a few times before immediately beginning to shovel food into his mouth, while Gold-Three opens her box of blue milk next to you and continues.  “The Blues never fucking shut up about it, it’s getting annoying.”
“Don’t listen to her, Dime,” Gold-Eleven tells you, quickly occupying the seat on your left and biting into a crunchy piece of fruit, talking loudly over the chatter even as he chomps.  “Rossi just knows her pool is up tomorrow, she doesn’t want to lose any of her precious credits.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Gold-Three immediately snaps, leaning forward and around you to point the prongs of her fork at Eleven threateningly.  “Zhang’s pool starts on Sunday.”
“Oh fuck off, you guys are betting on this now?”  You groan, shoving your plate away with a flick of your fingers now that you’re certain you’ve completely lost your appetite.  Sixteen immediately snatches up one of your bread rolls while Zhang swipes your juice and Rossi goes for a packet of glockaw sauce.
“You’re the one who announced it in front of everybody, we’re just being active spectators,” Rossi returns, ripping the packet and pouring the sauce on her vegetables with a shrug.  “How the fuck do you bet against fucking each other though, that’s my question?  It’s a paradox, wouldn’t you both just lose at the same time?”
“Dameron and I aren’t going to fuck,” you tell her very slowly and clearly, starting to get a headache.  Why is it impossible to avoid this conversation topic, even with an entire Resistance base to roam around in?  “Ever.  The bet never had anything to do with fucking each other, it’s about not fucking other people.”
“Literally what is the difference?”  You hear Rossi ask with her mouth full, but Zhang speaks over her.
“Somebody should probably tell Nine that, she’s the bookie,” he tosses out carelessly, dropping the core of his piece of fruit to his tray before wiping his hands on his jumpsuit.  You bury your face in your hands and let out a loud, exhausted sound into your palms, not knowing which response serves to aggravate your already emotionally overloaded ass even more.  Nine is the bookie, of fucking course she is.  “But hey, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think any of it actually goes outside of Gold, so.”
“I’ve heard the Blues talking about it, but that’s it,” Rossi chimes in while chewing some of her veggies.  “Maybe some Reds.  Point is everybody else thinks it’s already happening, honestly.”
“What the fuck,” you whisper, using your knuckles to rub at the backs of your eyes until bright spots appear.  Where are stress headaches localized?  Are those the ones right under your brow bone?  Because stars, you feel it.  “Fucking… why?  Why do people think that me and Dameron are…?”
Nobody at the table immediately responds, and you drop your hands after a moment to look at each of their astounded faces in turn.
“You fucking serious, bitch?”  Rossi blurts first, her voice completely deadpan, and you growl in vexation.
“Have I not been vocal enough about my severe dislik—”
“And yet you kicked Nine out of your room to let him bunk with you,” Zhang immediately suggests.
“You request mission assignments together,” Rossi adds.
“Spend your off-days together,” Zhang continues.
“You’re both really weird about how long it takes the other person to shower,” Rossi tacks onto the list Zhang is now making on his fingers and you shake your head frantically.
“No—no, that’s so that we know neither one of us is cheating,” you try to explain, and you already know it sounds unconvincing without needing the two quick, lofty and sarcastic nods on either side of you.  “Showers and off-days are prime masturb—no, you know what?  No.  I’m tired of the assumptions, I don’t owe anyone shit.  This is super fucking uncool of you guys, you know that?  It’s insane that this is what counts as gossip in the Resistance nowada—”
“There’s only so much bad news people can take, Ten,” Gold-Sixteen grunts down at his almost finished plate, and all three of you snap your gazes across the table at him.  The forest-tinted twi’lek doesn’t speak much, it’s uncommon to hear his voice without distortion over the comms, but you blink as his sharp teeth continue to form words without looking at you.  “Quit being so sensitive.  Rather bet on this shit than which system is getting demolished next.”
And with that, Sixteen excuses himself with a silent nod, having gobbled down his full plate while you, Three, and Eleven were bickering.  You feel your cheeks flare with anger and shame—you didn’t deserve that, you immediately reassure yourself, but the hidden self-doubt the comment sows just further contributes to your upset.  You want to call out to his back that just because the First Order exists doesn’t mean you have to put up with your own fucking squadron turning you and your mortal enemy into glorified race fathiers, but he’s already leaving the mess hall while Rossi and Zhang have moved on to other topics, both of them continuing to grab more food from your tray as they talk.
You have a tough shell.  But today was… a lot.  You bite your lip down at the table against the sudden wave of emotion, blinking quickly to clear the weakness watering your vision.
See, this—this right here is why you use last names.  These people aren’t your friends.  Betting on who you fuck for laughs, using you as a source of entertainment without your consent just because they’re in the middle of a war, and then guilting you into feeling like you’re the one acting like a stuck up bitch about it?  You’re fighting in the same fucking war—you’re on the front lines just like everybody else and nobody gets to lecture you on the devastation of battle.  You almost died today.  You fought tooth and fucking nail to stay alive and by all accounts, you shouldn’t even be sitting here right now, much less dealing with this childish shit.  This is your squadron.  These people are supposed to be the ones closest to you out of everyone, the ones you’ve been flying into chaos in formation with for years, and yet not a single damn person has even mentioned your performance to you today, all anyone can ever seem to talk about is—ugh.
Unfortunately, your unobstructed view also allows you to look at the source of your bad mood once more, immediately noticing the way more people have crowded around him now, and the headache continues to throb painfully behind your eyeballs.  You were in the same ship, does nobody realize that?  You were gunning, he was flying—you were offense, he was defense—that’s the only fucking difference, and yet, it’s like that side of the mess hall is just completely lit up with hearty laughter and music playing from someone’s holopad and congratulatory drinks being passed around, while yours is… well.
You continue to fume inwardly, struggling somewhere between bitter and hurt, and you can see your reflection through the transparisteel giving him a death glare, wondering how many of the people surrounding him have made bets with Nine.  How many of his little entourage have their money wagered on Dameron getting in your pants by a specific dat—
You stop short while staring at his handsome face, an infuriating, horrifying thought suddenly striking you.  No… no, he wouldn’t…
“Does he know?”  You immediately interrupt the chitchat between Three and Eleven to ask with a deadly edge in your voice, tipping your forehead at pretty boy.  Ooh, you can already feel it burning.  It would be so fucking typical.  Oooooh, Maker, if he’s heard even a fucking whisper about this outside wagering going on amongst the pilots, you will fucking smother his ass in his sleep tonight.  How could he not know?  With as many friends as he has?  If you’re just being made aware of it, then it’s a given that somebody has to have told him by now, which just means that it’s all the more possible—shit, even more likely—that he’s… participating, too.  You do your best to keep your voice even, but you can hear the quiet fury shaking in it.  “The bet about when me and him are gonna fuck, does he know about it?”
“Who—Dameron?”  Zhang turns his head.  “No, I don’t think s—”
“Yeah,” Rossi says at the exact same time, and your blood instantly turns ice cold as Zhang leans around you to blink at her stupidly.
“No.  Yeah?  What?”  He says, sounding genuinely confused.
“Yeah, remember?”  Rossi confirms with a shrug.  “Nine was mad as all shit, came at me in the rec room a few weeks ag—fucking Maker, Eleven, you were there.”
“Oh,” Zhang suddenly exhales, “yeah, that’s right.  Oh, yeah, Dime, he knows.”
You’re—fuck, you’re about to rampage.  You’re burning a fucking hole through Dameron while he converses animatedly with his numerous buddies, waving an open hand and shaking his head at someone with a smile and then gesturing broadly to this side of the transparisteel.  His pool is probably up soon, you figure.  That’s why he came onto you so strong earlier today.  He was going to get two weeks of your pay, plus whatever he must’ve offered up to Nine that says he’d get it to happen within a certain amount of time.  Perfect, your old roomie and the arch nemesis you stupidly agreed to trade her for, two asshole peas in an asshole pod.
“—she thought I was the one who told him—”  You know Rossi is still talking but you’re not actually hearing any of it.  Nobody has any fucking idea.  Nobody has any idea what he did to you today, how unbelievably close you were to… to actually…  “—was all just for fun, but then he had a few choice words for her and told his squad that if any of them had made a—”  You don’t know why you’re so surprised honestly, you should’ve expected…
Wait.
“Wait,” you suddenly blurt, and while she shuts up immediately, your mind starts whirling even faster.  Dameron had some… what?  “Wait.  Explain.  You’re saying he didn’t…”  You slowly shake your head, furrowing your eyebrows and trying to piece it together.  “He didn’t… place a bet with her, or anything?”
“What?  No,” Rossi shakes her head a lot more forcefully than you, getting frustrated.  “No, fucking—didn’t you hear anything I just said, Ten?  He got all high and mighty for some stupid reason, totally reamed her ass out for it.”
“But…”  You blink, stunned.  “But… why?  Why would he…?”
Rossi shrugs.  “Fuck if I know.  All she said was that he ordered Black not to throw in, made her lose a fuckton of money from it.  Had no idea Dameron would be so touchy about his sex life, honestly.”
He… he isn’t.  He isn’t touchy about his sex life—you feel like he never shuts up about it.
Rossi continues talking, but you’re not listening again.  You stare stupidly at yourself in the clear transparisteel as Dameron’s voice comes back to you, repeating something you specifically remember him saying earlier today.  Something you thought was just a careless jab at the time, aimed blindly at one of your comrades with nothing more than the intent to piss you off.
…I swapped housing assignments with your shitty roommate and slept in the bunk below yours for a month and a half… 
You blink beyond your own reflection to focus on him once more, still lost in his own little world, not paying a single lick of attention to you while you’re essentially having a fucking crisis over here.  You didn’t think the insult had any real substance to it at all.  You just naturally assumed that was the result of him wanting to lash out at anything or anyone remotely close to you, if only to get a reaction, so you never gave him one or paid it any mind.  
This is why he said that about Nine?  Because he knew she had organized this fucked up betting pool behind your back?
Stars, you need to get out of here, all these rumors are fucking with your head.  Your assumptions and the hairpin turnarounds are giving you worse whiplash than Dameron’s… well, admittedly spectacular flying today.  You were wrong about wanting to avoid isolating—in fact, that suddenly sounds like a phenomenal idea.
So, you just get up and leave right in the middle of Rossi’s sentence, needing some time alone.  Neither of them call out to you as you quickly walk around the table and through the barrier towards the exit, thank the Maker, and you’re just about to retreat with no interruptions until suddenly two Greenies step in front of you and block your path.
You halt immediately, looking up at them with a furrowed brow.  “What now?”  You grunt, not having the patience to even wait for a response before attempting to squeeze around them.
“Hey, so you really saved our asses out there today, Goldie,” the one on the left quickly sidesteps in front of you and rushes to say, and you settle your weight back on your heels with a huff.
“What are you talking about?”  You glance back and forth between them, not recalling a time you’ve ever spoken to either one, before jerking your head to gesture over your shoulder.  “Go congratulate trophy boy over there, he was the one flying.”
“We did,” the one on the right tips sideways to look at Dameron behind your shoulder, likely still laughing and joking with someone about something, something super fucking dumb probably.  “Well, uh.  We tried.”
“What?”  You let out a heavy sigh and rub your temples.  “The fuck is that supposed to mean?  I don’t have the time.”
“He won’t take any credit, just keeps saying that all he did was steer you around,” the other one shrugs as his companion straightens and looks down at you once more.  “Wouldn’t accept any drinks we offer him, nothing.  So we thought we’d buy you one instead.  Unless you’re… leaving?”
It takes you a few seconds to process that, even as he allows the open invitation to hang in the air.  You can’t stop the way your torso automatically twists around to study your copilot from across the mess hall in baffled silence, suddenly realizing that they’re… they’re right.  Dameron has no congratulatory drinks sitting in front of him even though more and more people have made their way into the bar.  He’s just sitting there grinning and nodding along to something someone else is saying, completely and blissfully unaware of the extent to which he’s fucked with you in the past twenty minutes.  The past… whole day.  Month and a half.  Or… fuck, how long have you known him?  Two years?
But then Dameron’s gaze gradually drifts this way, before suddenly locking with yours.  His eyes flick behind you to look at the two Greenies blocking your exit, and then back to the way you’re staring at him, wide-eyed and startled.
He suddenly stands up and starts to take a few steps towards you, and the sheer abruptness of the movement causes you to react immediately.  You stumble your way backwards through the two pilots, feeling a few hands reach out to steady you through the awkward fumbling, but you slap them away and announce loud enough for Dameron to hear beyond them that you’re taking a shower, and you don’t give a fuck how long it’s gonna be this time.
***
The knob squeaks as you turn the water on.  Usually you’d step back and wait the grueling five minutes or longer it takes for it to heat up with your arms crossed over your naked chest, but this time you move directly under the freezing spray, hoping to use the ice cold to shock your system.
You're finally alone.
Technically solitude doesn’t really exist within this base.  You’ve heard of others that are a little nicer, having a little more room for the ranks, but not here.  Housing assignments, showers and restrooms, mess and recreation halls—they’re all communal.  Everyone is given rotating shifts, so while that means there’s never any true quiet to be found, it also means that showers are spread out well throughout the day and night.
But, at least for this moment, there’s nobody else around.  At least in here, in the tiled chamber with multiple shower heads stationed around you—you’re sure there are a few girls lingering in the locker room and the entry area beyond it, but for right now, you’re blissfully by yourself.
And yet, you can’t seem to enjoy it.
You know you should be basking in the isolation.  You should be thrilled at the rarity of only hearing your own flipflops slap against the floor as you turn around and drench your hair with the icy spray, but the lack of an immediate distraction for your focus allows it to wander to things you don’t want it to.
Explosions, mostly.  Lighting up like fireworks in front of your eyes even as they flutter closed and let water drip down them.  Constant, never-ending.  Some of them small—TIEs you shot down, allies drawing fire away from you and then subsequently getting overwhelmed, zipping through dense debris from deadly collisions so quick that you had trouble distinguishing friend from foe.  Some of them were massive—star destroyers splitting apart, warp drives overloading, enormous casualty counts.  You don’t know how many lives you took today, not directly.
The beginning was the worst—when you were still slightly disoriented, when you were panicked and screaming into the comms for assistance.  Then the closest stationed tandem showed up first—Red-Two and Eight, you think it was.  Doesn’t matter now.  They took some heat off you before the cavalry arrived, but you remember Dameron barking out your name the second their left thruster got nicked and they started spiraling, a ferociously deep, “With me!” cutting through the white noise.  It was enough to snap you back, forcing you to instantly flick your eyes away and focus dead ahead without witnessing their demise.
It wouldn’t have normally been necessary.  You’ve been flying with the Resistance for years, you’ve seen way too much bloodshed by now.  But you’ve never been the catalyst of it—you’ve always been able to confront threats accompanied by your squadron, right between Nine and Eleven, the flight controls rumbling steady under your palms.  You’ve never faced down an entire fleet in one single ship.  You’ve never had to rely so directly on the skills of another pilot in order to stay alive.
The water slowly heats to a lukewarm while you reach for the shampoo.
Surprisingly, for as much as the two of you clash in normal interactions, it was like everything eventually became… synchronized.  Spectacularly so.  Dameron started off the enemy confrontation by calling out his flight patterns to give you a chance to adjust your firing in real time, but then at some point, it just stopped being necessary.  There was a moment where you both were able to suddenly… get it.  Get each other.  He didn’t have to say anything after that—you could predict each other without second guessing, react instantaneously, and work your way through the littered battlefield accordingly.  You never thought it would be possible to collaborate so well with someone you’ve spent ages despising.  Sure, you’d both die if you didn’t—shit, you’d probably still both die regardless—but this kind of teamwork extended beyond the need to survive.  It doesn’t matter how much you want to stay alive when reading someone else’s mind is physically impossible, but for some reason…  You have no idea why, but it apparently came naturally between you.  It fell to pure instinct, pure reaction, and remarkably, his would somehow match yours perfectly, every single time.
You lather the shampoo in your hair, remembering how his voice changed over the course of the mission.  How it gradually shifted from panicked roars and barked orders into ecstatic cheers and genuine praise after landing a difficult shot, how he just couldn’t seem to stop whooping.  
You smile softly as the tepid water rinses away the dirt and sweat from your body, until the temperature is brought up to a gentle, comfortable warmth raining down you and echoing in the empty shower room.
And, your first name.  Dameron kept calling you that, the whole time.  The one you’re now absolutely certain you’ve never personally given to him.  The one he would’ve had to have listened for specifically.  Remembered, or at least asked the right person about.  But why?  It’s not… it makes no sense, he doesn’t give a shit.  He’s notorious for not giving a shit.  He can’t even be bothered to remember the names of the girls he’s actually with—so why did he go to the trouble to figure out yours?  You’ve been nothing but a thorn in his side the same way he is to you, right?
Right?
Your mind starts recollecting more recent events, trying to work through and process it by yourself.  He was… singing your praises today.  He was openly giving you credit for the win while you pouted in the corner and assumed the absolute worst of him.  As much as you’re frustrated that nobody else seemed to give voice to your contributions, you’re even more surprised that he was the one who did.
And then even earlier.  Gold-Nine, holding wagers with members of your squad (and others, apparently) about when you’re going to fuck him.  Dameron, tearing her a new one for it, forbidding Black Squadron from throwing in and not attempting to hide his disdain for her from you.  He… he defended you.  Stood up for you when your own squad was being a bunch of dicks behind your back.  And nobody ever fucking mentioned it to you.  What did Rossi say—a few weeks ago?  He’s known all this time and only today, only after you… openly showed more interest in him than you ever have, after you worked up enough nerve to try in your own little way to flirt back this time instead of responding to his casual comments with contempt and disgust, only today is when he decided to make a real move on you.
…Your mind is completely blank and yet you still feel yourself start to heat up just a bit at even alluding to the events that took place earlier.  The way his fingers felt—
Steam begins to fill the open concept chamber while you shake your head against the train of thought and reach for the soap, beginning to circle the bar along your arms and shoulders with a sigh.  This is already the longest shower you’ve taken in almost two months, and your body slowly relaxes under the mist and heat as you take forever cleaning yourself, slowly and hypnotically rubbing the soap along your skin.
The second you let your eyelids dip shut at the feeling, you immediately shiver at a flash of Dameron dragging his finger out of his mouth and blinking dark eyes at you through the transparisteel.
Fuck.  The soap slips from your hand and you quickly catch it against your body before it falls to the ground completely, suddenly feeling the need to breathe in the misty air a bit harder.  Shower, you’re in the shower.  Come on.
The dirt and grime is scrubbed from your face and you tilt your head to move the bar of soap across your neck.  As it lathers, you can’t help but remember the way his lips felt against the skin right there, the scratch of his beard.  You keep working the soap against that same spot for a while, not knowing if you’re trying to wash away the sensation or simulate it, until you gradually slow and make it lighter, softer—yes, that’s closer to how it felt, that’s—
Soon the water is boiling hot and you’re trying not to boil along with it, remembering everything he said against this spot, the filth he whispered to you here.  Your pussy starts to throb between your legs as the memories play out in your mind, how close he got you to shattering bliss without even really working for it.  If you put it all together collectively, you don’t think he actually touched you for more than a minute or two total today.  Mostly he just talked to you, but stars, he hit buttons you didn’t even think you had, had you a split second away from cumming harder than Maker knows while his finger rested just above your clit and provided no stimulation whatsoever.
Fuck, you enjoyed it.  You did, you’ll admit it when there’s no one else here but you.  You enjoyed the fuck out of it.  You wish he’d do it again.  Force you to lose, force you to cum so you can at least blame him for it, remove your responsibility from the equation and allow you to put just one more thing on his shoulders, to taste ecstacy instead of expecting you to bear the weight of pretending you don’t need it any longer.  He was doing you a favor, you realize that now.  Your body is staging a fucking coup and you wish you could’ve called mercy before it got to this agonizing point.  He turns you on, you fucking admit it.  He inspires violent emotions in you—jealousy, arousal, anger, temptation—thoughts you don’t want to have and consolidating it all into various forms of hatred makes the finer details easier to ignore.  Your perception of him has always been skewed by your iron will, but he all but took a fucking sledgehammer to it today, dented it beyond all recognition.  You want him, you want to him to take it all away, you want him to fuck you—in the… fuck, in the good way.
You don’t have a thought beyond that.  Your hand quickly falls down the length of your body to wash your private parts, biting your lip as your hips slowly start to rock into it.  You’re getting clean, you’re getting clean, this is how you clean yourself, this is… yes, as long as you keep the bar of soap pressed between your palm and the top of your curls like this, you’re cleaning yourself and you can just… ease your finger down just a little bit and—
Flipflops suddenly echo from the twisting hallway leading to the tiled freshers, and you immediately snatch your hand back up again, not needing to turn around to know another girl is walking into the room.  A knob somewhere to your right eventually makes a dull squeak as you quickly finish washing up and turn your showerhead off, grabbing your towel and wrapping it around yourself.
Maker, you feel like your pussy is plotting your demise.  Fuck, you can’t believe you almost cheated in the fucking showers just now where literally anyone could walk in, you thought you would’ve had more self-control than that.  You make your way into the changing rooms and grab your pajamas, starting to tug them on without fully drying your body and having only one thought in mind.  
Dameron will probably be celebrating late tonight.  You can tuck in early, scurry back to your room and cheat there.
Well, no, not cheating, because you clearly remember making a very compelling argument about wet dreams earlier today.  Maker, a freebie, the word has never sounded so enticing.  What you’d say amounts to a… bye-week orgasm basically, since you know he’s already lost at least one match against his own body and you’re meant to be competing on the same level.  It’s only fair to let you persevere through the toughest part of the challenge if he was allowed to throw a game early on and still stay in the competition.  Maybe he threw multiple games, you never got a straight answer concerning that, so it’s still under review.  He could’ve thrown… three games, even.  Or four.
You dress as quickly as possible and then nearly bolt through the entrance area to the restrooms with all the sinks and stalls.  The balled up dirty clothes and wet towel in your arms allow you to hide the way your nipples are stiff and tender against your thin pajamas, and you can’t wait to climb into your bunk and take everything off under the covers.  You’ll be able to cum, at least once.  It’ll relieve so much stress, get rid of this nightmare headache, rip through your body like lightning and paralyze it until you can start over from square one and think like yourself again.
And, you’re just about to power walk your ass back to your quarters when a body nearly slams into yours as soon as you step foot outside the door, your shoulder jerking back just in time to avoid a collision.
A mechanic, you think.  You’re not exactly sure, you don’t hang out with too many of them—he’s Chiss and his glowing red eyes don’t even land on you as you gasp and sidestep him at the last second, but it’s not him that catches the majority of your attention.  He just exited the men’s room at the same time you left the women’s, and the door takes a moment to swing shut behind him.
You freeze.  It can’t be more than a few seconds—but it feels like everything slows down and it lasts a fucking eternity.
Dameron is standing at a sink in the far corner of the room, naked except for a towel identical to the one in your arms wrapped loosely around his waist.  He cradles the base of his own throat with one hand and gently drags a razor down the smooth contour of it with the other, his chin tilted up high and regal while his eyelids dip low to concentrate on his movements.  He glances down and holds the foamy blade under the running faucet, tapping it twice against porcelain before the door slides him out of frame.
I can shave, a low, silky murmur slowly fills your ears, heat swelling low and hot in your tummy.  Tonight, I’ll shave it off.  Make it nice and smooth for you.
You feel like your body is just a collection of rigid knots all tied together, and the one between your legs is the tightest it’s ever been.  Stars, on another day you’d say it feels like a bad cramp, even though you know your injection makes your period rare and like clockwork.  Regardless, the split second image makes you shudder and clamp up painfully, and you just stand there and stare at the closed door for a second, trying not to shake.
Fuck, this is so fucking… presumptuous of him.
Realistically, you know it could have absolutely nothing to do with you.  It’s his face—you’re not self-centered enough to have completely lost your concept of autonomy.  He can do whatever he wants to his body, and that includes facial hair, full stop.  You also know that he’s not being… obvious about it, no matter how much it feels that way to you.  He’s using the sink and mirror at the very end of the room, not any of the ones nearest to the door—but even if he was, it’s not like he could’ve planned for you to walk out at the exact moment the metal hinge was angled wide open.  He couldn’t possibly have intended for this, for you to see him doing this.  He wasn’t making a show, didn’t even notice you standing there.  You blame literally everything on him, or at least you always try your absolute best to—but this one…
It sends a hard shudder down your spine and you clutch the fabric in your arms tighter, trying not to drop it.  Fuck.  This is torture.  Fuck him.  Good and bad—both ways, all the ways he can be fucked, fuck him.  Your head is spinning, you’re sweating fresh out of the shower, you need to cum.  Maybe if you hurry, you can get that precious orgasm before he’s finished, because if Dameron is able to intercept you before you can tend to this, you’re… you’re not sure how you’re going to say no to him.
You don’t even think you want to anymore.  
You feel like you’re just… holding onto it on principle now.  Too stubborn and hardheaded to want change.  Too stuck in your own ways to recognize how much everything already has changed.
Somehow, you end up making your way back to your room, but the whole thing is a blur.  Your flipflops plap against your heels as you navigate through hallways as quick as you can, emptier than you’ve seen them in months.  You know most of the pilots are probably out celebrating in either the mess hall or rec room, but the thought doesn’t really presently register.  Almost nothing registers besides your continuous forward motion and the way you feel yourself throb with every step, aching for something you are going to get tonight.  Fuck, you are so attached to this orgasm now, it’s not going anywhere and neither are you.  You deserve this, you deserve some relief.  Come hell or highwater, it’s happening tonight.
As soon as you step into your room and slap your hand blindly against the wall panel to close the door behind you, you’re carelessly dropping the bundle of fabric to the floor and then shrugging out of your pajamas in the cool pitch darkness, having exactly one mission in mind.  You don’t bother with lights, with brushing your hair, with literally anything besides clamoring up the ladder to your top bunk and wiggling under the thin bedsheet, making sure to pull it up to your chin before your legs butterfly open.  The tip of your finger wets itself on your tongue and then you’re dropping it down and sliding it against your poor clit, the pleasure arcing and flaring so sharp and sensitive even from your touch that you have to give it just a second.
…No, no you don’t.  You don’t have to give it fucking anything.  You keep moving your finger hard and quick even as your hips naturally want to jerk away from it, shoving yourself through the sensitivity with gritted teeth and a ferocious will.
Fuck, how long do you think you have?  Was Dameron shaving pre or post-shower?  You can’t remember, all you know is he had a towel around his waist.  And that thin gold chain hanging down his neck.  Was his hair wet?  Fuck, why can’t you remember?  His chin and jaw were smooth as silk, you know that much.  Post-shower, then.  Probably.  Probably?
His chin and jaw were smooth as silk.  You keep getting stuck on that no matter how chaotically your thoughts whirl; they fling out in different directions at different velocities but all somehow manage to go in a perfect circle and end up at the same place you started.  His chin, his jaw, his mouth, his neck, his chin, his mouth, his jaw, his mouth, his mouth, his mouth—
You feel yourself start to clamp down and you speed up, chasing it.  The pleasure starts burning deep inside you, the fire slowly licking down your thighs and rising up into your abdomen, and then—
And then a series of quiet beeps from the hallway practically blare like alarm bells to your frantic mind.
You immediately stop moving your finger, snapping your legs tight together and flat to the mattress as soon as the door to your room shifts open and fluorescent light spills inside, and you feel like you could actually fucking cry right now.
All this edging is just a form of self-flagellation at this point.  You lay there and try not to make a sound, try not to tremble hard enough to shake the whole bunk with it, but even your breathing feels like it’s going to give you away.  Dameron, shirtless with his towel draped over his shoulder, slowly steps into the room and then pauses almost immediately, making your heart stutter for a second at what so blatantly caught his attention.
One quick glance down towards his feet confirms the simultaneous hope and fear—you left everything on the floor.  The towel, the dirty clothes, and your pajamas are strewn about haphazardly right where he needs to walk.
You know what it must look like to him.  A trail of clothes leading directly to an occupied bed isn’t exactly subtle, even though you didn’t necessarily intend it that way.  Still, what can you say?  Your hand is shoved in between your legs right now and you’re in your birthday suit under this thin sheet, what the fuck can you say to him?  Sorry Dameron, got too caught up with how stupid wet you get me that I left those there on accident on my way to cheat, but totally not because I lowkey want your help doing it.  Convincing, that’ll go over great.
Dameron slowly lifts his head to look at you.  Or, at least you think he does—the light from the open door behind him casts his body in a dark silhouette, but you know your face is perfectly illuminated for him right now.  Blinking down at him from the top bunk with your brows pulled up in the middle, wide-eyed and desperate and caught red-handed.  Fuck, you don’t know if he can see the way your knees are clamped tight together and your hand rests perfectly still against your pussy like this from the angle he’s at, but you know it has to be super fucking obvious either way.  You’re breaking the rules, you’re touching yourself, and you both know it.  You can’t lie, you can’t even sit up without confirming his very valid suspicion.  He can call the game at any point, but…
You watch his head fall back down to study the mess you left for him once more.  Fuck, are you positive that was an accident?  Normally you wouldn’t second guess anything about your own understanding of the interactions that occur between you and him, but—you’ve never done that before.  You’ve lived with roommates on this base for years, you don’t just… get naked before getting into bed, that’s bad form.  How are you going to get up in the morning without having your pajamas shoved near your feet while you sleep?  Wrap this thin bedsheet around yourself and scamper down the ladder until you can snatch them up from the floor, and then what?  Climb all the way back up just to wiggle the clothes on underneath the blanket before going back down again?  Maker, you fucked up, your pussy is plotting your fucking demise.
But then everything inside you pulls taut as Dameron suddenly decides to move.  Slowly, he leans down to catch your orange jumpsuit closest to his feet with a few fingers, before he stands upright and carefully begins folding the fabric without saying a single word to you.  Electricity buzzes through you as he very obviously takes his time with it, using nearly his whole armspan to lengthen and fold the sleeves while his chest and chin meet for support.  When he’s eventually satisfied with it, he takes a few steps toward the empty desk on your side of the room and then sets the neat rectangle of fabric atop it where you usually keep it.
You bite your lip and you can’t help it—you start to move your finger as he goes back to sort the pajamas you wore for barely two seconds from your dirty clothes, folding and putting away whatever is clean and then tossing the rest into the shared laundry basket that gets collected every week.  Somehow it makes you feel even more naked, seeing all your clothes be returned to their proper places, realizing that this is your base state now, this is what you’re going to wear tonight.  Nothing.  You left everything on the floor and trapped yourself up here, he’s simply shifting a pawn forward two spaces in kind now that you’ve made your first move.
You can feel yourself pulse threateningly against your own fingertip while he collects your wet towel and drapes it over your closet door to dry, and your breath comes louder through your nose while you bite back the noises you want to make, the way your movements so desperately want to speed up.  Your hand working the way you want it to under the white sheets would be too much, too revealing, but you don’t know how much longer you’ll be able to care.
But then of course, the asshole has to go and put away his towel and clothes, and you endure through the whole thing while pressing back and forth against your clit so hard and slow that your toes curl and pull the sheet tucked under your chin taut.  After that’s done, he makes his way over to the portshade above his desk and slowly slides it open a few inches, the light of three moons outside gradually filling the room.  However, when Dameron goes back to press a button on the wall panel and close the door to the hallway, you immediately see how much softer it is in here, how the artificial fluorescents have thankfully disappeared and the room illuminates more than it blinds, glows more than it beams.  He presses one more button as the lock inside the paneling slides into place.
You bite your bottom lip and try your best to hide the pleasure you’re building for yourself while he makes his way back to his desk, quietly swiping the radio off it and lowering the volume knob completely before he flips it on.  The noise slowly amplifies until you’re able to catch two distinct voices conversing in Huttese—it’s the only lingua franca that still broadcasts on this old technology in this part of the galaxy, but he’s already flipping through the stations in search of something specific.
If you were thinking straight, you may have actually recognized this for what it is, but you’re having trouble even processing the details of your general surroundings right now, your mind is lagging and too slow at reading between the lines.  Dameron’s doing exactly what he said he would do.  He laid it all out earlier for you in the x-wing, telling you exactly what he wanted plain as day, and now he’s checking the whole list off one by one.  The shade is open and the room is lit just enough to make him out, the door is locked, and he’s finding something to listen to.  Something quiet, and easy.
If you were thinking straight, you’d realize that there’s a much more obvious reason why he shaved his beard—you never told him the truth about how much you liked it.  You never tell him the truth.  You allow—even encourage him to think the sharp things you say to him are exactly how you feel.  He did it because he believed you.
Oh, but you’re not thinking straight.  Your thoughts are scattered and the only thing they can agree upon is how good this feels, even as your breathing starts to grow heavier, grow louder underneath the sound of the radio.  The thought stays right beneath your consciousness, tugging at your preoccupied mind.  You work your finger with just a little more verve now that he’s flipping through the stations, knowing he’s distracted by spinning the dial through intermittent white noise while different voices and songs fill the room for just a second at a time.
Your bed, his voice suddenly echoes through your thoughts, originating from your subconscious but almost sounding like it’s coming from the radio in your delirious mind.  I want you comfortable.
Fuck, the understanding finally clicks the second he flips to a slower song and you start to burn at the thought of what’s next.  The silent promise that his actions allude to.  You have the realization way too late but at least it still comes at all with the state you’re in.  Your hand slows down immediately, not even needing to consciously consider the choice between achieving orgasm through your finger or his mouth.  Still, it’s hard to stop touching yourself completely when it feels so fucking good to your deprived body.
Fuck, it’s barely been a few seconds since your realization and yet you immediately bristle in distress at how fucking long he’s taking.
So you open your mouth.  You’re desperate and needy and on the verge of something, and it comes out without thought.  You don’t think it’s loud enough for him to hear, but his head immediately lifts and looks unseeingly at the wall in front of him for a second, as if he’s questioning if he imagined it.  A soft melody plays on a bluesy guitar while you hiccup and wait, but he doesn’t move.
And then you say it again, higher and tighter in your throat, pitched up to an impatient, girlish whine.  “Poe…”
The radio is tossed onto the bottom bunk as soon as he spins around and walks towards the ladder, but it’s like your finger has a mind of its own the moment he disappears underneath your line of sight.  Your legs spasm against the mattress and you bite your lip, not caring about the frantic way your hand begins moving under the sheet as his muted footsteps climb up the rungs.
Your eyes snap to his as soon as you can see him beyond the railing at your feet, heaving himself up until everything above his waist is above you, too.  His pauses there and his lashes quickly dip to the shameless movements between your legs as you work yourself towards that approaching bliss, and then flick back to the way you’re biting your lip and looking at him so torn, wanting so badly to wait for it but not being able to right now.
Slowly, he begins to move forward, crawling his way up the mattress and over your body, noticeably careful with where he places his limbs.  You’re not hard to dodge, though—you’re like a rigid stick of desperation under him, knees and ankles still clamped tight together and your arms streamlined as close to your body as possible with tension as you keep rubbing your clit.  Not to mention the sheet is thin and shows your figure almost perfectly with how tight you’ve hooked it under your chin, only leaving the finest details to the imagination.
But then there starts to be a little strain against the fabric, an unspoken question he’s still bothering to ask even though you could’ve told him to fuck off ages ago.  Poe could yank the sheet down and flip your shit over and destroy you right now if he wanted—fuck, like you want him to do—but his face slowly appears in front of yours instead and his dark eyes search your features for answers.  The length of his chain dangles from his muscular neck and glows against his golden skin, his whole upper body stretched long and bare over you.
From the gradually increasing tightness pulling on the fabric, you expect the sheet to rip down your body as soon as you lift your chin and let that resistance go, but instead… stars, it’s slow.  Why is he going so fucking slow??  The bedsheet barely flutters down to your collarbone before he’s able to stop tugging on it so hard, and then he just gently inches the hem down from that point on.
Fuck—your eyes drop to his lips as he eventually reveals your shoulders and sternum to the room, and then lower to your cleavage while you let out a hushed whimper, praying he understands the extent of how vulnerable you’re allowing yourself to be.  You don’t do this often—and you definitely don’t do it with someone like him.  He’s the one who said you needed this, isn't he?  So why the fuck is he dragging out the anticipation?  Pretending like he doesn’t see the way you’re begging for help in the middle of another warzone that’s breaking out for the second time today?
Poe’s head drops down to give the contour of your neck a long drag of his tongue, slow and hot and wet, the sheet eventually dropping beneath your nipples and exposing them to the cool air.  You bite your lip and keep working yourself under the fabric even as it’s led down the length of your tummy, and you just get wetter and wetter feeling him mouth at your skin as the radio continues to play soft from the bottom bunk.  He follows the skin as it’s revealed, licking down from your collarbone and working with the increasing rate of your breathing.  His lips never feel like they vary in pressure, even as your chest heaves up and down and your lungs work hard for air.
His open mouth slowly drags down the curve of your breast and it makes your blood burn fire through your veins.  You nearly choke when your nipple is enveloped in soft heat, his tongue quickly fluttering up under the stiff peak and giving it to you so gently, contrasting so light and vernal with how brilliant and neon bright the need between your legs is.  Your hand starts to work quicker, and fuck—you can hear it now, your desperate movements audible over the shallow breaths and the sound of one song gradually fading into another below you.  You’re just too fucking wet and your pussy is smushed with how tight your legs are pressed together—the noise is unavoidable, and Poe’s knees are planted too close to either side of your thighs to spread them really at all.
Fuck, you knock against the resistance regardless to let him know what you want, but he doesn’t budge and it makes you just about lose your damn mind.  Does he have to make everything so fucking difficult?  You couldn’t close your legs earlier and now you can’t open them, and it’s like he’s able to take perfect advantage of each opposing position to prolong your torture.
But then his tongue leaves you even as his jaw opens just slightly, and that’s the only warning you get before his teeth graze your nipple with a sudden arc of sensation and you flare up all at once.
It’s a miracle and a curse that you’re able to stop at the very last second, your hand jerking away from your pussy and flexing into a fucking death claw on your thigh at how close you were, and you don’t know why.  Why did the fuck did you stop?  There’s nothing standing in your way right now, you’ve consciously given yourself express permission to cum, but still.  It must just be learned instinct at this point—hammered into your muscle memory for weeks on end to not allow the pleasure no matter what, especially when you’re this fucking close to it.
Nonetheless you garble out nonsense and cinch inwards on yourself to fight it off now that you’ve apparently decided against it.  There’s nothing worse than a half-assed orgasm, and you have to quickly summon the conviction behind your split second reaction before it’s too late and your body takes the pleasure any way it can get it.
Poe’s mouth releases your nipple at the way your whole spine suddenly hunches in and he drops his forehead to your chest, breathing heavy down the slope of your breast as you tremble and grapple for your sanity.
“Did you just cum?”  Is the first thing he says to you, his voice is so ragged and stony it’s practically gravel crunching as he speaks.
“N-n-no,” you quickly stammer at the ceiling, trying to remember how to breathe correctly.  Inhale, exhale—fuck, which one is inhale again, which one comes first?  Maker, does he need to call a fucking medic?  “Huhhhhalmost?”
Poe takes a deep breath and slowly releases it with a bassy and warm mmmm rumbling against your skin, so coarse but pleased enough to sound like melted chocolate dripping down your body.  The noise sends a violent shudder through you and it’s almost enough to knock you back to that edge again, even without your fingers assisting it.  
His head dips and the sheet pulls down even more, just below your belly button now, and you let out a quiet gasp in anticipation, nearly on the verge of begging him to keep moving downwards.  But when Poe’s eyes close and his mouth suddenly moves back up to open over your other nipple instead, your patience snaps.  
Fuck him, bad way.  This is your orgasm, you’re done waiting.
“I’m gonna cum,” you snarl furiously down at him, shoving your hand between your legs even as Poe’s lips quirk against your skin.  It’s not a warning, it’s a threat.  If he’s gonna be like this, he doesn’t get to share it with you.  It’s your orgasm, you’ll give it to yourself if he doesn’t give a shit about it.  “Thought you wanted it, guess not.”
You immediately feel his teeth again in response to your admittedly slightly bitchy comment and this time he lets your nipple roll just a bit between them, making you jerk at the sensation and quickly find your clit again.  Oh, you’re soaking fucking wet, you’re wet everywhere.  Slick and swollen and burning, and it’s not going to take much at all.  The sheet sticks to your overheated body and you can’t tell the difference between your sweat, his saliva, or wetness from between your legs—it all just feels damp and slippery as you gradually lose your bearings under his mouth.
“Fuck this, I’m gonna cum,” you breathe once more, possibly nothing more than a mindless reiteration but most likely just one last veiled plea for him to give you what you both want.  As if he can tell, Poe quickly lifts his mouth and suddenly the sheet is ripped the rest of the way down your naked body completely, sharp and frustrated, and then his lips brush against your elbow as it twitches, nipping the sensitive skin there.
“Brat,” he growls quietly against your forearm as he keeps dragging his lips down further, following the path it makes along your tummy.  “Just likes making shit difficult.”
“You’re the one—” you hiccup, trying to sound angry but just melting into a puddle at the tip of his tongue slowly trailing down your frantically moving wrist, “—you’re the… the o-one who… who…?”
But you’re already sprinting towards that edge, feeling him drop even lower and his hot breath fan against your fingers, and at this point you’re too far gone.  Poe gently kisses at your closed thighs, in perfect position and ready for you, but you can’t stop yourself anymore unless he makes you stop, and the longer he waits down there without grabbing your hand to replace it with something better the more you don’t give a shit about whether or not it’s going to happen.  You can feel the orgasm rising, you can feel your toes flex and everything start to lock down for the approaching tsunami.  You’re going to get it this time, you’re going to cum, you’re going to—
“This is—” you rasp, “—this is a f-free, a fffff-ffreeeeb—”
His tongue softly grazes your knuckle as it works.
And then there’s a moment.  A suspended moment that seems to go on forever, where you’re launched directly over that cliff and yet you still seem to be gaining altitude.  Where’s the drop?  You’re already cumming—you can feel it, there’s absolutely no fucking going back now, but it’s like your sheer desperation has so much momentum that your body tricks itself into believing there’s nothing to land on, no gravity to immediately rip you straight down to your demise.
You choke out his name and your back arches with it and that must be the signal, because Poe finally pulls your hand away and lets his chin dip, and then his jaw falls open and allows you just enough time to catch the glimmer of his pink tongue before it slides wet and slow through your swollen folds.
Heat.  It sears through your whole body with a wracked shudder, the slick glide over your clit as his eyes flutter closed, and within the very first second of feeling his mouth on you, you’re instantly cumming inside it.
There.  There’s the drop.
The burning erupts into molten chaos, crumpling your whole body on impact like an accordion, but he sinks all his weight down on your legs and forces you to endure it with everything below your waist pinned to the mattress.  It’s fucking mayhem.  You feel like your voice actually rips itself in half with the ragged cry of blinding relief, so enormous and soul wrenching in power that you couldn’t even hope to muffle it.  You can’t move your hips through it, you can’t stutter up to ride it out—you have to experience the whole thing with your lower body completely still while his tongue takes slow, gentle licks at your throbbing clit, only able to sit your shoulders up and slam them back down and grab his head as you endure.
You cum hard.  Fucking hard.  It’s daunting and explosive and utterly devastating in the havoc it wreaks, and just when you think you’ve seen the worst of it, it’s just so slow.  Creeping along and obliterating everything in its path, taking an eternity to pass because of how fucking big it is.
When you’re finally able to float back down into your own body again, the first thing you notice is how tight his hold is.  Poe’s arms are wrapped around your thighs to keep them pressed tight together and you can feel the wetness all the way down to your fucking knees as they tremble against each other.  Stars, what did he do to you?  You feel like you actually wet yourself, there’s way too much dampness on the mattress underneath you to feel anywhere close to normal for you.
His mouth eventually leaves you but his head doesn’t move, nothing else moves.  Even his hot breath feels like rough stimulation to your throbbing pussy.
And then Poe shifts and adjusts his body just enough, catching the backs of your knees and slowly spreading your legs up and apart like you wanted to do ages ago.  They feel like jelly, wobbly and unsteady even as his thumbs hook right under your knees and easily support most of their weight.  Your pussy is soon exposed completely, and his shoulders move down just before his head drops to lick the collection of wetness right from your entrance.  Fuck, he couldn’t get it from the previous angle your legs were at, just your clit at the very top—but this is deep and personal and you know he’s probably getting mouthfuls of how hard he just made you cum, using the tip of his tongue to scoop your arousal up and swallowing it quietly before going back for more.
“Poe,” you whisper, and he rumbles low in his throat in response without stopping.  This isn’t for you, this isn’t for your benefit right now.  Your pleasure receptors aren’t concentrated right here, just the physical evidence of them being overloaded just a few moments ago, but he stays for longer than necessary.  He keeps his mouth here far longer than you need to push past the throbbing sensitivity and start to crave the sensation again, forcing you to bite your lip to stop yourself from telling him to move back up just a couple inches.
So you seek it out instead, the lower part of your body clearly not listening to a damn thing your mind tells it right now.  Your hips drop and his velvet tongue catches your clit at the apex of its repetitive motion, and you gasp and rock upwards again as Poe groans and immediately rises with you to chase it.  He attaches to the swollen flesh and sucks at it gently for you, following your lead, letting your wet fingers comb his hair back from his face and clutch a good fistful of it as you plant your feet and slowly grind up into his mouth.
Fuck.  He was right.  You needed this.  Everything about it is heaven—endorphins pour off you in waves as you roll your hips against his face, and he lets you do it.  He’s not just pliant, he’s willing.  His tongue works diligently, his eyes close and he moans into your pussy, allowing you to tug his hair and fit to his mouth exactly how you want.
Oh, everything burns.  Everything smolders and sparks, because he’s always been so withholding and now he’s just going for it.  He’s reading your mind better than he did during the battle today, not necessarily submissive in his approach but… servicing.  Accommodating.  Finally giving in and putting real effort into helping you chase after another shot of ecstasy without being so stingy about it like before.
As soon as you feel another familiar swell of something deep down, your mouth is suddenly dropping open.
“How many—” your ragged voice comes out without thinking, and it takes so fucking long to actually attach the train of thought to its conduit of translation.  You swallow thickly and flex your fingers in his hair, tugging at him to ground yourself, trying to anchor yourself to the very thing that’s about to fling you into oblivion again.  “—fuck, how many times did you… how many fr-freebies do I—do I…”
Poe eases his chin back just enough to respond, and the slick sound his tongue makes leaving your clit makes you shudder and miss the wretched words at first.  “Mm.  Just the one.”
And then his tongue is already sliding back through your pussy by the time your eyes pop open in immediate panic, and your clit is in his mouth again as soon as yours drops to frantically contest.
But the words aren’t coming, it feels too fucking amazing.  Your jaw goes slack and your fingers tighten in his hair.  Maker almighty, the orgasm swells up so sharp and quick that you have to fucking kick him at the very last second to get away from it.  Thankfully Poe’s mouth abruptly leaves you with his oof of shock at your audacity, lifting his head as you snap your legs together and grit your teeth through your miserable retreat from ecstasy.  You don’t even notice the way your knee almost knocks into his jaw with it—you just focus on shamefully easing your way back down again from the platform overlooking bliss like you’re too afraid of the high-dive.  After a second, you actually have to turn on your side and rock yourself like a child as Poe slowly sits up with a grimace, lifting his arm to rub at his ribcage where your heel slammed into him.
You peek an eye open to watch him do it and oh no, it’s not a good plan.  He’s so… fucking hot.  Fuck.  He’s unbelievably good-looking—his hair curls and frames such handsome features, his body is lovely and warm and seeing his chest bare and up close like this makes you want to reach out and slowly drag your hand down the smooth curve of his side.  But then your gaze catches on the dark sweatpants tented shamelessly between his legs and how he’s glistening with perspiration, too, and how he tugs at the fabric covering his crotch and sighs softly, blinking down at you slow and intoxicated with lust.
You have to close your eyes and bury your face into the pillow because your body is latching onto anything to keep you within inches of that edge.  The mere sight of him is enough to make you worry for yourself.  You take deep breaths and do your best to tune his existence out entirely.  Just you, just you in your bed, trying desperately not to cum without even touching yourself.  You’re naked and curled up and there's no one here to look down at you with deep brown eyes, no one else breathing and especially not equally as loud as you are.  Just you, just you.
And, just when you think you might finally get to the point where you’re not teetering anymore, where you’re at least mostly certain that moving around and looking at things and just existing in general isn’t going to make you completely unravel hands-free at any moment, he has to fucking… go and be himself.
You peek up to see him staring down at you, dark and intimate and devouring, before his hand gently brushes down the curve of your hip.  “Maker, you are so fucking hot right now.  Was that a close one, pretty baby?”
Your hand snaps out to grab his wrist with a whimper and you don’t know if your intent is to stop him or just hang on for dear life, but your grip is weak and you shake and Poe takes the opportunity to grab a handful of your ass while you do absolutely fuck all to stop him.
“Mmmm.  Open your legs,” he murmurs, releasing your flesh just to give it a soft smack.  “You’re only making it worse like this.”
“What?  W-What do you—” you stammer, but Poe drags his hand down your thigh to catch one of your knees and pull it up without waiting for your babbled reply.  Both knees go with him, your pelvis wound too tight and frozen to do anything but rotate your whole entire body on your tailbone.
“You’re just adding more pressure by keeping them closed,” he explains, wiggling his fingers in between your knees to try and get enough of a grip to pry them apart.  “C’mon—open your legs, let yourself breathe.”
“Nnnnnnstop talking,” you groan, trying to slap at him, but he’s strong enough to force the movement regardless, levering your knees apart and then pushing them tight to the mattress.  And, though he would normally be right about it, you’re fighting your mind to get away from the orgasm just as much as you are your body.  The sudden exposure and the positioning and the way he automatically drops his gaze down at your needy pussy with his cock still hidden in his pants like that only serves to displace the cause instead of eliminating the effect.  Closing the door and opening a window, shifting the stimulation somewhere else but allowing it to throb steady and aching regardless.
“Much better,” he sighs lowly, digging his fingers into the sore muscles inside your thighs and you just keep your hands loosely attached to his wrists as he works.  “Fuck me, baby’s got such a pretty pussy doesn’t she?”
“Poe,” you wheeze up at him, hearing him rumble at the sight of your cunt contracting around nothing, probably shining and glistening with your desperation for him.  By this point, you’re worrying again.  You have no doubt whatsoever that he could talk you into cumming just like this, with your hands trembling and clutching at his wrists.  If he keeps murmuring filth while holding your legs open and staring at your pussy like this, you have no doubt you’ll find a way to get there somehow.
Thankfully, he seems to understand.  He goes quiet and just keeps massaging your sore muscles while you try not to writhe underneath him.  Stars, it’s like he’s genuinely doing what he can to take it easy on you and you’re still all kinds of fucked up about it, still frantic and desperate while all he’s doing is just squeezing your legs.
“Calm down,” he gruffs, but you can’t.  “You’re working yourself up, don’t—”
“Stop talki—” your ragged growl is cut off by your own hiccup as you quickly find the strength to shove at his hands, knowing they’re at least mostly to blame for your prolonged tightrope walk.  You can’t fucking think when he’s touching you, you become too hyper-aware of your own body, it feels too good in a way that’s hard to describe and impossible to explain.  Poe’s palms immediately listen and raise in front of him in surrender, his back lifting to give you space while you hide your face from him with shaky hands and gasp.  It’s pathetic and your legs are still held wide open and your fingers tremble hard enough to resemble a malfunction.
You just.  You need a hard reset.  You need that thirty seconds of complete idle, of figuring shit out on your own without an electric current running through you before you can start working properly again.  It can’t be rushed, it’s necessary when most people just want to power down and then right back up again.  The wires connecting your parts are all criss-crossed and tangled and sparks are lighting up at the slightest stimulus, you just need to experience absolutely nothing for thir—
“I’m sorry,” Poe murmurs, still staying in his own space but the gravelly voice shooting a bolt of lightning down your spine.  Thirty seconds, of course he couldn’t give you thirty fucking seconds.  “Fuck, you’re so hot, I’m sorry—”
“Please stop talking,” you beg him, your fingers curling against your face, “Maker, I—I don’t want to cum—”
“Fuck, I know, it’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever fucki—”
You go to kick him again and even though it collides wrong and does nothing more than get your message across, the jostle is enough to knock you back from the approaching oblivion just slightly.  It serves to wake you up way more than it remotely hurts him, the equivalent of someone just smacking a piece of machinery and fixing the problem temporarily.
You heave an enormous breath and blink your eyes open behind your fingers, immediately locking with his.  Poe’s teeth are digging into his bottom lip but he’s mercifully silent, even when you drop your shaky hands down to your spread thighs and stay equally silent another full minute while you make the effort to right yourself.  After awhile though, you realize he must be taking cues from you, waiting for you to speak.
Only, you suddenly don’t know what to say.  You’re at a complete loss, looking up at him through your eyelashes in uncertainty now.  Something you’ve never been around him, even as your pussy is wide open for him to look at.  He hasn’t recently, though, you don’t think.  He’s just keeping his eyes on your face, watching you bite your lip and blink up at him while your mind whirls, the only sound that can be heard is the radio continuing to lull from the bottom bunk.
You wish he’d say something.  How come he’s choosing right now to listen to what you tell him to do?  You don’t… you don’t know what to say to him.  Why can’t you figure out something?  You fidget but then suddenly feel your expression lose all its struggle and just look… innocent.  Needing his help.
“Do you want me to leave?”  Poe eventually asks after another moment, tentative of breaking the silence, and you frantically shake your head before he’s even finished speaking.  Fuck, something drops in your stomach at how desperate you’re probably coming off right now, but you’re so lost and you know that’s at least one question you know the immediate answer to.
Poe tilts his head thoughtfully, slowly reaching a hand towards your thigh without removing his eyes from yours.  “Want me to make you cum again?”
You shake your head again, wide-eyed and worried.  He immediately pulls his hand back and blinks slowly at you.
“You want to be edged more?”  He asks lowly, and you shake your head vehemently for the third time.  Poe sighs and sits back, planting his palms to his thighs and pulling at the fabric of his pants in budding frustration, clearly tired of playing twenty questions.  “Well what do you want, baby?  You wanna just hang out?  That’s fine, I don’t care, but you gotta tell me.”
Fuck, he’s right, what do you want?  The only thing that’s standing in your way of feeling better, you soon realize.
“Want you to cum first,” you mumble, cheeks warming at how childish you sound.
“Not a fucking chance,” Poe immediately scoffs, crossing his arms over his bare chest.  “And pouting at me isn’t gonna help.”
“Why not?”  You breathe, dipping your gaze down his body.  “I can use my mouth.”
“I don’t—” he stops short, suddenly registering what you said and switching gears.  “You can—?”  Poe narrows his eyebrows and looks suspicious.  “You’ll let me… cum in it?”
“Okay,” you whisper in breathless agreement, sitting up and reaching for him, but Poe groans and pushes you back down on the mattress with a flattened palm against your shoulder like you just aced a test he was hoping you’d fail.
“Fuck whoever’s idea this was,” he grits darkly to himself while you arch up against his hold, wanting him to grab your tits but knowing it’s not a good idea right now.  “Maker, I’m so fucking hard—fuck whoever’s idea this was, making me turn that down—”
“You said,” you pant, licking your dry lips and blinking up at the ceiling, trying to control yourself, “before, you said that you’re… you’re not doing this for a bet, right?  So why not?”  Your voice goes softer when you flutter your gaze back at him, even though the accusation feels like it should be sharper if anything, since it comes from a very real place of distrust.  “Were you just… lying to me about that?”
“Fuck, come on,” Poe groans, his voice starting to waver as he shakes his head and squints one eye at you, exasperated.  “You don’t get it.  You can’t think of a single fucking reason I don’t wanna blow my load just yet?  Really?”
The sentence coupled with his rock solid hold on you skitters a thrill through your body and you automatically reach up to run your hand along his forearm.  He looks down at the caress and then back to your face and fuck, even you feel like you’re sending mixed signals right now.
“You could… fuck me,” you whisper, and Poe’s dark eyebrows pull up as his gaze falls down your naked body, nodding and digging his teeth into his bottom lip.  An agreement backed by so much unspoken desire that it looks like it almost hurts him just to hear you say it out loud.  “And we can just… see who cums first.”
“Yeah?”  He croaks, his eyes pinned between your open legs.  “Just say fuck it all and race for last place?  Okay.”
Your heart pounds, having just enough wherewithal to preemptively establish a safety net for yourself.  “And—and we can’t finish at the same time or we both lose.”
“Fuck,” Poe groans, reaching down to catch the hem of his sweatpants with his thumb and lifting his hips until his cock is exposed to the dim room.  “We can’t stop once we start, then, we’ll have to see it through.”
Except you don’t catch any of the last part because, uh.  Well, to sum up.  May the Maker have mercy on you all.
Just like that, the only thought in your mind is… you get it.  Okay, you get it.  He told you before that girls were only interested in him for his cock, and it actually… stars, it makes so much fucking sense now, you totally get it.  You thought maybe he was just boasting as a form of overcompensation at first—or, to put it another way you’ve probably used in conversation with him before, talking big talk but walking small walk.  Only now, you’re… humbled.  By a fucking dick, you’re humbled.
You haven’t seen more than a few of them in this context, so you know you’re not necessarily qualified to give an informed opinion, but heavens it’s a sight.  It’s thick and swollen and just a shade darker than his complexion and everything inside you rockets to attention as soon as he wraps his hand around it.  It’s big.  It fills his whole palm without much room to spare.  Far larger than what you’re used to, and you know that no matter how he fucks you with it, you’re gonna feel it tomorrow.  Next weekend, probably.
Your eyes must betray you, because Poe suddenly loosens his grip and breathes your name softly, causing you to flick your eyes back up to his.  You didn’t realize you were staring so openly.
“I’ll go slow,” he reassures you quietly, voice gentle and knowing.  The complete lack of sarcasm or aggression in his tone is enough to snap you back to yourself, knowing that can’t possibly be right.  He’s talking to you like he did when you stumbled your ass out of the x-wing today, when you were barely responsive and lost in dumb shock.  He doesn’t have to… be nice to you right now, like you’re still only moments away from losing it.  It’s offensive.
“I can handle it,” you harumph, widening your legs while Poe immediately suppresses a grin.
“'Course you can,” he sighs with the slightest note of fondness creeping into his voice, dropping his hips as he lines up at your entrance.  “And I’ll go slow anyways.”
You open your mouth to respond but at the first push of his head inside, you inhale sharply and your palm immediately shoots out to press against his chest on complete instinct.  The stab of pain is impossible to mask from your features and Poe instantly stops with a shaky breath, watching how your jaw drops at the intrusion and your face contorts.
“Ahh.  Shit…” he whispers as his head tips down, dark eyes clamping shut and his hold on you tightening.  “What—shit, what the fuck…”
“Keep going,” you growl out, even though you know you’re just making it more difficult on yourself.  You can take Poe’s cock, you can take it, he has absolutely nothing to brag about, it’s completely normal-sized—
His hips inch forwards and you gasp at the excruciating arc of sensation, slapping at him harder.
“Keep going,” you babble while locking your elbows and shoving him back, “fuck, keep going, keep going—”
“Baby,” Poe groans, wrenching one of your hands from his chest and bringing your wrist up to his mouth to kiss and breathe hot air on it, “baby, you gotta let me—”
He moves a little more and you cry out, jerking your hand back from his lips and knocking it hard against his chest before you even realize it.  Oh shit, you can’t handle it, you haven’t been fucked in so long—
“I’m sorry,” you choke out, trying to be nicer by flattening your palm but then immediately digging your nails in, “fuck, I’m sorry, it’s just—it’s been awhile since I—”
“Shit, I can tell,” he pants brokenly, his fingers dropping back down to flex hard on your hip.  “Hoooolyfuck, I can te—ah, fuck, it’s alright, it’s alright, just—nnnnnnshit, okay, just relax, don’t tense up too muuuh… much—”
His cock pushes deeper even as he keeps rambling through it and you feel yourself being rearranged to make room for the slow movement, giving way to a rich pleasure even as the discomfort increases.
Poe stops once more when your hands shove up against him, somehow simultaneously shakier and firmer than all the other times put together and a little more than half of him inside you at this point.  You’re so slick and hot between your legs that there’s no resistance besides the stretch, nothing to stop him from slamming home besides your weak hands trembling at his collarbone, but everything about the way he stays completely frozen for ages says he’s controlled and patient.
Everything except his face, you soon realize.
When your body is finally able to come to terms with the sensation and you blink up at him, Poe isn’t looking at you anymore.  He’s staring directly over your head at the wall, tangible regret manifesting itself in seething frustration marring his expression.  His eyebrows furrow and he scowls but all of it is silent and directed at himself, as if he’s asking why the fuck he actually agreed to do this.  You know then that it must be really fucking wet.  You know then that you must be just blazing hot and tighter than sin and as if in rhythmic agreement, his cock jumps inside you with each pounding rush of blood through it.  You can see the sweat beading at his hairline as he continues to ignore you for the moment, choosing instead to silently lament at the wall like it did something to mortally betray him.
You could… make this a sprint, something devious suddenly whispers to you.  He’s struggling through the pleasure and you can outlast.  From the severity of that look alone, you can put an end to it before it even starts.
Admittedly, you don’t even let the devil finish his damn sentence before you decide to take your own initiative.  You clamp down around him as hard as you can and Poe whips his attention down to you and punches out a curse that sounds like you wrenched the word from his throat before he was anywhere near ready for it.  It comes from somewhere high and defenseless in register and then quickly falls down into a growly pit as his hips automatically lurch forwards the rest of the way inside, hard, smacking into yours as you squeeze wickedly around him.
You keep squeezing through the sudden upward shove of bliss, you keep tightening up even though you’re making agonizing noises and your eyes clamp shut and it hurts.  But stars, it feels good, why does it feel so good when it hurts so bad?  It makes your throat scrape and your face twist up, but you can hear his cursing getting louder and more desperate so you still don’t relax your viselike hold around him.
“Stop it—” he snarls down at you rabidly, “—oh fuck, stop or you’ll make us both cu—”
Shit, he’s right.  You know he’s never been more right about anything as soon as his hips stutter and kick up to a full blown gallop in the middle of his furious scolding, and the sudden build of ecstasy is so fast and intense that you sob his name, not being able to loosen your muscles anymore as soon as it overtakes you.  But it’s like a closed circuit, you’re both recycling the same pleasure without knowing how to shut it off.  The harder you bear down on him, the faster his hips work, the vicious cycle compounding and circling and manifesting in the perfect typhoon within just a few tumultuous seconds.
But then suddenly he rips himself out of you with a gasp and it’s not a moment too soon, because both of you have to scramble and grab onto things to brace yourselves through the worst of it.  You choose the mattress and he chooses the railing, and through the searing discomfort and settling of the chaos that’s becoming more and more familiar to you as this exhausting day passes, you know you fucked up.  You underestimate his self control, time and time again.  But, exactly like earlier today, you feel a thrill skitter up your spine at how he’s going to respond to your brazen treachery in the face of a newly established truce.
“Fuck,” he jerks his head to spit the obscenity at you, sounding more pissed off than you’ve ever heard him, the shredded anger in his voice starting to burn through you.  “Fuckfuckfuuuuck—you make me so mad.  You make me so mad.  I wish I could fuck you right now, on Maker, I’d ruin you.  I’d wreck your shit until you learn and you’d deserve every single fucking second of it, you—”
He stops short and growls jagged sharp in frustration, but you can’t help yourself.
“Say it,” you whimper on a dare, feeling your heart pound.  The words quiver with an inexplicable sort of excitement as you dig your fingers into the mattress, wanting to hear his voice snarl the mysterious profanity.  “Say it.  ‘You…’—what?  Say it.”
Shock suddenly paints his previously tense expression blank, even though his pupils blow out and his chest heaves.  Your voice is too breathless, it’s too needy to sound nearly as antagonistic as you want.  
And then Maker, it’s as if the sheer control he’s clinging to serves to spark his vexation even more.  Mad that you would ask for something so enticing at a moment like this.  Your heart thunders as Poe nearly flashes up close to you and points a threatening finger at you.
“You’re not going to get what you want from me,” he snaps, quiet and furious.  “Not tonight.  I don’t give a shit, I told you I’d slow fuck you and now I’m gonna do it until you act right.”
“You’re an asshole—” you move to lift up onto your elbows, but his hand suddenly plants against your clavicle and shoves you back down flat on the mattress.
“Not even ten minutes after I make you cum and you’ve already got a fucking attitude problem again,” he shoots back, positioning his cock at your entrance with his other hand once more, and Maker you’re drowning between your legs.  His sharp rebuttal and the firm hold on the upper part of your chest makes it that much wetter, knowing you can’t do much more than lift your legs the way you need when he eases his way back inside.  
“P-Poe—” you gasp breathlessly, but it's like he doesn’t hear you.
His expression tenses and he shudders out a low growl.  “Fuck.  Tight little baby.  Rude little baby, just wants everything her way but doesn’t know how to behave herself.”
You have to bite your lip hard to hold back a whine when he’s completely sheathed and his hips connect to yours, and… shit.  You already feel it.  You already feel that simmering starting to take hold deep down once more, that monstrous second orgasm you’ve been fighting now digging its claws into you and licking the base of your spine with fire.  And, as if he can tell, his demeanor instantly changes.
“Uh, oh,” Poe murmurs quietly, equal parts lilting and baiting, slowly dragging his cock out and then starting up the laziest pace you’ve ever experienced with his hand still planted high on your sternum right below your collarbone.  “Can you feel it coming?  Fuck, I can,” he shudders.  “Already.  Fuck, you’re so wet, you’re so wet—wish you had let me eat you out mor—”
“You can’t c—umm,” you hiccup, grasping his wrist and writhing through the building ecstasy, and you don’t know who you’re talking to at this point.  Your other palm slaps at his shoulder with increasing urgency—fuck, he’s been fucking you for barely ten seconds and you’re already struggling to hold everything back.  Only, his hand quickly grabs yours and pins it to the mattress, his face dropping closer as he rolls his hips achingly slow.  You feel his back working with the steady pace, you see his neck flex as his cock drags so thick inside you, and then your gaze starts to lose focus a bit.  It slides up his throat as lazily as he’s augmenting your pleasure, following the contour of his smooth skin until it reaches his face.
And mercy, Poe’s tongue comes out to wet his lips and a dark curl hangs down his forehead, concentrating hard on fucking you steadily without giving into the same creeping euphoria you’re feeling, and you have to turn away and bite back a whimper at the metal railing when the image starts to burn you alive.
“No,” Poe gruffs and his hand slides up a few inches to frame your jaw, twisting until you face him directly once more.  “Right here, you stay right here with me.”
Your eyebrows pull up weakly and your eyes flick across his stunning features, the way he’s so present, so focused and determined while you’re starting to drift.  His skin is so smooth, so golden when his jawline used to be dark, and—
“I—” you choke, starting to lose it, “—I-I…”
“What is it, baby?”  Poe growls, staring down at you with unwavering, intense concentration.  “Tell me.  You gonna cum?”
“I…” you whimper, blinking at him slowly, “I… liked your… b-beard…”
Poe’s eyes, previously hardened and steadfast, suddenly go a bit dumb, a bit dazed.  After a second, his eyebrows lose all strain, his gaze turns warmer and he rolls his hips deeper—
But the swell begins to become the only thing you can comprehend—that and the fact that you should be fighting it.  You should be revolting against it, but now he’s looking so softly down at you and you can’t remember what could possibly be so bad about letting him take away all this ache and desperation again.  Let him continue to take it away, over and over and over until it’s nowhere to be found at all.
And then Poe leans down and kisses you.  And it’s… nothing like you’d expect.
It’s gentle.  It’s tender.  It goes on forever while he rocks into your soaking wet cunt, easing his throbbing cock in and out of you with such a smooth, repetitive motion that sends sparks of ecstasy down your spine at the apex of each thrust.  
You handle it silently.  At first.  You don’t audibly react to any of it, you force your voice to at least keep quiet if you can’t hide the pleasure from your face or body, but then true to fucking form, he has to go and ruin it all.  Poe uses his knees to scoot up just the slightest bit, and then his moan breaks through the absence of the desperate sounds you’ve been holding back as his tongue slowly slides into your mouth.
Your pussy flares, contracting painfully around his cock as it hits a spot that makes your legs shake against his sides.  Your eyes roll back as his soft tongue dips into your mouth and everything just gets tighter, and tighter.  Poe moans again and his hips push a little bit harder into yours on the next thrust, and it’s almost like a domino effect, except that doesn’t do it justice.  It doesn’t topple one by one, it doesn’t take any time at all for the beginning to reach the finish—it’s a house of cards, the whole thing collapses and crashes down in on itself all at once.
You cum.
You lose.  Fair and square.
You make a long, anguished whine into his mouth as you just start spasming, clutching hard at his shoulders and drenching his cock with it, your eyes squeezing shut as you cum so slow and fucking helpless around him.  Oh Maker, it’s fucking devastating, it feels even more destructive and powerful than the first one.  You pull and shove and claw at him equally, mouth slack as Poe tightens his hold and keeps tasting your whimpering cries, fitting his hips snug to yours as he slowly pushes you down through the debilitating ecstasy.  You sob in euphoric defeat and a low, bone-shattering groan of satisfaction rumbles through his chest in response, grinding his cock into you and holding it deep as your pussy convulses.
All those weeks of holding out, just to lose.  You had a freebie, he gave you an orgasm already and it was like a massive dose of spice to your deprived system—all it did was make your body want it more.  Even worse, your orgasm doesn’t immediately inspire one in Poe like a part of you hoped it would, if only so you could reasonably contest the validity of the outcome.  He’s able to ride out every twitch and flex as you shudder your way through it, continuing to lazily slide his tongue into your mouth while it’s held open and slack.  He tastes like you.  He tastes hot and slick and everything about your body feels the same way, damp and unbearably warm from your nape to your elbows to your cunt to the backs of your knees.
You lay there for what feels like a lifetime afterwards, powerless to the way your thighs tremble violently against his hips and letting the tip of his tongue slowly trace the bottom edge of your teeth while he firmly keeps his cock buried inside you.  It pulses thickly and you know he wants to cum, you can feel the tension pulling at his shoulders as he keeps perfectly still.  But then Poe shuffles his arms up until they’re braced around your head, using himself to box you in completely without moving his lips from yours.  His teeth close on your bottom lip as he inches his hard cock out long and aching from your sensitive channel, and then groans and goes back to the same exact dragging pace from before.
Your expression furrows, even as he keeps kissing you and the movement lights up your oversensitive nerves.  Fuck, you want him to speed up, it’s all the more shattering and viseral when he takes his time.  What is he doing?  What is he waiting for?
“Fuck me,” you whine against his lips, demanding a quicker pace.  You don’t know why he isn’t just letting loose on you now, giving into his body’s need to cum.  He’s aching for it, still rock hard inside of you.  “Come on, I already l-lost, just fuck m—”
“Told you before,” Poe whispers back, refusing to speed up.  He keeps his pace dragging and steadfast, no matter how much you work to entice him.  “Never… fuck.  Never gave a fuck about that stupid bet.  Suffer though.”
The complete lack of harshness in his tone sears through your nerve endings even though what he said wasn’t exactly nice.  You never thought hearing him tell you to suck it up could be delivered in a way that inspires so much arousal in you, but then his tongue is in your mouth again as his hips work slow and easy, and your eyes roll back at how… overwhelming it feels.  So intimate.  You’re completely surrounded by him, his forearms propped next to your head and his mouth on yours, and… Maker, there it is again.  Your body is so deprived that it’s already gearing up to go again.  He’s being lazy and you can’t fucking stand how it’s breaking you down.  Gradually, with incredible stamina and a patience you never expected from him.  When you first feel that pull, part of you still wants to pick up the other end and start a tug-of-war with the sensation.  You’ve been fighting for so long that your body almost doesn’t know any different, its automatic reaction is to resist.
A distraction, that’s what you need.  That’s what guys do to stop themselves from cumming too soon, right?  Fuck, think of something, think of…
—Poe, you can't think of anything but Poe.  Fuck.  His cock sinking deep, the way he tastes, how his fingers thread into the damp hair at your crown so you can feel him that much more, how you can hook his biceps with both hands and swirl your tongue around his while he fucks you open.  Your hips roll up with the pace and almost immediately stutter back down again, not sure if you can handle the wicked shot of oversensitivity—but then Poe groans and shifts up until his thighs are under your ass and he can curl you in more, lift your feet a bit more and make you feel smaller.  And—stars, the next thrust in is enough to nearly make you bite him on complete accident, an unexpected sound ripped from your throat as he keeps that specific angle.
Poe keeps going.  He keeps kissing you, keeps rocking into you.  He lets you claw at him, lets you grapple helplessly while his cock shreds molten hot euphoria deep inside you, and then everything tightens up again.
“Ah, fuck,” Poe breaks away and curses a whole few seconds before you descend into mindless chaos once more, garbling out broken syllables with the absense of his mouth keeping yours occupied.  Your voice crescendos and breaks at the same time you do, the pleasure arcing through you over and over and wringing you out repeatedly around his throbbing cock.  Poe’s lips quickly move forward and give your whole cheek an open kiss while your expression crumples with it.  Teeth drag down your skin as he moans hot air across your skin, his hips slowing to a complete stop with an obscenely slick sound.
You throb and clench around him and his lips are suddenly on yours again, his tongue sinking deep and dominating.  Your mouth is slack and all you can do is squeeze him through the bliss, scrape your fingernails down his back and hope it leaves a mark.
Eventually the tremors pass and you’re dead in the aftermath, you don’t have energy.  Your body is starting to acclimate to the slow orgasms and just let them steamroll you flat, fully accepting now that you can cum but still putting everything you have into it like every single one might be your last for a while.  You come back to yourself enough to feel Poe’s cock solid and achingly hard inside you, and your bottom lip is being tugged between his teeth.
And then he eases out and goes back to fucking you.  Same speed, same control.  
Your eyes nearly fucking cross.  “P-Poe—”
He immediately makes a noise of disapproval with his mouth closed, a nuh-uh but kept tight in his throat.  He doesn’t want to hear it, he’s not even letting you finish your thought.
You can’t take it, though, you didn’t think he was capable of this.  This is torturous in an entirely different way, overstimulating and shattering you with every thrust.
So, you think back to the one thing that got him to nearly snap earlier, the one time you really got to see that fire you love playing with.  Only now, you need that fire, you need him to take everything out on you.  Your floor muscles clamp down without warning and squeeze him as tight as possible, squeeze squeeze squeeze until you feel his hips stutter to a halt once more.  Your breath catches—fuck, is this gonna work?—but then Poe breaks away from your lips to drop his head and sink his teeth into your neck.
You nearly squeal at how careless he is about it—an animal that bites you lazily even though it sends sharp agony rocketing through you.  Again, your attempt at sabotage backfires spectacularly as a subsequent flare of pleasure swells up, and oh, that’s what you want, you want him to be mean—
“Please,” you whimper, hooking your ankles behind his back and locking down hard enough to make your toes curl.  Poe groans as you grab a fistful of his hair and tug at the way your skin pinches between his teeth—you know you’re gonna have a bite mark for a few days and it thrills you.  “Fuck, please, Poe—please just fuck me, please, I want you to fuck me until it hurts, fuck me the way we both nee—”
“You and me almost died today,” Poe grits into your neck, cutting off your desperate whimpers with a short growl.  “Maker, it was so close, I don’t think anybody has any f-fucking…”  His hips pull out and then spear deep and you choke, tightening and tightening.  “But—shit, we didn’t, we lived and now—oh fuck, now baby’s finally letting me fuck her and I’m not cutting it short, no matter how pretty she sounds asking.”
His words sound slurred against your neck and you can’t tell if it’s his delivery or your perception that’s lagging.  But when you feel Poe inch his cock out and start to slowly fuck you through the tightness, you let out a weak little whine and feel yourself drifting… somewhere else.  
Things subtly lose their clarity, your eyelashes dip and you stop talking because words won’t come.  You can’t tell if you’re staring at the ceiling or your eyelids or the back of your head, but Poe’s voice abruptly breaking through the silence makes you realize you don’t have a concept for time anymore.  You couldn’t tell him how long you’ve been floating, but you almost don’t understand what he’s saying at all and it takes you a remarkable delay to fully comprehend.  But judging from what he says, it sounds like it hasn’t been long.
“Shit, are you cumming again?”  He suddenly gasps into the crook of your neck and grinds his hips achingly hard into yours,  “O-Oh—fuck yeah, you are—baby’s cumming again—”
“P-Poe?”  You stutter and smack your hand against something, him maybe, not knowing literally anything else.  Not knowing what he’s talking about, not knowing where you are, not knowing your own name, “Poe—oh m-my… God—”
“Whhh—W-What—?”  You hear him breathe a split second before everything compresses down tight, and then it all shoves forward at once.  All of the buildup makes itself known the very moment it becomes too much to control, like a flash flood but the downpour happened miles away.  You think you might actually squeak this time, helplessly cry out like it hurts because stars, it does.  It hurts so fucking good, it spiders pure plasma through your entire body with rhythmic jolts and wipes your mind completely vacant.  Your shoulders shoot you up and knock your chin into something and you think you might be crying?  You don’t know anymore.  Your spine comes back down to the mattress like the damp fitted sheet covering it is made of pure ice—your body is overheated and you keep tensing and jerking back up until Poe forcefully pins you tight against it, growling filth under his breath as he slow fucks you through it.
You feel his hand dropping down between your bodies and you sob pitifully at the ceiling when the tip of his calloused finger brushes your clit.
***
You lose count.
It’s just… constant, there isn’t a point in keeping track anymore even if there happened to be the ability—which, nope.  Not even close.
He ruins you slowly.  Meticulously, with nothing more than steady, unwavering determination.  Every structure you built, he takes apart by hand instead of bulldozing it the way you beg him to when you find the words.  You’re certain you find them—you must find them at some point, but they’re interspaced between babbled gibberish and breathy whispers of his name.
Even though it’s slow—Maker, it’s so slow—you’ve never been so fucking exhausted.  He makes you give him everything and then he drains the reserves, the hidden ones you weren’t even aware existed.  He never goes fast enough; in fact, you think he’s actually slowed down over the unknown amount of time it’s been since you first called out his name and asked for this.  If you were in a frame of mind to notice, you’d probably realize he’s trying harder and harder to not cum, but in your wild headspace, it just feels like a prolonged punishment for you.  It still feels like he’s depriving you for his own pleasure, even though he’s actually depriving himself for yours.  But you always do manage to find some way to read things wrong with him.
Eventually, he begins to waver.  He stops talking so much, stops chastising you when you plead with him.  He hasn’t looked at you since he first kissed you—he’s either hidden his face in your neck or closed his eyes as his soft tongue slides across your bottom lip before dipping inside.
But then there comes a point where even you realize he’s struggling not to let go now, and in your faded traces of sanity, you hear your broken voice cut through the sounds of the soft radio.
“Y-Y-You—” you gasp, trembling under him, “—youneedtocum.  You need to—”
“No,” Poe grits against your chin, sounding shaky and weak no matter how sharp he makes his consonants.  “Fuck, not yet, I—I-I don’t want to yet.”
“Oh no,” you wheeze out, feeling the swell begin again, the familiar flicker of warning you get as his cock slowly rocks into you.  Maker, the pleasure is getting raw and painful even as your pussy is drowning his cock with it, allowing him to glide slow and deep into your sensitive channel and letting the sheer tightness of it be the only resistance your body puts up.  You can feel the wetness on your cheeks though, the tears of frustration gathering as your body prepares itself for yet another wave of attack.  “Oh no, ohhhhhnononononono—”
“I don’t want—” Poe gasps, his hips stuttering just a bit and one of his hands coming down to smack the pillow next to your head as he chokes, “—don’t want this to… e-end yet, I—”
Your next orgasm suddenly slams through you and Poe immediately rips himself out of you before it’s too late.  He shushes you frantically while you sob in distress and writhe side to side through the contractions solo this time, having nothing to clamp down on, not even able to grind up into him because he keeps his leaking cock elevated far beyond your reach.
Oh, that’s it.  That is it.
“Fuck me!”  You wail up at him, water blurring your vision and tears streaming down your cheeks, “Stop fucking around and just fuck me, you asshole!  Fuck me and fuck me hard Dameron or I swear to every fucking star in the sk—”
You don’t get too far.  He’s immediately scrambling over top of you and a strong hand is clamping down tight over your mouth, muffling your high-pitched cries against his palm.  Your legs are shoved apart and one is caught under his arm and wedged back as far as it can go.  His head drops to your neck, and then he snarls a ragged, “Brat—“ under your ear before ramming his cock back inside you.
Stars.  Stars light up, it’s so much—the angle, the force, the speed, the sound his hips make as they start ruthlessly colliding with yours.  Your eyes screw shut and you dig your nails into the meat of his back, but he doesn’t slow down—he speeds up—
“Fuck, you still think that throwing your little fucking fits works on me?”  He hisses, drilling into your g-spot with such blinding hard precision that you can’t do anything more than just claw at his chest, gasping for air that just won’t come into your lungs.  “Huh?  Think you can just be a little bitch to me about it and it’s gonna change anything?  You still don’t have any fucking idea, do you?  Look at me—” he snarls, grabbing your face and shaking it to get you to respond, “—look at what you fucking do to me—”
But you can’t.  You already came countless times and he’s lurching you up the bed with every single rabid thrust into your blindingly sensitive cunt, fucking you into the railing and then the wall behind it.  You still feel his fingers grasping at your jaw, forcing you to address him, to look at him, and you can’t seem to focus your vision on his blurry features even when your eyes flutter open.  You’re too dumb with grinding pleasure to see anything besides blurs and stars, to say literally anything back to him.  But that’s not what he cares about.
“Oh fuck yes, there it is,” his voice whines, pitching up something vulnerable as his hips ram you into the corner hard and unyielding, “fuck, there’s those pretty eyes, that’s what I wanted, baby, that’s all I wanted—th-that’s—fuck, that’s—”
They must cross, or roll back, or something, because suddenly you can’t see him at all anymore.  You don’t know what happens—but you know it’s wet.  You know it bursts forth something fierce and you shriek his name with a hoarse and shredded voice like he steals the last part of your whole fucking soul with it.  Fuck, you’re not even there for most of it, you might actually black out.  
In your conscious moments, you can feel his whole body flexing over and over again on top of you.  He empties his load deep inside you and takes a fucking eternity doing it, so many breathless praises leaving his mouth so quickly that they slur together and you can’t understand any of it even if you could hear him.  All you can do is feel your cunt tighten and convulse in tandem with the throbbing of his cock, rhythmically working the cum out of him until Poe stops stuttering his hips, until he finally trails off into nothing but labored gasps and slumps down on top of you in exhaustion.
You both lay there for a while, dead weight breathing.
You want to hold him, your cum-struck mind quietly provides in the comedown.  You want to feel his body now that you can finally think straight and take a moment to enjoy this blissful relief.  He fucked you so good and you want to touch him, you want to run your fingers through his hair and massage the tight muscles at the base of his neck.
But then you just start giggling.
It’s stupid.  It’s so fucking stupid.  You smack your hand over your mouth but the garbled noise easily floats beyond it, completely elated and having absolutely no explanation at all.
Poe quickly pulls his head back to look at you and you try to twist sideways under him to hide it, but you can’t stop—like a complete loon, you snort and start to laugh harder at the ridiculous sound.  Oh, you don’t just float, you’re the air itself, so light with endorphins that you close your eyes and get lost in the fit until water wets the outside corners.
After a moment, a hand gently grasps your wrist and slowly pulls it down until he can see the way your mouth opens as you giggle, hear it unobstructed and let the sound bubble up at him and fill the room.  And you blink your eyes open just in time to see him slowly break into the most dazzling smile you’ve ever seen him bestow a person.
And… you’ve seen him grin a million times.  He’s almost always smiling, as long as you’re not right in front of him.  He smiles at his squadmates, he smiles at girls, he smiles at complete strangers, and you always thought it was pretty.  Always knew that he could light up a room with it, you always knew he could get anything he wanted with it, but this… this isn’t that kind of smile.  That one is practiced and alluring.  It wasn’t fake, necessarily, but that smile’s purpose always had more to do with making anyone who happens to witness it feel a certain way than it did about signifying his own emotional state.
This one is… goofy.  Amazed, and uncoordinated.  Thunderstruck in a way, except the clouds all part at the same time and let you see a rainbow.  It makes you feel… alive.  Colorful.  Radiant.  Sunshine.  Butterflies.
Poe quickly drops his lips to catch yours and you moan happily, sliding your tongue into his mouth this time.  You both adjust, you arch into him as he pushes your damp hair back and makes a deep noise of satisfaction, letting you explore while he wraps his arms around you and finds a way to make this atrocious position comfortable.  Every part of you is smushed up against him and there’s absolutely no space to be found, and you’ve never been happier.
“We made a mess,” he groans against your lips, rocking his hips into you with a disgustingly slick sound as if to illustrate, and his cock is soft but it’s still so thick that it stays buried inside your sloppy entrance.  “Shit, I—I think I might be bleeding.”
“What?”  You ask breathily, and he heaves himself up with his elbows just enough to reveal his chest.  You both tuck your chins unattractively to look and you don’t immediately see any blood, but your claw marks are clearly red and visible scraping down his pectorals.  “Oh.  Pfft.  You’re fine.”
He drops back down with a huff and your head is tilted at the perfect angle catch on the tiny droplets of blood decorating the marks criss-crossing his shoulder blades.  Oops.
But he’s already kissing up your neck and over the curve of your jaw and making out with you again like he can’t get enough of it, and you forget.  You forget everything.  You forget every disagreement, every gripe with him you’ve ever had.  It’s all wiped away and replaced with giddy, childish adoration.  Resetting completely and starting off on the rightest foot imaginable.
“Let’s go to my bed,” he murmurs, and you make a tight noise of disapproval.  No.  This is good, this is how you want to stay.  The railing is digging into your lower back and he’s heavy but you’re perfect like this, this is perfect.  “Baby,” Poe pants against your lips in exasperation when you quickly clutch the back of his neck and keep him glued to you, “mmph—you got everything all wet—”
This time you make a low hum of agreement and drag your hand down the bare curve of his spine to his ass to give it a squeeze.  A testament to how hard and raw he fucked you.  Poe shudders hard enough for you to feel his body tremble but you just kiss him harder, pulling him down onto you more.
“You’re gonna have to give me, just like—I don’t know, at least an hour or two,” he chuckles, grabbing your hands to make it easier to peel himself from your body and groaning when his cock finally slips out.  “Come on, let’s hang out in my bed.”
You’re so boneless when he pulls you to sit upright, you roll a little bit and Poe has to catch you, and you laugh again.  Maker, you’re a complete mess and absolutely delighted about it.  Your attempts at grumbling and complaining don’t hold any sway when you’re still trying not to giggle, and Poe is able to pull you to the top of the ladder and make his way down first.
As soon as he’s out of sight and calling up to you, you weakly slide into position with a groan and feel yourself leaking at the movement.  “Gah—look what you did.  I’m all… gooey.”
“I know, s’the hottest fucking thing,” he says under his breath from the floor, before beckoning you by tapping on the closest rung a few times.  “Come on, be careful.”
You do as he says, easing your naked body down one step at a time with wobbly legs.  It’s clumsy and you whine the whole way through, wordlessly grousing and mumbling.
“Oh, I just know it,” he comments on the sound, “nice clean sheets, I’ll get the violin.”
Normally, you probably would’ve snarked something back down at him, but you’re still so loopy and shaky-legged that you just start laughing again.  The fact that he’s absolutely right and you’re being ridiculous about something like moving beds suddenly strikes you as incredibly fucking funny for some reason.  You don’t realize his hands are hovering inches away from your hips until your legs buckle and Poe quickly supports your weight.
“Maker,” Poe chuckles before giving you a firm yank, and then catching you before you can tumble down the ladder in your naked, teary-eyed mania, “let’s go, giggles.”
He carries you a few steps to the mattress and plops you down on top of the comforter, letting you take up the whole bed while he sits on the end and puts your feet on his lap.  Poe grimaces for a second and then shuffles until the radio is pulled out from under him, and you can hear the soft sound of it playing once again.  You bury your face into his pillow, inhaling the warm scent lingering there while he tosses it carelessly to the side and rubs your shins for a little bit, watching you stretch out naked on his mattress.  
“I’m not giving you two weeks of pay,” you suddenly grunt, and he just grins down at you, not arguing.  Not saying anything.  Sitting in comfortable silence with you when you’re expecting him to bicker.  So you stay like that for a long time, breathing deep and relaxing, until Poe’s hands leave you for a second…
… to pull a bag of chips out.
Maker, at the first squeaky sound of the wrapping assaulting your eardrums, you want to roll your eyes.  You want to tease him about how fucking typical it is.  Like clockwork, you could probably set your watch to his middle of the night cravings.  You don’t know why you thought fucking him would change any of that.
You want to give him shit for it.  You even open your mouth, the snark on the very tip of your tongue.  But then your stomach growls as soon as he rips the thin plastic apart.
Poe’s eyes shoot to yours and neither one of you move, but apparently your tummy doesn’t get the memo.  It takes forever to trail off into silence again, and he blinks.  Fuck, you know you should’ve forced yourself to eat at least something earlier.  Warmth floods your cheeks and you scramble for something to say, but there’s no way to play it off.
“Would you like some chips?”  Poe suddenly asks with a boyish grin, raising his eyebrows and tipping the open bag freely in your direction.
The corners of your mouth pull downwards even as the inside of it waters.  You wouldn’t call it stubbornness necessarily as much as it is a… a desire to stick to consistency.  After the unbelievably hard time you always give him about midnight snacking, you’re hesitant to partake.
Though, the chips rustle against each other and sound absolutely fucking delicious as Poe shakes the bag and bounces his eyebrows, and you know what?  Fuck it.
You snatch it without thinking, cradling the precious food to your chest as you dig your whole hand in and shove a bunch into your mouth at once.  You catch him smiling again, but he doesn’t comment.
You both take turns, and by take turns you obviously mean you take turns stealing the bag from each other instead of just setting it equidistant between you and openly agreeing to share it, but it works for you.  It seems appropriate.  And then it’s quiet again, just munching and crinkling, except for the radio continuing to play from its place in his lap.  You have to work to listen over the loud crunching vibrating through your skull, but when you finally manage to stop chewing and catch a few bars, you suddenly find yourself trying not to smile again.  Fuck, it’s been years since you’ve heard this song, you love this s—
“Fuck, I love this song,” Poe promptly exclaims with his mouth full, licking the tips of his fingers before scrambling to pick the radio up and twist the volume knob without using his wet fingertips.  He starts humming over the melody, loud enough to almost drown it out completely, because of course he does.  The one damn time you actually want to listen to his radio and he still finds some way to mildly irritate you.
But this irritation is almost… fun.  You want to laugh just as much as you want to yell at him.
“Hey, who sings this song?”  You immediately ask over the sound of him clearly not knowing the lyrics, already ready with it.  Oh, the round is in the chamber, your finger is on the trigger, you are ready, and Poe’s eyes sparkle as he seems to stop and think about it.
“Mm, not sure,” he eventually shrugs, just before you rush, “Let’s keep it that—”
And then he’s slapping a hand on your leg and belting out the chorus while you scoff, giggling.  He ruined the punchline on purpose and is now getting chip dust all over you, but you know any complaint you make will be drowned out by his suspended notes and backing track, so you just roll your eyes and swipe the bag of chips from him while he continues to serenade you.
“My ears are bleeding,” you mutter under your breath.
He has a nice voice, you think.
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saltedsolenoid · 2 years ago
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pretty big witch's heart spoilers below the read-more!
so uh. You guys know how Dorothy has a grave outside the mansion, and it's implied that Sirius dug it himself? Because, like, that's just something I've been thinking about lately, and I have a few things to point out about it.
First, I'm pretty sure Dorothy died when Sirius was about 10. How long did he spend in a pure dissociative state, with nobody there to help? The only person that might have come by are investigators of the massacre, though I imagine many of them would have been scared off, and Sirius would not have interacted with them, he would have opted to hide from them out of fear. Throughout his years living in the mansion, the man who owns it would have come by a few times, but not frequently enough to form any sort of bond with Sirius.
Did Sirius have to clean up the guts off the walls himself? When did he start adequately taking care of the mansion, of himself? How long did he spend, sitting in front of where Dorothy's body was, trying to understand what happened? He was smart, yes, but he didn't know how to understand this, how this terrible loss happened all over again, now with absolutely nobody to save him.
Got a little bit off topic, but second, how did Sirius go about making the grave? Did he make it when he was around 14, able to interact with society again, with the vague help of another? He wouldn't accept anyone coming up to the mansion to build it, to grieve for someone he blames for her death, but did he buy the gravestone? The flowers he planted around it? By now, he might have started working as a pharmacist, and might have been able to afford some more expensive items from the town below.
On a similar but unrelated topic, there are a few paintings of Dorothy scattered about. Were these commissioned before or after her death? Did Sirius paint them himself? (unlikely, he's shown to not be the best at art from that one scene where everyone's drawing each other, but this could have also just been Sirius insulting the people he was drawing) If Sirius commissioned them in memoriam of Lady Dorothy, how did he go about doing that? Bringing a photograph down to the town, having it be painted with the utmost care? Did he describe her? Did he bring an already-painted portrait? It's one of those topics that's quite minimally discussed, but takes up too much of my brain.
I was going to write more but forgot what I was saying along the way, also, apologies if any of these points discussed seem more like assumptions, although I am replaying Witch's Heart, I haven't gotten to the part when these events are shown yet.
(also i don't want to tag this! whoops)
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lovely-ateez · 3 years ago
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Vampire Shift~
ꕥPosted: 5/23/21
ꕥGenre: Fluff, Smut, Angst, College!au, Horror!au
ꕥPairing: Fem!Reader x Vampire!Jongho (feat Wooyoung and Minho from skz)
ꕥWord Count: ~5.9k (whoops)
ꕥWarnings: Horror themes, Language, Thigh riding, Unprotected sex, Mentions of blood and blood sucking (please lmk if I missed anything)
ꕥTag List: @cappujinho @bobateastay
ꕥA/N: I hope you all don’t a more spooky concept! Halloween is my favorite holiday and even though its May, it’s always spooky season to me lolol. Also! Feel free to listen to Vampire Shift by All Time Low while reading this (it’s only on YouTube I cry) since this is inspired by the song :)
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It was a terrible idea, really, to work the night shift at a gas station alone. Even more so when you’re a young woman whose only defense is the pepper spray on her key chain and 911 on speed dial. Alas, college bills don’t pay themselves and every spare opportunity to get cash was one I had to take.
The digital clock sitting on the counter next to me briefly flashed, indicating another hour had gone by. It was currently four a.m. and it was safe to say I was losing my mind. I’d worked for five hours now, and not a customer had come in. That was the only advantage, really. So long as no one was around my boss let me finish any assignments I had, which came in handy on more than one occasion.
I was only six paragraphs into a five page report and had been staring at my laptop screen for over an hour, feeling beyond brain dead. I was assigned the topic of financial statements and country trade deficits, and wanted to cry every minute I thought about it. I was half convinced to pay someone to write the report for me.
The ringing of a bell indicated a customer opening the door and I closed my laptop to peer around the counter, ready to greet whoever entered. The first man to catch my attention was wearing sunglasses which fazed me, but I tried not to stare. The man that followed had black hair with blond underneath, a combination that I strangely liked. Both men were donned in all back, their faces stoic. They were attractive, I had to admit, but neither were my type.
And then, the last man entered. He looked over to me as he walked through the door, giving me a nod and a slight smile. His slicked back black hair matched his black ripped jeans and highlighted his red leather jacket. He was so handsome he looked like he jumped out of a magazine and I had to suppress a ‘wow’. A string of butterflies fluttered in my stomach and I did my best to ignore them, not even knowing his name.
The three of them wandered through the aisles until I could no longer see them, and I scolded myself for being so thrown off that I forgot say any form of a greeting. I sighed and turned my attention back to my laptop, opening it and blankly staring at the screen. My ears perked when I heard the men’s hushed voices.
“Y’oughta get that girl’s number. I saw the way you looked at her.”
“Yeah, Jongho. She’s pretty cute. If you don’t get her number you know I will.”
“Shut up.” One of the men, Jongho apparently, responded with a laugh, “Let’s just get some snacks, okay? It’s gonna be a long night. Also I’m buying tonight so get whatever.”
A smile crept on my face and I looked down, fiddling with my thumbs.
They think I’m cute. Maybe Jongho’s the one in red?
I heard the bell ring once more and a girl entered who I vaguely remembered from high school. She was popular but for good reason, probably being one of the nicest people I’d ever met. Our circle of friends overlapped slightly so I’d spent a fair amount of time with her. She was smart as a whip and gorgeous all the same, which seemed to stay with her. She looked bright, long red hair falling around her face, freckles still prominent as ever.
We met eyes and she smiled, “Hey y/n!”
I smiled and waved, “Hey Annabelle. How’ve you been? I haven’t seen you in awhile.”
“Good! I got into my dream college and it’s been great, although I’ve had to take some pretty hard classes.” She giggled, walking towards me. It’s honestly not too far from here. You go to Westgate University, right?”
I nodded and I put my laptop aside. She spoke again, genuinely excited for me, “That’s awesome! Congrats!”
“Thanks,” I smiled, “I’m taking it you got into Orholt?”
“I did! I was really-”
One of the men that entered earlier—the one still wearing sunglasses—shouted the redhead’s name and caught her attention, “Hey Anna do you want a Redbull or a Five Hour Energy?”
“Redbull! I’m not a monster.” She laughed.
The man nodded and walked toward us with several drinks and snacks in his hands.
“Oh! I want to introduce you to my boyfriend!” Annabelle turned to the man still wearing sunglasses and reached for his arm, “This is Minho. I met him at Orholt.”
Minho gave me a slight nod as I introduced myself and he placed the food and drinks on the counter. I began to scan the items, the mindless routine that I was used to by now. The loud sound of laughter made me look up, seeing the two other men approach us and place their snacks down as well. I watched them long enough to notice the way two-tone—my new affectionate name for the man with blond and black hair, I decided—shamelessly checked me out, a cocky smile on his face when I caught him. I just let out a small laugh before resuming my task, watching his confused reaction in my peripheral vision.
“Oh my god I totally forgot to introduce you to my friends.” Annabelle giggled and pointed to two-tone, “This is Wooyoung.”
“Hiya, Wooyoung.” I said with a confident smile, enjoying the way he still had a slightly confused look on his face.
“And this,” Annabelle nodded towards the man in red, “This is Jongho. Both him and Wooyoung go to Orholt, too.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Jongho. I’m y/n.”
“Very nice to meet you.” The man smiled before he sent me a wink.
I had never been a particularly shy person, but as he did so my eyes darted down as I felt my face flush. I didn’t notice the gears turning in Annabelle’s head as she put the pieces together.
I placed the final items in the bag, raising my head as Annabelle addressed me,  “You know I’m having a bonfire tomorrow night at my place and you should totally come!”
I stopped to think, first trying to remember if I worked the next day, then wondering if I was willing to go the bonfire when I realized I didn’t have to.
She sensed my hesitancy and her face fell, “Aw do you work tomorrow night? It’s a Saturday!”
“Oh no, I don’t. I...” I stopped to think for a minute. Although I likely didn’t know anyone else who would be there, I was familiar with Annabelle’s house, which brought me a bit of comfort, “Are all of you going?”
Annabelle gave a knowing smile, “Yes. All of us will be here.”
I nodded, accepting the credit card Jongho gave me, quickly after handing them the bags, and returning his card, “I’ll go.”
“Yay! We’ve gotta head out but I’ll send you the details. You’ve still got the same number, right?”
“Yeah I do.”
“Alrighty! I’ll see you tomorrow then!”
Annabelle left with a wave, her boyfriend on her arm and Wooyoung behind her. To my surprise, Jongho didn’t leave with them, the cocky look on his face all but telling me why he stayed.
I looked at him with wide eyes, playing innocent. “Can I help you?”
He placed an arm on the counter, his dark eyes seeming to put me under a spell. The confidence he was radiating was almost palpable and I felt myself being pulled to him. It was intimidating, to be honest.
“You’re really cute and I want your number.”
I let out a surprised laugh, “You really don’t beat around the bush, do you?”
“No, not really,” He propped his other arm on the counter, leaning towards me and raising an eyebrow, “So what do you say, doll?”
A smile crept on my face as I mirrored his actions and leaned towards him, “You gonna memorize my number? Or do you have a phone I can put my number into?”
Jongho’s smile got brighter as he reached to grab his phone, handing it to me. “You’re a firecracker, aren’t you?”
I shrugged, “I’d like to think so.”
When I handed his phone back, our fingers brushed and I could’ve sworn I felt sparks shoot through me at the simple interaction.
“Well I need to head out before the rest of them get too annoyed,” He nodded towards the exit where Annabelle, Minho, and Wooyoung left, “But it was enchanting to meet you, y/n.” He bowed, drawing a laugh from me.
“Ah yes. You as well, absolutely delightful.”
He gave me a smile, “I’ll text you later.”
"Sounds good. I’ll hold you to your word.”
“I’d expect nothing less.” And with that, he was out the door, leaving my heart a fluttering mess.
-
Me [8:37pm] So is there a dress code for tonight?
Annabelle [8:42pm] Nope! Wear whatever you’re comfortable with. I’m wearing this if it helps at all!
Annabelle [8:43pm] 1 Image Attached*
Me [8:45pm] So leather jackets and crop tops?
Annabelle [8:48pm] Haha sure! We can match!
Me [8:51pm] Lol bet. See you at eleven :)
Annabelle [8:51pm] See you then!
I started the process of slipping on a white cropped top followed by my light washed ripped jeans. I knew I was getting ready far earlier than I could have, but something about new events made me anxious and I had to make sure I looked nice. I giggled at the black leather jacket I was throwing over my shoulders, not having worn it since high school. In the middle of debating whether or not I should add another layer of mascara to my lashes, my phone dinged.
New Number [8:59pm] Y/n this better be you. This is Jongho and I’m texting you for a really important reason and I need you to reply quick
Me [9:00pm] Yeah it’s me. What’s going on are you okay??
New Number [9:02pm] I’m gonna go grab some food before I head to Anna’s. You wanna come with?
Me [9:02pm] Oh my god don’t do that to me, you buffoon. You scared me so bad rip
[New Number name changed to A Cute Buffoon]
Me [9:03pm] But sure I’m down lol. Here’s my address btw
Me [9:03pm] 1 Location Shared*
It occurred to me perhaps a bit too late that I was sharing my address with someone that I’d met only once and in a gas station.
I mean, he’s friends with Annabelle so he’s gotta be good right? God I hope so. I thought to myself.
A Cute Buffoon [9:04] Then it’s a date :) I live pretty close so I’ll be over in 10. That work for you?
Me [9:06pm] Fine with me!
A Cute Buffoon [9:06pm] Sounds good. I’ll see you soon ;)
I set down my phone and thanked myself for already doing my makeup. I checked myself out in the mirror, satisfied with my appearance and proud of how well my makeup turned out. I grabbed my bottle of perfume and spritzed the liquid in the air, letting it gradually fall on me so it wouldn’t be too overpowering.
You look beautiful, babe.
The waiting game was harder than I thought, not knowing what to do except awkwardly sit around and play an assortment of phone games. When exactly ten minutes had passed I heard my doorbell ring and I lifted myself from my couch, grinning at his punctuality.
I opened the door to see Jongho holding a bouquet of flowers, a smug look on his face. “Lovely to meet you here, stranger.”
I wanted to make a joke back but I couldn’t seem to think of anything, too surprised by the flowers in his hands. It wasn’t anything extravagant, the small bouquet of violets, but I felt my heart swell.
It’s perfect. He’s perfect.
My voice was small when I spoke, “No one’s ever given me flowers before.”
His eyebrows furrowed as a confused look painted his face, “Really?”
I nodded, taking the flowers from his outreached hands and smelling their sweet fragrance, “They’re beautiful.”
My eyes flickered to his, the tender look on his face making me feel as if I was melting on the spot, “You’re beautiful.”
I squealed, my face undoubtedly turning pink while my mind short circuited. I’d never become so shy around someone before and the only thing I could think of to say in response was another ‘thank you’ followed by ‘I’ll go get a vase for these.’
I opened my door further, rummaging through my cabinets for a vase when I noticed Jongho was still standing by the door, “You can come in, you know? That’s why I opened the door.”
He laughed nervously, “Sorry about that. Force of habit, I guess.”
I raised my eyebrows in a teasing manner, “What? Are you a vampire? Can you only come in if someone invites you?”
I thought I saw a flicker of shock on his face for a moment, but it was gone before I could register it and I shrugged it off, my eyes finding the perfect vase for the flowers.
“It’s just how I was raised.”
“I get that.” I placed the flowers in the vase, giving them a bit of water before walking up to Jongho and gently patting his cheek, “Your good manners are appreciated.”
He laughed in surprise, full gummy smile on display as he playfully swatted my hand away from his face, “Alright, alright. Let’s head out already.”
I made a sound of agreement before noticing a slight pink on his ears. I was temped to tease him, but ultimately decided to save it for later. If I could fluster him once I knew I could do it again.
-
The diner we went to was one I’d never heard of before, let alone been to, and I was beyond frustrated that I didn’t even know about it’s existence. It was an adorable fifties style diner and even the attire the waiters were wearing fit the theme.
“This is the cutest place to ever exist, I’m convinced.” I said as we sat down on the same side of a bright red booth.
“I really hoped you would like it. This is my favorite restaurant ever and they have fantastic milkshakes. If you’d like to share one for desert, I’m all for it.” A wink.
I bit my lip and hid my face in the menu that was placed in front of us, thankful for any method of escape.
“You’re so cute.”
“Ahh no don’t say things like that.” I giggled from behind the menu.
His hand grabbed the top of the menu, pulling it down so he could see me, “Why’s that?”
“Because you make me nervous. Like a good nervous!” I tried to explain, which only resulted in becoming even more embarrassed, “I-I mean I’m excited to be around you but I’m also nervous. I hope that doesn’t sound weird.” I cringed at myself. Never in my life did I think I’d be blushing and stuttering over some man, but my god did he prove me wrong.
“Not at all,” he reached over to take my hand in his, “because I feel it, too.”
Before I could properly react our waitress came over, taking our order and effectively saving me from becoming a human tomato.
We handed our menus back to her after ordering and she looked at us with a soft smile, “You two make a cute couple.”
While I was a bit too stunned to say anything, Jongho didn’t seem to have the same problem and went along with it, “Thank you, ma’am. That’s kind of you to say.”
When she left, Jongho leaned closer to me, “I hope I didn’t make you uncomfortable by saying that we we’re a couple. I thought that-”
“No, I didn’t mind it!” I bit my tongue after likely saying that way too fast with far too much enthusiasm, but I meant it, “I didn’t mind it,” I said again, softer this time.
The tips of his ears once again turned a faint shade of pink, “Good to know.”
The food was as wonderful as it possibly could’ve been, their fries alone being one of the best things I’d ever consumed. Just as Jongho suggested, we shared a milkshake, which led to shy eye contact and laughter and my crush becoming stronger by the minute.
Just as Jongho paid and we were about to leave, a certain song began to play and he looked at me with an air of mischief, holding out his hand to me, “Dance with me.”
I took his hand, trying to hide my smile but failing. He led me away from the table and next to the jukebox. The area surrounding it was more open, probably with the intention for people to dance near it. He grabbed my waist, holding the hand of mine that wasn’t placed on his chest and looking at me in a way that could make any woman fall in love on the spot. We swayed to the music and I couldn’t help but feel full. Like I’d found all that I’d ever need.
Put your head on my shoulder~
“Do you know this song?” He asked with a smile.
I scoffed, “Of course I do! It’s one of my favorites.”
“It’s one of mine, too.”
Hold me in your arms, baby~
I mouthed along to the words as I felt the need to prove it to him. As if to one up me, Jongho began to sing along, his gorgeous voice amazing me.
Squeeze me oh so tight, show me~
That you love me, too~
I blushed as he looked at me while singing along, becoming a bit flustered himself when the lyrics clicked with him.
Put your lips next to mine dear~
Won’t you kiss me once, baby~
As if we were in sync our eyes darted to the other’s lips at the same time. I could feel Jongho’s breathing becoming heavier before he said in a hushed tone, “Can I kiss you?”
“Please.” Was all I could respond before I pressed my lips to his, fireworks igniting inside me when he kissed me back. His lips were so soft and warm and as crazy as it sounded, he felt like home. I felt him smile against my lips as the music continued to play.
Maybe you and I will fall in love~
-
The fire was loud, crackling and lighting up the faces of all those crowded those around it. It was essentially the only source of light in the dark of the night, except for the distant lights still on in Annabelle’s house. My hands were interlocked with Jongho’s as we sat around it’s warmth, both of us finding it hard to separate from one another.
Conversation was flowing all around us, and I was relieved to find that everyone I had talked to was kind and welcoming. I was more nervous than I realized, but having Jongho next to my side alone calmed me. Someone around the fire mentioned an old story involving Annabelle and I began to wonder where she was, having not seen her since Jongho and I first arrived. I mentioned I was going to look for her and he nodded, at first wanting to join me but then getting pulled into conversation with one of his former classmates. I told him I’d head off on my own and he nodded again.
I looked around what seemed to be the entire property and still there was no sight of her. At that moment I heard yelling coming from her house, startling me. I felt my blood run cold when I recognized one of the voices as Annabelle’s. The yelling didn’t sound like it was out of fear, but instead more aggressive, out of pure anger. Without thinking I ran inside, hoping to calm the situation but instead found what seemed to be out of a work of fiction.
An unfamiliar man was on the ground, obviously trying to get away from a hidden figure before him that seemed to be cloaked in darkness. He let out a sound that I’d never heard a human make, one that I couldn’t even compare to something I’d heard before, and a shiver ran down my back. As the figure took a step forward I recognized it as Annabelle, or what seemed to be some version of her. Her normally grey eyes were now bright red, sharp fangs on display as she snarled at the man. A group of people were surrounding them, alarmed looks on their faces but hardly trying to intervene.
“What the hell?” I whispered, my eyes wide as I tried to back away without anyone noticing. But of course, I just had to step on an empty soda can, all eyes pointing my way. As I looked at the people around me, their expressions seemed to mirror mine and I swallowed, suddenly feeling immensely claustrophobic.
I met eyes with Annabelle and she seemed to change in a flash, her eyes returning to their former color and fangs disappearing. She looked more panicked than I had ever seen her which only scared me more. She was always able to keep her stressors under control, but as she stared back at me, I saw a version of her I never had before.
I was barely able to form a sentence, adrenaline coursing through me at a rampant rate, “Um...” 
Annabelle slowly walked towards me, “Oh—hey! Sorry I disappeared for a while but how’s the party going? Are you having fun?” Panic was still evident in her voice but I knew she was trying to keep a hold of the situation.
“I...I don’t-”
A stern voice came from left, and I nervously turned to meet Jongho, an unreadable expression crossing his face, “Y/n.”
“Yeah?” My voice squeaked as I began to regret agreeing to come along in the first place, still hyper aware of all the eyes on me.
“Come with me.”
His eyes softened at my panicked state and he held out a hand, “Please?”
I was hesitant, but being anywhere away from the crowd and whatever Annabelle turned into seemed to be a good idea. I took his hand and watched as he exchanged a look with Annabelle that seemed to calm her. Turning on his heels he led me back to the bonfire, sitting in a chair and motioning for me to do the same. Seeing no one around us gave me a feeling of both anxiety and comfort, and I wasn’t quite sure which feeling was winning at the moment.
“Well I’m sure you have plenty of questions.” He started, “I won’t lie to you and try to convince you what you saw wasn’t real, because it was, but I need you to know that no one is going to harm you. That guy is Anna’s roommate and they get into an argument at least once a week. Sometimes it can be nasty, but they never get physical and neither would ever hurt anyone unprovoked. No one here would.”
I was silent for a few minutes, trying to process what I saw on top of the time bomb of information he dropped on me. “Is she...is everyone....are you a vampire?” I whispered the last words, almost too stunned and afraid to say out loud.
He smiled slightly, his kind eyes making me feel safe. “Yes. We’re what you’d call vampires.”
I took a breath, almost afraid to hear the answer to my question, “Am I in any danger by being here?”
“No, everyone here is good. They don’t pose any threat. There are plenty of dangerous vampires but we stay away from them. Besides,” He placed an arm around my waist, playfulness in his eyes, “If there were, I’d protect you from them.”
“Oh? And how don’t I know you’re not dangerous?”
He leaned closer to me, clearly enjoying this, “You don’t, I suppose. Doesn’t that make it fun?”
“That’s very much debatable,” I smiled for a moment before a frown took over, “Everyone just seemed really...I don’t know, startled I guess?”
Jongho let out a loud sigh, looking down at the ground for a few seconds before looking back up at me, “Humans aren’t normally invited to these parties. It’s assumed that everyone here is a vampire. The perfume that you’re wearing, whatever the hell it is, is masking your scent. If I didn’t meet you before today I wouldn’t have known you were human. I guess Anna didn’t tell everyone, either.” He placed a hand on my knee and looked at me with kind eyes, “How are you feeling?”
“Surprisingly calm considering that I just learned vampires exist.”
Jongho laughed, “Yeah I’d say you’re taking it pretty well. Like I said earlier though, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of questions, so fire away.”
“Yeah I have a few.” I hesitated, hoping he wouldn’t be offended by my question, “Exactly how old are you?”
“Oh are you gonna age shame me?”
“No but it’s probably an important thing to know...since we kissed and all.”
He laughed again and leaned back in his chair, placing his arms behind his head,  “How old do you think I am?”
I used his question as an excuse for my eyes to wander over his body. He was beyond attractive, very clearly fit and he knew it, which equal parts pissed me off and turned me on. As hard as I tried, I kept finding myself being pulled to his thighs. Even through his jeans I could tell he had strong thighs and I had to press my fingernails into my palm to keep from drooling. “From your appearance? Early twenties. From what age fiction usually tells us vampires are? I’d guess you’re a hundred and three.”
Jongho nodded with a smile, “I’m not quite that old but that’s a fair guess. You had it right the first time. I’m a pure born and we actually age, but we don’t age as quickly as humans. I’m twenty.”
“Pure born?”
“It means both of my parents are vampires.”
I nodded as another question came to mind, a smile on my lips. “Do you sparkle in the daylight?”
“Oh my god,” He covered his face with his hands, a mixture of a groan and a laugh escaping his mouth, “No, we do not sparkle in daylight, “His hands came to rest on his knees, “But it sucks that we really shouldn’t be in direct sunlight for over two hours a day. That’s normally the rule to go by. It’ll burn us if we’re in it for much longer than that.”
“So do werewolves and witches and everything like that exist, too?”
“Yeah pretty much. We don’t all get along, but we have to coexist. It’s something we’ve struggled with for a while, unfortunately. Basically everything you’d believe to be supernatural exists.”
I was silent for a while, not really knowing what else to say.
“Y/n? Are you doing okay? If you’re not comfortable being here I can drive you home right now or if you’d rather be alone I can call an Uber or—”
My heart skipped a beat at his kindness. “No, I’m okay. I guess I’m just surprised I’m learning about this just now.”
“We do a good job of hiding it. Also it was probably a given, but keep this as a secret if you can. Having a lot of people know about our existence can be risky.”
I gave him a silent nod, unintentionally leaning closer to him. The sound of approaching footsteps made me jump into Jongho’s arms. I didn’t know why I found comfort in him, knowing that he could be dangerous as well, but he’d been nothing but sweet to me. I had no reason to fear him.
Annabelle approached us but stopped, taking a few steps back when she saw how I was buried in Jongho’s arms.
“Hey y/n.” She rubbed her arm, looking down as if she’d done something wrong.
“I guess Jongho probably told you everything at this point. I’m really sorry if I scared you and I understand if you don’t want to be friends anymore.” Even in the dark I could see tears beginning to stream down her cheeks and I felt a pain in my chest.
I got up from Jongho’s hold and wrapped my arms around her, feeling her stiffen, “I trust you, Annabelle.”
Those four words seemed to relax her and she returned my hug, still sniffling, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. We aren’t supposed to tell anyone and I thought you might hate me—”
I pulled back, “Why the hell would I hate you? You’re still you.”
She laughed through tears, gripping me tighter, thanking me over and over for not pushing her away.
We’re gonna be okay. It’s all gonna be okay.
-
Not too long after, Jongho drove me home. The ride was more silent than when we were headed to Annabelle’s house, but the air wasn’t heavy or uncomfortable. Feeling tired, I laid my head on Jongho’s shoulder, faintly hearing ‘sleep well, baby’ before drifting asleep.
When I woke, I was in my bed. I reached for my phone on the bedside table and found a little note placed next to it that read:
I hope you don’t mind that I carried you inside. I tried to wake you for like five minutes but you were out cold. Anyways, I had a really good time with you yesterday and I hope you had fun too :) Text me when you wake so I know you’re okay. -J
I looked at my clock and saw that it was still early, but I texted Jongho anyway.
Me [3:00am] Not sure if you’re still up, but I really enjoyed yesterday, too. I’m exhausted so I’m gonna go back to sleep but I just wanted to say I’m okay and everything is good :))
A Cute Buffoon [3:00am] Sleep well, darling. We can talk in the morning
-
It had been roughly a month since Jongho and I started dating, and while I felt like I knew him pretty well, we had only known each other a little over a month, on top of the fact that he was a vampire which was essentially an entire separate culture. I’d asked him most questions I had early throughout our relationship, but one in particular kept replaying in my mind.
We were currently sitting on the couch in my apartment, cuddling each other. The TV was on but neither of us were really watching it. I was far more interested in the warm body in front of me, and based off of how Jongho was looking at me, the feeling was mutual.
I bit my lip, anxiously mulling over the question I’d wanted to ask him for weeks. I didn’t know how he would take it, let alone how I would bring it up, but I needed to ask at some point. Knowing he could probably sense my nerves, I gave in. “Jongho, can a human turn into a vampire?”
He hummed, turning to face me. “Why do you ask?”
“I just...I didn’t know if it could happen or not.”
Jongho chuckled, “Yeah it’s possible. It’s a long ass process to go through though, and there’s a lot that can go wrong, so it rarely happens.”
I shifted in my seat, trying not to appear overly interested. “Why is that? What can go wrong?
He smiled and raised a brow, his cocky persona resurfacing, “You sound so eager to know, dear. Do you want to become a vampire?” His eyes briefly flickered towards my lips before he tilted his head, dragging his soft lips across my neck. I let out a gasp when I felt the tips of his teeth lightly scraping the skin, “Or maybe you’re just looking for an excuse for me to put my mouth on you?”
Like with anything that exuded him, I felt myself becoming quickly overwhelmed, my mind now hazy and distant. I shut my eyes in an attempt to gain some semblance of control over myself.
“Your thoughts are swirling, doll.” Jongho began leaving gentle kisses along the side of my jaw, “Don’t think too much. Just let me take care of you. Okay?”
“Okay.” I said through a short breath, knowing we’d just have to have the conversation another time.
We’d had sex before, so it wasn’t like this was new territory for us, but every time felt like the first, leaving me just as out of breath each time.
He lifted me and placed me on his thigh, dragging me across his flexed muscles. I felt my eyes roll back at the simple motion, my need growing at an embarrassing rate. I grabbed his shoulders as I began to drag myself against him, whines and whimpers spilling from my lips.
“God you’re hot,” Jongho said through hot breaths, beginning to kiss my neck, no doubt leaving marks.
“Thanks I try.” I managed to say, pleased when Jongho laughed.
“You don’t even have to, and it’s completely unfair.” His hands moved under my shirt and danced along my skin, “It’s like you’re an angel come to life.”
I let out a loud moan, feeling tears well in my eyes from his praise, “You always make me feel so beautiful when I’m with you.”
Jongho responded with a smile, carrying me to my bedroom and laying me down on the bed while hurriedly discarding both of our clothes.
“You’re always so eager, babe.”
He nuzzled my neck as he climbed on top of me, his hands finding my own and holding them, “As if you’re not.”
“I never said I wasn’t.”
He then moved in between my thighs, teasing me with his fingers as he ran them along my wet slit, occasionally rubbing my clit, drawing small whines from me.
“Jongho please just fuck me already.”
“Sweetheart, do you even think you’re wet enough for me?” He cooed.
Feeling frustrated, I pushed my fingers inside myself with ease, pulling them out and spreading them so he could see my essence dripping down my fingers, “I don’t know you tell me.” I said with far more sass than I intended.
Jongho’s eyes widened at the sight and wasted no time positioning his cock at my entrance, pushing in and letting out the most beautiful groans.
Neither of us ever bothered to use protection because, to put it simply, vampires couldn’t get humans pregnant. It was only possible when both partners were vampires, and we took full advantage of that.
“Fuck—baby you feel amazing. You’re so warm and tight ohmygod.” Jongho moaned as he began to move, thrusting in and out of me at a steady pace.
I clenched around him, loving when he was vocal. His sounds helped get me off just as much as his actions, at times it seemed.
“You feel...really good...too.” I said through heavy breaths. And as much as I wanted to last longer in bed, with Jongho, I never could.
“I don’t know if it’s because you’re a vampire and you’ve got like magic powers or something or maybe you’re just a sex god—but holy shit...I’m close.”
He threw back his head and had the audacity to laugh, something I really couldn’t stay mad at with how good he was making me feel. “Babe it’s been like six minutes.”
“Don’t be an asshole.” I joked, my laugh turning into a moan. It only spurred Jongho on, making him angle one of my legs up higher, hitting deeper inside of me.
“I know you’re close, baby. I can feel it. Cum for me, baby girl. Let go for me.”
He reached down to tease my sensitive nub, drawing quick circles until I was seeing stars, chanting his name like a prayer.
After Jongho came down from his high, he disappeared into the bathroom as he always did, coming back with a warm towel. As he pressed the towel to my thighs I tried to ask again.
“So...about the human to vampire thing?”
“Well,” Jongho sighed, “I didn’t think I’d be able to distract you forever.” He smiled, “It’s mostly done because couples want to stay together. The thing is though, the vampire obviously gets a taste of the human’s blood and it can be hard to stop once you’ve marked them, especially since smell is such a big allure for us.”
He took a long breath, “Then the human will almost always pass out, and needs to be taken care of for the next couple days because they’ll be so weak. Another problem is that the scent of their blood will be amplified during those days and it’ll be harder for the vampire to not, you know...” He looked away, not able to say the words. I knew what he meant, we both did. In some cases, vampires would kill their human partners for of their blood. Sometimes it was beyond their control. Just a primal need that would betray them. “Then their scent is more easily detected by other vampires and the whole thing is just kinda a mess. I think I’ve only heard of five attempts and only one of them was successful.”
I nodded, not really knowing what to say.
“And then on top of it all, it can be harder for the human to adjust and it can put a lot of pressure on the relationship. Human and vampire relationships are dangerous.”
His face was serious as he ran a hand through my hair. I looked up at him and leaned into his touch.
He cleared his throat and averted his eyes, a shy behavior I hadn’t seen from him before, “I guess it’s important for you to decide then.” His eyes met mine again, “Is this still something you want to continue?”
“Our relationship?”
“Yeah.”
“Of course, are you crazy? You mean the world to me.” I swallowed, realizing he hadn’t voiced his own thoughts, “What about you? Do you want this?”
“I think you have a pretty good idea of what I want.” He smiled and pressed a quick kiss to my forehead, his eyes sparkling.
“Hey Jongho?”
He hummed, looking at me.
“I want to spend forever with you.”
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